… provide her with a birthday balloon during a case team pirate-themed murder mystery party. (La Kid figured out the murderer.)

… Glenstone (see this post for details of UD‘s recent visit).

UD doesn’t know quite what to make of it. It’s an absolute copy of his style. Homage? Glenstone’s focus throughout is indeed early and mid twentieth century; but what can it mean that they decided to hire someone to construct a Corbu, as you might hire someone to write a Mozart sonata?

… were the only dystopian elements of the otherwise utopian Glenstone Museum and grounds in Potomac, Maryland – a short ride from Garrett Park. We reserved the visit months in advance cuz the place is madly popular and they keep the numbers low to make the visit meditative… Come to think of it, there was a third less than utopian aspect to the place, though Mr UD disagrees — an audio installation in the forest, which UD enjoyed but found a wee hokey (‘what a forest might “hear” over the course of hundreds of years.’). Twenty eight minutes of natural and unnatural sounds bouncing around your ears ended in Arvo Pärt’s Nunc Dimittis, which UD will admit was pretty cool, the high soprano at the end piercing the trees.

On the dead hummingbirds: The big windows surrounding this tranquil water garden in the main pavilion (which featured a whitewashed room full of Cy Twombly sculptures) are, one of the gray-outfitted art guides confided to me, fatal to them.

The Patio cafe, which does not take cash, had trouble today with its card reading machines; we gave up on it and went to the other cafe on the grounds. On the way, Mr UD gave me his lecture on why it’s appalling that some places refuse to take cash. “A lot of poor people can’t go to these places.”

… ‘D.C.’s new must-see art museum.’ Glenstone.

They’ve got some Cy Twombly sculptures. UD loves Cy Twombly.

Roland Barthes on Twombly.

Admittedly, it’s easy to make stories like this funny. So this reporter gets no points for difficulty. Still – she does a fine job. Enjoy your inside look at UD‘s next-town-over neighbors.

UD is developing a sideline in spider web photography. She took this earlier shot in her woods; and this afternoon she snapped an enormous web along the side of her house.

… with a basketball court inside. Whatever the Washington Post thinks, this is the opposite of a true Garrett Park house, its owners having destroyed lots of greenery (Garrett Park is an arboretum) in order to make a very large house even larger.

UD is anxious to dissociate her beloved town from this monstrosity.

The town has excellent basketball courts in a beautiful setting, but you wouldn’t want to play with the riffraff. Much better to take up all the privacy and most of the yard on your lot, and throw massive shade over neighboring houses, in order to build an indoor basketball court and who knows what other pointless fillings-up of pointless space inside your fourteenth addition.

The property has been on the market for eighty days, while Garrett Park houses usually sell in minutes. Here’s hoping its obscene asking price plus grotesque excess keep this house on the market forever. Karma sucks, don’t it.

… UD‘s home, and she took a few photos yesterday to share with you.

That’s what’s staggering to UD – that Baltimore is happening in the richest state in the country.

Longtime readers may recall that UD – a native of the city, born in Johns Hopkins Hospital – was in Baltimore the day after the Freddie Gray riots. Her account of her time there is here. Here. And here.

… UD was approached by a man in line ahead of her who said Ma’am I’ve got the last of the shade up here and I want to switch places with you so that you can have it. UD gratefully accepted his offer and reflected, as she glanced at his MAGA hat (she’d overheard that he was visiting from Tulsa and was here for the festivities on the Mall), that it’s always crude and stupid to perceive other people in broad ideological terms. Leaving your little house in an affluent lefty bubble in ‘thesda and heading into the sweltering city means encountering the actuality of individuals. “Sometimes you just feel you need a humanity bath,” said Saul Bellow, and for UD you need the bath because money and technology and group-think make it easy to remove yourself altogether from the human story, and that removal really has to be resisted if you want to go on being human.

Today however UD was firmly within her tribe, putting out more and more beach chairs at the end of her driveway so that her Garrett Park neighbors could watch our little parade (theme this year: Garrett Park is an Arboretum) on yet another sweltering afternoon. By the time Mr UD stood up to read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, a crowd had gathered to join us as we saluted, a few minutes later, the parade marshal, 93 year old Barbara Shidler, with whom UD‘s mother gardened and landscaped and helped establish the arboretum (scroll down to Mitzi Rapp).

Love of country; love of town. The day inspires.

It’s one day before the Trumptacular, and as UD took a long hot walk from Union Station to the Natural History Museum, she heard tomorrow’s National Anthem singer rehearse the piece (UD sang along).