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.
My “affluent suburb … [an] idyllic hamlet … used to the trappings of Washington’s elite,” looses its chihuahuas on the FBI as the feds search John Bolton‘s house.
But… “bucolic“?

… by early morning sunlight.
People like UD‘s gardens. UD likes UD‘s gardens. But it must be stated for the record that UD‘s zebra grass – eight feet tall and everywhere – is a mite more massive/spreading than she understood when she bought three plants from a little nursery near the Chesapeake Bay a few years ago.

Munro Leaf, author of Ferdinand, was the last owner of our house.
One of UD‘s neighbors is suddenly being visited by lots of friends in armored SUVs. Hm.
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte