Browsed by
Category: place

Vienna Walk

Vienna Walk

Comments 0 Comment

I found myself in Vienna last Friday. Not Vienna, Austria (though that would have been nice) but Vienna, Virginia, which is 20 minutes from my house, a place I often pass through on my way to somewhere else.

There is a strange disconnect to walk along streets one usually drives, sort of like flipping a video from regular play into slow-mo. 

There is the house on the corner lot with its split-rail fence and funky upstairs addition — but instead of zipping by it I can see the details, the little upstairs deck with its wrought-iron tables and unmatched chairs.

There are streets whose names elude me at 35 miles per hour: Garrett and Malcolm and Holmes. Solid middle-class names, though their neighborhoods are ones made pricey by their (mostly) large lots and desirable location within walking distance of Metro (back when that mattered). 

I ambled along Center and Lawyers, past Salsbury Spring, which was the only source of water for the area during the drought of 1930. I saw the place with new eyes after learning that, felt a little more connected to this place I (almost) call home. 

First Hill

First Hill

Comments 0 Comment

Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, and I’m getting to know them. Today we toured the Central District (in hard hats, no less!), then lunched in Capitol Hill. Several mornings I’ve hiked along the waterfront. I also visited Green Lake and Woodland Park. 

But I’ve spent most of my time in Seattle’s first neighborhood, First Hill, also called Pill Hill because of the hospitals here. 

I’ve trudged up steep grades and sidled through shortcuts. I’ve spotted fewer tents under I-5 but heard more sirens heading up to Harborview. 

It’s an urban neighborhood with all that implies, but there’s a gentility beneath the grime. Here are leafy lanes and named apartments buildings, an old German deli on Madison and a cathedral garden behind St. James.

I leave today with the smell of the city in my pores and the pitch of the hills in my calves. And I leave … from First Hill.

Vistas

Vistas

Comments 0 Comment

Seattle is a city of vistas: heading west to the bay and the sound, islands on the horizon, ferries and tug boats and freighters plying the deep, unfathomable blue. 

Or looking east, to the lake and Capitol Hill, the muted colors of sky and clouds, small sailboats on the water and a cathedral on the summit. 

Or the most iconic of Seattle vistas, the one with the Space Needle, of course.
March of Time

March of Time

Comments 0 Comment

One of the things I like about travel is that you move through time as well as space. You recover lost springs and leap ahead to crisp autumns. 

On Monday I strolled through the Columbia City neighborhood of south Seattle. It was sunny and cool, and I snapped a photo of a gnarled and mossy tree with crimson leaves. 

My head was still spinning from the flight across the country — an unusual tail wind meant we made the trip west in less than five hours — but it was alert enough to register this place, this northern place, as already ahead of us in the march of time. 

Think Zebras!

Think Zebras!

Comments 0 Comment

Doctors are taught that when you hear the sound of hoofbeats, think horses not zebras. It’s a saying I’ve always appreciated, worrier that I am, a reminder to see the molehill instead of the mountain. But even doctors know that in some situations, it’s better to think mountains — or zebras.

This is especially true in Maryland, where five zebras escaped from a farm and 30 days later have yet to be caught. Zebras have been spotted grazing in suburban yards and dashing across suburban lanes. 

Officials tell folks to be careful around the wild animals, that they cannot be caught, they must be corralled. Funny, I was just reading about zebras in the book Guns, Germs and Steel (more on this classic in a later post), how, unlike the forerunners of the horse, zebras are impossible to tame. They cannot be lassoed, and they have a tendency to bite. 

The Maryland zebras are living proof of these biological and historical facts. 

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Yard Signs

Yard Signs

Comments 0 Comment

It seemed to start with the pandemic, with the chalk art and the concerts on balconies, the way we felt during those first few weeks of the ordeal when we thought our sheltering time would be more like a long blizzard than a new way of life. 

Pundits ponder how many of the changes we’ve made over the last 18 months will become permanent fixtures. Let me add one to the mix: the proliferation of yard signs. 

