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The Overdog

The Overdog

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Yesterday, I watched my first and last University of Kentucky basketball game of the season. Such is the hubris of this Kentucky fan that she missed the first two rounds of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, figuring she’d tune in only if her team made it to the Elite Eight.

There was a not-so-subtle assumption here, of course … which is that her team would make it to the Elite Eight. Not such a crazy assumption given that they’ve been there 34 times. Heck, UK has played in 17 Final Fours. Auburn, the team that beat us yesterday, has never been to the Final Four. Which means that, as usual, many people were pulling for our opponent to win.

I understand this emotion. In fact, I usually pull for the underdog, too — except when the underdog is playing UK. My rationale is that Kentucky is not the first in much else. US News ranks the Bluegrass State 34th in education (which is an improvement from when I was in school) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis lists us 42nd in per capita income.

The fact that we’re not the the underdog in basketball — that you might even call us the overdog (no fooling) — seems only fair to me. But that never stops me from pulling for the boys in blue. I want them to win every time.

(“Underdog” cartoon photo courtesy Wikipedia) 

The Volunteer

The Volunteer

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In so many ways, the name doesn’t fit. When I hear “volunteer,” I think of a smiling face with a hospital tray, or a badge-wearing angel at an airport information desk. There is a lot of goodness in the word, to be sure. But the word also a martial implication, young men marching off to war. How odd, then, that trees that spring up where they aren’t planted are also called volunteers.

But they are, and I can now stand amidst the branches of one — a weeping cherry that was spared at birth by our neighbors the Morrisons, the same neighbors who are more than halfway through their around-the-world cruise. Decades ago, they left the cherry alone while it spread its roots, enlarged its trunk and sent its branches down in a cascade of blossoms, larger and more fulsome every year.

The tree sits far too close to the street, is off-center, is too big for its footprint. But it has thrived, just the same. And watching it bloom this year makes me wonder at the wisdom of natural selection.

According to the itinerary they left behind, the Morrisons recently left Sri Lanka for Indian ports. These will be followed by a long string of sea days, then Jordan and the Suez Canal. The Morrisons aren’t in Virginia to see the small pink flowers bud from the hanging stems. For this, they will need a stand-in — and  I volunteer. 

Our Towns

Our Towns

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I’ve just finished reading Our Towns: A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America by James Fallows and Deborah Fallows. The authors, who write for the Atlantic and charted their multi-year progress on that publication’s Our Towns notebook, have a few things to say about what makes places prosperous and what makes them whole.

Their observations were based on their visits (often multiple visits, some years apart) to towns and cities all across America, from Eastport, Maine, to Redlands, California; from Holland, Michigan, to Greenville, South Carolina.

Here’s some of what they learned about what makes towns tick: Thriving places consider themselves separate entities, not suburban satellites, and people work together on practical local possibilities rather than letting national politics keep them apart. Many of these towns have flourished because of public-private partnerships, research universities and community colleges. Elementary and secondary education also makes a difference. Downtowns are one of the most important features. They enliven towns, they give them heart.

The part of the book that spoke to me most involved the intersection of people and place. When asked why they live where they do, citizens of these towns say it’s about belonging. “This is my place,” they exclaim. To which the Fallows add: “From Sioux Falls to Eastport to Columbus to San Bernardino. Hometown [is] home.”


(The photo is from my hometown, Lexington, Kentucky, which was not featured in the book but which holds a special place in my heart.)

Under Construction

Under Construction

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It didn’t take long. Just weeks after Amazon’s announcement that my work neighborhood, Crystal City (aka National Landing), would be its new HQ2, the demolition — and the detours — began.

First, my cut-through was cordoned off, which made my walk from Metro to office less diagonal and hence longer. Then one whole stretch of sidewalk was blocked, a pedestrian walk constructed in the bike lanes, and the whole lot of it painted white.

Now I wait at the light and cross to the other side of Crystal Drive so that I’m strolling on a pavement-stone sidewalk that runs alongside apartment buildings where a few brave pansies still show their yellows and purples.

This is not just a construction zone; it is the construction zone. A transformation that will continue for years, and will, I imagine, outlast my presence in these environs.

There’s a tinge of excitement in it, I’ll admit. It’s not unlike the neighborhood I grew up in, full of two- and three-bedroom bungalows being built as quickly as the hammers and saws could make them. The sound of construction, the sound of new life.

Tunneling

Tunneling

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The thermometer read 32, just as it did yesterday. But yesterday it was sleeting and icing; today it’s “only” raining. Dark, gray, cold and wet — but somehow precipitation that remains liquid.

And so, I put into place my own winter emergency plan. No riding the bus from Courthouse Metro. I took my chances on Metro all the way. Most of all, no outside walking from Metro to the office. Instead, I took the tunnel.

The tunnel is longer but ever so much more pleasant, especially on a day like today. It’s a weird feature of this neighborhood, something about its spook-driven origins.

