Major excitement on Rokeby Avenue today. UD is in her office at Foggy Bottom right now, where she just received this email from Mr. UD:

The groups we saw walking around with maps [this morning] are members of the American Volksport Association, or others tagging along on walks this group is organizing (in particular their local club Annapolis Amblers). Today’s 10k walk is Kensington-Garrett Park. They are directed from Penn Place on Rokeby and then up on Argyle, but before that they are directed to take a little sidetrip a bit further on Rokeby to see the garden sculptures of Ferdinand the Bull. So today hundreds of people will walk on Rokeby to our house, look at the bulls, and then turn around go back, and take Argyle uphill, a special trip just to see our house.

Mitzi Wasserman Rapp with
her four children.

Campsite, Bavarian Alps, 1960.

UD: White cardigan, badminton racquet.

…tedious by a lieutenant governor.

… with their much-sought-after song, are back in UD‘s trees.

What they don’t tell you is that wood thrush never shut up.

You spend the first week after they’ve appeared in ecstasy.

You spend the rest of the summer wanting to throttle them.

See this post for background.

Press release.

**************
UD thanks her sister.

Even as she writes, UD is watching multiple Priuses, BMWs, and pickups gather across the street from her Garrett Park house. An important civic ceremony is about to be held there. If UD knew how to take pictures, she’d take pictures of it.

But, you know. Use your imagination. Glamorously redone farmish house in one of the richest counties in the richest state in the country. Pleasantly cool wet weather. Modest news media presence. Spectacular spring blossoms everywhere. Insane colorful lushness.

UD knew about this event because her sister, Morrissey fanatic and MOOC-producer, works for the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection, and told her about it.

Twenty people in trench coats are smiling and shaking each others’ hands while standing atop a semi-permeable driveway. County Executive Ike Leggett, elegant in a really good suit, stands in the middle of this semi-circle getting ready to say a few words.

About what? What’s the deal?

Well, the county is announcing a new program that financially compensates citizens who put in water gardens, semi-permeable driveways and God know what else along the lines of eco-mindedness. They’ve chosen UD‘s neighbor’s place for the announcement, which makes sense because she’s definitely put in all of that plus one of those absolutely no lawn (contrast to this UD‘s dandelion-rich expanse) cottage gardens.

Man – ANOTHER Prius. Wow.

Is the thousand dollar check or whatever my neighbor’s about to get a nice thing?

I guess so…. I mean… How to say this… We Rokeby Avenue folk are not exactly hurting financially; and my neighbor’s garden easily represents tens of thousands of dollars of expense… “Maybe they should target the program a little differently,” suggests Mr UD…

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Ike is about to climb them well-worn stairs (that’s George, to Martha, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) and say a few words of thanks to my neighbor for allowing the event to take place at her place (as if the rest of us wouldn’t jump at the chance for this sort of attention… Over here over here! Look what I’ve done with my pachysandra! Sure she’s done this English rural thingie and it’s all environmentally correct blah blah but I’ve got a well-established Japanese garden over here without all those garish colors… A study in greens and textures over here! Maybe you can’t appreciate it because it’s quiet, subtle, tranquil, Japanese tea room kind of thing… Contemplative stroll garden over here!!… No one’s listening…).

…non-filthy rich.

George Washington University, “a place known for its beautiful cars,” it says here, has taken a hit: A new BMW M5 parked on campus got hammered by a tree.

Unbelievably, the tragedy was compounded. A man, desperate to reach the car (perhaps he is the owner), crossed a police line around it and got arrested.

My office window is steps from this crash scene. It will be a difficult day for me. I hope they’ve cleaned things up by the time I get to campus.

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The only headline I can think of for this is AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY.

… spring.

I post something on this blog every day, most often of course something related to universities. But here I am, 5:50 PM, just starting in on today’s writing, and I’m posting that I’m not posting.

Not posting something about plagiarism, athletics, conflict of interest. Not posting about poetry.

I think, as the song I link to up there goes, that I have spring fever. I mean, spring fever’s part of it, part of the restlessness, the difficulty concentrating, the tendency to wander to the garden and do something – anything – to stay outside on a cool sunny day in the Arboretum And Bird Central Station which is Garrett Park Maryland. The Solomon’s Seal is out, the fallen cherry at the top of the hill puts out white flowers. The white-flowering dogwood that shelters the topiary bulls has been hammered by heavy snow the last few winters, but its lost limbs have allowed it to clarify itself, and it’s more beautiful, more Japanese – in my green and white garden – than ever.

