… spreads mulch in UD‘s backyard. It’s a fundraising thing. UD graduated from WJ.
Altogether odd and beautiful weather this spring, back and forth from sunny and warm and calm to gray and cool and windy. I’ve tossed Magical Flames and Firestart onto the grate, and on top I’ve piled old woody grapevines that sheared off a tree in one of the windstorms. Mr UD got the black statues when he worked for the UN in East Timor. The tan camels we brought back from India, and to the right is a Corbu-themed quilt that students of Jerzy Soltan made for him.
UD reflects, looking at this fire and also at people/dogs walking on Rokeby Avenue, that though she’s done quite a lot of traveling (as you know if you read this blog), she likes best to be at her peaceful home, whose last owner was Munro Leaf. Ferdinand the Bull’s spirit remains here, decades after the death of the man who conjured him.
Musk vacates UD‘s local mall.
… a pink sunrise with pink contrail. An hour ago, from the deck outside my bedroom.
Yellow, white, and purple wildflowers are everywhere.
Under pressure from a hostile regime, DC begins to get going on its homelessness problem. The mayor notes that of course “the encampments are not technically permitted in the District.” And yet the last time UD returned home via Union Station, the waiting area was overwhelmed by homeless people, many sleeping in seats meant for travelers. A woman in one of the seats nastily told me to give her money, and, when I didn’t, followed me into the bathrooms and got nastier. Er – technically – this is not permitted.
Read Nellie Bowles for a bellyful of the ‘progressive-libertarian nihilism’ DC’s headed for.
[A]ny intervention that has to be imposed on a vulnerable person is so fundamentally flawed and problematic that the best thing to do is nothing at all. Anyone offended by the sight of the suffering is just judging someone who’s having a mental-health episode, and any liberal who argues that the state can and should take control of someone in the throes of drugs and psychosis is basically a Republican. If and when the vulnerable person dies, that was his choice, and in San Francisco we congratulate ourselves on being very accepting of that choice...
LOL. The NYT’s coverage of Westminster has been informative, amusing, and, uh, fetching, to UD, who grew up with dogs (her mother bred, showed and even hunted with English cocker spaniels, and there were always puppies around when UD was a kid) and very much loves them. Here’s her webmistress – speaking of fetching – when young, holding one of Mitzi’s puppies.
… friends.
Example One: She was chatting with her buddy Peter about Tom Lehrer, and it quickly turned into a competition as to who knew more lyrics and could sing them more convincingly. UD of course won; her parents played and sang Lehrer all through UD’s childhood, and UD has a better voice/vocal memory than Peter.
While UD basked in her victory, Peter said in a musing nostalgic sort of way I remember Tom’s many visits to my parents’ Cambridge house when I was growing up… He was a good friend and very entertaining…
UD bowed to his one-upmanship…
Example Two: Through Peter’s daughter, UD has come to be friends with Alice Hayes, a direct descendent of Rutherford B., and a clerk on the January 6 Committee. Barely out of her twenties, and guilty of nothing, she has just been issued a presidential preemptive pardon!
This just in: Airports suck, and nine hours of flying over the Atlantic is no fun.
This just in: Robust travel when you’re certifiably old is different from the same when you’re young. Hence: UD is proud she held up pretty well.
This just in: Nothing like being back in your comfortable bed after more than two weeks of Euro-wandering. “Hello, beautiful people,” our friend and neighbor Doug just greeted us as we shoveled the car and the driveway/front steps. Word is out in Garrett Park that we ditched the snowstorm and went to southern Italy instead.
Back to regular blogging later today.
