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Malawi Memories

Malawi Memories

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This time last year I was catching my first glimpse of Africa’s Great Rift Valley. In Malawi for work, I was bouncing around the countryside in a car full of colleagues, exploring small villages and learning what they were doing to help fight child labor.

Some villages built homes for teachers, tidy brick structures that provided a fresh start for an instructor and his family. Others started commercial enterprises — a grain mill or a dormitory for older students — and the money they made from these was used for school fees or uniforms.

It was a quick trip but a wonderful introduction to the vast plains and awesome peaks of this beautiful and warm-hearted country. And this week I’m reliving it, seeing it again in memory, marveling that somehow, improbably, but in actual fact … I was there.

A Different Day

A Different Day

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A week ago today I awoke in a tiny house in the Blue Ridge Mountains. On my to-do list: write, read, and savor the landscape. Not bad as to-do lists go.

Today’s list is looking a lot more businesslike: Editing articles, writing headlines, having meetings. It’s still not bad as to-do lists go, but it’s significantly less creative than last week’s occupations.

But how much depends on what we make of it? I write from my fifth-floor window seat (loosely construed, this term “window seat” — all it means is that my chair is pulled up close to the window) and the sun glints off the curved corner of the building next door. Leaves fly in the brisk wind, and they are gleaming too, as another day, a different day, begins.

White Stripes

White Stripes

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Crosswalks in my neighborhood are getting a facelift. A set of them on a road I drive every weekend have new paint, flashing lights and big signs in neon yellow to remind motorists to stop.

In my work neighborhood I’ve started taking a new route to the office, one that involves a crosswalk and the forbearance of drivers.

It’s interesting to be on either end of crosswalk etiquette — as a pedestrian on weekdays and a driver on weekends. It helps me see how important it is to share the road, to look out for the errant ambler or the distracted driver.

More than anything else, a crosswalk encourages engagement. Those white stripes on the road can be a walker’s — and a driver’s — best friend.

Train Spotting

Train Spotting

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The windows of my new office overlook the main north-south railroad line in the eastern United States. So as I conduct interviews and write articles, I keep one eye peeled for the sights and sounds of a passing freight or passenger train.

Whether it’s the Virginia Railway Express commuter line (one just zoomed by!), the quicksilver flash of an Amtrak engine heading up the Northeast Corridor, or one of the lumbering freights that seem to go on forever, I find this new pastime more than a little distracting.

Usually, the work of the day creates a vortex on the other side of the glass, and there could be a circus train chugging by and I wouldn’t have time to ogle it. But early or late, when my eyes are prone to wander … do I ever have a lot to see!

A Night at the Office

A Night at the Office

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It was a late day at the office. Which didn’t mean I was there until the wee hours, only an hour and a half later than usual, just long enough to label, transfer and prune some MP3 files that had been filling up my voice recorder.

My attention had been riveted by the screen for a couple hours, that and my inner ear, where voices from interviews I conducted months ago replayed through an earphone. It’s a strange thing, listening to voices heard only once and trying to figure out who they are. It was an interior exercise, a journey into memory, aided by last year’s day planner and typed notes.

But back to the matter at hand, which was the long day, the tedious task, and then, finally, completion. I clicked off my computer, packed up my things — and only when I stood up to grab my coat did I look out the window.

And there, spread out before me, was a magical sight. Offices that are drab brown and inscrutable in daylight were all lit up at night. What was normally invisible was suddenly seen. I marveled at the lights and the reflections. I marveled also at the comfort they brought. And that’s when it occurred to me, something I know but too often forget — that we’re never alone in our toil. Even when we think we are, there are countless others who are close by, working along beside us.

Warming the Pot

Warming the Pot

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It’s something I do without thinking, idly swirling hot water around my ceramic pot before brewing  my morning tea. I learned it long ago, when I first visited England and took on some Anglophile habits, such as drinking tea with milk.

Warming the pot, I was told, produces a better cup of tea. It prepares the cold surface for the rush of boiling water. The tea will be more fragrant and potent for this effort.

