Browsed by
Category: events

See Something; Say Something

See Something; Say Something

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday I didn’t take my usual walk around the Capitol. And it’s a good thing I didn’t. A man brandished a gun at the Capitol Visitors Center and was shot by police. A bystander was reportedly hit as well, and the whole complex was put on lock down.

I wonder if I’ll take that walk again. Will I vary the route? Go another direction entirely? 

A crazy world is a limited world. It’s a world of fences and walls and bollards; of keeping things at a distance. It’s a world of “see something, say something,” a message I hear repeated on the Metro approximately once every four minutes.

Most of all, it’s a world of suspicion and distrust and fear. It’s not an especially pleasant world — but it’s the only one we have right now.

Epiphany!

Epiphany!

Comments 0 Comment

I was all set to write about Epiphany, one of my favorite holidays. Day of discovery and adoration. The magi at the stable. And also of epiphany, one of my favorite feelings, the sudden revelation, the aha moment, the emergence of the forest from the trees.

I was helped along by a real surprise, a tree of scarves. Farther along, scarves draped over banisters and railings. On each scarf a blue tag: If you’re cold take this scarf. Chase the Chill D.C.

Looked it up, found the page and the mission, saw the skeins of yarn from which some scarves were made. Learned that the “scarf bombing” was long planned for this day, that many fingers flew to bring it about.

A sometime crocheter, I could feel the needles in my grasp, imagine the warm hearts and hands of the knitters. A sudden revelation, an aha moment. All of that and more.

Remembering

Remembering

Comments 0 Comment

A lunchtime walk on Monday, heading south on First to the Mall, then turning back north at Seventh only to find myself at the Navy Memorial …  at noon … on Pearl Harbor Day.

There was a brass band, a color guard, music, salutes and a bugler to play Taps. So I stayed a while, listened to the invocation, put my hand on my heart for the National Anthem.

I had forgotten. And it is important to remember.

Fulfillment

Fulfillment

Comments 0 Comment

Advent is the season of waiting, of ancient chants and plainsong. It is the season of patience and hope and muted gladness, a glimpse of distant mountains, the lure of the promised land.

Advent is, therefore, a good time for new beginnings, for celebrations of all kinds, planned and unplanned.

I write today on one of the latter. Unless you count the two years in a dusty African village, the nine months awaiting a visa, the long years before that.

It is, for my family, a day of fulfillment and rejoicing. To which we all say “Amen.”

Active Shooter

Active Shooter

Comments 0 Comment

On the day of the latest mass shooting in the United States, I took part in an active shooter exercise at my workplace. We learned how to run — low to the ground in a zigzag pattern. We learned how to hide — turn off the lights, close and lock your door, barricade it if possible. And we learned how to fight — go for the hand that is holding the gun, do whatever you can to slow or disrupt the killer.

I sat politely, even took notes. Colleagues joked and laughed about crawling under their desks, George Costanza-style. “I learned a lot from watching Seinfeld,” said our presenter. 

I don’t know if employees at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino had taken active shooter training. But could a 30-minute presentation have helped them  counter the assault rifles and semiautomatic handguns? And more to the point … is this how we want to live?

(M2 Browning machine gun, courtesy Wikipedia)

A Door Ajar

A Door Ajar

Comments 0 Comment

It’s a mild day so I write with the French doors slightly ajar. A small breeze wafts in across the deck. The deck where we hung out yesterday eating crab dip before the big feast.

Afterward there was a game of bocce ball — and some energetic raking preceded it. (Hard to play bocce ball with leaf piles everywhere.)

It was a different kind of Thanksgiving. New people to share it with. A tinge of sadness, too. A dish or two we’ve never tried before. All befitting a change, a shift.

I liken the shift to the door ajar. A door through which one sort of life has ended and another sort of life has begun.

Full Circle

Full Circle

Comments 0 Comment

Our neighbors are expecting their first grandchild, due any day now. These folks have lived next door since we moved into the house 26 years ago. I remember their daughters as little kids and they remember my daughters as babies.

It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that we would stay in the house more than a quarter century (maybe two years?!), but stay put we have, and the staying and the putting have brought a great full-circle quality to life that almost makes up for the years lost to traffic jams and Metro delays.

So on this red-letter day for my family — one daughter celebrating a birthday and another learning that a long wait will soon be over  — I pause to savor the richness of it all — and to give thanks.


(Two rush hours, two red-letter days, much gratitude.)

7,800 Miles

7,800 Miles

Comments 0 Comment

It is 7, 214 miles from Washington, D.C., to Kigali, Rwanda, where Tom has gone on a business trip. In less than an hour it will be 7,800 miles — just a few hundred more — from Nasa’s New Horizons probe to Pluto.

Earth meets space, the Kuiper Belt, that which lies beyond our solar system in what surely deserves to be called terra incognita (except that it isn’t terra!).

Early pictures show an orange globe with a crown of methane and nitrogen ice and craters the size of the Grand Canyon. By tonight we will have more photographs of this celestial body, photographs that may help scientists decide whether to call it a planet or a dwarf planet.

What we have right now is a tantalizing glimpse, a collectively held breath — and of course, the wonder. 

Fourth of July Parade

Fourth of July Parade

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday I went to the National Independence Day Parade with my dear friend Kay, who is visiting from France. It was mostly a chance to hang out with her, but it was also an opportunity to soak up the holiday spirit and marvel at the expansiveness of the American dream.

There were high school marching bands from Ohio, Nebraska and Alabama. There were cloggers and Irish steppers and Chinese-American dancers. There were the Sikhs of America holding down a Smokey the Bear balloon.

There was, in short, all manner of celebration and diversity.  Not exactly a small hometown ensemble — but not sophisticated and glitzy, either. More of a medley than I thought possible in these days of politicized newscasts and gerrymandered districts. And that in itself, I think, is worth a parade.

Casual Thursday

Casual Thursday

Comments 0 Comment

Like most of the rest of the working world (those of us who are working today) I’m wearing jeans and sandals. Also seen in the office today: flip-flops, shorts and a little gray terrier. The pace is slow, the day is short and the mindset is … what is the mindset? I’ve already forgotten.

I’m tempted to hang up a “Gone Fishin'” sign, but I don’t want to check out completely.

Instead, I’m sitting here in office chair, hands on the keyboard, work piled on the desk, summoning up the energy to dive into it.

And I will dive in … any minute now.