In the Middle

On a day when many of my friends and family were making history I decided to forgo the crowds and take in some history. Our county has a tiny historical museum that I have driven past over a hundred times in the last almost 30 years, but despite an avid interest in the local past, I have never been there.

So, after taking a brisk walk and running a few errands in the quiet gray streets (most people really were at the march!) I headed up to the ridge that overlooks the Potomac and the capital beyond and pulled into the tiny parking lot of the former Hume School. Just as I prefer, I was the only visitor for most of the time I spent there, and I was able to take the time to examine all of the maps and artifacts in as much detail as I pleased.

Walking out again into the misty afternoon, my mind full of stories of those who had carved their lives here in the past, I paused to look east to where so many were gathered in hopes of shaping the future.

And there I was.

Monoculture

Washington DC is our hometown, and though we stayed away from the pageantry surrounding the peaceful transfer of power this noon, I couldn't help but watch the inauguration on TV. What struck me most as the camera panned across the crowd gathered on the National Mall, a place where we have spent countless hours mingling with the diverse crowd that usually populates "America's front yard," was just how white they were. 

Take Two

Another day, another trip to Mt. Vernon. Originally scheduled to chaperone our other activity, a series of personnel min-crises landed me back on the southbound bus. As before, the kids were delightful, however one day before a presidential inauguration is probably not the ideal time to visit the home of our first, and only unanimously-elected, president. Throngs of tourists joined us on our tour of the plantation and mansion, and subsequently the narration was rushed and disjointed.

In between rooms, I tried to fill in some of the gaps for the students I was with, both to inform them and keep them occupied as we waited. For example, waiting on the east-facing portico I swept my arm toward the wide Potomac. "A land trust owns all that property on the other side," I told them, "so that what we see will always look as much as possible like what Washington saw when he looked over there."

The kids nodded with half-interest, but as it turns out, they were not my only audience.

"He must have had a hell of an arm to get that silver dollar over there!" the guy ahead of us said.

Political Compass

“It’s one thing to say: ‘I think the proposal on the following is a serious mistake. I think it’s gonna do the following damage.’ It’s another thing to say, ‘The guy’s a fucking idiot, and he is an egomaniac who’s a whatever.’ ”

~Joe Biden

The Zen of Field Trips

It was cold and drizzly when we left school this morning. 40 minutes late because transportation had "forgotten" us, we were on our way to Mt. Vernon. The plan for the day had already been altered to account for the weather: we would come back to school a little earlier than planned and eat lunch in our rooms, but now as we bumped along the GW Parkway, it looked like we might miss our tour of the mansion as well.

Of course the 50 kids chattering all around me had no idea that there might be a problem; half of them hadn't even worn a warm coat, and several had already eaten their entire lunch when we advised them to a have a snack while waiting for our errant bus. Conceding my powerlessness, I wiped away the condensation on the window and peered out at the iron of the Potomac. Rafts of geese, ducks, and other migratory birds floated serenely on its steely surface.

I ticked off the misty landmarks as we traveled south and noticed that the rain seemed a little less steady, and when at last the bus pulled around the circle to the familiar gate and the 55 of us piled out, it had stopped altogether. The staff at the estate kindly pushed our tour 15 minutes, and as we crunched up the damp trail toward the house, the sun actually came out a moment, and I saw blue skies for the first time in days.

Downs and UPS

The package needed a signature, which was a nuisance, because we are rarely home during the week. There was no place on any of the reminder slips to designate a neighbor or another safe place, and the phone number provided was wholly automated. When the FINAL ATTEMPT at delivery was made when we were out on Friday evening, we shrugged it off, knowing that at some point in the upcoming three day weekend we would find our way down to the customer service.

And that opportunity did indeed come this morning when we pulled into the out of the way industrial park a little off the route to our favorite grocery store. We produced the required documentation and waited in the drafty shipping office listening to a local soul station, weighing ourselves on the industrial scale, and jumping every time the automatic door eerily opened and closed all by itself at random intervals.

The clerks returned from time to time to question us about the size, value, and shipper of our expected package, openly acknowledging that they couldn't find it. After speaking to two supervisors and leaving our number, we agreed to go to the grocery store and stop again on the way home. But when we got there, they balefully informed us that we would have to file a claim.

A couple of hours later we sat in our living room griping about our bad luck. Heidi was making her way through yet another automated phone menu when a roar outside the window attracted my attention. A brown truck rumbled by. "Maybe they accidentally sent it out for delivery again and that's why they couldn't find it," I suggested. "That could be it right now!" I laughed.

Just then a recorded voice came over the phone. The latest status of that package is that it was delivered at 3:36 today, it said.

I looked at my watch.

It was 3:37.

I trotted over to the front door, and...

there it was!

A Time for Every Season

Oscar weekend beach house?

Booked!

First movie (Hidden Figures) and dinner (Peter Chang's) with the regular Oscar crew?

Check!

Here's to seven more weeks of fun.