“If this is coffee…”

“If this is coffee…”

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In honor of our 16th president and his February 12 birthday, a quotation. Not from the Gettysburg Address or the Second Inaugural. In fact, no one is sure exactly where it came from, or even completely confident that he said it. Though it has always been attributed to him, it is not an especially well sourced remark.

But still, it is funny and practical and about real life. A break from the ponderous union-preserving tasks with which he was shouldered. A witty aside the man might have tossed out into the world without expecting it to go very far.

“If this is coffee,” he said, “please bring me some tea. But if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”

So much for uniting the North and the South, those who sought to preserve the Union and those who clamored to divide it.

With one sentence this man could bring together  — with humor — those who love coffee and those who love tea.

Now that’s saying something…

The Lincoln Cottage in northwest D.C., the president’s summer home, where he undoubtedly had a cup of coffee … or maybe it was tea.

Flow

Flow

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This morning a choice: Turn left or right out of the park-and-ride lot on my way home to write.

Turn left and I wait twice. Turn right and I drive farther —but without stopping.

I turned right.

It’s about movement. Flow.

It’s about that in so many ways.

Impaled!

Impaled!

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It looks like an interloper in the garden, a volunteer tree that decided to grow there overnight. But it’s actually a branch impaled by the wind — just about the only evidence we have of the storm that’s ravaging our neighbors to the north.

Apparently, folks in Boston are getting as much snow per hour as we’ve gotten all winter. That would be two inches.

This makes it official. No complaints about winter this year. They’re not allowed.

Black and White

Black and White

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My walks around the city are a study in black in white. The white is from the buildings, their facades of marble, limestone and granite.

The black is from the coats. Long, short, open, closed. But black, almost always black. The puffy parkas of the seriously cold. The long topcoats of the multitasking and self-important (a lot of those around here). The dark suit jackets of those impervious to the chill.

Put them all together — the Hill types striding across the Capitol plaza; the office-worker at lunch — and you have a ballet, a choreography, a study in contrasts.

D.C. gets color from its tourists. But it gets its subtlety and its heft and its monochromatic harmony from its denizens.

Three Years and Thankful

Three Years and Thankful

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I began this blog three years ago, not sure how often I would post or for how long. It would be an exercise, I told myself, “a slow, patient accumulation of words,” a daily discipline. Maybe people would read it, maybe they wouldn’t. But if I kept at it long enough, I told myself, I would have a body of work.

Don’t know if there’s quite a body yet. Maybe the beginnings of one.

What I do know is that somehow, every day but Sunday (or Saturday!), the blank screen is filled. Even on the hardest days, the words come. Some days they rush in as quickly as I can get them down. Other days I spend way more time than I’d like with fingers poised above the keys.

But eventually the muse speaks — and I listen.

Today I pause to thank that muse — and to thank all of you who visit, read and cheer me on. Your encouragement means more than you know.

Stitchery

Stitchery

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The lunchtime walk is timed, by necessity. No more than an hour, often less. Bracketed by desk work, it is more of a bolt than a saunter.

Down First to New Jersey, over and around the Capitol.

Or maybe down the Mall, to the Washington Monument and back.

Errands might take me up Massachusetts or along E Street to Penn Quarter, the bustle of Chinatown.

Sometimes just to the Botanical Gardens to smell the roses.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. Each route stitches me more securely to this place.

Grand Central Centennial

Grand Central Centennial

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Saturday marked not only the 127th Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, but also the 100th birthday of Grand Central Station. It was the second train station on that site, and it opened on Sunday, February 2, 1913. More than 150,000 people visited the first day.

For me, for years, Grand Central was the place I passed through on the way to work. My office was in the Helmsley Building, an ornate wedding cake of a structure that straddles Park Avenue north of the station.

Grand Central was where we grabbed a newspaper and a bagel before starting our day at the oh-so-civilized hour of 9:30 a.m. It was where we went out to lunch for a splurge on our assistant editor salaries. It was where we met people for drinks or dinner. It was even sometimes where we caught the train.

Most of all it was — and still is — a grand public space. One of the grandest. And its currency is not stone or steel but motion. Of trains, of people. 

To stand at the clock in the middle of Grand Central is to be caught up in a great whirl of activity — but somehow to feel the stillness within the movement.


(Not Grand Central, but something of its scale…)

Flurries

Flurries

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We’ve had more than our usual share of flurries this winter. Snow without purpose, not driven, not sticking much, just dancing in the air.

One minute the day lightens, the next it grays, and then … it’s white out (though not whiteout).

This is snow-globe snow, decorative, ornamental, does not mean business. It could be lint from an errant dryer. Or ash from a meddlesome volcano. Or bits of fluff from a cottonwood tree.

But no, it is snow. It melts on the tongue. It coats my hair when I walk through it, which I did yesterday.

Flurries are difficult to photograph. They are ephemeral. It is part of their charm.

Is Poetry Dead?

Is Poetry Dead?

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This morning’s Washington Post tipped me off to a literary kerfuffle that has recently been playing out in its pages and online. An op-ed by Alexandra Petri, “Is Poetry Dead?,” has 375 comments and counting. I didn’t read all of them — only enough to convince me that no, it is not!

Petri’s piece seems to have been inspired by Richard Blanco’s inaugural poem and the fact that Blanco “has overcome numerous obstacles, struggled against opposition both
internal and external — in order to excel in poetry, a field that may
very well be obsolete.”

Petri raises valid points, criticizing not just poetry and poets, but a culture that has turned poetry from a romantic, individual act to a heavily workshopped, grant-driven endeavor.

But she certainly touched a nerve.

With rants and reasoning, 375 people took the time to defend the art form, many of them in posts that used the art form itself.

“Poetry turns darkness into light,” wrote one.

Another quoted William Carlos Williams, from “Asphodel”:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

Violets, Again

Violets, Again

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Violets are part of my emotional-horticultural heritage. My mother has
always loved them and her mother, my namesake, always
loved them, too. I have very few of my grandmother’s possessions, but I
do have her violet-patterned cup and saucer set, and I treasure
it.

In a way, the violet is a strange flower to claim. Many consider it a weed. It’s mowed down as often as it’s cultivated.

But even without the family tradition, I would like this flower. Maybe it’s the color combination, the vividness of
the purple, the way it’s grounded by the green. Or maybe it’s the way it
clusters with its own, as if waiting to be gathered into a bouquet. In
the general boisterousness that is spring, the violet is shy and
unassuming; it doesn’t ask for much.

 For that reason, it’s an easy flower to love.

(Happy Birthday, Mom!)