A Walker in the Suburbs

I’m a tea drinker, but yesterday was all about coffee — and the debut of Burmese specialty coffee on the world stage. I was too busy to sip the stuff, but I sampled some the day before. It’s “complex,” as they say. A more savvy taster described it this way: hints of chocolate, cranberry and nutmeg.

It was a work function filled with government officials, a former ambassador, and coffee growers from Myanmar.  An odd mix, to be sure, but one that worked. At its root, a simple principle: to connect poor farmers with the flush and fully caffeinated, a feel-good way to spread some wealth.

And it worked. I bought a bag of expensive beans, and so did many others. The coffee sold out.  And the farmers who grew, dried and processed the beans will have more food on the table, more money for their children’s school and more to invest in next year’s crop. So a lot of buzz, but good buzz.

(*For “Seinfeld” fans: “They call it Myanmar, but it will always be Burma to me.”)

Looked up from the page I was working on Friday to see these clouds. They looked vaguely Sistine-Chapel-like, with the wispy upper-right-corner one the pointing finger of God and the fluffy white left corner one Adam reclining in his new human splendor.

An exaggeration, of course, and hard to reclaim that Friday feeling on this Monday morning.

But if nothing else it’s a reminder of the summer sky, its blue-beyond-blueness, its white clouds shining.

I started running when I lived in Chicago, but I started walking when I lived in New York.

I had walked before, obviously, but not “seriously.” In New York, everyone walks. Not for a stroll after dinner and not for their health.

Walking in New York is the purposeful stride from Point A to Point B. It’s hoofing it because the Uber or cab won’t come. This is Walking 101.

Of the 20 hours I was in New York over the weekend, I spent eight sleeping, five birthday-party-ing and four — four precious, wonderful hours — walking.

I hiked from 37th and Eighth Avenue to 115th and Broadway — and was making my way back downtown when I met Ellen and Phillip in the 80s on Broadway, then Eric on a cross street with the car.

It was the shortest trip I’ve ever made to the Big Apple. I wouldn’t want to take a shorter one.

But it was, I”m happy to say, long enough for a long walk.

I’m late writing about the moon that graced our solstice, the moon that woke me this morning with its light so late it was early. But it was still there at dawn when I went out to walk, the day already fully present but the orb still high in the sky. And it will be there, though not quite as full, tonight.

The solstice has passed, but the days are still long, the summer still gathering speed. When I went out to spray the flowers night before last, I spied the first firefly.

Good that it came the same night as the strawberry moon, the same day as the latest shadows.

Good to know there’s still plenty of summer ahead.

(Photo: Everpedia.com)

Dad was not a stern father. He was not a slippers-and-paper father, either. He was relaxed and easy in his skin, most decidedly himself in every way.

For me, he became most fully a father when I was an adult. Our closeness blossomed later in life, after his first heart attack. I think of all the years his bypass surgery gave us. More than two decades made possible by that operation and others that came later.

Dad seldom complained about the indignities of old age. Sometimes he’d make a joke about them, like the time he was entering the hospital for one of said surgeries and he pushed the revolving door all the way around to the outside again and kept marching away, a grin on his face.

But he went back, of course, did what he was supposed to do, and cheerfully. He always found a way to keep going, and to keep laughing. So I know that’s what he’d want us to do, too.

Today, though, I can get a little sentimental. I don’t think he’d mind.

(Dad in 2011, photographed in front of his childhood home.)

Yesterday’s National Press Club workshop reminds me how much I love the company of writers. Talking shop was a great way to end the week.

After my panel ended a second one convened, this one on social media. I meant to stay. The crowd was buzzing and the speakers seemed fabulous. But it was Friday afternoon, downtown D.C. was beckoning and (this will sound very fifth-grade of me) I really really wanted to be outside.

No matter. Live tweets from the panel, a twitter chat at work, and the fact that I spent an hour mining tweets from last month’s summit in Bangkok so I can write about it have all made the case.

Seems that there’s a little Twitter bird following me these days, tugging at my sleeve, and he won’t let go until I give him what he wants.

I had no sooner lugged the rocking chair out to the deck when the sprinkles began. Not enough to drive me inside except for the delicate piece of machinery on my lap. But there was a delicate piece of machinery on my lap, so in I came, along with laptop and rocking chair.

Now, of course, the rain has stopped, though the air feels heavy and humid. 

It’s looking like an indecisive day. Will I do housework or brain work? My own stuff or work-work? Will I walk or row? Be efficient or lazy?

Maybe I’ll do a little of each, a bit of all.

On an indecisive day, that’s only to be expected.

My dear friend Kay celebrates her birthday on January 2. I always feel for her, since her special day comes when everyone goes back to work after the holidays.

Today I’m in a similar boat. May 31, always the afterthought day when I was a kid, the day after Memorial Day, is in exactly the same spot this year — with the added ballast of being a back-to-work-after-a-long-weekend day, too.

But this is fine. A stealth birthday is what I’m after (though mentioning it in a  blog post can hardly be called “stealth”).  Maybe Father Time will be too busy driving home from Ocean City to slap another year on me.

Even if he does, though, I won’t complain. It is, after all, another year to embrace.

The airport will be busy. I could spend the whole morning on the back side of the office, watching the planes take off and land. Or I could look right behind my building at the train tracks. They’re mostly for freight lines but carry the odd passenger car or two. The rails will be humming today, too.

And don’t even get me started on the roads. The big story on the all-news radio this week was that the worst day to drive out of the second worst traffic city in the United States before a long weekend isn’t Friday but Thursday. I was driving west on a major highway last evening — and I would agree.

So as tempting as it might be to flee, I’m looking forward to staying in my own backyard — which I’m overlooking right now, sipping tea and listening to the crows call.

Today, on what would have been Dad’s 93rd birthday, I’ll attend a Mass that’s being said for him in my parish church. I reserved this date not long after his passing, had to book it about 20 months in advance. Dad would get a kick out of this. “I guess they give priority to the Catholics,” he’d say. (He was not one!)

Thinking of all the funny things Dad said to me growing up, the gentle religious humor. “Just tell ’em it’s your father’s feast day,” he’d suggest, deadpan, when I didn’t want to go to school.  We always got a holiday on the feast day of our pastor and principal, Father O’Neill.

It was the humor of an agnostic. Only Dad pulled a fast one. At the end of his life he reverted to the Methodism of his youth, went to church most Sundays. When I was in town, I would go with him, reveling in his rich baritone as he belted out the hymns he learned as a kid.

Was he hedging his bets by returning to church? Not Dad. It wasn’t out of fear that he returned, I think, but out of love. He was a deeply grateful man. I imagine he was saying a lot of “thank-you’s.” Today I’ll be doing the same.