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Local History

Local History

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When my dad was a boy, he snuck out one night to hear Ella Fitzgerald at a dance club a few blocks from his house. It was a black jazz club; whites were allowed only upstairs at the bar. My dad was 12 at the time, so he wasn’t allowed in it all. But he remembers standing outside and listening to Ella, and a few months ago, he looked for the building. Here it is, a shadow of its former self, but still standing. While we were looking around the property, the owner pulled up in his truck and told us that before it was a jazz club, the oldest part of the building was a steam-powered hemp factory.

You can love a place without knowing much about it, but if you know about a place, if you learn its past and its stories, how can you not be attached?

Devil May Care

Devil May Care

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It’s the first Saturday in May, a day to drink mint juleps, sing “My Old Kentucky Home” and watch the horses run. Strong storms are predicted for Churchill Downs, which means that Devil May Care, a filly whose owner my parents met last weekend, will have to run well in the mud to win the 136th Kentucky Derby. I hope she does, because of the faint connection, because she’s a girl and because I like her name. (This is the, ahem, highly scientific method by which I usually choose a horse.)

Devil May Care makes me think about going for broke. It’s the rakish tilt of a fedora, a whiff of cigarette smoke, the swirl of bourbon in a highball glass. In a world of highly regulated outcomes, chance draws us like a magnet. Who wants to know how every race will end? Who doesn’t long for surprise? When the track is muddy, it’s more likely that you’ll see a most improbable horse, a long shot, perhaps a filly, streaking along the rail or swinging wide on the outside. The cheers will be deafening, the mud will be flying and a horse, a horse whose name we don’t yet know, will be running her heart out, racing for the finish line.

Down and Out

Down and Out

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“We’re just homeless people, trying to keep ourselves together,” said the woman as I passed her this morning. “One of these days we’re gonna live in a house again, just like you.” I often see homeless people on my way to Georgetown Law, but this woman and the two others walking with her were sane, dressed for work, in a hurry. Just like me.

When I walk in the suburbs, I write about trees and flowers and reflections in the rain. When I walk in the city, I write about people, the down and out as well as the up and coming. Walk in the city for long and it will break your heart.