Today's column is about the World Cup Soccer games going on in South Africa (go USA!) but more specifically, it's about that infernal buzzing noise coming from the stands as South African fans blow incessantly on their plastic horns called vuvuzelas. How is that a topic fit for "All Life Is Local," you might well ask. I have a couple of answers to that, but first let me give you the context of the question.
If you have watched even the briefest bit of any of the World Cup games on TV (and here's the schedule, if you'd like to start: World Cup Soccer Schedule ), you already know what the problem is. The vuvuzela, when played by lots of people spread throughout the stadium, produces a tremendously loud droning, like a gigantic swarm of bees, or worse, like a concert of dental drills. The constant din makes it hard to follow the commentary, and the sportscasters on site say that it's so loud down on the field that the players can barely communicate with one another. There's already been an instance in which a player said he did not hear the referee's whistle because it was drowned out by the blowing of these horns.
Despite complaints from the players, fans at home, and fans in the crowds, FIFA, the governing authority of international soccer, has ruled that the vuvuzela can't be banned because it's part of the culture of the host country. FIFA's official position is that polite guests (that is, the soccer players) should not tell their hosts how to behave. What's wrong with this analogy is that the host country is not inviting guests into their parlor to enjoy a vuvuzela concert. The guests are actually the ones called upon to perform, and it's the sort of performance that requires full attention and ability to communicate with each other -- skills that are impaired when it's too loud to think straight. And why should the musical culture of the hosts be allowed in the stands, anyway? If the World Cup were played in Scotland, could the stands be filled with bagpipers piping nonstop? If it were played in Switzerland, would alpenhorn blowers be allowed to boom throughout? If it were played in Japan, could taiko drummers drum through every match from start to finish? You get the idea.
The buzzing of vuvuzelas isn't just an annoying sound but it prevents one of the more pleasurable sounds associated with the World Cup games: the cheering and singing of the fans of different countries and teams. This time around, there's no possibility of hearing chants of USA! or GOOOAL! or "Allez, Ola, Ole!" that livened up the experience of the great World Cups of the past. It's all bzzzzzz-bzzzzzzz and no chance to hear anything else.
There may be a solution, however. The techie web site Lifehacker reports that you can attach an equalizer to your TV and set it to balance out the frequency of the buzzing of the vuvuzelas, which will go a long way toward muting the sound. Here's the web site that explains how to do this: Lifehacker anti-vuvuzela page http://lifehacker.com/5564085/how-to-silence-vuvuzela-horns-with-an-eq-filter?sk\
yline=true&s=i . And that bring me back around to question I alluded to in the second sentence of this edition of All Life Is Local: How is the problem of vuvuzela noise at the World Cup in South Africa connected to life in this corner of the world? Well, I'm hoping it's possible that there's a sports bar somewhere around here showing World Cup Soccer games for people like me who want to watch them without getting a vuvuzela-induced migraine. A bar with big TVs hooked up to an equalizer, right here in Cleveland Park, or perhaps a metro stop or two away. If you know of such a place, please direct me to it! Getting an equalizer and hooking it to our own TV just for a few weeks of games is not a practical solution for us, but we figure it could make economic sense for a venue that could draw in patrons by the busload. A bar with a super hi-def screen could also offer superior World Cup viewing as well as listening pleasure. Plus I'll throw in the incentive of free advertising on this Listserv (9,500-plus subscribers) to any bar that can offer us vuvuzela-free viewing.
Beyond my quest to find a place to watch the World Cup without the being driven insane by that buzzing sound, I want to use this space to urge you to join the movement to get FIFA to reverse its disastrous tolerance of vuvuzela-blowing in the stands. Please add your name to the international petition:
http://www.banvuvuzela.com .
Finally, I want to end on a positive note. (I wrote in my second "All Life Is Local" column that I would do my best to stay upbeat and keep this space from being a repository of my natural curmudgeonly tendency to pile up complaints.) There is one very good thing that I want to point out about the vuvuzela: It is an amazingly point-worthy word if played in Scrabble -- a game I know and appreciate far better than I'll ever know soccer (and may well make the subject of some future "All Life Is Local" column). If you ever happen to have that bizarre combination of letters and you can find someplace on the board to play your seven, connecting to an eighth already played and accessible, you'd have a bingo (that is, a play that uses all seven tiles at once) earning you a bonus of 50 points, on top of the minimum score of 25 points you'd earn for those letters played on the plainest possible squares, for a total of 75 points. Now consider this: if you could manage to play "vuvuzela" starting on one triple word square and stretching to the other triple, that would place the Z on the double letter score, so that the whole word would be rack up 33 points, which would then be tripled and re-tripled, for 297 points -- plus the 50-point bingo bonus, for a whopping total of 347 just for that one word! Of course, that would be a once-in-a-lifetime play. If I ever made such a play, I would definitely want to blow a vuvuzela in celebration!
--------------------------
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, June 18, 2010.
Showing posts with label Cleveland Park Listserv. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cleveland Park Listserv. Show all posts
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010
Grocery Heaven Is Here
I have been to the new Georgetown Safeway
and I am here to sing its praises. After closing for a year-long renovation/total rebuilding, the new store is now open for business, and boy has it won my business! It's everything I want from a grocery store, except Costco prices. (But then, that really would be asking the impossible, wouldn't it?) It's big, but not overwhelmingly so. It's got everything I put on my shopping list -- even some obscure items I would have bet I'd never find. And it's good looking -- by which I mean it's not the ugly concrete box we've all come to expect a large store to be. From the street it appears appropriately sized for the neighborhood and inviting to pedestrians as well as drivers. The two-level parking lot is nicely tucked around the back and underneath the building. Inside, it's clean and logically laid out. I had no trouble finding things, but even if I had, during this first week, there are greeters and guides standing by the front door, ready to take you around and personally escort you down the aisles until you arrive at your destination. (Well, I'm sure that won't last, but in the meantime, it gives a certain Japanese Zen-like quality to the shopping experience. Enjoy it while you can.)
Actually, I didn't require a guide. I was happy to wander around, making each new discovery on my own. There's the bakery with a bay of lovely loaves, enticingly arranged. Next, the patisserie, where I was encouraged to sample the cakes and confections. The young man behind the counter earnestly assured me that there was a chocolatier on site at all times checking the equipment so that the temperature of the chocolate remains constant. I tried a dark chocolate pretzel that came from some famous chocolate pretzel maker in Pennsylvania. (I pretended to have heard of it, because I didn't want to disappoint him.) I wandered past the sushi bar and was tempted for a minute to take a seat at the counter and have a California roll, but I couldn't spare the time, not if I wanted to tour the aisles and aisles of wine offerings. Nor did I have time to enter the separate, climate controlled, ultra-high-end wine shop, where the hundred-dollar-a-bottle-and-up wines are stored with special care. Next time, perhaps. Same for the sit-down Starbucks cafe. I finished up my tour with a dash through the frozen foods section, but soon realized there was no need to move so fast; for the first time in a grocery history, I felt no need to rush through the chill-zone. With these new energy-saving freezer cases, there's not even a nip of frost leaking out into the air. No wishing for a sweater for this part of the trip. Though I didn't have to rush to stay warm, let hastily finish off my virtual tour with a quick mention of the full-service pharmacy, the florist shop, the deli counter, the cheese offerings, the produce departments (organically grown and not) and the multiple places to buy different kinds of prepared dinners (I may never cook again!).
