9 posts tagged “washington dc”

Shootings in DC are unfortunately, not than uncommon. They occur mostly in the sections beyond the center of the district away from the tourists.  The shooting the day before yesterday at the Holocaust Museum was an exception.

Local news stations are still carrying this story as one of the lead stores.  In this morning's news it was noted the museum wil reopen and the doors of the museum which had bullet holes in them were now replaced.  Personally I believe these doors should have been left as they are, sealed against the elements of course but kept there as a reminder and a means to accentuate the message of the museum. The Holocaust Museum you see,  is not a place one takes in to feel uplifted or to marvel, as other public places in DC are designed to. 

And of the gunman, an 88 year old man who ought to have been enjoying what is left of his life, spoiling his grandchildren, grand nieces, nephews etc?  What he did was beyond disgusting.  In the same breath however, I would say he is a product of an increasing intolerant and polarized social-political environment, both right and left.

News programs all of them, are blatantly tailored to a selective audience and instead of letting in fresh air, simply reinforce and stoke preconceptions and intellectual rigidity.  News and commentary, rather than thought provoking is more like modern day bear-baiting with ratings as the prize. Political blogs on both sides are even more self-serving and intellectually bereft.

I see this manifested on a personal level too.  On my Facebook page, I have as a friend a woman I grew up with. An otherwise good person, but since the election of the current occupant of the WH, I see almost daily postings-rants about the President and the direction he is taking.  I too did not vote for him, have grave reservations about the consequences of what has happened already and what is under consideration, and would like to see him 'one and done in 2012' but throwing intellectual tantrums is not constructive.

Think the zealots on both sides of the divide need a long 'time out' to take a deep intellectual breath and to 'get a life'.  Otherwise one could find oneself like the gunman, a life devoid of everything else but ideology and hatred.

As the lyrics from a Beatle's song go, "Life goes on within you and without you."

It appears 'my guy' won by a margin of just 69 votes! His opponent however, has not conceded.   Also an observation that in comparing percentage of voter turnout, the U.S. electorate may be a bit too preoccupied with macro political contests, like the one we've just had for the Presidency. 

Thinking a bit about this,  is there that much direct impact on one's life from a nationwide political race vs. a local political race, which determines  who'll sit on your child's school board, who you can go to if the local zoning officials are not being reasonable, or get the local government moving on some traffic issues in your area?

Due to our ex-county executive moving up to freshman congressman (ugh!)  there was a local election to fill his seat and then yesterday, yet another local election to fill the seat vacated by the person who assumed  the vacated county seat.

As in the previous election, I volunteered/ got drummed into poll-watching.  Sat with a representative from the other side and looked at my list of names, crossed off names  of those who came to vote and later in the day, handed the list over so others could make calls to those who had not yet showed up at the polls, to go and vote.

The turnout was low leaving all with much time to sit on our hands.  I was surprised to see just how many  of the voters couldn't/wouldn't speak clearly enough to be heard, leaving the poll watcher for the other side and I sometimes looking at one another with a 'huh?' look.  At least the election officials covered for that.

There was a small bit of drama too. An elderly man came in with one of his sons, he did not speak too much English, but he was able to say it was his very first time to vote and we all gave him a small round of applause.

The election itself was/is tight.  One precinct voting machine broke down, prompting a lot of 'how convenient' comments during an election night party. Still though I think many of the hard-core people on both sides of the ideological divide could greatly benefit from taking a deep breath of fresh air at a place far away from Washington, DC.

Was an unexpected pearl of wisdom from son this morning as we watched the morning after while eating our banana pancakes.

Glanced at one headline 'Now Washington Returns to Normal', and snorted. Since when is any day here 'normal'?

Did not watch much of the inauguration. I do think it was the abyss of low class and outright juvenileness/lack of maturity, tolerance and grace for those to boo and catcall when now ex-President Bush was on the dais.  The White House official website yesterday also carried a very cheap shot at former president Bush too.  The people of this country have been promised change, but from the get-go, it doesn't seem that way, rather it appears the adults are not in charge.

 My son got a random message while on-line on his Xbox. The message said that all white people should report to the South for work in the cotton fields.  Apparently one of his friends got a similar 'note' as a text message on his cell phone.Like I have just said, the adults are perhaps, not in charge?

Personally I think that those who expect the new President to part the waters and shower them with Federal manna from heaven are going to be in for a very large shock and disappointment.  Frankly after reading Atlas Shrugged, I think Ayn Rand hit the nail squarely on its head.

One of the winter interns where my wife works shared this story about an adventure/misadventure she had at year end in DC.