So I wander about, feeling that it would be madness not to be wandering about.

As always, in these supercharged settings, I’m thinking mainly of the dead world-lovers for whom I’m taking up the task of loving the world. Gillian Rose, Tony Judt, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Lasch, and Paul Monette can’t be here – neither, for that matter, can George Orwell and Albert Camus – and I take seriously my role as proxy world-lover for them. Their writing taught me why I should love existence, and now I’m parading my gratitude.

The restlessness is more than that, though. Now that my fear for my sister-in-law is over – she lives in Watertown, and was hunkered down, alone, during the shootouts – I have time to think about what it must have been like for her, and for her neighbors. Relief and sadness come at me at the same time. Also some crazy sort of pity for the depraved little fucker in the boat, bleeding, trembling, trying to do himself in but too weak … Hiding out in the neighbor’s yard like some sick kid’s game…

We sent Joanna an assortment of Beacon Hill chocolates - survivor’s chocolates, we called them in our jokey note… All part of conjuring the event as farce rather than tragedy, and why not.

It’s what the song says. I feel so gay, in a melancholy way.

Sunset, Malta. La Kid.

Who has, for a week,
left dark chilly Galway
for the sun.

Next week, she starts
an internship at the
Abbey Theatre.

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Whew. Took a bit of work but I found
Malta in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy.

I said I was tired we lay over the firtree cove a wild place I suppose it must be the highest rock in existence the galleries and casemates and those frightful rocks and Saint Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever they call them hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching my boots Im sure thats the way down the monkeys go under the sea to Africa when they die the ships out far like chips that was the Malta boat passing Yes the sea and the sky you could do what you liked lie there for ever

(UD had lunch last week with a
woman her equal in Joyce madness.
This woman named her daughter Molly,
while UD‘s La Kid is Anna Livia.)

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A completely, completely charming and
hilarious poem about Malta by Richard
Blanco, whose work my friend d. has
been after me to read:

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WE’RE NOT GOING TO MALTA. . .

because the winds are too strong, our Captain
announces, his voice like an oracle coming through the
loudspeakers of every lounge and hall, as if the ship
itself were speaking. We’re not going to Malta–an
enchanting island country fifty miles from Sicily,
according to the brochure of the tour we’re not taking.
But what if we did go to Malta? What if, as we are
escorted on foot through the walled “Silent City” of
Mdina, the walls begin speaking to me; and after we
stop a few minutes to admire the impressive
architecture, I feel Malta could be the place for me.
What if, as we stroll the bastions to admire the
panoramic harbor and stunning countryside, I dream
of buying a little Maltese farm, raising Maltese horses
in the green Maltese hills. What if, after we see the
cathedral in Mosta saved by a miracle, I believe that
Malta itself is a miracle; and before I’m transported
back to the pier with a complimentary beverage, I’m
struck with Malta fever, discover I am very Maltese
indeed, and decide I must return to Malta, learn to
speak Maltese with an English (or Spanish) accent,
work as a Maltese professor of English at the University
of Malta, and teach a course on The Maltese Falcon. Or,
what if when we stop at a factory to shop for famous
Malteseware, I discover that making Maltese crosses is
my true passion. Yes, I’d get a Maltese cat and a
Maltese dog, make Maltese friends, drink Malted milk,
join the Knights of Malta, and be happy for the rest of
my Maltesian life. But we’re not going to Malta. Malta
is drifting past us, or we are drifting past it–an
amorphous hump of green and brown bobbing in the
portholes with the horizon as the ship heaves over
whitecaps wisping into rainbows for a moment, then
dissolving back into the sea.

The Washington metro is jammed with people visiting the cherry trees down the block from UD’s Foggy Bottom office. After class last Tuesday, she asked a cabbie to drive her around them. He said it would take forever – sightseeing traffic was at a standstill.

There are cherry trees everywhere around here, including at the front and back of UD’s house.

Months ago a rainstorm took down a massive cherry at the back of UD’s half-acre wood. Its three branches look very beautiful, very rested, on their sides. Their mottled charcoal barks are spun with old vines.

