A Walker in the Suburbs

I had another blog post simmering in my mind when I read on this morning’s Writer’s Almanac that on today’s date in 1863 Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.

Since my visit to the Lincoln Cottage a few weeks ago I’ve had a deepening appreciation of our 16th president, of his greatness and humility. The cottage on the ground of the Old Soldier’s Home in northwest D.C. is where Lincoln wrote much of the Emancipation Proclamation. I don’t have time this morning to research his writing of the address. Though reports of his dashing it off on the back of an envelope on the way to Gettysburg have, I believe, been discredited, he didn’t have much time to write the speech.

The verifiable information I did learn today was that Lincoln’s two-minute speech followed a two-hour oration by Edward Everett, that many in the audience were not aware that the president had spoken because it happened so quickly, and that afterward Everett said to Lincoln: “I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.”

Brevity is always the harder path to take. I’d like to imagine that Lincoln got to the heart of the matter because he was living with the war, living with it at the White House and living with it at his summer retreat at the Soldier’s Home, where as many as 30 fresh graves a day appeared in the president’s back yard.

Twenty years ago we visited Gettysburg and I lamented that I had forgotten the words of the address I had to memorize when I was a kid. I could probably recite less of the speech these days than I could even then. But I appreciate it more now.

Virginia was only one of four states to hold legislative elections yesterday, and when I reached the elementary school that serves as a polling place, an ethereal pale moon was rising in the sky.

Because there were no national races, experts predicted a low turnout. It was anything but the case in our precinct; I had to wait in line even to use a paper ballot. (For the first time ever, I wrote in a candidate’s name — for the soil and water conservation board!) And polling officials said it was a steady stream of voters all day.

From a glance at this morning’s paper, it’s not clear whether our candidates won. What matters more is seeing how many people vote. I said hello to neighbors I hadn’t seen in months.

I don’t want to romanticize this too much. But sometimes on election day our precinct feels like a village, with small-town manners and courtesies and generosities. I wonder if, in different circumstances, on a different scale, we might be like this every day — a true community.

This morning I turned on my Macbook at home, sent a quick email. Then I came into work, turned on my Mac with its big wide screen and its shiny silver base. And then there’s my sleek little iPod and the iPhone that I’m planning to get soon. I thought back to the first Mac I used, a MacPlus was it? It was the computer Tom bought before we were married. I had used a computer very little before. The Mac was my first computer and for most of my computing life it is been the only kind of computer I’ve used.

Which is all to say that Steve Jobs is in my life, as he is in so many lives, and that when I heard the news last night that he had died of cancer, I felt like something big had shifted in our world.

I also noticed, when reading Jobs’ obituary this morning in the Washington Post, how many of his inventions — items that now seem like they’ve been around forever — are very new. The iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010.

We have not been digitized and Mac-ified forever. Only in the last few years have we been buying our gadgets in stores without counters and walls. Like any good idea, Jobs’ ideas have been so elegant and significant that they’ve erased the memory of what came before.

Walking down the mall in D.C. yesterday at lunch time (and asking myself why I don’t do this at least once a week, it is so uplifting) I pass a woman who spots the steep, imposing steps of the National Gallery and starts to sing the “Rocky” theme song. Her husband quickly picks up the melody while their children stare in confusion. They don’t know how lucky they are.

I follow a mother and her toddler. She lets the little guy run a few steps ahead of her then “races” to catch up to him. He cackles with laughter. Later, I fall into step with a group of kids and their staff, hurrying through an intersection. They count down with the “Walk” sign as they cross the street.

The sun is out, even though it (inexplicably) sprinkles for a few minutes. But not enough to open an umbrella (good because I didn’t bring one) and never enough to impede the big show, the spectacle that awaits me at the end of the mall, something I had forgotten about but remembered as I closed in on the Washington Monument. It was the rappelling engineers, inspecting the monument for structural damage from the earthquake and looking at first, from afar, like large ants crawling on the side of the structure. They had tethered their ropes to the top and were bouncing off the sides.

