Doing the District Federale

 Boarding the plane from St. Louis to Charlotte are mostly young men and women in khaki uniforms, in great physical shape, heading towards some military duty. On the next leg of my journey, the first passenger I see on the plane from Charlotte to D.C., is a young African-American woman standing at her first class seat putting a bag in the overhead. She’s fashionably sporting an afro and a Yale tee shirt. I’m loving this East Coast thing. Too bad US Airways lost my bag. Otherwise I’d love them too. I actually watched the entire Giants-Eagles game till midnight, suffering through watching Michael Vick win a game, hoping to be awake when a courier delivered my bag. Alas, instead, I nodded off to the glow of a lava lamp in the bedroom I commandeered from my second cousin Michaela, staring up at her poster of Justin Bieber.

In the meantime, I was treated to a lively game of after-dinner Parcheesi. My three quick-minded second cousins are frighteningly quick at math. They at least pretended to be patient with their silly, slow cousin Peggy, as I counted my moves on the board. They knew all of their options and mine before I counted the dice. Olivia and Michaela were kind enough to explain a bit of strategy lest I suffer a terrible fate at the hands of their younger brother Chauncey. Multi-talented, they could do all this while texting on their cell phones until their turn came around again. My cousin and I are sort of text-savvy, but prefer a walk in the park with the family dog Lucy.

  Their Maryland home rests at the end of a sloped cul de sac designated the sledding hill by the rest of the neighborhood. Therefore when snow immobilizes the region, everyone’s streets get plowed but theirs. During the four-day long blackouts in recent years, neighbors brought them boxes of candles. They preserved perishables by simply putting them outside in the snow.

I love efficient metro transit systems. What I don’t understand is why, during peak hours, the D.C. metro costs $1 more. Cretans. You’d think they would make it cheaper; to encourage people using public transportation instead of penalizing us for using it during rush hour.

  Making the journey by metro underground from that rural Maryland enclave to D.C., I emerged into brilliant sunlight pouring through the jungle of buildings around Howard University. My dear old friend Jeff Miller, now Vice-President of Communications for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, showed me around some classic landmarks before bringing me to the home he and wife Jill Schwartz share with fabulous dog Roxie. Schwartz is Director of Program Communications at World Wildlife Fund. Appropriately, their townhouse row home is full of beautiful artwork, restored original wood floors, a brilliant, colorful garden out front and a warm and cozy guest room. They bicycle to work. After all, that’s how they met: on an AIDS ride a dozen years ago. They walk the talk.

The hint of fall colors lined the Potomac around Roosevelt Island. Roxie towed us at the end of her leash, sniffing her way through the woods then leaping after sticks into the cool river. 

  Someone had laid a fresh rose at the feet of Roosevelt’s statue; we presume as a talisman to aid in his bobble-headed run for the plate in the president’s bobble-head competition; a distraction from a lackluster performance by the Nationals erstwhile real baseball games until recently. And this night, sure enough, the Nationals clinched the pennant, covering the photographers in the locker room with champagne, probably destroying any camera gear not wrapped in ziplock bags and duct tape.

My tour of U Street near Howard University included the historic Ben’s Chili Bowl, and landed us at Busboys and Poets for fabulous vegetarian food and beer.

Jeff managed to strategically beat both traffic and rain en route to seeing Los Lobos at the Birchmere, an intimate night club. Our group of five danced while these OG rockers played all the song off Kiko, marking that album’s 20^th anniversary. So they’re a little older, but their harmonies still rival the Beach Boys’.

The locals riding my bus the next morning seemed to barely notice the rain, dressing instead for the humidity. At New York Street, the driver opened the door to ask a woman about her mother’s health. A woman in the back of the bus loudly made herself an appointment with who-knows-who, promising to send a check that day, after she opened a new bank account and put some money in it.

