This morning’s increment, under an early spring sun and no clouds, included trimming dead grass mounds (the birds use the stalks for their nests), shaping viburnum buds, and raking (with care!) garden litter. I removed a wren’s nest in progress on a window sill on the deck — I’ve been watching the bird approach the house with twigs in its mouth, and I felt sure she was flying all the way up to the gutters with it — and felt some guilt as I did so.
But mainly I felt, as Harold Brodkey wrote, douceur:
Perhaps you could say I did very little with my life, but the douceur, if that is the word, Talleyrand’s word, was overwhelming. Painful and light-struck and wonderful.
He sat in his house (three doors down from UD) writing and mailing “at least 40 letters and two post cards to 25 Jewish institutions nationwide.” He threatened them with violence.
UD gave editorial advice to a Garrett Park neighbor involved in writing a letter asking the judge for clemency. UD is a Jew and is disgusted by this man. But it seemed the right thing to do.
… that rushes around the brown basin.
… the arrival of the Walter Johnson high school football team (I’m class of ‘71). The guys will, as they do every year (it’s a fundraiser), spread mulch.
This is one of the more amusing (and informative) takes on the Mandelson/Starmer fiasco. Indeed every elite from every elite walk of life seems to have been hot and heavy w/ J. Epstein…
The remark in my title reminds me of David Bowie’s parting sentiment:
“On the whole, this whole world is run by brutes for the common and the stupid.”
My only link with Epstein (I swear!) is that my friend Lisa Beth (cousin of my ‘thesdan playmate) went to elementary and junior high school in Brooklyn with him (“a mathematical genius, and an overweight nerd”).
As a notorious local squatter goes to jail for 90 days and gets a fine, one of Maryland’s bleeding heart pols comments.
Maryland state Del. Teresa Woorman, whose district includes the Bethesda neighborhood where Goode was squatting, said her thoughts were focused on how to help squatters when asked for her opinion on [Tameika] Goode’s conviction …
‘I think we need to look at how it is happening across our state, and figure out how to best address not just people breaking in, but the underlying issues people are having when they have that need to seek shelter,’ she said.
Homelessness ‘thesda-style, baby! She drove into that four car garage in a $190,000 Porsche, and broke into that house, in her desperate need for shelter — and the cruelty of her neighbors to witness her suffering and send in the goons to drag her away!
My neighbor a few doors down now faces a good deal of prison time for having spent a year mailing violent threats to many Jewish organizations.
Six in formation shrieked overhead as I stood in front of this building, having made my weekly visit to an almost 100-year-old former Garrett Parker who lives there.
I like to do occasional city walks: I get on the 8:13 MARC train (they rarely charge me anything for it; I think they only want to deal with regulars who flash cards at them, not people who pay cash) and in no time I’m at Union Station, where the government shutdown features a quiet city, the angles of its monumental buildings super-sharp in full sunlight.
I walked from one station (Union St.) to another (Judiciary Sq.), and then metro’ed to Friendship Heights, where, after the visit with my friend, I once again metro’ed home. Mr UD picked me up at our local stop.
I’m now tired and pleasantly chilled.