And now to the checkout. In this first week, when it's bumper-to-bumper shopping carts all up and down the aisles, I assumed that the checkout couldn't help but be slow. Pleasant surprise: It was actually pretty zippy. They've got all cashiers working, with ushers to steer you to the shortest line. There are self-checkout cashiers for those adept at doing their own scanning and bagging. (One day I'll get the hang of that!) I'm definitely going back soon.
I expect to be a weekly customer, until such time as Cleveland Park gets its own upgraded, new and improved supermarket. (Why don't we have such a thing already? Hmmm....I don't think I'll get into that, lest I be accused of sneaking an editorial into what's supposed to be my quirky-cute column on life in the city. But I do need to toss out this observation: That a store of this size and scope can be designed to fit in comfortably, even charmingly, into a low-scale historic neighborhood, without causing traffic backups or any other widely-feared effects. Go take a look and see the example in action yourself.) I digress. I didn't mean to talk about anything but this Safeway. There's one thing I'm sure my single readers will want to know: Is it still the "Social Safeway"? Yes, and now more than ever, it lives up to its reputation. You can linger over the melons just as you did in the past, waiting for that someone of your dreams to seek your counsel on the question of firmness and ripeness. But now you have other choices as well: Looking to meet a hiker? Hang out at the trail mix bins. Or find a fellow caffeine addict at the Starbucks. Wait for a wasabi lover at the sushi bar. You get the idea. (And if you do find your soulmate while shopping at the Social Safeway or in any other consumer-related excursion, I'd be interested to hear your story, perhaps for a future column. Bill and I met at a Safeway -- in a manner of speaking. But that's a story I'm saving for another column, perhaps sometime in October, around our 22nd anniversary.
-------------------
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, May 7, 2010.
and I am here to sing its praises. After closing for a year-long renovation/total rebuilding, the new store is now open for business, and boy has it won my business! It's everything I want from a grocery store, except Costco prices. (But then, that really would be asking the impossible, wouldn't it?) It's big, but not overwhelmingly so. It's got everything I put on my shopping list -- even some obscure items I would have bet I'd never find. And it's good looking -- by which I mean it's not the ugly concrete box we've all come to expect a large store to be. From the street it appears appropriately sized for the neighborhood and inviting to pedestrians as well as drivers. The two-level parking lot is nicely tucked around the back and underneath the building. Inside, it's clean and logically laid out. I had no trouble finding things, but even if I had, during this first week, there are greeters and guides standing by the front door, ready to take you around and personally escort you down the aisles until you arrive at your destination. (Well, I'm sure that won't last, but in the meantime, it gives a certain Japanese Zen-like quality to the shopping experience. Enjoy it while you can.)
Actually, I didn't require a guide. I was happy to wander around, making each new discovery on my own. There's the bakery with a bay of lovely loaves, enticingly arranged. Next, the patisserie, where I was encouraged to sample the cakes and confections. The young man behind the counter earnestly assured me that there was a chocolatier on site at all times checking the equipment so that the temperature of the chocolate remains constant. I tried a dark chocolate pretzel that came from some famous chocolate pretzel maker in Pennsylvania. (I pretended to have heard of it, because I didn't want to disappoint him.) I wandered past the sushi bar and was tempted for a minute to take a seat at the counter and have a California roll, but I couldn't spare the time, not if I wanted to tour the aisles and aisles of wine offerings. Nor did I have time to enter the separate, climate controlled, ultra-high-end wine shop, where the hundred-dollar-a-bottle-and-up wines are stored with special care. Next time, perhaps. Same for the sit-down Starbucks cafe. I finished up my tour with a dash through the frozen foods section, but soon realized there was no need to move so fast; for the first time in a grocery history, I felt no need to rush through the chill-zone. With these new energy-saving freezer cases, there's not even a nip of frost leaking out into the air. No wishing for a sweater for this part of the trip. Though I didn't have to rush to stay warm, let hastily finish off my virtual tour with a quick mention of the full-service pharmacy, the florist shop, the deli counter, the cheese offerings, the produce departments (organically grown and not) and the multiple places to buy different kinds of prepared dinners (I may never cook again!).
And now to the checkout. In this first week, when it's bumper-to-bumper shopping carts all up and down the aisles, I assumed that the checkout couldn't help but be slow. Pleasant surprise: It was actually pretty zippy. They've got all cashiers working, with ushers to steer you to the shortest line. There are self-checkout cashiers for those adept at doing their own scanning and bagging. (One day I'll get the hang of that!) I'm definitely going back soon.
I expect to be a weekly customer, until such time as Cleveland Park gets its own upgraded, new and improved supermarket. (Why don't we have such a thing already? Hmmm....I don't think I'll get into that, lest I be accused of sneaking an editorial into what's supposed to be my quirky-cute column on life in the city. But I do need to toss out this observation: That a store of this size and scope can be designed to fit in comfortably, even charmingly, into a low-scale historic neighborhood, without causing traffic backups or any other widely-feared effects. Go take a look and see the example in action yourself.) I digress. I didn't mean to talk about anything but this Safeway. There's one thing I'm sure my single readers will want to know: Is it still the "Social Safeway"? Yes, and now more than ever, it lives up to its reputation. You can linger over the melons just as you did in the past, waiting for that someone of your dreams to seek your counsel on the question of firmness and ripeness. But now you have other choices as well: Looking to meet a hiker? Hang out at the trail mix bins. Or find a fellow caffeine addict at the Starbucks. Wait for a wasabi lover at the sushi bar. You get the idea. (And if you do find your soulmate while shopping at the Social Safeway or in any other consumer-related excursion, I'd be interested to hear your story, perhaps for a future column. Bill and I met at a Safeway -- in a manner of speaking. But that's a story I'm saving for another column, perhaps sometime in October, around our 22nd anniversary.
-------------------
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, May 7, 2010.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Rate Your School's PIS Level
This year I'm missing my kids' school spring fair. It's the Fete Champetre at Maret School on Saturday, May 22 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it's free and open to the public, with a moonbounce, climbing wall, and other games and activities, a rummage sale, vendor tables, food pavilions and more (end of commercial). I'm skipping out this year to attend a family wedding in Austin, Texas, one of the few times I've dodged this annual semi-mandatory parental job assignment. The parents of my daughter's class are in charge of selling the scrip used to pay for games and food. I feel guilty enough about my dereliction of duty to make it the subject of this column. But not guilty enough to send regrets to my cousin's family and stick around to man the ticket-booth. How did it get to the point where I would even consider such a thing?
