… deliver and spread mulch chez UD. It’s a fundraising thing for the school UD graduated from in 1971.
… is the Ghost Fleet of one hundred World War I wooden ships, whose outlines lie in the shallow water. This was today’s outing.
… out of the barn! It does our hearts good to see her freely grazing in the fields.
When she walks her paths, piles of feathers mark battlefields.
Here are two feathers (mourning dove?) she picked up and brought inside yesterday.
A local poet, who lives next to an old forest slated for development, writes about her owls.
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The owl came because he wants this scrap of woodland, wants the beeches and their hollow hearts, their cavities. He came because so long ago the farmer left his fields alone to grow their latent crop of trees that no one came to cut. The owl wants this wooded hilltop, its ancient oaks that stand among heaped quartz the farmer or his father or his father’s father cleared. The owl wants the hilltop’s crown of hollies, wants the deep-shade roost they’ve made; he wants this open branch that ends a wing-wide tunnel through the hollies’ shelter, wants this place to watch, to rest and cast his pellets, wadded clumps of fur and bone the rain dissolves to show he wanted squirrels, and voles, and frogs, and once a huge black beetle. If you knew a wood would call an owl back, if you knew the owl’s calls would fill the winter wood until another owl answered, wouldn’t you want to leave the land alone to grow its woodland, wouldn’t you want to grant the owls what they wanted?
Yes. I was sitting up in bed, reading, when the house shook and I heard a boom. It was loud enough that I got up and went outside, where I saw my across the street neighbor on his porch, doing exactly what I was doing.
When I read an hour later that a house twenty-eight miles away (by car) had exploded, it seemed impossible that I would have heard it. Yet – well, see my post’s title.
… but PQ was on my route back to the metro from the Natural History Museum…
… where UD failed to have anything like the spiritual experience she’s been having during her early morning visits to the National Gallery of Art, West Wing.
No surprise there: The art excites, room after room, the startle of beauty, which deepens into the shock of seeing …
Which in turn reveals the human all too human in flagrante.
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And although longtime readers know UD has a thing for geology, even the most, well, aesthetic rocks
fail to … transport your blogeuse. (Granite, With Orbicular Structure, Virvik, Finland) Even the karayzzziest calcite
leaves something to be desired in the coulda knocked me over with a feather department.
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The walk to the metro featured the much in the news office of the AG.
It was also instructive to pass the ugliest building in DC – the FBI.
The unplanted, stained planters. Fun burst of color from the traffic cone. Dead concrete wall, stage left; desperate flurry of flags stage right. Chain link fencing on the second floor is a nice touch, as is the uncompromising brutalism of absolutely everything. As soon as the FBI vacates (bet the people who work there can’t wait), we can look forward to the architectural finishing touch: demolition.
Not really a chorus; a very clear messaging system from tree to tree to tree.
They’re usually high up at some distance in our forest, but for the first time I heard one piercingly close call. Just one loud guttural repeated note; not the famous who cooks for you business.
“Too dark to see it,” said Mr UD as I grabbed my binoculars.
“I’ll try anyway,” said I, scanning nearby branches.
But it flew off, signaling with cooks for you and a whole bunch of other sounds that it was changing location.
And then — at least two other owls elsewhere in the woods answered this first one, with yet other songs.
And the whole group flew off.
Regardless of Mr. Hur’s motivation, the details that he presented spoke to worries voters already had.
Duh. The dude’s showing his age, and you bet we’re worried.
UD has no problem, btw, with Hur having spilled the already-opened beans. In fact she’s proud of the fact that we’re the sort of democracy where non-loyalists get appointed to important positions. That’s a good thing, mes petites.
Of course she will vote for the shaky irritable old guy over “a corrupt and confused 77-year-old who’s facing trial on dozens of felony counts in four separate criminal cases and has recently been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation.” But, says today’s NYT editorial, “the combination of Mr. Biden’s age and his absence from the public stage has eroded the public’s confidence. He looks as if he is hiding, or worse, being hidden.”
I say do two things:
1.) Let the guy out. Let him misspeak and trip on steps and let him laugh about this and acknowledge that though he’s doing a very good job running the country (“In the most challenging moments of his presidency, in supporting our allies when they are threatened and in steering the U.S. economy away from recession, Mr. Biden has been a wise and steady presence.”) he’s old and sometimes it shows.
2.) Send him to the Naval Medical Center (couple of miles from Les UDs) and get him an honest, legitimate cognitive workup. My guess is that he’ll do okay. Not real well, but well enough. Time to stop hiding.
… at Drunk Shakespeare’s Macbeth. UD attended, with La Kid, this evening.
She’s become addicted to the luxury/intensity of having the history of art to herself. She stays for an hour and a half or so, until other people dare to show up and share the goods.
I swear there’s almost no one there at ten AM on a cold weekday, so you just sashay about with an idiotic smile on your face as one unbelievable gallery after another beckons you. You hum Bach’s Cello #1 and the paintings hum back. Their lifeblood is bright red. They are right at you.
Even deathly pale their lifeblood is bright.
It’s you, the copyist, and the echoing halls.
Outside, UD takes heart from the writing on the side of the Archives.
Permanency. YES!
Although just in case I’m keeping a few of these pennies in my pocket.
… to her own private DC.
Winner and Still Champeen. Visits to the Archives always bring tears to UD‘s eyes, despite a certain amount of scoffing from Mr UD. (“Do they have benches where you can kneel in front of the documents?” he asked on my return.)
Imagine this scene in the insanely crowded Uffizi! Impossibile.
I’ll have the same quality of art as the Uffizi, free of charge, with one after another gallery to myself, please.
All topped off with a Teaism chai, and ginger scones.
- From the promotional literature for new assisted living apartments a mile away from Les UDs.
McCaffery and Solera Senior Living have partnered to co-develop The Modena Reserve at Kensington, a 135-unit luxury independent, assisted living and memory care community. Located in the high barrier to entry town of Kensington, Maryland, and adjacent to the historic Kensington train station offering direct access to Washington D.C….
2. UD had a consult this morning with a pulmonologist. Faithful readers know UD has episodic bronchitis. She hasn’t had any trouble for months, but she decided as a precaution to talk to a specialist. Here’s a bit of conversation from him.
When I joined this practice ten years ago, I thought the partners wanted me because of my impressive education. Harvard College, Hopkins med school, Harvard internships… But when I made partner they told me ‘Franklin, we hired you to be our shabbos goy.‘
The sun throngs her window (I stole “throngs” from Philip Larkin); her wee nuclear family sits directly to her left on the train. Extended family insists on living in Boston, so the Polish-ish Christmas must happen there.
You know if you read this blog that UD dislikes grubby old Boston, and slogging to that city in the dead of winter seems especially stupid. But.
I listen to Julia Lezhneva for much of the trip, which also features blueberry muffins and, this year, a book about India. After New Year’s in Venice, Les UDs fly to Rajasthan.