During the DC year-end drinking season, the city government offers free taxi rides to cut down on vehicular mayhem.  So this person and 6 other of her buddies went down to paint the town whatever color they had in mind.  At the end of all of it, she said, they stood outside waiting for a taxi to come and take them back to Northern VA, except there were none to hail, and after an hour none were in sight so she said. The last Metro to Northern Va had long since departed and unlike a Japanese city, in DC, there are no all night cafes (at least as far as I know)  to kill time in until public transportation starts running again.

So what to do?  They got back home that night.  Either the intern or one of her 6 buddies took a page from a pizza chain advertisement,  ordered a pizza, had the driver 'deliver' it (and them) to the Vienna, Va. Metro station (where the car was parked), a distance of probably 15 or 16 miles, and went on their merry way. 

She did say they gave the driver a decent tip.

04:10, Wake up trod down the dark stairs, taking care not to trip over the dog. Go into the kitchen, turn on the lights. Great!  neither my son or wife had the presence of mind to simply press the dishwasher's START button before going to bed. See more unwashed dishes are in the sink.  Utter a few unkind words, start the wash cycle and start making up a lunch for the wife and her breakfast.

04:50: Call upstairs to my wife to tell her she needs to get out of bed now.  Have her breakfast on the table. She showers, dresses for work and comes down, complaining that the dishwasher is on and that the noise will wake our son.  I go upstairs, shower, shave and dress.

05:10: Do a quick scan of e-mail and links I look at everyday. Eat a quick small breakfast.  Hear son stir upstairs.

05:30  Son comes downstairs and gets his bowl of cereal. Wife starts railing about why he hasn't been fixed a more substantial breakfast.

05:50-06:15 Leave home to drop wife off at work. Sparse traffic of course, given the hour and many of the lights are on flashing mode until 06:00.  A silent ride it is.

06:45: Arrive back home, son is gone meaning he has left the house in time to catch his morning bus.  Scan the net more closely now, job boards mostly. Feed the dog  Make son a small snack to east after his weight-lifting class.

08:10: Leave to pick up son from home school and to drive him to another high school for his Japanese Language class.  Drop him off and head to a nearby Starbucks, since it makes little sense to go back home and then come back, to wait.  While waiting, I drop one of my pens between the cushions and in the process of retrieving it, touch on a bunch of coins that have fallen out and lodged  in the same place.  The amount runs out to be almost what I paid for the coffee. Hooray for small victories.

10:30: Pick son up and drop him off at his base school. Ask him as I always doe, about what he did in his Japanese class, and he answers as always, 'Study Japanese'.

10:50: Son is safely dropped off and I now head west to  the next county, where the local community college has its annual poinsettia sale. Am after the snow-white poinsettias I saw last year.  No snow-white ones but some salmon pink ones for which I and some very determined women quickly snap up.

12:30: The Prelude (or as The Auto Gal called it: The Quaalude) is loaded up with eight large plants and I can barely see out of the rearview or passenger side mirrors. Drive very carefully back home.

13:35:  Back home, unload the car, thrown my son's gym stuff into the clothes washer and start the wash cycle.  Take some leftover turkey, fry some onions and gobo in sesame oil then add a curry-flavored salad dressing to the stuff and have my lunch.   See I still occasionally get junk mail addressed to the people we bought this house from 10 years ago.  Pitch it.

14:10: Leave house to pick up wife fro work. Make a mistake on the time (I am early).  I get to listen to the 'My day was...' on the way back.  She wants to practice cake decorating at home, so a detour to another store which lead to another detour and yet another.  Meanwhile the temperature Quaalude's temperature gauge gets worryingly high.  Buy and add more coolant, but realize that I need to do something about the radiator.

17:30 Finally arrive home. Son is on the PC doing homework and web surfing in alternating spurts. He's not terribly hungry. Tell him I have fixed and baked a turkey casserole which he can scoop out what he wants from, nuke and eat. Wife falls asleep upstairs.

20:30: After drifting in and out of sleep while on the couch, I get up and tell my son that if he is 'bored', he cantake out the clothes from the washer and hang then up to dry. To my surpirse he complies.  I finally call it a day and head upstairs.

One of my neighbors, now stationed in Hong Kong, have a 2-unit apartment they rent out near the Capital and for which I act as their eyes & ears. 

In the e-mail mail box this morning was a note from the neighbor, forwarding on a note from one of the tenants.  The tenant wants to break the lease and return home to California as things just don't seem to have worked out here. It a shame the tenant has run up against a wall, but you have to do what you have to do, I guess

Washington DC can be a tough city to plant oneself in.  Despite its history, it is and has been a city of transients. I don't know of any hard statistics, but I would be willing to bet a beer or two that the proportion of those who moved here to work and live is far greater than those who grew up here and still live here.