Let me get back to the beginning, circa 1994, when we were looking at schools for our two children, one of whom would be starting kindergarten the following fall. We looked at every school, public and private, in the Cleveland Park/Woodley Park/Tenleytown area. We went about it very systematically: We drew up a chart with the name of each school on the vertical axis, and a list of school criteria as headers on the horizontal axis. That created a grid with boxes in which we could assign a rating to each school in each category. For example, we had "Quality of Faculty," "Class Size," and "Curriculum" as three of the most important areas on which we judged each school. Then we had some practical considerations: "Closeness to Home" -- we assigned more points to the school if our kids would be able to walk there when they were old enough -- and "Cafeteria," with lots more points to a school that had one than to a school that didn't (as we could not see ourselves packing bag lunches for the next 14 years). One of our quirkier rating categories was something I'm calling "Parental Indentured Servitude" (or PIS, for the purpose of making it fit into the grid heading box). This was a category that was scored in negative numbers. The more we thought the school required parents to work on the school's behalf -- running school functions, assisting on field trips, staffing the auction, putting on the spring fair, soliciting for the annual fund, and a multitude of other "volunteer" jobs -- the greater the negative number we assigned to that school. We figured the rating for each school based on firsthand reports from parents already indentured to the school.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that parents shouldn't be expected to volunteer at their children's schools. Absolutely, they should. We would not have been interested in any school that didn't have active, involved parents. What made a school go into deep negative territory was a high pressure atmosphere, and a heavy load of guilt for parents who didn't do as they're told every time they were assigned a task. We were looking for a school where voluntary actually meant voluntary, and a "No, sorry I can't" would be accepted graciously with a friendly response: "Then we hope to see you next time." We were looking to avoid the taskmasters who think they can whip insufficiently dedicated parents into shape. These are almost always other parents -- virtually never the administrators. Every school has at least a handful of over-zealous PIS-meisters. The key for us was to pick a school where they were not the defining spirit of the parent body.
I won't reveal the rankings that we assigned in the PIS category to the schools we considered for our children. It's all so long ago that doubtless things have changed. All I will say is that we thought a few schools rated a -8 or -9 (the max was -10), while the school we ultimately chose, Maret, seemed to us about average in this regard. It ranked very high for closeness to our house, for having a cafeteria, and, as a small school, was top ranked for small class size and individual attention to students. We were generally impressed with the teachers and courses offered at all the schools we saw, so there was little point variation among them in those categories.
Sixteen years later, one child having graduated and the other with just one more year, we can sit back and reflect on our original assessment. Maret was and is a great school. Our kids loved it and got a great education. But what about the PIS level? Well, now that I've put in my hours, no, my years -- baking cookies for bake sales, cooking casseroles for class potlucks, running two class email lists (well, I kinda had to volunteer for that one, now didn't I?), taking dictation from kindergartners for their "autobiography" projects, being a room parent for the first grade, being a fortune-teller at the spring fair for 5 years in a row, shepherding kids on field trips, drumming up speakers for assemblies, delivering dinners to the cast and crew of the musical, donating items to the after-prom party and the rummage sales, and stepping into perhaps a dozen other jobs over the years that I've forgotten to add to this list ... now where was I? Oh yes, after all that, well, the reality is, everything I did I was happy to do, and would do again, if I could go back in time. Yes, I was asked to do many things, but I never said no. Until this year's Fete, when I won't be there.
So now that I'm missing ONE THING, why after all these years of cheerful compliance to my school's call for a high level of PIS do I suddenly feel guilty? It's certainly not due to any external pressure from my fellow parents. I supposed I've so fully internalized the mindset of a PIS-syndrome parent that there's no other outcome possible. So, all during that wedding, as the bride and groom are exchanging their vows, as we're dancing and toasting, somewhere in the back of my head I'll be thinking, "I should be selling scrip today." And "I wonder if they found someone to staff the booth for that last shift?" But don't pity me. I have only one more year to go.
Still, something tells me that even when it's over, it's never over. In my own mind, I'm at PIS level -10, and may take a long time for me to come back up to a normal level.
---------------------
Posted on the Cleveland Park Listserv on April 30, 2010.
Let me get back to the beginning, circa 1994, when we were looking at schools for our two children, one of whom would be starting kindergarten the following fall. We looked at every school, public and private, in the Cleveland Park/Woodley Park/Tenleytown area. We went about it very systematically: We drew up a chart with the name of each school on the vertical axis, and a list of school criteria as headers on the horizontal axis. That created a grid with boxes in which we could assign a rating to each school in each category. For example, we had "Quality of Faculty," "Class Size," and "Curriculum" as three of the most important areas on which we judged each school. Then we had some practical considerations: "Closeness to Home" -- we assigned more points to the school if our kids would be able to walk there when they were old enough -- and "Cafeteria," with lots more points to a school that had one than to a school that didn't (as we could not see ourselves packing bag lunches for the next 14 years). One of our quirkier rating categories was something I'm calling "Parental Indentured Servitude" (or PIS, for the purpose of making it fit into the grid heading box). This was a category that was scored in negative numbers. The more we thought the school required parents to work on the school's behalf -- running school functions, assisting on field trips, staffing the auction, putting on the spring fair, soliciting for the annual fund, and a multitude of other "volunteer" jobs -- the greater the negative number we assigned to that school. We figured the rating for each school based on firsthand reports from parents already indentured to the school.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that parents shouldn't be expected to volunteer at their children's schools. Absolutely, they should. We would not have been interested in any school that didn't have active, involved parents. What made a school go into deep negative territory was a high pressure atmosphere, and a heavy load of guilt for parents who didn't do as they're told every time they were assigned a task. We were looking for a school where voluntary actually meant voluntary, and a "No, sorry I can't" would be accepted graciously with a friendly response: "Then we hope to see you next time." We were looking to avoid the taskmasters who think they can whip insufficiently dedicated parents into shape. These are almost always other parents -- virtually never the administrators. Every school has at least a handful of over-zealous PIS-meisters. The key for us was to pick a school where they were not the defining spirit of the parent body.
I won't reveal the rankings that we assigned in the PIS category to the schools we considered for our children. It's all so long ago that doubtless things have changed. All I will say is that we thought a few schools rated a -8 or -9 (the max was -10), while the school we ultimately chose, Maret, seemed to us about average in this regard. It ranked very high for closeness to our house, for having a cafeteria, and, as a small school, was top ranked for small class size and individual attention to students. We were generally impressed with the teachers and courses offered at all the schools we saw, so there was little point variation among them in those categories.
Sixteen years later, one child having graduated and the other with just one more year, we can sit back and reflect on our original assessment. Maret was and is a great school. Our kids loved it and got a great education. But what about the PIS level? Well, now that I've put in my hours, no, my years -- baking cookies for bake sales, cooking casseroles for class potlucks, running two class email lists (well, I kinda had to volunteer for that one, now didn't I?), taking dictation from kindergartners for their "autobiography" projects, being a room parent for the first grade, being a fortune-teller at the spring fair for 5 years in a row, shepherding kids on field trips, drumming up speakers for assemblies, delivering dinners to the cast and crew of the musical, donating items to the after-prom party and the rummage sales, and stepping into perhaps a dozen other jobs over the years that I've forgotten to add to this list ... now where was I? Oh yes, after all that, well, the reality is, everything I did I was happy to do, and would do again, if I could go back in time. Yes, I was asked to do many things, but I never said no. Until this year's Fete, when I won't be there.
