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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.

Past is Present

Past is Present

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What would it be like to live where the past is present, where you can visit an Iron Age fort or a beehive hut, drive along ancient routes and savor timeless views?

It would feel like living here, in the west of Ireland.

Take Kilmalkedar, a 12th-century Irish church built with stones that had been around for centuries, some of them with the ancient ogham script. It was built on an important monastic site. After the roof caved in hundreds of years ago, people began burying their dead inside the church, a practice that practically guaranteed one entry into heaven.

Speaking of heaven, what would it be like to love the place you live so much that you give tours of it.  Makes me think about place and some people’s devotion to it, which very much gets me back to why I started this blog.

To walk through the landscape and write about it, and in writing about it to belong to it.

Here, that process is not as labor-intensive.

Far-Flung

Far-Flung

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In St. Louis for a family wedding, I find myself thinking about place, about generations placed and unplaced, about the difference it makes.

Families that began in Indiana and Kentucky spread to Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin — and I’m probably forgetting a few.

It was bound to happen when transportation became supersonic and communication became instantaneous, but do texts, calls and jet planes fill in for the shout down the street, for Sunday visits?

People leave for college, for jobs, for opportunities, for fresh starts. It’s how we’ve live now.

It’s just changed us, that’s all.

Caps Win the Cup!

Caps Win the Cup!

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It took me a split second this morning to remember, and then the joy washed over me again: The Washington Capitals have won the Stanley Cup! They have coolly and methodically mowed down their competition. They have run the distance, they have prevailed.

Does D.C. need this or what? It’s been decades since we’ve had a sports championship of any type. And just in general, things are tough in the “swamp.” We’re the seat of government in an era when government is contentious. Our traffic is horrendous, and we’ve had four weeks of rain.

But last night, all of that was forgotten. Ovi hoisted the Stanley Cup, smiled his gap-toothed grin, and made some sort of utterance that was part howl, part growl.

Last night wasn’t about words, though. It was about sounds and images. Firecrackers popping. A sea of red in Capital One Arena and throughout Chinatown (which I cruised beneath on Metro less than two hours before they won).

Today the whole region woke up a little happier than it did yesterday. Yes, it’s just a bunch of guys who skate around and chuck each other with sticks. But it’s our guys. And they won!

Ramping Down

Ramping Down

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National Airport is only a mile from my office, less as the crow flies (though Google Maps doesn’t chart crow-fly mileage).  But it took me half an hour to navigate yesterday because of the time I spent  backtracking.

The problem was that I had walked from the office to the airport but never the other way around. I  had the general idea but couldn’t figure out the specifics (like finding the bridge that crosses the parkway and the railroad tracks). Airport signage (in fact, most signage) does not favor walkers!

Eventually I found the road that led to the ramp that led to Crystal City. It all seemed so easy once it fell into place. I was on the downward slope, heading back to office and home.

(The first National Airport terminal in 1941, shortly after it opened. Courtesy Library of Congress.)

We Did It!

We Did It!

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I knew when I heard the trumpet solo in the Triumphal March from Aida that there was a different energy at the performance. Something inspired, something transcendent. Seasoned artists say that performances aren’t usually better than rehearsals, but this one was.

I’m not saying that this particular performer played better at the concert. I was nervous, almost dropped my bow switching from pizzicato to arco. But I held on, made most of the notes in the run, did not rush the entrance in the exposed string bass part half way through the Verdi, and was able to hit the harmonic in the tip-of-the-bow opening of the Firebird finale.

From there on, the hair stood up on the back of my neck as I played our B flats and E flats, putting everything I had into those notes, doing my awkward vibrato, hearing the timpani pounding behind me. I didn’t just play the music, I felt it. The trumpets and trombones blaring out their final chords, the whole marvelous ensemble, and at its helm, Dr. Joe Ceo, 85 years old.

“We’re doing this again in five years for the 75th anniversary,” he said after the concert, as a bunch of us stood around, still in a bit of a rush from it all. “You all will have to be here for it, because I don’t know if  I will be.” No way, we said. If you can do it at 85, you can do it at 90.

It was that kind of music, that kind of concert, that kind of day.

(The Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra with vocal soloists in its final performance of the 2017-2018 season. No pictures of the Reunion Orchestra yet!)