Even more things I'll miss about DC

The list goes on:

Historic places.  History is alive here, concentrated as opposed to spread out over vast spaces as it is out West where I'm from.  It's grounded in buildings, battlegrounds, and monuments.  In Virginia, where we live, we're surrounded by the sites of the Civil War -- Manassas and Shepherdstown, the Shenandoah Valley and Chancelorsville, Richmond and Appomattox.  A 90-minute drive to  Gettysburg and we are walking over the ground of the peach orchard where Gen. Sickles lost his leg to a cannon ball.  (The bone is on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine -- I have seen it.)

Several years ago we visited the spot along the James River where my great grandfather was wounded during the Civil War -- Deep Bottom, Virginia -- and after some preliminary research about the battle which occurred there, were able to picture the Union and Rebel forces waiting in the morning mist to attack.  Chances are anyone aware of their own family history will be able to find a personal connection to our nation's story in DC and along the eastern seaboard.  History breathes from the cities and woods, hilltops and valleys.  I'll miss that proximity to so many historic places when we head back west.

The Nats.  Even though I've attended several hundred Major League baseball games, this year's Nationals team stands out.  The Nats are what America's sport is all about.  A general manager (Mike Rizzo) who has built a winning team with draft picks from the ashes of many losing seasons.  A veteran manager (Davey Johnson) who knows how the game is played and how to get the most out of every player, from rookie to veteran.  The league's best pitching staff (made better by the acquisition of Gio Gonzales and growth of Tyler Clippard).  Veterans who play hard and keep it simple (Ryan Zimmerman, Adam Laroche, Jason Werth, Michael Morse) .  Young players who play like veterans (Bryce Harper, Steven Strasburg, Ian Desmond, Danny Espinosa, Steve Lombardozzi, Jesus Flores).  They expect to win and they do, with a minimum of fanfare and maximum effort.  A great new ballpark.  All fun to watch.  I will have to lower my expectations to endure the Rockies when I'm back in Colorado.  I know I'll miss the Nats and the brand of baseball they play.

Diversity.  DC and surrounding communities are among the most diverse in the world.  Any walk down any street, or stroll through any public space will expose you to a symphony of foreign tongues and dress and manner.  We often comment that a shopping trip to the Arlington Costco feels like a day at the United Nations.  Shoppers represent every faith, every political bent and economic strata, every race.  The same can be said of all the visitors from around the globe who pour into the US Capital, especially  during the summer, but essentially year round.  They are drawn to the District by its history and institutions and to America as a symbol of freedom and opportunity.  And they are made to feel welcome here.  Any wide-eyed visitor on the Mall will tell you, America remains a country that represents a chance for something better to millions who lack that chance.   We can't guarantee all dreams will be fulfilled.  Nor can we pretend that our history does not include darker chapters and our national character darker impulses.  But despite our faults, we still represent to people everywhere hope for a better life, a better world.  And I'm convinced it' will be our willingness to embrace diversity that will help us to deliver on that promise in the long run.

Communities all over America have become increasingly diverse, although groups still segregate themselves by neighborhood (or are segregated by economic and prejudicial circumstances) in many locales, DC included.  But the beltway is an area where people seem especially comfortable around neighbors who speak and act, dress and worship differently.  That matter-of-fact acceptance is grounded, I believe, in a  common faith in the national principles that declare:  America welcomes with open arms those who would share its values and contribute to its traditions.  I know that faith exists outside of the Capital, but I'll miss the sheer volume of those who share it here (certain legislators excepted).  

Things I'll miss in DC (continued)

The nooks and crannies.  The reading room at the Library of Congress.  The Public Vaults exhibit and research rooms in the National Archives.  The George Mason memorial.  Daumier's hilarious cast bronze caricatures of the members of French Parliament downstairs in the National Gallery.  The 3rd floor great hall of the Museum of American Art.  The fabulous covered atrium of the National Building Museum (the old Pension office).  The Old Post Office Building.  Farmer's markets at Courthouse, DuPont Circle and L'enfant Plaza.  The butterfly garden next to the Natural History Museum.  The sculpture garden at the Art Gallery, where I love to eat lunch and watch tourists and bureaucrats meander around the fountain (or ice rink in winter).  The cafeteria at the American Indian Museum--the best food on the Mall.  Prickly pear tacos.  Planked salmon.  Squash blossom soup.  Pulled buffalo with chayote sauce.  Beats the heck out of hotdogs from the food carts along Constitution Ave.

