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Tuesday, April 27, 2004
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SPRING AND FALL:
Unseasonably hot weather and days of full sun have transformed UD's campus into a flowery retreat in the midst of the city. White-linened students lounge among the flowers. There are happy couples everywhere, floating on the euphoria of the day. There are calm solitary readers lost in their books. The sense of serenity survives even the sirens of cars transporting dignitaries to the White House or sick people to the university's emergency room. Years ago the President was brought, bleeding from a gunshot wound, to this same emergency room. UD was aware, last week, as she strolled through this early summer dream, of another high-profile Washingtonian in the university hospital at that moment. Mary McGrory, a great writer and journalist, was dying in a room just steps away from this lush life. McGrory wrote this about Washington's spring: "People who say Washington can't do anything right just haven't seen us do spring. Nowhere is it done better. Washington does spring without its usual maddening blather and lost motion: no delay, compromise, task force, czar, cost benefit analysis, no nattering about 'ongoing' and 'out years.'" This morning's Washington Post describes her funeral, a gathering of famous journalists and politicians. I think she would have liked the view she might have had out of her hospital window of dreaming lovers at ease in the middle of the city. |