Boogie Wonderland

Boogie Wonderland

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Never underestimate the power of soundtrack. The tunes in the ear set the pace, set the mood and sometimes make the day.

Take today, for instance, a gray Tuesday. Ho-hum. But over the weekend I watched a French movie, “The Intouchables,” which featured some of my favorite old Earth Wind and Fire songs. I already had most of them, but after Saturday night I also have “Boogie Wonderland” on my iPod. So that’s what I listened to on the short walk from Judiciary Square to New Jersey Avenue.

Impossible to walk to this song. You bop. You bounce. And you try, very hard, not to dance.

But don’t take my word for it. Listen (and watch) for yourself.

(See what I mean. Even the trees are dancing.)

Earth and Water

Earth and Water

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It’s Earth Day, and I’m thinking about water. More specifically, about a presentation I went to last week at the law school where I work in which students discussed the human right to water. This is new terminology for me. A human need, yes. A human right, well…

But I’ll let that pass for the moment as I think of my far-flung child, my oldest, living in a place where water — and lack of it — is very much on people’s minds.

The other night she called, and it was a bad connection. “I think it’s because of the rain,” she said, voice jubilant. The rain, which was finally falling there on the edge of the Sahel. The rain that hadn’t fallen in months as the temperature soared. “It’s good for the plants,” she said, understated as usual since it’s also good for people, whose wells won’t go dry, who no longer have to choose between cooking or washing their clothes, who now have enough to drink.

One day a year we honor the planet, with all its strengths and all its frailties. But this is hard to do in a land of plenty. Where resources are scarce, every day is Earth Day.

The Other Cherry

The Other Cherry

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To visit the Tidal Basin in late March or early April is to walk through a tunnel of ethereal white blossoms, to be transported into the soul of early spring. The Yoshino cherry trees never fail to transfix and amaze a winter-weary populace.

But there is another blooming cherry tree, a later arrival, whose beauty I appreciate more each year. It’s the Kwanzan, its blossoms pinker and more vivid than the Yoshino. The Kwanzan have a warmer hue and a more generous, sturdy flower. Fat-fisted, big-hearted —as awe inspiring as their cousin, maybe even more so.

I’m looking at ours right now. I didn’t understand what it was when we bought it, thought we’d purchased a Yoshino, and the first year or two was disappointed with its late, scarce bloom. But this year it has come into its own. Right now it’s wagging its head in the cool, brilliant sunshine. Look at me, it’s saying. Have you ever seen such a sight?

Lockdown

Lockdown

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As I write, the entire city of Boston is on lockdown. All businesses, offices and schools are closed. No public transit, no street life. Seven and a half million people told to stay inside as police comb the streets looking for the second suspect in the marathon bombings.

Across the country, a town leveled by a fertilizer explosion searches for victims and buries its dead.

And finally, an Elvis impersonator who struggled with mental illness is accused of sending Ricin-laced letters to the president and other officials.

Try putting this in a novel and your editor (if you had one) would protest. Unbelievable! Too much! Take some of it out!

But this isn’t a novel.

Stem, Bud, Leaf

Stem, Bud, Leaf

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I write about this hedge every year. It’s a welcome subject today, when there are so many things I’d rather not write about. So many sad and unnatural things.

The hedge, on the other hand, spends its days just being a hedge. It was trimmed earlier in the season, so it has the sad openness of a little boy after his first haircut, curls heaped around the chair.

But the haircut has not deterred the hedge from performing its hedgely duty — the steady transformation from brown stem to pink bud to green leaf.

Some years it takes weeks for this to happen, and I hold my breath. But this year it took only a few days. An ordinary miracle.

White Violets

White Violets

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An oxymoron, I guess. A rarity, for sure.

Find a field of violets, and the ratio of white to purple will be roughly the same as this one.

But finding a field of violets isn’t easy. Too often the sweet flowers have been weeded or mulched or mowed into oblivion.

The owners of this house have the good sense to let their violets bloom free. (No, it’s not our yard — I wish our weeds were this attractive.) And they’ve been rewarded with the rare white variety. Not many of the flowers, just enough for contrast, just enough to let us know they’re still around. 

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.

Goals and Deadlines

Goals and Deadlines

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On this national deadline day, a few thoughts on reaching goals. How what keeps us going is setting new ones, and what happens when we don’t know what the next new one should be.

The natural world may be of some help here. It’s all about growth and change: bud to flower, flower to leaf. Waves rolling in; waves rolling out. The steady rhythm of the tides.

But all of this within seasonal cycles.

Nature doesn’t mind repeating itself. But it does so with endless variation.

Pear Trees

Pear Trees

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It’s the most suburban of neighborhoods, a place of happy families and dogs and swim team cheeriness. It’s tidy and cultivated.

Except every spring when the Bradford pears bloom. Then it’s magical. The natural world has taken over and I hardly notice the vans with sports stickers.

The white trees, the way they bend over the road.  Their lacy branches and dark trunks. The ethereal effect of it all.

Spring reminds us of what is invisible the rest of the year.

Sound of the Season

Sound of the Season

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What happens when you jump from winter to summer overnight? When you move from a few brave daffodils and halfhearted forsythia to flowering cherries and Bradford pears; to hyacinth, forget-me-not, periwinkle and violets — and, most especially, to budding maples and poplars and oaks.

What happens is perhaps summed up in one word, actually one sound. Awwwwwww choo!

Once or twice in this blog I’ve written about our late, great parakeet, Hermes. He was a talkative little guy who had a dozen or so words in his repertoire. But the sound he made most often was the human sneeze. He heard it enough that he figured it was our call.

There’s a reason for that.