So now that I'm missing ONE THING, why after all these years of cheerful compliance to my school's call for a high level of PIS do I suddenly feel guilty? It's certainly not due to any external pressure from my fellow parents. I supposed I've so fully internalized the mindset of a PIS-syndrome parent that there's no other outcome possible. So, all during that wedding, as the bride and groom are exchanging their vows, as we're dancing and toasting, somewhere in the back of my head I'll be thinking, "I should be selling scrip today." And "I wonder if they found someone to staff the booth for that last shift?" But don't pity me. I have only one more year to go.
Still, something tells me that even when it's over, it's never over. In my own mind, I'm at PIS level -10, and may take a long time for me to come back up to a normal level.
---------------------
Posted on the Cleveland Park Listserv on April 30, 2010.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Happy [Fill in the Blank] Day!
Today, April 16, is Emancipation Day, a legal holiday in the District of Columbia. I love holidays, but not all of them equally. This one, however, meets all of my personal criteria for a very good holiday:
* It commemorates a real and important event, something worth learning about: Lincoln's proclamation that freed the slaves of the District of Columbia on this date in 1862.
* It has activities and/or ceremonies for present-day celebrants -- in this case, a rally for DC voting rights at Freedom Plaza. (It ended at noon.)
* It's not disruptive of normal life -- that is, there's still trash pickup, school is still on, and everyone's open for business.
* It's a free parking day!
Some other holidays that meet these criteria are: Halloween, Valentine's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Groundhog Day, Pi Day (that's 3-14 at 1:59pm and 26 seconds), Bloomsday (June 16) and Talk Like a Pirate Day (aarrrgh, that one be September 19, matey). Okay, I know what you're thinking: By these standards any day of the year could be a holiday. Yes, it could ... and what's wrong with that? It's not a bad idea to have something special to note about each day of your life. There are national days of other countries, 192 of them. There are days that mark historic events. There are days set aside to appreciate things in nature (Arbor Day, the last Friday in April), to honor a national symbol (Flag Day, June 14), to campaign to protect the planet (Earth Day, April 22), as well as dozens and dozens of lesser known, should-be-known days set aside to celebrate or appreciate something in our lives.
How do you find out about these days? An easy and fun way is to call Verizon's weather line (202-936-1212) first thing each morning. If the weatherman on the line is Neal Pizzano, you will be treated first to his reading of the day's weather report in his indefatigably cheery voice, followed by his proclamation of the day's "holidays." It's National Mushroom Day! -- he will announce -- and it's No-Socks Day! And Caps Lock Day! Yes, these are all real days that have been declared by some group or other, with observances that the organizers want you to know about. You can Google them if you don't believe me. Neal's usually on at 7am, but if he's not, you can go to the source of many, if not most, of the goofy, oddball holidays he comes up with: http://www.brownielocks.com .
Of course, there's a big difference between marking a day on which people became free and, say, the day you take your teddy bear to lunch (Teddy Bears' Picnic Day, July 10). I just thought I'd say that, before I get angry notes from people who think I'm lumping the solemn holidays in with the silly. Yes, today's Emancipation Day rally is far more noteworthy than tomorrow's Ford Mustang Day. But that shouldn't stop owners of Ford Mustangs from tooling around in their cars and having a glorious time on the 17th.
Since I couldn't make it to this morning's DC voting rights event, my participation in today's Emancipation Day celebration will be limited to publicizing the day through my column. Hooray for DC voting rights! Most of the time I don't do a single thing to mark the day, except smile when I hear what I should be commemorating on this day. If you like the idea of finding something that makes each day worth honoring, you might want to start with your own birthday. For something substantive and significant to celebrate, try "This Day in History" by the History Channel: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history . I learned that my birthday, June 19, like today, marks an important advance in the fight to end slavery. It's called the Juneteenth, and on that day in 1864 Lincoln signed a proclamation that freed slaves in all parts of the South then under Union control. It's a legal holiday in 35 states.
That's it for this Friday's column. Prithee visit again on Friday next, April 23 -- Shakespeare's birthday!
----------------
Posted on the Cleveland Park Listserv, on April 16, 2010.
* It commemorates a real and important event, something worth learning about: Lincoln's proclamation that freed the slaves of the District of Columbia on this date in 1862.
* It has activities and/or ceremonies for present-day celebrants -- in this case, a rally for DC voting rights at Freedom Plaza. (It ended at noon.)
* It's not disruptive of normal life -- that is, there's still trash pickup, school is still on, and everyone's open for business.
* It's a free parking day!
Some other holidays that meet these criteria are: Halloween, Valentine's Day, Cinco de Mayo, Groundhog Day, Pi Day (that's 3-14 at 1:59pm and 26 seconds), Bloomsday (June 16) and Talk Like a Pirate Day (aarrrgh, that one be September 19, matey). Okay, I know what you're thinking: By these standards any day of the year could be a holiday. Yes, it could ... and what's wrong with that? It's not a bad idea to have something special to note about each day of your life. There are national days of other countries, 192 of them. There are days that mark historic events. There are days set aside to appreciate things in nature (Arbor Day, the last Friday in April), to honor a national symbol (Flag Day, June 14), to campaign to protect the planet (Earth Day, April 22), as well as dozens and dozens of lesser known, should-be-known days set aside to celebrate or appreciate something in our lives.
How do you find out about these days? An easy and fun way is to call Verizon's weather line (202-936-1212) first thing each morning. If the weatherman on the line is Neal Pizzano, you will be treated first to his reading of the day's weather report in his indefatigably cheery voice, followed by his proclamation of the day's "holidays." It's National Mushroom Day! -- he will announce -- and it's No-Socks Day! And Caps Lock Day! Yes, these are all real days that have been declared by some group or other, with observances that the organizers want you to know about. You can Google them if you don't believe me. Neal's usually on at 7am, but if he's not, you can go to the source of many, if not most, of the goofy, oddball holidays he comes up with: http://www.brownielocks.com .
Of course, there's a big difference between marking a day on which people became free and, say, the day you take your teddy bear to lunch (Teddy Bears' Picnic Day, July 10). I just thought I'd say that, before I get angry notes from people who think I'm lumping the solemn holidays in with the silly. Yes, today's Emancipation Day rally is far more noteworthy than tomorrow's Ford Mustang Day. But that shouldn't stop owners of Ford Mustangs from tooling around in their cars and having a glorious time on the 17th.