Kennedy Center.   There's always something going on here, from an obscure band or youth orchestra at the Millennium Stage to the gala star-studded ceremonies bestowing National Medals of Art.  We've been to operas and plays and concerts.  I've written about the Chieftans 50th anniversary concert and the holiday performance of the Messiah elsewhere in this blog.  I could also have sung the praises of Patricia Racette in Tosca or Kate Blanchett in Uncle Vanya (we saw that performance the night of Hurricane Irene).  But the most fun is always the highly unpredictable fare on the Millennium Stage.  Performances are free at 6 pm every night, year round.  That's where we heard The Bills, my favorite Canadian hard-to-categorize musical group.   You're just as likely to hear the Marine Corps chorus, a drumming performance from China, an as yet unknown violinist, or a famous alternative group like They Might Be Giants.  The crowds are usually small, very casual, enthusiastic, a mix of intentional and accidental audience members.  A shout out to the Target Corporation for their sponsorship.

Botanic Gardens in winter.  Locals in DC, like in all tourist destinations, love the shoulder seasons, when they are left to enjoy their places without the press of tour busloads of camera toting visitors competing for space on the Metro or elbowing their way into museums and restaurants.  But no complaints.   Every American should spend at least a week here.  As a resident, I must admit, though, I am glad when almost everyone goes home after Labor Day.  The zoo and outdoor monuments in the Fall are particularly moving and beautiful.  And in Winter the indoor venues--all those wonderful museums--feel like they have been staged just for my leisurely enjoyment (not counting those weekdays when the school busses show up at 11 a.m.).  But, I am not fond of the winter weather in DC.  So I have found places to escape the wind and wet and biting cold.  One is the US Botanic Gardens.  My favorite time there is winter--spending a bitter cold sunny morning with the hothouse orchids and bromelids inside conservatory.  On the mezzanine level overlooking the jungle of plants and trees and vines, there are benches where I spend winter days soaking in the heat and sun and humidity of the greenhouse.  Like being transported to the tropics.  I'll miss that.

More to come . . . 

Things I'll Miss in DC

Today I submitted our "intent to vacate" the Arlington townhouse that has been our home the past two years.  The lease expires October 5, and that's the day we're handing over the keys and garage door openers and electronic entry fobs.  It's back to Denver.

Colorado is home, but we have an affection for our nation's capital having lived here five years out of the last ten.  I am eager to be back among friends and family out west, but the truth is there's a long list of things I will miss.  Here's a start of my list in no particular order:

The humidity.  No, my brain is not soggy from the swampy climate.  DC is several canisters of deodorant stickier than Denver.  And that's it's appeal, up to a point.  My skin thanks me every time I step off the plane into air as moist as an alligator's breath.  No more cracked hands and feet, scaly elbows and knees.  If I miss a day applying Aveeno moisturizer after my shower, I don't look like a dried lake bed by noontime.  What I won't miss:  air conditioning set at arctic temperatures.

The Smithsonians.  Have a free morning or afternoon?  The nation's attic invites you over for a leisurely poke-around -- no admission charge and something new guaranteed every visit.  Like most visitors, the first time I came to DC in 1988 I thought the Smithsonian was a red gothic brick building on the National Mall.  Actually, 19 museums and the National Zoo all fall under the Smithsonian label.  Some aren't even in DC (The National Design Museum is in New York City, and the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum is a 45-minute drive to Chantilly, Virginia).  I've been lucky enough to visit some so many times that I roam the floorplans in my sleep.  My most frequented haunts:  Natural History, American History, National Gallery.

The memorials and monuments.  Hard to pick a favorite.  Of the biggies, the Lincoln memorial looms large, as does the Jefferson.  The Vietnam War Memorial grabs me every time I walk by the dark angular wall of names --  the color of the stone, the way the wall carves deeper into the ground and slowly reemerges at the other end, the letters and photos and mementos still left daily, the veterans and surviving families weeping while fingers trace a reminder of the loved one lost.  I am moved by all the monuments, but I spend the most time wandering through the Roosevelt memorial, 7.5 acres of stone and water with memorable quotes from our longest serving president.  Among my favorites:  "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." and "I have seen war.  I have seen war on land and sea.  I have seen blood running from the wounded.  I have seen the dead in the mud.  I have seen cities destroyed.  I have seen children starving.  I have seen the agony of mothers and wives.  I hate war."  Are you listening, you economists and generals, power brokers and decision makers?

New memorials.  In August of 2010, on the morning that the construction barriers came down, I walked through the new MLK Memorial a week before its scheduled dedication (postponed until October because of Hurricane Irene).  I returned to photograph and enjoy it many times in the first few months.  Seeing the crowds of African-American families and school groups drawn to the memorial and overhearing their conversations made me realize how important this monument is to our country and its promise of equality for all.  Grandparents and parents explaining Dr. King's life to their children, talking about the civil rights movement, reminding the young that not so many years ago whites and blacks used separate bathrooms and water fountains -- hearing these stories firsthand was a privilege and something I will take with me wherever I live or travel in America.