It was the biggest show in town. All around me people whipped out cameras and binoculars. I had none of these, but I won’t forget the sight of human beings dangling from that obelisk. They looked impossibly daring, impossibly free.

I didn’t lose anyone I loved that day — though Tom walked home past a smoldering Pentagon and my brother Phillip glimpsed the first plane flying preternaturally low, saw it moments before it struck the tower.

But I did lose a place that day. We all did. We lost the country that existed up until 8:45 a.m. September 11, 2011. Into its place came another country, less innocent, more anxious, initially united but now fragmented.

To the extent that I can recall any one emotion from that horrible day, that day of clear air and silent skies, it was a sadness and tenderness for my country. It was a feeling I had experienced before only attached to people — a pathos for our achievements, our goodness and even for our mistakes.

On September 12 I went to church. Suzanne, 12 at the time, came with me. The minute we took our seats I was sorry that I had brought her. Everyone was sobbing. None of the lectors could make it through a reading. I vaguely remember hearing the passage about beating swords into ploughshares, but other than that all I recall were the tears.

Suzanne, now 22, said just the other day she was glad she was there. It made her realize the depth of what happened to us. And as I watch the commemorations of this day on television, I see young men and women Suzanne’s age who lost fathers and mothers and brothers. They were children then; they are adults now. They grew up in a different world.

After the earthquake struck Tuesday, all I wanted to do was go home. Home would be its usual chaotic, cozy self. Things would be right where I left them.

Of course, the earthquake shook our suburb, too, and apparently shook harder here than it did downtown, shattering one of our nicest pieces of wedding china (a covered vegetable dish used more for storing receipts than serving mashed potatoes–that will teach us to use the good stuff instead of the everyday) and shaking down the closet where I store magazines, photographs, the girls’ school work and other memorabilia.

I snapped a photo before I tidied up, took it to remind myself what a pack rat I am and how much cleaning and organizing I need to do — but also to certify the power of nature. An earthquake, as we are all too aware after the tragedy in Japan, can rip apart an entire society. But even a 5.8 quake like ours exposes fault lines and weaknesses. An earthquake reverses order.

After the last big tremblor in Virginia in 1897, I read, the water swirled the opposite way out of the springs. And if my closet holds any lesson, it is this one: After an earthquake, what was once on the bottom is now on the top, and what was once on the top is now on the bottom. It is a reversal, a correction.

It was shortly before 2 p.m. and I was finishing lunch at my desk when I heard what sounded like a bunch of people running and jumping above my ground-floor office in D.C. This didn’t make sense, though, because I had never heard footfall before from the upper levels. Before I could process that fact, the entire building began swaying, and I realized that as unbelievable as it was, we were most likely having an earthquake.

By the time I got outside I realized I had left my purse, my phone and all my work inside. All I brought with me was a Diet Coke — not the most practical item for bail out but (apparently) what I had in my hand.

There are cracks in the Washington Monument, damage to the National Cathedral and fallen masonry all over town. It is not what you expect when you go to work on a perfect late summer day. It is, therefore, a good reminder of the preciousness of life.

Today is the last Wednesday of July — the annual Pony Swim in Chincoteague. It’s the day when “saltwater cowboys” herd wild ponies across Assateague Channel at low tide for an auction held the next day. Proceeds from pony auctions through the years have helped finance the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company. And auctioning off some ponies each year keeps the herd to a manageable 150.

The day I drove home from Chincoteague earlier this month there was an article in the paper about wild horses biting campers, stealing their food and otherwise being canny and uncooperative. I pointed out to folks that the article was about the wild ponies of Maryland; they were the ones who were acting up. The wild ponies of Virginia are probably too busy fending off mosquitoes to get into any further mischief.

I’ve never seen the Pony Swim, but I know the place well enough now that I can imagine it. The sun will shine flat upon the water, the lighthouse will loom picturesquely in the background and the charm of an old custom will unfold in a town that most days, except this day, time seems to have forgotten.

Photo from Chincoteague Facebook page