Since I couldn't make it to this morning's DC voting rights event, my participation in today's Emancipation Day celebration will be limited to publicizing the day through my column. Hooray for DC voting rights! Most of the time I don't do a single thing to mark the day, except smile when I hear what I should be commemorating on this day. If you like the idea of finding something that makes each day worth honoring, you might want to start with your own birthday. For something substantive and significant to celebrate, try "This Day in History" by the History Channel: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history . I learned that my birthday, June 19, like today, marks an important advance in the fight to end slavery. It's called the Juneteenth, and on that day in 1864 Lincoln signed a proclamation that freed slaves in all parts of the South then under Union control. It's a legal holiday in 35 states.
That's it for this Friday's column. Prithee visit again on Friday next, April 23 -- Shakespeare's birthday!
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Posted on the Cleveland Park Listserv, on April 16, 2010.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Driving Range
For the past several weeks I have been doing something harrowing almost every day: I have been teaching my teenager how to drive. My younger daughter has her learner's permit and she's rejected our offer to hire a professional driving instructor. It's simply a problem of time: Professional instructors require students to schedule lessons in advance to suit the instructor's schedule, but with her long school days and varying after-school activities, she needs to be able to fit in lessons on the fly (perhaps an unfortunate turn of phrase in this case), and only her parents can do that. So I'm teaching again, my least favorite activity. There are times I think I can actually feel my hair turning white under its veneer of L'Oreal.
Not that my daughter is bad at learning this particular life skill. Quite the contrary, she's a conscientious student, takes the lessons seriously, and is doing a great job so far -- just as her sister did three years ago. I have every confidence that she will be a fine driver in time. Really, I'm not worried about her -- it's all the other drivers out there who are twisting my stomach in knots. For example: My daughter is now advanced enough to drive around the streets of Cleveland Park. But at this stage in the process she's driving a bit more cautiously than most drivers, making a right turn onto a main road only when she's sure that no one is coming. So she was waiting at an intersection for there to be a long break in traffic before she'd turn right. She was just about to go when the car behind our car suddenly lurched to the left to scoot around our car, making the right turn ahead of her. I would tell you honestly if my daughter had been hesitating an egregiously long period of time. But she was merely being conservative about when the road was clear to turn. The car that jumped around her caused the oncoming car to have to brake to avoid an accident. This happened yesterday.
Drivers around here are just too much in a hurry, so I guess she'll have to get used to it. I remember how my older daughter learned that lesson. (This one is so vivid in my mind that it feels like it happened yesterday, although it was in 2007.) She was driving down Reno as the light at Porter turned yellow. She decided, unlike 99 percent of drivers in DC, to stop for the yellow, so she braked fairly hard to be sure to come to a stop before the stop line. But the driver behind her had apparently assumed she'd speed up to run the yellow, and was speeding up himself to go through it as well -- or possibly run through the beginning of the red. Fortunately for us all, he did realize she was stopping just in time to slam on his brakes and avoid rear-ending us. By about two inches. Lesson learned: Always check your rear view mirror before stopping for a yellow light. If the guy behind you is zooming along and shows no signs of slowing down, it's better to run the yellow than risk a crash. And in this city, that describes almost any approach to a yellow light, except perhaps for one in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
The teaching process has helped to crystallize rules like this for me that I'd previously applied but never thought out in words. That's made me a better driver. I know people from other places commonly think that the driving is better back where they came from. I'm originally from Atlanta, and I truly believe that Atlanta drivers are more courteous, more relaxed, more willing to let others go first. I could be wrong about this, but if we'd stayed in Atlanta, I can't help but doubt whether I'd have to teach my daughters to watch out for all the crazy, illegal things that Washington drivers do routinely. I tell them, for example, that you just can't count on any driver who arrives at a four-way stop sign to come to an actual stop. If you're lucky, they may slow down a lot and then roll on through. And then there's the "second car doesn't have to stop" rule that so many drivers seem to believe is on the books in this town. If the car ahead comes to a full stop at a four-way stop sign, causing the car behind to come to a full stop as well, then when the first car moves on, the second car can go without waiting for any other cars already at the intersection to go first. I'm happy that both girls have been taught to look out for this maneuver. I even like it when they chide me sometimes when I'm driving and come to a stop sign, because they don't feel the full "set-back" of the car making a complete stop. I've become much more careful about doing this, even as I notice how rare it is to see another car do so.
Well, I could go on and on about what else I've observed during these daily instructive drives. The crazy U-turns. The tailgating. The intersection blocking. The cellphone yakking. Everything you want your teenager never to do, on display in a single half hour spin around the neighborhood. I know there's no alternative but to acknowledge the reality and teach my daughter to drive with the idea in mind that others will be doing all these things and worse. All the same -- futile gesture though it is -- let me send out this plea: If you see a small red car driving around the streets of Cleveland Park, perhaps five miles under the speed limit, perhaps waiting an extra second or two before making a turn, please be patient. Please don't honk. And don't swerve around that car to jump the turn. It might not be my daughter at the wheel but it could be someone else's daughter or son in the first few weeks of learning.
Thanks in advance from that white-knuckled bundle of nerves in the passenger seat.
P.S. Here's a tip if you have a teenager with a brand new learner's permit. A great place to have a first lesson is the Carter Barron parking lot. There are actually two large connected lots, with some roadways circling around them. If you pick a time when there are no events on (and that's most of the time), the parking lots will be practically deserted – except for one or two other cars
circling slowly around (that is, other parents giving their kids driving lessons).
#
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv on March 19, 2010.
Not that my daughter is bad at learning this particular life skill. Quite the contrary, she's a conscientious student, takes the lessons seriously, and is doing a great job so far -- just as her sister did three years ago. I have every confidence that she will be a fine driver in time. Really, I'm not worried about her -- it's all the other drivers out there who are twisting my stomach in knots. For example: My daughter is now advanced enough to drive around the streets of Cleveland Park. But at this stage in the process she's driving a bit more cautiously than most drivers, making a right turn onto a main road only when she's sure that no one is coming. So she was waiting at an intersection for there to be a long break in traffic before she'd turn right. She was just about to go when the car behind our car suddenly lurched to the left to scoot around our car, making the right turn ahead of her. I would tell you honestly if my daughter had been hesitating an egregiously long period of time. But she was merely being conservative about when the road was clear to turn. The car that jumped around her caused the oncoming car to have to brake to avoid an accident. This happened yesterday.
Drivers around here are just too much in a hurry, so I guess she'll have to get used to it. I remember how my older daughter learned that lesson. (This one is so vivid in my mind that it feels like it happened yesterday, although it was in 2007.) She was driving down Reno as the light at Porter turned yellow. She decided, unlike 99 percent of drivers in DC, to stop for the yellow, so she braked fairly hard to be sure to come to a stop before the stop line. But the driver behind her had apparently assumed she'd speed up to run the yellow, and was speeding up himself to go through it as well -- or possibly run through the beginning of the red. Fortunately for us all, he did realize she was stopping just in time to slam on his brakes and avoid rear-ending us. By about two inches. Lesson learned: Always check your rear view mirror before stopping for a yellow light. If the guy behind you is zooming along and shows no signs of slowing down, it's better to run the yellow than risk a crash. And in this city, that describes almost any approach to a yellow light, except perhaps for one in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.