Some of the tree’s root system must have stayed in the earth, because it’s not dead. Smaller branches have suddenly produced bouquets of yellow-studded white flowers.

So there’s this froth of cherry blossoms at eye level. UD will collect some of it and put it in the biggest vase she can find.

*************************

Done.

Early spring, and UD‘s been
creating a system of paths through her
wooded half acre. Mr UD has
given names to the paths, and he has
called the entire complex
Ferdinand House and Park.

(Munro Leaf, author of Ferdinand the Bull,
was the last owner of UD‘s house.)

Here are some highlights.

***********************

The first path, The Meadow Path,
starts here, at the
Balinese Wind Chimes.

Now you begin walking
The Meadow Path.

Many old vine-covered
trees have fallen.

Weather Vane at the beginning
of the Road to Nowhere.

The Middle Way,
with Poet’s Table in the
background.

Ferdinand the Bull.
And Isabella.

As usual, a large limb has broken off onto our front yard during this late March snowfall. UD‘s practiced eye sees this one as quite loppable. She’s more worried about traumatized early spring shoots.

***********************

She’s just back from her first lopping.

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The Tao of Lopping.

With each clean cut yielding a core of yellow wood, there’s a good feeling: the offshoots from the main trunk give easily, and it’s pleasant to think you’re putting things right branch by branch.

With cold fingers despite your gloves (first you try rubbery garden gloves, then a rather nice pair of  leather ones), you gather a few lopped branches and toss them over the wooden fence so the town maintenance men will pick them up.

But then you wonder:  Would they prefer one large unlopped limb?  Too late to ask the question; you’ve lopped the thing… But you think of the wood chipper and wonder if you’re doing things right.

The tao of lopping:  There is no right.  There is no wrong.  There is snow falling on ‘thesda, your cold hands, your pleasure at each clean cut.

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Or, if you like:

The tao of Sheryl  Sandberg:  Lean in.

… Mr UD turned up

a portrait of her.

Woman at the Window, Portrait of Zofia Borucinska, 1908. It’s in the National Museum of Warsaw.

It’s also featured in this book, whose author describes Kazimierz Stabrowski’s “model in a peacock crown and radiant, shimmering blue dress with peacock eyes.”

Click on the image for a larger view.

On UD‘s front lawn this morning is a Razor Scooter.

Why?

Les UDs are having a contest. What’s the back story? How does a silver scooter end up on your front lawn very early on a Saturday morning?

So far Mr UD hasn’t come up with much. Mainly he’s embellished UD’s scenarios. UD has three scenarios.

#1: Rokeby Avenue in front of our house is an ideal scooter/skateboard street. It attracts many people – often very young people – who UD watches fly down Rokeby’s incline all day. Especially all-Saturday, which today is.

So a kid was on the thing this morning (again, has to have been very early – I saw it at 7:30 AM) – or, wildly, late at night? Late on the night of the meteor streak?? Late at night strengthens my theory, which involves a bad spill.

Kid takes a bad spill; his buddies (parent?) help him (carry him?) and need to ditch the scooter. It’s light – they’re in a hurry – they toss it.

The toss theory involves the fact that the scooter (a 2009 Razor made in Shenzhen Guangdong) does seem to have been thrown onto our lawn — when I lifted it, pretty sharp indentations appeared in the soil at each point of the scooter.

Mr UD’s embellishment is that it was a family on their way to Garrett Park’s Saturday farmer’s market with their kid; again, they ditched the thing, figuring they’d fix up the kid, check out the market, and then retrieve the scooter.

#2 A neighbor of UD, noting that UD has had trouble walking lately (probably arthritis in one of my feet), has, in an act of charity, put the scooter on UD‘s lawn for her use.

#3 It’s ‘thesda. People throw out nice things all the time. The scooter – which probably cost around hundred dollars – works fine, but is certainly scuffed. Its rider suddenly decided it was old or creaky and then and there discarded it. It’s a five-minute drive to the sporting goods store.

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Update: Various additional theories have come in.

UD‘s sister the Morrissey fanatic: Petty theft, joyride, ditching after joyride.

UD‘s neighbor Koneti: Big item pickup is in a few days, and people are putting things out in front of their houses. A kid noted the discarded scooter, and the rest is the same as UD‘s sister’s theory.

… John Wilson, artist.

Wilson knew UD’s father-in-law in Paris,
where they both studied with Leger.