Of the transients,  I'd say a huge hunk  comes from the military families who rotate in and out of this area as the father's and increasingly, the mother's career ticket is 'punched'. Next are those who enter the civil service followed by Congressional staff, industry association staff, and Washington DC rep. office staff.

The city and environs doesn't to me, lend itself to wanting to stay on once a working reason for being here ceases to be.  In pre-WWII times, it was probably the provinciality of the place coupled with the very hot, humid summers and lack of A/C.  Now I'd say, its the traffic, the high prices for housing and the knowledge that this city is still Ground Zero for terrorists.

The very nature of this city, politics, can make relationships shallow and breed cynicism and loneliness. One day you can find  yourself marching shoulder to shoulder with say the National  Rifle Association over Internet regulations, and then find them as your implacable enemies over a Federal tax on ammunition.  And should you fall from grace...........

I recall  something I observed after attending the funeral of a long-time employee at Large multinational automobile manufacturer 1.  Among those there to mark this person's passing was a corporate attorney who had fallen from grace.  After the service was over,  a few people said a couple of strained words of 'hello' to him and then he walked on his on to the nearest Metro station and on to his final destination. Had he still been what he had been, he would have been greeted by many more people and had had a corporate limousine at his disposal to drop him off and pick him up. There is a saying here that if you want a true loyal friend in Washington, get a dog.

Me?  I think I am in a somewhat different situation from many who move here as one, I not only grew up on the East Coast, but grew up in Baltimore, which is less that an hour north of DC.  Second, I had my family here and did not have an empty apt. or house to come home to every night after work was finished. Last, you can make good friends here; for me, I think there are  people here whom I have come to know through work and living here, who I could call up at 3:00 am for help and  by the same token, would unhesitatingly jump out of bed at the same hour if I were called by one of them.  But it takes time and work, perhaps more so than in other cities in this country.

This day, like the same days in other years is a different day. Schools for one thing, perhaps recognizing family travel plans and the futility of keeping kids in for a full day of school on this day, are on a half day schedule.

Traffic in the morning is noticeably lighter too as some, wisely, head out to wherever they are going to early.  This is particularly so of Washington, DC as some many who live in and around the area have come from different parts of the country (like us) and thus, grandmother's house, as the song goes may not just be through the woods, but perhaps over the Mississippi as well.

Around 15:00 the main roads North South and West will clog up- becoming parking lots,  as the entire eastern seaboard (it seems) is on the move somewhere.  Its on this day the main North-South route here, I-95 truly earns its other name: I Hate 95.

Still there are those who will of course stay and my wife's store was very busy yesterday and today  it will probably be a madhouse. But my wife has the day off and is thus spared.

It will be a quiet Thanksgiving for us. We had planned to travel to The Shore to have dinner with my cousin, as her Thanksgiving will be a smaller affair than in the past. Her now grown sons and daughter and other family members have their own Thanksgiving Day  obligations.  I could go to my mother's house, which is relatively close by, but going there is always depressing and just not worth the expended gas so that'll be skipped too.

Post Thanksgving, there'll be changes.  My wife got a promotion of sorts in getting full-time employment at her store starting the day after.  It will mean  much for earlier hours (like starting at 04:00) which will make my juggling of who needs to be taken where & when much more interesting, but it is a good thing. For years I have told her that while we are the same age (our birthdays are but a day apart),  statistcally I will check out before she does, so she needs to get her Social Security card punched (yeah, like there'll be money left in it when she can draw upon it), she'll be now able to start contributing to her own 401k and at least she'll have health insurance coverage for herself and our son.  Its also  a step up as she can then rotate after another year. Think she may be on a career path finally: she has very good customer skills, skills she honed from working at the small busness her family ran. 

Its a pretty dead time for job-hunting too, though the traffic flow has increased somewhat, which may when I least expect it, lead to something.

This is a symptom of the affliction I may suffer from, acquired from the many years spent around automobile engineers, to whom anything that is not precisely defined or is inaccurate, is anathema personified.

And its also partly directed at Team Vox, and anyone who is not familiar with Washington, DC.

About the only thing that truly represents the depiction of the city is the juxtaposition of the Capital Building and the Washington Monument.  Washington DC is not surrounded by mountains shown in the background: there are some rolling hills, but they are nowhere near the height shown on the background  The city itself  sits mostly on what was Potomac River floodplain, flat, swampy land that neither the State of Maryland or Virgina felt was worth a damn, so they gave it to the Federal government (for history wonks, Virgina was returned the land it gave, but the boundaries,which are now the boundaries of Arlington County, are still well-defined).  In other words, there are not a series of smaller hills which punctuate the city's landscape.  And as you might expect,  the city is filled with a series of fairly low buildings   (for those who love to wallow in minutiae, there is a law which prohibits any building in DC to be taller than the Capital building), with squares of green (parks) in between.