Before the pandemic I don’t remember seeing many that weren’t advertising a house for sale or a renovation taking place. Politics are too hot right now for people to use yard signs to advertise their candidate of choice — at least in my neighborhood. 

Now there are signs welcoming kindergartners and high-schoolers, banners for birthdays and even notices with desperate requests. The latter includes one from a family in the neighborhood that used the back of their PTO’s grade school welcome sign to scrawl their own heartfelt message: Open The Schools!

At least that one is down now, but I think people are catching on to the potential of yard notices in an era when more of us are at home and walking around. 

Yard signs … bring ’em on. 

The Birds

The Birds

Comments 0 Comment

They swooped, they swerved, they filled the sky with their acrobatics. I first spotted them as I was stopped in traffic on Key Bridge, but could only snap a faraway shot. 

It was later, once I’d reached the Car Barn Building terrace, that I saw the birds again. I’d stopped to look at the river and the towers of Rosslyn across into Virginia (how cool that I leave my state for class) — and there they were, circling and swirling, making their presence known. 

Were they up to no good? It was hard to tell at the time. But when I looked at the (top) photo later … well,  you be the judge …

Twenty Years

Twenty Years

Comments 0 Comment

When I visited Lexington last month, Phillip drove me through the University of Kentucky campus. He  wanted to show me that the twin towers were gone. Not those twin towers, though Phillip saw those come down, too. He was working in New York at the time, his office less than two miles north on Hudson. But it was the absence of the Kirwan-Blanding Towers he wanted to show me, two 23-floor dormitories that housed students for almost 50 years and that came down carefully, a floor at a time.

Not so with those other towers, of course, which pancaked to the ground 20 years ago today, taking the lives of almost 2,700 with them. As is so often the case, we hadn’t known what we had until we lost it. We also hadn’t known that terrorists with fake IDs were learning how to fly planes — but not to land them. There was ignorance within our innocence. Perhaps there must always be.

In the days and weeks that followed 9/11, I cooked up a storm. I made bacon-and-egg breakfasts, chopped vegetables for stews and soups. I drug out the crockpot and pressed it into service. I was making food for the bereaved and serving it to my family. It felt like a way to heal.

But that was long ago. Our problems have metastasized. The terrorism is still present but now we also have a pandemic, climate change disasters, and an ignominious end to the war we started to avenge the 9/11 attacks. So many challenges … and so little consensus on how to deal with them.

Ten years ago, I wrote that our children grew up in a different world. Now my children have children. What kind of world will they inherit?

Tranquil Contemplation

Tranquil Contemplation

Comments 0 Comment

When 19th-century statesman Henry Clay needed a respite from his life as the “Great Compromiser,” he retreated to the shady groves of Ashland, his Kentucky estate. There, as the sign tells us, he walked the trails of his beloved farm, using them for “tranquil contemplation” of the issues at hand.

For Clay, as for many of us, walking and thinking went hand in hand. Maybe these strolls reinvigorated the legislator after the rigors of rough-and-tumble politics. Maybe they inspired some of his signature moves.

But even if they didn’t, the paths Clay created remain for current-day walkers to explore. When I strolled them two weeks ago, I felt the hush of the giant oaks and sycamores. They stilled my buzzing brain. 

Harvest Time

Harvest Time

Comments 0 Comment

A day’s drive out, a day’s drive back and three days in my hometown leave me in a state of addled contentment now that I’m back home. Throw in some nostalgia and amazement — from visiting with folks I haven’t seen in 10 or 20 years (numbers we toss around as we used to the single digits) — and you have a lovely way to end the summer.

Or is it ending? It will be 90 again today,  the cicadas are crescendoing and the humidity is creeping up as I write this post on the deck. 

Given the opportunity, I’d probably keep traveling and keep sweltering another month or two, but September is almost here — September with its call to purpose and purchase. It’s time to harvest what I’ve sown. 

(Joe Pye weed in a Jessamine County, Kentucky, field)