Well, alas—this week the
aquatic primer on the walls was covered up by two coats of “grown-up” paint,
and all the fishies disappeared. That’s progress, I know.
But a couple of them made a
break for it, ending up on the industrial-strength cardboard floor protectors.
One in front of my flat:
And one right by the
elevators:
(Sadly, it did not take long
for Elevator Fish to be squashed pretty miserably.)
But then I noticed that
someone had rescued many of the fishies—although I suppose jamming them in the
hinge-space of a door is not a pleasant environment for anyone:
Even so, it means that the
painters also have a sense of whimsy, and that makes me feel good today, when I
very much need it.
My place of employment is in
the Red Zone; not precisely Ground Zero of the Kakistocalypse, but as close as
dammit. Our building garage (and others in the Zone) is closed as of 1000
today, and they may be patting people down as they exit from Metro Center
station.
I don’t know, because my
manager strongly encouraged me to work from home today, and tomorrow we are
thankfully off. But here are a couple of shots from the ‘hood as of yesterday:
Jersey barriers, which I
imagine will be moved across the various intersections.
Death to parkers signs.
And, frankly, this is about as
close as I want to get to the Kleptocrat and his ilk.
Some time ago I was in the
parking lot of the Alexandria Wegmans, an East Coast grocery chain, when I
noticed this truck all tricked out:
This Wegmans is near Fort
Belvoir; I didn’t see a base sticker on it, but it did have an Oklahoma license
plate on the rear, and I just kinda thought…
Anyhow, what caught my
attention was this declaration plastered to the front bumper:
Look—anyone driving a $32K
Silverado pickup with Oklahoma plates and a piece of a Robert Browning sonnet slapped
across the bumper deserves a shout-out. I rifled through my car, but didn’t
have any decent-sized pads of paper (since rectified). So I scribbled my good
wishes on a business card-sized scrap and stuck it under the windscreen wiper.
May you grow old alongside
each other, never run out of gas and always be driving under the speed limit as
you pass the cop cars.
On the day we as a nation
celebrate the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., I’m focusing on some of
the remarkable achievements of the United States of America that have occurred
in my lifetime. Some of the ones with special meaning for me:
The Space Program. It started
out as the Space Race, us against the Soviets, and they won the first few
heats. But oh, when we put our minds—our very best minds—to it, we soared.
Viz.:
The Mercury Seven—our space
pioneers. I’ll give you John Glenn’s first trip, on 20 February 1962, since we
so recently lost him:
1969: Apollo II, first landing
on the moon. Neil Armstrong took that giant leap on 20 July, followed by Buzz
Aldrin. I watched it in Champaign, Ill., with my friend Gretchen Pullen’s family.
Look at Armstrong just hopping around like an eight-year-old:
Taking a giant step of a
different sort, Richard M. Nixon took a blowtorch to the ice block of our
relations with China, and within a few years of entering office, he was entering
the People’s Republic. Literally.
But Nixon’s hubris grew as
though on steroids, and it was the now-vilified main-stream media, including
the New York Times’s disclosure of
the Pentagon Papers and the stellar work of the Washington Post, digging into the Watergate scandal. From publisher
Katharine Graham down to newbie reporter Bob Woodward, the Post uncovered
corruption and crimes on a scale we’d thought could never be replicated. They
uncovered it, verified it in accordance with high journalistic standards, and
they published it, in the face of intimidation from high-ranking Administration
officials. Including Attorney General John Mitchell.
Yes, that’s right: our chief
legal officer was not only in on the crimes, he threatened those who brought
them to light. Plus ça change…
[From left, Washington Post
publisher Katharine Graham, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, managing editor
Howard Simons and executive editor Ben Bradlee. Photo by Washington Post]
It gave me hope that, no
matter how far off track we got, we could right our course and continue to move
forward.
We’ve had some amazing song
writers during my lifetime. I’ll just sum them up with Bob Dylan and give you
something that was true in 1964 when he wrote it and sure as hell is true again
now.
Here’s Tracy Chapman singing
it at his 30th Anniversary Concert:
In the cinematic arts we’ve
had a shedload of brilliant filmmakers. These are among my favorites: Coppola,
Coppola, Spielberg, Hill, Lucas, Scorsese, De Palma, Howard, Lee.
And we made—for a while—astonishing
progress toward equality for all in this shining city upon a hill: striking
down the policies of separate-but-equal; don’t ask, don’t tell; and governmental
intrusion into the reproductive rights of women.
All of this may have
culminated in the election, in 2008, and reelection, in 2012, of the first
African-American man to the Presidency.
It’s Martin Luther King Day,
of the week that will see the installation of the antithesis of all these
achievements—the Kleptocrat and his appointed administration, abetted by Repugnant
majorities in both Houses of Congress. So I’m holding on to these things that I
witnessed in my lifetime. We were good, once. I hope we can return to goodness
once again.