Hobnobbing with the great and near great.  Power is the drug that fuels DC.  My wife's work takes her to the White House, to embassies, to legislative and executive office buildings around the city.  She attends functions at which the President or First Lady, congressional leaders or cabinet officers appear.  Her office makes decisions that ultimately affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.  But it's the happenstance encounters that make living here a frequent high.  One night dining at the Bombay Club she enjoyed the hearty laughter of Hillary Clinton and guests one table over.  On a visit to Costco last month I skirted a crowd waiting to have books autographed by Colin Powell, who was signing away at the end of the kitchenware aisle!  Only inside the beltway.  Then there are the celebrity sightings, Hollywood folks who appear so often to advocate for their particular cause that the Post has coined the term celebvocacy.  Catch Owen Wilson at Oyamel, Alec Baldwin at Zaytinia, Sharon Stone at Bistro Bis.  Or, more likely, you could run into Joe Biden at Ray's Hell Burger.

More to come . . .

Heat wave

Here's a record no one wanted to break:  eleven consecutive days in the DC area with daytime temperatures above 95 degrees.

Yesterday (Saturday, July 7) the official high melted previous marks:  106 degrees in the shade.

Even the doubters and deniers couldn't hide from the second consecutive summer of all-time high temperatures, the hottest since weather records were first kept in 1871.  They, too, have felt the wound in the ozone layer.  They might even believe now that something is going on.  Climate change is real.

That's the conclusion of yet another international report, after examining extreme climate events worldwide since 1950.  The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an almost 600-page report last week noting that weather extremes -- particularly those involving high temperatures and extreme rainfall amounts -- now occur frequently enough that they cannot  be sloughed off as "normal" fluctuations in weather patterns.  

I like how Dim Coumou (real name), a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, summed up the evidence.  Using a "loaded dice" analogy popular with climatologists, Coumou said one roll of double sixes doesn't prove the dice are fixed.  Ten in a row?  Much more likely.  And that is, in essence, the kind of repeat performance in extreme weather events that researchers are now observing.  One hot summer in one location doesn't prove much.  Tens of heat waves over the past 15 years in multiple locations -- Russia, Europe, the US, Africa -- cannot be ignored.  Humankind has poured pollutants into the atmosphere that are affecting the climate.  

All of that provides little comfort for the hundreds of thousands of households across West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia who lost power from torrential winds and rains that toppled trees and cut power lines last Thursday.  Many of them have sweltered without air conditioning since then.  We have heard several tales from acquaintances about packing up and seeking a hotel room for the duration, just to beat the heat.  

People, animals, and plants have all suffered.  Thirteen deaths have been blamed on the extreme temperatures or rainstorms.  We picked a good week to be out of town on summer vacation, and so have had to endure only the last four days of 100 degree plus temperatures.  Our poodle, Charlie, stayed with a sitter, who was forced to spend several days with her sister's family when their power went out.  His walks since we returned have been short and efficient.  A few quick squirts on the nearest bush, a sniff over the first patch of grass we encounter to locate a suitable outdoor latrine, then a plaintive look that says, "Get me back inside where it's cool."  

Before we left on vacation I brought inside almost all of my pots of plants on the patio.  Our dog sitter friend came over and watered everything several times while we were gone, and miraculously they survived except the lettuce (fried) and a large, laden tomato vine in a pot too large to haul into the kitchen, which looks now like it was hosed by jet exhaust.  

One local power company is getting hate mail.  All of the cost cutting measures they employed over the last year (so that shareholders could rake in a higher dividend) resulted in fewer trees being trimmed around power lines.  So when Thursday's wind and rain -- an extreme weather event clearly linked to human-aggravated global climate change -- tore through the area, it was time to pay the piper.  My bike ride on the Mt. Vernon trail a couple of days ago felt like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, as I dodged fallen branches, limbs, and one entire tree trunk obstructing the trail -- all still waiting to be cleared a week after the storm.  It's not like crews were shirking their duty.  The grinding whir of wood chippers and chain saws serenaded me the whole section of the trail I covered.  Judging from the amount of downed limbs still remaining, an army of beavers could not have hauled off all the debris in a week's time.  

I'm too limp from the heat to pontificate about what all this portends, other than the fact that we need to face up to the weather patterns we are creating with our cars and factories and farting herds of cattle.  

Paseos and Politics

The best way to know a place to is walk it.  The view from a car is sterile and superficial.  On foot, you can't ignore the smells and sounds, the feel and taste of a place.  No matter where we live or travel, my wife and I walk as much as possible.  It's at a pleasant pace, a time to talk and notice and enjoy.  Even in familiar places, it is a time to get lost, so we can find something unexpected.  