So all these years I’ve boiled the water, swished it around, poured it out — not unlike rinse and spit — and only then have I made the pot of tea. All of this even though I only use teabags — and an Irish brand, to boot.

This morning, for some reason, I wondered what would happen if I took the same time warming myself as I do warming this Brown Betty? What if I woke up gradually, reading in bed, then did some gentle stretches, some devotionals, some writing in my journal … and only then began the mad dash to wash up, make lunch, walk Copper and drive to Metro?

It’s a lovely fantasy — but only a fantasy, one I can dream about … while warming the pot.

Knowledge Workers

Knowledge Workers

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Like most “knowledge workers,” I spend a lot of time sitting. This is made painfully clear at the end of work days when I move stiff muscles up and out of the building, onto the streets and sidewalks of Crystal City.

A standing desk and an office to stand in has improved this a little. But I still get into my rut, which is too much time on my behind and too little time on my feet.

Of course, those of us who wax rhapsodic about standing desks might sing a new song if we were street cleaners, baristas, or letter-carriers. Too much sitting is a problem of affluence, and that’s something we knowledge workers shouldn’t forget.

Still, I regularly remind myself of the power of movement. Even a quick stroll down the hall for a glass of water can rejigger brain cells. This is also a good time to be thankful for … a job that lets me sit down.

A Poor Trade?

A Poor Trade?

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By about 4 p.m. yesterday that extra hour of sleep Saturday night was beginning to seem like a pretty poor trade for the early darkness. The angle of light and the gathering shadows were disorienting, coming as they were a full hour earlier than I was braced to expect them.

In short, it’s “fall back” all over again, half of the crazy exercise in discombobulation we undergo twice a year. In this one we gain sleep and lose light — and in the springtime just the opposite, of course.

As an early riser, I technically shouldn’t mind this shift, because the light we lose in the evening we gain in the morning. But arriving home in darkness truncates the part of the day that belongs to us.  I always feel a bit robbed these first dark evenings.

I’ll get used to it eventually; I always do. And then it will become so much the norm that the bright evenings of early spring will seem an assault on the senses, leaving me blinking, as if someone flipped on the lights in the middle of the night.

Dino Walked into a Bar

Dino Walked into a Bar

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The Halloween’ness of yesterday was eclipsed by the World Series win of yesterday … until later in the day, when my office held a party complete with fog machine. There were three folks from one team who collectively dressed as “working remotely” — wearing  robes, slippers and headphones and carrying big bags of chips to munch. They won first prize in the costume competition.

There was a dinosaur, a scarecrow, an Elvis impersonator, a Minnie Mouse and someone dressed as regenerative soil. (After all, I work for a nonprofit development organization with a robust agricultural unit.)

And then there was my fave, because we hatched the plot together, a woman who dressed as the Winrock “mouse” with gray ears and tail … stuck in a sticky trap. The only hitch: this poor woman found just such a creature in her cubicle the very same day.

That’s a little too Halloween for me!

In Transit

In Transit

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No matter how crummy the commute — and I’ve had some doozies — the time I spend in transit is usually always interesting.

Take today, for instance. It wasn’t one of the better trips I’ve had from home to office, but it was perfect for people watching, for noticing. It was the usual jumble of humans and locomotion that I’m convinced become embedded in me somehow and pop out in my writing or thinking.

In the parking lot, a man in a Nationals cap and a flowered shirt searched his trunk (full of bags and boxes) before walking to the station.  On the train, I sat next to a man reading a book … a book! And on the way out of the train, I heard one of my favorite buskers, an accomplished violinist, tripping through the fourth movement from Schubert’s Trout Quintet. I gave him a dollar.

Walking from the station to the office, a fellow commuter and pacesetter dropped something tiny. It wasn’t money, but he took pains to chase it down and pick it up. Was it a tiny ticket? An important phone number scribbled on a piece of napkin? No, it was a shred of wrapper from the granola bar he was nibbling (tidily, it seems) on the way to work. It was, in short, a human moment, just one of thousands that occur … in transit.