The teaching process has helped to crystallize rules like this for me that I'd previously applied but never thought out in words. That's made me a better driver. I know people from other places commonly think that the driving is better back where they came from. I'm originally from Atlanta, and I truly believe that Atlanta drivers are more courteous, more relaxed, more willing to let others go first. I could be wrong about this, but if we'd stayed in Atlanta, I can't help but doubt whether I'd have to teach my daughters to watch out for all the crazy, illegal things that Washington drivers do routinely. I tell them, for example, that you just can't count on any driver who arrives at a four-way stop sign to come to an actual stop. If you're lucky, they may slow down a lot and then roll on through. And then there's the "second car doesn't have to stop" rule that so many drivers seem to believe is on the books in this town. If the car ahead comes to a full stop at a four-way stop sign, causing the car behind to come to a full stop as well, then when the first car moves on, the second car can go without waiting for any other cars already at the intersection to go first. I'm happy that both girls have been taught to look out for this maneuver. I even like it when they chide me sometimes when I'm driving and come to a stop sign, because they don't feel the full "set-back" of the car making a complete stop. I've become much more careful about doing this, even as I notice how rare it is to see another car do so.
Well, I could go on and on about what else I've observed during these daily instructive drives. The crazy U-turns. The tailgating. The intersection blocking. The cellphone yakking. Everything you want your teenager never to do, on display in a single half hour spin around the neighborhood. I know there's no alternative but to acknowledge the reality and teach my daughter to drive with the idea in mind that others will be doing all these things and worse. All the same -- futile gesture though it is -- let me send out this plea: If you see a small red car driving around the streets of Cleveland Park, perhaps five miles under the speed limit, perhaps waiting an extra second or two before making a turn, please be patient. Please don't honk. And don't swerve around that car to jump the turn. It might not be my daughter at the wheel but it could be someone else's daughter or son in the first few weeks of learning.
Thanks in advance from that white-knuckled bundle of nerves in the passenger seat.
P.S. Here's a tip if you have a teenager with a brand new learner's permit. A great place to have a first lesson is the Carter Barron parking lot. There are actually two large connected lots, with some roadways circling around them. If you pick a time when there are no events on (and that's most of the time), the parking lots will be practically deserted – except for one or two other cars
circling slowly around (that is, other parents giving their kids driving lessons).
#
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv on March 19, 2010.
They Keep Changing the Names on Me!
First, an update to last week's update about the Washington, DC Complaints Choir. I was happy to receive this newsflash from Evan Tucker, the director of the Voices of Washington choir, who informs me that "We just wrapped up our filming of a Complaints Choir for Washington DC tonight [March 8]. We've staged unannounced outdoor performances of it at the White House, the Capitol and Dupont Circle. We are going to be editing the footage for the next few weeks and should have a complaints choir film ready and totally worthy of all DC's faults by the beginning of April (and hopefully well before that). If you have any questions about the project, I would be absolutely delighted to answer them. My email is etucker82 @ gmail.com. Please feel free to contact at any time, and I'm so happy to hear that other DC people are as interested in the complaints choir project as we are." So keep watching this space. I will post a link to the finished film as soon as it's available. Now on to the main course:
Comcast is becoming Xfinity, but don't expect me ever to call it that. And what's with the initial X for companies? (Actually, that's for another column; this one's about my fondness for old names.) I found myself pondering the name change on my walk home from People's Drugstore. Um, I mean CVS. I can't help myself: "People's" must be stamped on the primal neurons of my brain, which just can't seem to recall the three simple letters of the new ("new" meaning since 1990)name.
I'm not as bad about names changes as my mother, who still refers to that big hotel at the corner of Woodley Road and Connecticut Avenue as the "Wardman Park." Which became the Sheraton Park in 1953. And then became the Marriott in 1998. But wait! Marriott restored the original Wardman Park to the hotel's name, so that now it's officially the Washington Marriott Wardman Park, which may be called "Wardman Park" for short. So after half a century of mis-labeling the hotel, my mother is now correct again. That gives me hope.
Meanwhile I continue on my merry way, flying in and out of National Airport, not "Washington Reagan National Airport." I don't know any DC native who calls it that. Actually, I doubt I've ever heard the phrase coming from anyone other than a Metro train operator. So there's no reason for me to change.
I think part of my resistance to name changes stems from the loss of a sense of place. "National" Airport tells you that you're in the nation's capital. When I'm in New York, I often hear New Yorkers refer to Sixth Avenue, which officially got renamed "Avenue of the Americas" in 1945. But what does that "of the Americas" tell you? That you're in the hemisphere which has two continents called America. What does Sixth Avenue tell you? That you're on the avenue that falls between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue -- now that's useful information! So much so that sometime in the 1980's, the city of New York acknowledged the truth and installed "Sixth Avenue" street signs alongside the "Avenue of the Americas" signs.
I can claim a bit of credit myself in keeping a useful street name unaltered, right here in our neck of the woods. When I was a commissioner of ANC 3-C back in the early 1980's, there was some political momentum to change the name of a short segment of Massachusetts Avenue to "Nelson and Winnie Mandela Avenue." The name change would be just for the block in front of the South African embassy, then controlled by the apartheid regime that had imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Now I admire Mandela as much as anyone – I was even arrested and jailed for a day as part of the series of staged protests in his behalf – but I just could not see the value in hanging new street signs and printing new maps, all for a one block segment of a street. What would be the impact? Perhaps some mild annoyance for the rulers in South Africa -- though this would have been the least of their problems -- versus a good deal of confusion for tourists trying to navigate their way down an avenue already hard to follow through its various circles and squares.
Fortunately, the name change never happened. If it had, we'd probably still be trying to get the Council to change the name back. By the way, take a close-up look at the 1100 block of 16th Street on Google Maps. You'll see that segment of the street is officially named "Andrei Sakharov Plaza," a moniker slapped on it during the early 1980s to annoy the Soviet Union, which had its embassy on that block back then. If the Council would like to make a stand for rationality of place names and control of its own street grid, as well as recognition that
times have changed, it should take the quick, simple and long-overdue action of changing the name back to 16th Street.
My mother and I would be grateful. And I suspect that the Andrei Sakharov, champion of democracy that he was, would not have minded at all.
#
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, March 12, 2010
Comcast is becoming Xfinity, but don't expect me ever to call it that. And what's with the initial X for companies? (Actually, that's for another column; this one's about my fondness for old names.) I found myself pondering the name change on my walk home from People's Drugstore. Um, I mean CVS. I can't help myself: "People's" must be stamped on the primal neurons of my brain, which just can't seem to recall the three simple letters of the new ("new" meaning since 1990)name.
I'm not as bad about names changes as my mother, who still refers to that big hotel at the corner of Woodley Road and Connecticut Avenue as the "Wardman Park." Which became the Sheraton Park in 1953. And then became the Marriott in 1998. But wait! Marriott restored the original Wardman Park to the hotel's name, so that now it's officially the Washington Marriott Wardman Park, which may be called "Wardman Park" for short. So after half a century of mis-labeling the hotel, my mother is now correct again. That gives me hope.