It’s a warren of passages, steps up and down. I passed a barber shop, an optician, a branch library and an experimental theater. I walked down a hallway with art on the walls.

It was warm, it was dry. It was divine.

The Shutdown Continues…

The Shutdown Continues…

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As the government shutdown closes in on the two-week mark, the D.C. area is feeling like both a ghost town and a seething caldron.

Last night on the radio I heard the story of a 71-year–old woman who’s raising two of her grandchildren and is furloughed from her federal job. She needs every penny of every paycheck for her car note, mortgage, groceries and other expenses. She says she feels like a pawn.

We all do. It’s the only shutdown to span two Congresses, which makes it doubly ridiculous.

With two government employees in the family, I’m following this story with great interest. Will it end this week? Unlikely. Next week? I hope.

Until then, it’s a matter of staying calm—and keeping my own job, of course!

(A photo of the Capitol taken when the season was spring and the government was open.) 

Keeping it Real

Keeping it Real

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Every year on New Year’s Day, the Washington Post‘s Style section features an “In-Out” list. As the years pass, I understand fewer references. But I always get enough of them (Out: Meghan Markle; In: Megan Markle’s baby) to glean a smile or two from the whole thing.

The item that made me laugh the most this year was number two in the hit parade:
Out: Keep Portland Weird.  In: Keep Crystal City Weird.

As I type these words I look out the window at Crystal City—its military precision, its empty buildings and plazas (even emptier now during the government shutdown), its anything-but-weirdness.

Yes, I feel a bit protective of this Arlington neighborhood, where I slog three or four mornings a week; where you’re more likely to see a soldier in camouflage than an artist in grunge; where even the foliage is orderly (see above).

Avant-garde it ain’t.

But it’s my workplace now, and I’ve come to terms with its straight-arrow ways. So as HQ2 moves in, I’ll be on the lookout for creeping signs of Left Coast-ness. Let’s keep Crystal City … uh, Crystal City.

National Landing

National Landing

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It was before 8 a.m. when I landed at National Landing, landing in my usual way, which is to say via bus — not plane or boat.

National Landing is the former Crystal City, transformed overnight from a slightly down-on-its-heels and not-so-aptly-named set of office buildings, hotels, restaurants and parking garages to half of Amazon’s new HQ2 (HQ 2.5?).

As I walked from Metro to my office, I noticed a car with broadcast equipment staking out a spot for a stand-up shot. It was parked near the basketball courts that were painted with pink and green flowers a few months ago and accessorized with a ping-pong table and life-size chess board. A few steps away, on the other side of the street, was my building, now being shown in a promotional video with a faux glass-walled eatery in front.

I don’t know whether it’s the winter or the weather — or the fact that the HQ cat is out of the bag — but the basketball court isn’t protected from vehicular traffic like it was earlier this year during the “courtship” phase. And I saw no evidence of the painted bicycles that had been adorning the area until recently. I was feeling a little bereft, like the bride who wakes up the day after the wedding and finds that her beloved isn’t quite what he seemed before the nuptials.

It’s not disappointment, not exactly. But something very much like it.  I must remember the mantra that the building pictured above (formerly Noodles restaurant) reminds me every time I walk to the office. … “Good things coming.”

Let’s hope so.

Monuments at Night

Monuments at Night

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Last night, a tour of the Washington, D.C., monuments at night. There was Lincoln, the great man’s right foot protruding slightly, as if he were about to push himself up and walk out to greet the beleaguered citizens gathered there.

What would he say? What could he say? Seeing him made me long for a statesman or stateswoman, someone larger than life who will come to save us all, who will do the right thing no matter the political consequences.

The scale of the monuments only grows in the darkness. Darkness is what we had last night — a rich, warm darkness that meant we could stroll around in shirt sleeves the second week of October. But darkness is what we have in a metaphorical sense, too. And that darkness isn’t as comfortable.

I took heart from the lights and the sounds, the throngs of people staying up late to see the marble and the fountains, those who — I hope — still believe.

Mellow Sunshine

Mellow Sunshine

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Over the weekend, as D.C. reeled from yet another emotional and divisive week, the weather gave us a gift: days of mellow sunshine and low humidity, scant clouds. Not Indian Summer, not yet, because we haven’t had a frost. More like the early September days we hoped for but didn’t receive.

There’s a thinness in the air this time of year that allows us to enjoy the warmth, not dread it.  I remember feeling this thinness while doing homework in early September during grammar school. Sitting on the front stoop, wearing my green-and-gray-plaid uniform and a too-tight pair of saddle shoes or penny loafers, still in love with my cartridge pen with peacock blue ink.

Somehow, those memories are all mixed up with the feel of the September air, not quite fall but not quite summer, either. A glorious in-between time.

That’s what we had this weekend, even though we’ve just entered October, what we’re promised through the week. If you listen closely you’ll hear a collective sigh of gratitude.