I have so many old friends now working at the Washington Post it’s crazy. The photography that gets produced, therefore, is insightful, intelligent, heartfelt. And from the photo editors, it is encouraged, nurtured and even published. There is an oasis there at the Post, of excellent visual journalism treated right, and it gives me hope.  With the addition of immensely-talented video-journalist Brad Horn (my instructor!) an in the capable hands of MaryAnne Golon and Sonya Doctorian, anything is possible!

A brisk walk and insider tour of downtown buildings brought us to the National Gallery of Art. Jonathan Newton ushered me through the intricate maze of galleries to see George Bellows lithographs, some of the finest sculptures and paintings by Degas

 and Van Gogh

and Rembrandt (“light the way it’s supposed to be, ” he said, ever-so-poignantly) before we made our way into the evening through the wave of stars in the corridor to the East Wing. As we passed the Newseum’s display of front pages, we wondered if soon this would not be a sampling of newspapers, but rather a display of the only newspapers left in the country.

I know there are many great eateries and pubs in DC but I will always recommend Church Key for its great menu of microbrews. Leave it to the sports writers and photographers to know the best watering holes. And bless his heart, Newton had the energy, after covering the Nationals’ game and victory celebration in the locker room till midnight, to be my guide and share a brew.

The next morning my bus passed through the same neighborhoods, collecting some of the same faces, while the same folks buzzed about on the street corners. I wondered how often folks born and raised in a given neighborhood might venture out just for a day’s journey, and how far they might go, and to where, and how they might choose their destination.

  I’m not sure how far the walk was that I made from the White House to the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, then MLK Jr., Roosevelt, Jefferson rotunda…. 

Back up to the National Gallery of Art, the National Portrait Gallery… back to the White House and then from there with Pat Butler up to Mt. Pleasant, past the smallest dog park in the world.

Maybe ten miles. I think I earned the reward of a gin and tonic on the back patio under a strand of lights, the smell of humidity corrupting the leaves of maples beginning to turn amber in Pat’s neighborhood. What a smart move he made to buy this classy 1870s-built home with its hard wood floors, its outdoor porches, tall ceilings and secret doors. Good thing he has housemates. The place is probably haunted. And he’s never there, being that his job as Vice-President of Programs at the International Center for Journalists he is hopping from country to country all year.  And to think I knew him when. 

Pat shares my awe for the impossibility of art galleries in D.C. I mean, right there, at the Portrait Gallery, is THE portrait of George Washington that’s on the dollar bill. There a bronze head of Rachel Carson!

And in the National Gallery, THE portrait of Napoleon. And the galleries are all free. Our tax dollars paid for that. Free. It’s like a tollbooth being taken off a bridge once the bridge is paid for. So, when does that happen?
Jeff recommended the Roosevelt Monument, and I am so glad. It is beautifully arranged, through all four of his presidencies.

The quotations reflect the foundation of personal motivation that defined the character of Americans as they struggled through a Depression, a War and the Dust Bowl.  My favorite inscription should be front and center in today’s presidential debates: “Men and Nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of Nature throws out of balance also the lives of men.” And also, next to a wall of bronze men in a bread line: “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.” Amen.

A cab ride and an order for take out Thai puts all of us together in front of one big t.v. screen for the first presidential debate. After which, of course, we all left shaking our heads.

Back on that awesome D.C. metro the next morning, I barely broke a stride moving from the green line to the red line, as the cars were so sync-ed up. The rest of the day was a whirlwind of what life is like for my mother-of-three and still working cousin. 

We eat deli salads on our laps between a track meet (Michaela) and soccer game (Olivia), passing her husband Kevin on a side road along the way while he traverses from soccer (Olivia) en route to track (Michaela).

I do the only thing I can to contribute: I make dinner, while dodging Lucy, the family dog, who is the closest thing to a stuffed animal you can get, and as playful as a puppy.

I regret leaving the next morning. I’ve just gotten into the groove. But that’s easy when you’re on vacation isn’t it?