Dinner last night at ‘thesda’s Cafe Deluxe with fellow blogger and former student and current professor Ryan Cordell. We played Hangman with his daughters on the restaurant’s paper tablecloth.
Garrett Park, Maryland, as you may know, is the town where UD grew up.
Once she grew up, she went away to college and graduate school, lived in various cities, and then, fifteen years ago, bought her own house in the town.
Her latest article in the Garrett Park Bugle has her reminiscing a bit.
Anyway, turns out Sargent Shriver used to go to Holy Cross Church in Garrett Park. UD was at Holy Cross Elementary School (adjacent to the church) recently, to vote; she has also sung at some funerals in the church with fellow Garrett Park singers.
From a letter in today’s Washington Post:
On the day before Palm Sunday in 1964, I was a horse-crazy 12-year-old living in Garrett Park and had ridden my bike to Holy Cross Church for my Easter confession. As I leaned my bike against a wall, I couldn’t believe my eyes: Several people were seated on horses of different sizes, right in the side yard of the church. There was a dad with a handsome, dark horse and a mom with a young child in a cart pulled by a dazzling dun-colored pony, complete with English saddle.
The dad noticed me staring and asked if I would like to ride on the pony. I had never been on a real horse. He helped me up and led me around the yard several times, telling me the pony’s name was Daisy and that she belonged to his daughter, Maria. Thoroughly bedazzled, I have no memory of proceeding on to confession.
When I got home and told my parents this fantastic tale, my dad correctly guessed that my encounter had been with the Shrivers, who attended our church and in those less-congested days often rode their horses.
It just flew by my office window.
But let’s back up and do a longer Snapshots from Home post.
I woke this morning from a dream whose last scene had me surveying our entirely redecorated (lots of olive trees) living room, and thinking about how clever Mr UD was to have thought of this new arrangement.
Before I left for campus, I printed out my invitation to a reading tonight at the Irish Embassy.
On the train, I made a mental list of the day’s activities:
~ Office hours, during which my student Gabe will interview me for the campus newspaper. Subject: What’s it like to have alumni auditors in your classes?
~ Lunch with Rosemary, a student of mine from last semester, and a fellow ‘thesdan.
~ David Brooks’ recent reference to what he calls “the Composure Class” has me thinking about Philip Rieff’s Psychological Man. I will mull over this today.
~ After lunch, I will get passport photos taken. I’m going to Ireland in March.
~ After the embassy event, I’ll go home and prepare for Thursday’s classes.
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UPDATE:
“Thank goodness you’re here, Gabe. I’ve been reading about Francesca Woodman and getting depressed. Let’s change the subject to alumni auditors, quick!”
“Okay. Now I’m a visual guy and I can’t write fast. So be patient as I take notes.”
“Okay.”
“So there were three alumni auditors in the Aesthetics class I took with you last semester, and I understand you often have alumni auditors in your class. What’s that like? Does it change things? How?”
I’ll link to the GW Hatchet piece that contains my answer to this and other questions.
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UPDATE:
Rosemary (who turns out to be the daughter of Doyle McManus) and I eat Thai food and chat about our ‘thesdan lives. After lunch, we walk around the city looking for a place that takes passport photos. I get it done at a FedEx store off Connecticut Avenue. Takes three minutes.
It’s a chilly day, but I don’t really want to admit this, so I carry my coat and shiver.
Back at GW, a Linguistic Ambiguity moment: I’m walking by the elevators on my floor of Academic Center, and I hear an elegantly dressed man say to his friend, “I have no class.”
Was this some sort of false modesty? He was very classy.
No. He was talking about his class schedule for today.
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7:oo
Irish Embassy
Washington DC
Since I know no one, mingling isn’t going to work – at least I don’t know how to make it work. So I’ve taken a drink from a man with a tray, and I’ve taken my trusty notebook, and I’ve taken a seat in the reading room.
The Irish Embassy is… an embassy. Big brick house with carpeted rooms and with fireplaces. A grand piano with framed color photographs of meet and greets. Vague smell of food for the reception after. From curtained windows, excellent night views all the way down Connecticut Avenue. A portrait of – Wolfe Tone? – over the fireplace.
Odd day for me. Personally, as Stephen Dedalus says, I detest action. And yet I’ve packed a great deal into today. Lunch with a student. An interview. Passport photos. Long city walks. Office hours. And now this – an embassy event.
The novelist who will read to us tonight – Joseph O’Connor – is Sinead O’Connor’s brother!
His book, Ghost Light, is a love story based on a relationship the playwright Synge had with an actress, Molly Allgood.
O’Connor reads beautifully, and it’s always a pleasure for UD to hear an Irish accent.
The writing is pleasant, sentimental, a gentle evocation of a certain time and of two lovers. I guess O’Connor’s sister got all the roughness.
After he’s finished reading, an audience member asks a question about the burden of Irish literary history. Does O’Connor feel oppressed as a writer by the weight of Joyce, Yeats, and the rest?
In response, O’Connor says something rather beautiful.
“These writers were, for me, growing up, our Easter Island gods. We put them on our currency. They were the only Irish who had accomplished anything internationally… When I was young, we Irish sometimes felt as though we lived in a place that didn’t exist at all. This was before U2 and Riverdance and all of that. My mother would say to me, ‘This is a little country where we don’t do things very well. But we have Yeats. We have Joyce.’ The arts gave us dignity.”