Meanwhile I continue on my merry way, flying in and out of National Airport, not "Washington Reagan National Airport." I don't know any DC native who calls it that. Actually, I doubt I've ever heard the phrase coming from anyone other than a Metro train operator. So there's no reason for me to change.
I think part of my resistance to name changes stems from the loss of a sense of place. "National" Airport tells you that you're in the nation's capital. When I'm in New York, I often hear New Yorkers refer to Sixth Avenue, which officially got renamed "Avenue of the Americas" in 1945. But what does that "of the Americas" tell you? That you're in the hemisphere which has two continents called America. What does Sixth Avenue tell you? That you're on the avenue that falls between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue -- now that's useful information! So much so that sometime in the 1980's, the city of New York acknowledged the truth and installed "Sixth Avenue" street signs alongside the "Avenue of the Americas" signs.
I can claim a bit of credit myself in keeping a useful street name unaltered, right here in our neck of the woods. When I was a commissioner of ANC 3-C back in the early 1980's, there was some political momentum to change the name of a short segment of Massachusetts Avenue to "Nelson and Winnie Mandela Avenue." The name change would be just for the block in front of the South African embassy, then controlled by the apartheid regime that had imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Now I admire Mandela as much as anyone – I was even arrested and jailed for a day as part of the series of staged protests in his behalf – but I just could not see the value in hanging new street signs and printing new maps, all for a one block segment of a street. What would be the impact? Perhaps some mild annoyance for the rulers in South Africa -- though this would have been the least of their problems -- versus a good deal of confusion for tourists trying to navigate their way down an avenue already hard to follow through its various circles and squares.
Fortunately, the name change never happened. If it had, we'd probably still be trying to get the Council to change the name back. By the way, take a close-up look at the 1100 block of 16th Street on Google Maps. You'll see that segment of the street is officially named "Andrei Sakharov Plaza," a moniker slapped on it during the early 1980s to annoy the Soviet Union, which had its embassy on that block back then. If the Council would like to make a stand for rationality of place names and control of its own street grid, as well as recognition that
times have changed, it should take the quick, simple and long-overdue action of changing the name back to 16th Street.
My mother and I would be grateful. And I suspect that the Andrei Sakharov, champion of democracy that he was, would not have minded at all.
#
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, March 12, 2010
Compliments, Not Complaints, for Helpful Strangers
My very first column for "All Life Is Local" generated some interesting reader feedback. One of the first reactions came from a reader who said she's sick of hearing complaints, even comedic complaints put to music and sung by a choir. She writes: "I think we should be more positive and focus on the beautiful things in life... I'm tired of the complaining." Point taken: So I thought with this second column, I should heed her call --um, her complaint, actually--and present some anecdotes about people who have been helpful to strangers. Fortunately, two other responses I received to the column fit the bill nicely.
First, from Lois on Woodley Road: During the height (depths) of the snow, I watched my husband try to dig his car out with our flat-edged, dented, aluminum shovel. Fitfully slow. So I found my pointed garden shovel out back. I was handing it to him when I noticed a young woman across the street trying to dig out her car with a tool as pitiful as my husband's, only plastic. Before giving my shovel to said husband, I punched my way around the ice near the woman's tires, hoping for a quick liberation. It took just a few minutes, and her huge smile and thank you's flooded the street. Soon, too, my stubby garden shovel had freed my husband's car. I then handed the woman my shovel for her to try a few more whacks at the ice, for good measure. More profound thanks followed, in fact, way too much for my small gesture. A few days later I found a lovely, hand-made valentine in my mailbox, along with a bag of Lindt chocolate truffles from the young woman. Now that's appreciation!
And next, from Charlotte on 38th Street: When we rescheduled our tickets to The Rivalry at Fords Theatre, after the snows, the theatre didn't have two seats together, so I was sitting by myself. Behind me, I heard someone say to his companion, "Once at Ford's Theatre we heard, oh, what was his name, he was a cabinet secretary in the Eisenhower administration and then president of U. of Oregon?" Amazingly, since I attended U. of Oregon, I knew the answer! Despite my reluctance to interrupt, I turned around. The three of us, all from greater Cleveland Park, talked avidly about 1960s Oregon. How unlikely is that? One benefit of the snows: more willingness to connect. Oh, the answer: Arthur Fleming, secretary of HEW under Eisenhower.
That leads me to my own little story about a helpful word from a stranger, similar to Charlotte's. I was waiting in a long, slow-moving line with my daughter, and to pass the time, we were discussing her upcoming test in US history, which would cover the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. I remarked to my daughter that when I was in high school during the Johnson Administration, all students had to take a course in Civics, which required us to memorize the names of all members of LBJ's cabinet, and all 9 justices of the US Supreme Court, along with the top positions of both parties in the House and Senate. I aced that test, and I still remember most of them to this day. My daughter pooh-poohed this sort of course, saying any teenager or adult living in Washington who is the least bit interested in current events could name the people in these positions without having to study. Go, I challenged her, name all 9 justices of the current court. She rattled off the first five without hesitation. With some thought she came up with a sixth name. After a bit more pondering, she named a seventh. Then she was stumped and could not come up with another name. I was able to think of one more. But for some reason neither one of us could summon up the last name to complete the court. We were about to give up in frustration (since neither of us had a smartphone with us to allow us just to Google the answer), when a white-haired gentleman in front of us in the line turned around and quietly said one word: Stevens. Thank you, Mr. Random Retired Washington Lawyer Waiting In Line! Only in DC!
And finally, the most helpful responses I received to my column came from readers who alerted me to the existence of Voices of Washington, which is organizing a Complaints Choir of Washington. So far there's just a very spare web site, http://www.voicesofwashington.org/contact.php , with little more than a name, phone number and email address on the "contact" page. But if you'd like to get involved in this effort, that's clearly the place to start. I'm sure the main contact person would welcome any and all helpful strangers willing to come together to make this happen for our city. (My thanks to Susanna Beiser for being the first to pass along this information.)
#
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv on March 5, 2010.
First, from Lois on Woodley Road: During the height (depths) of the snow, I watched my husband try to dig his car out with our flat-edged, dented, aluminum shovel. Fitfully slow. So I found my pointed garden shovel out back. I was handing it to him when I noticed a young woman across the street trying to dig out her car with a tool as pitiful as my husband's, only plastic. Before giving my shovel to said husband, I punched my way around the ice near the woman's tires, hoping for a quick liberation. It took just a few minutes, and her huge smile and thank you's flooded the street. Soon, too, my stubby garden shovel had freed my husband's car. I then handed the woman my shovel for her to try a few more whacks at the ice, for good measure. More profound thanks followed, in fact, way too much for my small gesture. A few days later I found a lovely, hand-made valentine in my mailbox, along with a bag of Lindt chocolate truffles from the young woman. Now that's appreciation!