This morning we are in the Yucatan, where it has not rained in almost a week, so the usual humidity is a few notches below cloying.  We have set out on a morning walk.  An hour or two later and I would be sticky with sweat before we navigate the first 500 meters, but it is still comfortable enough  on our paseo.

That's a word we picked up in Madrid many years ago.  The summer temperatures in Spain can be brutally hot.  During the heat of the day, everyone from shopkeepers to school children to civil servants takes a break to spend time at home, enjoying a cool lunch and a nap.  The time to move around is at night.  And so the streets and parks of Madrid are filled with young and old, families and lovers, walking in the evening air.  Paseo.

My Spanish at the time we were there was minimal and so I couldn't understand the conversations and laughter, but it was pleasantly everywhere around us as we walked one night with our purposeful American determination to find somewhere to eat at 9:00 p.m., the start of the Madrileño dinner hour.  The first restaurant we tried was still prepping food for the evening's menu, the chef not scheduled to arrive for an hour.  As we walked on (our hungry teenage kids were with us) the meandering crowds around us forced us to slow down.  Paseo.  Stroll.  Take your time.  Enjoy the evening and each other.

It was a lesson we resisted at the time, but eventually learned over the course of several weeks in Europe.  Walking at an easy pace connects you to people and places.  Even better if you have no particular place to go.

This morning, we are on the aptly named Paseo Xamen-Ha, which meanders in front of a string of Riviera Maya resorts south of Playa del Carmen.  As we left our friend's beach house we saw our resident agouti making his rounds, weaving in and out of the shrubbery in the vacant lot behind our rented vacation property.  Lizards seem to be out in great numbers today, scurrying down walls and around palm trunks.  An iguana heads into a drainpipe at our approach.  A jogger overtakes us, a middle-aged American dedicated to keeping his beach figure alluring.  Judging from his labored breathing, sweat-soaked t-shirt, and sunburnt legs, he is still learning the value of slowing down.

To get to the Paseo we have tramped through a patch of jungle, past a few backyards, and into the Playacar II neighborhood.  We're not really set on doing anything, just a little people watching, maybe a stop at a crafts market or taco stand for a cool drink.  We've made this circuit many times before, but there are always surprises afoot.

The unexpected pleasure of the walk this morning presents itself in the tiny mall of craft and souvenir shops across from the resorts.  I had forgotten that this is election day in Mexico.  The country is voting for a new president, since that office is now limited to a single term.  We have been here before during local and national elections, and on those occasions the main thoroughfare, Benito Juarez Avenida, was teeming with vans and pick-up trucks hauling stadium-sized speakers in the back, blaring salsa music and political slogans.   For some reason, we have heard none of this raucous campaigning in the five days we have been here.

In a small plaza area in front of the mall, local residents are lined up waiting for the official opening of the polling booths, which are set up behind a collapsable table where election judges sit.  The pronouncement on the privacy covers of each booth in large block letters spells out the significance of this and all free elections:  El voto es libre y secreto.  This presidential election will have its detractors, just as we have our conspiracy hawks and discontents in the U.S.  Tomorrow the losing candidate, Obrador, will accuse Peña Nieto and the PRI party of vote buying and other fraud once ballots are counted.  But, even those complaints arise from a belief in and hope for a system that fairly enfranchises every person of voting age.

A large sample ballot is posted on the wall of a shop to the left.  Voters all seem to know one another.  They are well-dressed, the women in light strapless shifts or summer frocks, the men in jeans or chinos and polo shirts.  A couple of shorter older voters look to have more of the Indio blood in their mestizo DNA.  Two men with clipboards appear to be monitoring the process.  We find two young policemen back in the shade of the shop lanes, biding their time until the balloting starts.  The process seems peaceful and ordinary -- a reassuring sight for citizens and foreign visitors alike.

I am hesitant to talk with people standing in line, afraid of violating some regulation about talking politics too near the ballot box.  But seeing the voting booths and ballots makes me curious to know what this election means to the people of Playa del Carmen and to Mexico as a whole.  With so much in the news about grisly crimes committed by drug cartels, I suspect that the narcotraficantes are on everyone's mind.  But, I also know that just like in Europe and the U. S., unemployment and fair wages are issues in Mexico, which has been affected by worldwide economic instability.  I resolve to ask some of the waiters and shopkeepers, taxi drivers and strolling locals in town tomorrow what they hope for with their newly elected government.

The temperature is rising.  We both are sweating a bit now, so we head back "home."  The election day lines and voting booths we observed on our stroll felt familiar, as it appeared to feel to the voters in line.  That's a reassuring vote of confidence in Mexico.