“Well said,” whispered UD.
And then she closed her notebook and got her coat from the check room and went out into the cold clear night.
The moon was high and full, its canyons absolutely clear. The radiance of the moon made long white clouds stand out against a blueblack sky.
UD didn’t put on her coat. The room had been hot, and she wanted the evening air on her skin.
As she turned onto R Street toward Connecticut – nearby was Restaurant Nora, where the President celebrated his last birthday, and, stretching before her, bright with seasonal lights, were the two blocks of R Street leading to the intersection – she felt with full force the particular beauty of her city. Up ahead the big black and white Teaism banner waved. The book-lined interiors of old stone townhouses glowed at her. UD‘s heart went pitapat.
… in one generation: UD calls that impressive. Hell, inspiring. The university where UD teaches, George Washington University, has just brought this guy onto its faculty. His father was a shepherd.
I also find the guy disarmingly honest. From his Nobel prize autobiography page:
My brothers John Abderhaman and Turhon Allen were born in 1938 and 1944. We were raised in a four room apartment behind my parents’ restaurant in Whiting, Indiana. This small apartment undoubtedly influenced my desire for large expensive homes.
… I’ve been preparing syllabi, writing recommendations, checking out my university’s Spring 2011 calendar (what’s a Constructive Monday?), meeting my sister for lunch here, preparing introductory lectures, etc.
I’ll post later today.
… from UD‘s daughter, La Kid.
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“You’re only young once,
but you can be immature forever.”
— Germaine Greer
… where she’ll celebrate the New Year and Peter Galbraith’s birthday.
Right now she’s off for last-minute shopping in Cambridge.
I’ll post when I can.
… The mountains on the left include Mt. Fuji.”
University Diaries’ webmistress,
UD‘s niece, is in Japan.
Here’s one of her photos.
… and it’s all rather strange and comforting, the swaddle of a warm hotel room with a big tv and baked goods and second-floor views onto massive wind and snow.
UD spent the whole day in this room, reading The Memory Chalet, singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs with her daughter, and watching a film about Glenn Gould with Mr UD.
Inside this room today, life was all small domestic bliss (UD‘s missed her daughter, just back from a semester in Ireland). Outside, the white-cold rage of the world whirled high and wide, and we looked at it, amazed into silence.
… for the next couple of days.
Going to Cambridge for Christmas.
Then she’ll be in Vermont over the new year.
Blogging continues, with interruptions.
… with my black alpaca thrown o’er meself, I’m watching it now, the lunar eclipse, with my mother’s clunky old binoculars.
How is it I awoke, without an alarm, at exactly 3:17? Exactly the moment one was told to wake up to see the thing in its prime?
And here’s this full gorgeous orange-shaded orb, surrounded by bright stars, and… a shooting star! As if the spectacle weren’t amazing enough, a shooting star just shot by the moon…
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I keep going out there to sneak a peak at its copperiness, getting cold, rushing back in…
There’s a thin lighter-orange line that curves along its edges — the faintest halo — and — it’s so celestial — I’m seeing the vast smudges on its surface as angel wings…
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Here’s the closest rendering I find in Google’s image stock.
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Update, 3:57.
You’ve changed.
You’re not the orange I recall.
The moon is now a different ball.
You’ve changed.
It’s silvering up again.
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No, no — now you’re gray, with an immense brightness along your crown, like a north pole, or like a sunrise.
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Now the moon’s down among the clouds and the trees, and it’s just as well. So cold out there.
… is packing them in today.
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I myself (It’s not important. I wasn’t going to mention it. But since you insist… and since it’s topical…) almost landed in GW Hospital yesterday evening.
It was six o’clock, and I was rounding Washington Circle on my way to the Foggy Bottom metro. The emergency room entrance was directly across the street from me.
As I crossed the street, with traffic from the Circle on its way to where I was rapidly walking (you only get a few seconds to cross), I saw a patch of what I assumed was water in the street. How could it be ice? There wasn’t any ice anywhere else. (I didn’t know there’d been water main breaks here earlier in the day.)
It was the last day of class, and I was holding twenty or so student papers in my arms.
I went straight down, hard, papers flying.
My first thought was Get up immediately or get run over.
I did this, and was instantly surrounded by a small crowd of Washingtonians who were worried about me and wanted to know if I was okay. One of them marched out onto the ice and – somehow avoiding the cars – picked up every one of the papers. Another pointed out that if I needed medical attention I’d fallen in one of the best locations ever – three feet from an emergency room.
But I was okay. Okay and grateful.
Sure, my coccyx hurt; but I was okay.
… after the Kennedy Center Honors.
This was taken a couple of hours ago.
[Click on the photo for a larger picture.]
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From the LA Times:
The producers saved the finale for [McCartney], with a blowout cover of “Hey Jude” that involved Grohl, Stefani, James Taylor, Mavis Staples, Alec Baldwin, an enormous choir and a whole lot of non-flammable lighters waving in the air.
That was my kid – standing in the aisle between Forest Whitaker and John Lithgow – handing out non-flammable lighters to wave in the air…