And next, from Charlotte on 38th Street: When we rescheduled our tickets to The Rivalry at Fords Theatre, after the snows, the theatre didn't have two seats together, so I was sitting by myself. Behind me, I heard someone say to his companion, "Once at Ford's Theatre we heard, oh, what was his name, he was a cabinet secretary in the Eisenhower administration and then president of U. of Oregon?" Amazingly, since I attended U. of Oregon, I knew the answer! Despite my reluctance to interrupt, I turned around. The three of us, all from greater Cleveland Park, talked avidly about 1960s Oregon. How unlikely is that? One benefit of the snows: more willingness to connect. Oh, the answer: Arthur Fleming, secretary of HEW under Eisenhower.
That leads me to my own little story about a helpful word from a stranger, similar to Charlotte's. I was waiting in a long, slow-moving line with my daughter, and to pass the time, we were discussing her upcoming test in US history, which would cover the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. I remarked to my daughter that when I was in high school during the Johnson Administration, all students had to take a course in Civics, which required us to memorize the names of all members of LBJ's cabinet, and all 9 justices of the US Supreme Court, along with the top positions of both parties in the House and Senate. I aced that test, and I still remember most of them to this day. My daughter pooh-poohed this sort of course, saying any teenager or adult living in Washington who is the least bit interested in current events could name the people in these positions without having to study. Go, I challenged her, name all 9 justices of the current court. She rattled off the first five without hesitation. With some thought she came up with a sixth name. After a bit more pondering, she named a seventh. Then she was stumped and could not come up with another name. I was able to think of one more. But for some reason neither one of us could summon up the last name to complete the court. We were about to give up in frustration (since neither of us had a smartphone with us to allow us just to Google the answer), when a white-haired gentleman in front of us in the line turned around and quietly said one word: Stevens. Thank you, Mr. Random Retired Washington Lawyer Waiting In Line! Only in DC!
And finally, the most helpful responses I received to my column came from readers who alerted me to the existence of Voices of Washington, which is organizing a Complaints Choir of Washington. So far there's just a very spare web site, http://www.voicesofwashington.org/contact.php , with little more than a name, phone number and email address on the "contact" page. But if you'd like to get involved in this effort, that's clearly the place to start. I'm sure the main contact person would welcome any and all helpful strangers willing to come together to make this happen for our city. (My thanks to Susanna Beiser for being the first to pass along this information.)
#
Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv on March 5, 2010.
All Life Is Local, debut column: A Chorus of Complaints
This is the premiere of a new feature on the Cleveland Park Listerv (www.cleveland-park.com), a column called All Life Is Local. It will appear every Friday and will be a sort of grab-bag of a column, with stories from the neighborhood, odd little quirks and anecdotes that people send in, and musings about this and that, not necessarily all neighborhood connected but all in some way adding a bit of flavor to the stew that is our local life. The inspiration comes from former House Speaker Tip O'Neill's observation that "All politics is local," but that's just a jumping-off point, as the column won't be limited to politics or even just to this particular local area. Today's column, for example, is more about Chicago than DC, but the subject is universal: Complaints. Of which there is no shortage here in Cleveland Park.
A Chorus of Complaints
Ever since Snowmageddon, I've been hearing a loud chorus of complaints: about snow, about cabin fever, and shoveling, and people who don't shovel, and people who save parking spaces with lawn chairs, and from those who put those lawn chairs in their shoveled-out spaces moaning that space-takers don't respect the amount of work it took to shovel out that spot. We've had complaints about city snow plows that never arrived, followed by complaints about the city snow plow that did arrive but left a giant snow barrier in its wake. You've read all these things and more on the listserv. (You haven't? Just visit Cleveland-Park and click on the "join this group" link at the top of your screen.) Add to that all the other complaints of everyday life, snow or no snow (late night noise, early morning noise, misdelivered mail, people with too many items in the 15-or-less line, signs that say "15 or less" when they should say "15 or fewer," -- the list goes on and on until life itself seems like one unending chorus of complaint. What if somebody were to put all those complaints to music? Make them sound nice by turning our whines into an actual song? Well, someone already has. And not just one somebody with one song but a whole lot of somebodies, enough to make up a choir. And not just one choir either, but a network of them from all over the world. Where and how? On the Internet, of course. (Isn't everything on the Internet?) Take Chicago's Complaints Choir, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvWVxHEaWDU
Want more? Pick your city or region from the main site of Complaints Choirs:
http://www.complaintschoir.org/choirs.html
I like Philadelphia's Complaints Choir, and the one from the "As It Happens" Radio Show of Canada. But some of the videos on the ComplaintsChoir.org site don't work – that's my complaint!
How can we get a complaints choir of DC? I'd organize one but I don't have a single one of the skills needed to assemble a choir, write and arrange the song, videotape the result and upload it to Complaintschoir.org. But somebody ought to do it! Isn't that the nature of complaints? That you always want somebody to do something? Until that happens, I hope these other choirs of complaint fill the void.
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First published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, www.cleveland-park.com, on Feb. 26, 2010.
Send me your comments, complaints, compliments, funny stories, yada-yada: AllLifeIsLocal at fastmail dot net
A Chorus of Complaints
Ever since Snowmageddon, I've been hearing a loud chorus of complaints: about snow, about cabin fever, and shoveling, and people who don't shovel, and people who save parking spaces with lawn chairs, and from those who put those lawn chairs in their shoveled-out spaces moaning that space-takers don't respect the amount of work it took to shovel out that spot. We've had complaints about city snow plows that never arrived, followed by complaints about the city snow plow that did arrive but left a giant snow barrier in its wake. You've read all these things and more on the listserv. (You haven't? Just visit Cleveland-Park and click on the "join this group" link at the top of your screen.) Add to that all the other complaints of everyday life, snow or no snow (late night noise, early morning noise, misdelivered mail, people with too many items in the 15-or-less line, signs that say "15 or less" when they should say "15 or fewer," -- the list goes on and on until life itself seems like one unending chorus of complaint. What if somebody were to put all those complaints to music? Make them sound nice by turning our whines into an actual song? Well, someone already has. And not just one somebody with one song but a whole lot of somebodies, enough to make up a choir. And not just one choir either, but a network of them from all over the world. Where and how? On the Internet, of course. (Isn't everything on the Internet?) Take Chicago's Complaints Choir, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvWVxHEaWDU
Want more? Pick your city or region from the main site of Complaints Choirs:
http://www.complaintschoir.org/choirs.html
I like Philadelphia's Complaints Choir, and the one from the "As It Happens" Radio Show of Canada. But some of the videos on the ComplaintsChoir.org site don't work – that's my complaint!
How can we get a complaints choir of DC? I'd organize one but I don't have a single one of the skills needed to assemble a choir, write and arrange the song, videotape the result and upload it to Complaintschoir.org. But somebody ought to do it! Isn't that the nature of complaints? That you always want somebody to do something? Until that happens, I hope these other choirs of complaint fill the void.
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First published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, www.cleveland-park.com, on Feb. 26, 2010.
Send me your comments, complaints, compliments, funny stories, yada-yada: AllLifeIsLocal at fastmail dot net
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