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Category: place

Sidewalks Gleaming

Sidewalks Gleaming

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Wet pavement, steam rising — an urban phenomenon I’d forgotten until I started disembarking two stops early and walking a mile through the city some mornings. It’s the ritual hosing of the sidewalk to start the day.

There is some pride of place here. The rest of the city can get by with grit and grime, but not our patch of pavement. It will be clean, rinsed by the waters of dawn, sun barely glinting above the horizon.

Some custodians, the polite ones, pause briefly to let pedestrians tiptoe through the puddles. Others dare you to cross.

Though a temporary annoyance, it’s all for the best. It’s a salutation, a baptism, a way to start the day.



(Pretend you can see the sidewalks in this picture.)

Place, Continued

Place, Continued

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I love it here. If this place was a boy or a girl, I would marry it. Maybe it’ll be legal to marry places one day. And if so, then I will marry this one.

— Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

The Interestings begins at a summer camp, where a group of artistic kids meet, give themselves the (ironic) name “the interestings” and forge friendships that will last all their lives. It’s a book that explores what it means to be talented and what it takes to build a happy life.

The line that grabbed me was spoken by a 15-year-old dancer about to be sent home from camp because of an eating disorder. She’s a minor character, the second generation the reader gets to see at the camp, but her experience mirrors that of “the interestings.”

The feeling she describes, an ecstatic connection with place, is probably as much about people as anything else. But haven’t we all felt that way once or twice, coming upon a town or a vista or an old house in the country to which we feel an immediate attraction?

It’s not always rational or easy to maintain, but it is real.

Door, Wall and Flower

Door, Wall and Flower

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Art imitates life imitates art. The door bedecked with flowers, a variety of hydrangea, I think, larger and more open-petaled than the usual. The wall decorated with wisteria — and a bicycle, in case you get tired of walking.

To walk in an old city is to stop often to photograph buildings. It makes for a halting step but a full camera (phone?) upon return.

It’s more than worth the trip.

In Miniature

In Miniature

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A view of the Capitol Fireworks I’d never seen before, from across the Potomac and down a few miles. The fireworks in miniature but just as splendid.

The spectators were a mini United Nations; they spoke Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Tagalog (maybe). Babies toddled, parents chased, teenagers stared not at the sky but at their phones. Some people sat on blankets, others on the grass. Some had packed elaborate spreads, but more had simply wandered over with a snack and a soda.

Like the fireworks, the venue was a miniature, a snapshot of our country now.

Jackets Off!

Jackets Off!

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A sure sign of summer in D.C., more even than long lines at the Capitol Visitors’ Center or Code Orange air alerts, is the suit jacket carried over a shoulder.

I noticed at least half a dozen examples of this on yesterday’s walk around the Mall, but didn’t snap any photos.

So for this one you’ll have to imagine it 20 degrees warmer, air steamy rather than brisk. Feel the heat radiating up from the pavement, see the leaves not moving on the trees.

It’s summer in the city. Jackets off!

Morning Run

Morning Run

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Early to the city, sun still low in the sky. The Capitol there in the foreground, white, imposing, lit from the east. The air is still cool, but there’s a promise of heat in the breeze.

I’m early enough that I slip into running shorts, t-shirt and tennis shoes, grab my iPod and head to the Mall. 

I didn’t mean to jog the whole way to the Washington Monument, but “Flashdance” was pulsing in my ears and the whole world seemed to be running. The slow moving with bandaged knees and the speedsters with no shirts. Groups of colleagues pacing each other, the worn down and revved up. All of them alive, gloriously alive, this May morning.

Before I knew it I was turning left down 14th Street for the return trip. I felt like I was floating on air.

Quite a Track

Quite a Track

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When I don’t have time for a long walk at lunch I “just” walk around the Capitol. This can be an exercise in frustration, as I thread my way past bomb-sniffing dogs, bicycle-riding police officers, sign-toting protesters and press-conference-giving legislators.

Most of all, of course, there are tourists. They stroll, they dawdle, they pose for photographs. As well they should. That’s what they’re here for, and our city is enriched by them, really it is.

But when the Capitol loop is your lunchtime walking track, and you want to round it twice before going back to your desk, well, it’s easy to stew and fume at the congestion.

Whenever that happens, I try to step back and remind myself where I am. And if I have a phone in hand (as I did one day last week), I become one of the picture-taking multitudes, too.

Post Boston, Post 9/11

Post Boston, Post 9/11

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The Saturday before 9/11/01 I went to the National Book Festival. We milled around the Capitol grounds, soaking up the literary ambiance. Books and book lovers as far as the eye could see. Paradise!

Two days later the world was a different place. I thought to myself, there will be no innocent crowd scenes again. No more National Book Festivals — or anything like them. Gatherings will take place, but we won’t participate in them the same way. We’ll always be looking over our shoulders, bracing ourselves for a pop or a crack or a boom.

The reality has been far more complicated. I’ve gone back to the book festival and many other happenings on the Mall. Just last weekend I was standing with throngs of others at the base of the Washington Monument as Claire completed the Cherry Blossom 10-Miler. I plan to be waiting for her at the finish line of the Marine Corps Marathon in October. It’s been 11 and a half years since 9/11. Sometimes I forget.

But the Boston Marathon bombing has made us remember all over again, remember that we live in a different place than we did on September 10, 2011; remember the silent, cloudless sky, the Twin Towers incinerated, the Pentagon on fire.

Remember that innocence, or what we had left of it, is gone forever.

Seize the Day

Seize the Day

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Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands along the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide

Now, of my threescore years and ten
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A.E. Housman

I kept thinking of these words yesterday, of how beauty is bounded by time, how all things precious are. And so this seasonal ritual is not just spectacle, not just renewal, it is reminder.

The blossoms are fleeting; they, like us, will come and go. But we’re here, and they’re here.

There’s nothing left to do but seize the day.

Blossoms for the People

Blossoms for the People

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I used to wait for the perfect photograph, hold my camera steady until a split-second unobstructed view. But on today’s early morning stroll around the Tidal Basin, I didn’t mind including people in the picture. It was the people I noticed most.

The joy on their faces, not a sour look in the bunch. These are cherry blossom devotees, early risers,  up before 6 to be downtown before 7.  Joggers, bikers, picnickers, photographers — all here for one reason, to get their fill of beauty.

Here’s what they saw: