Something about the word nova - as in November

 Looking behind and also ahead: Could the word November have a direct connection to the Latin word 'nova,' meaning new? 

That certainly applies to  current days when we  say goodbye to summer and prepare for  new seasons ahead. And what a dramatic time it's likely to be- in all senses of the word. (Yes to  El Nino snowfalls and to a blizzard of top notch theater productions on local stages.)

Bears know for sure, as they prepare  to hibernate in winter by collecting a food supply that will last through to spring. The bear image is  pertinent in many ways: a portent of hope as well as danger. (After all, bears must count on a fresh supply of fruit and other favorites goodies to be available in spring.)  Which is why a quick silhouette of the animal on a cloudy backdrop  during the latest production at Folger Shakespeare Library's theater  of 'The Winter's Tale' is so effective and meaningful. It's just a quick look, an omen of sorts. Good and bad intertwined. Human folly and humanity's ability to change - to prevail. Art and nature in an uneasy balance -  a constantly evolving relationship.

Which may be something of a stretch when it comes to discussing characters and their actions in one of Shakespeare's seldom seen comedies. Though Folger last put on the show in 2018 when the Library's executive director Michael Witmore declared - surprisingly  - that the play was  his favorite among all of Shakespeare's works. A surprise because to amateur eyes, the script seems a bit uneven and difficult to comprehend overall. The first half is a tragedy (a guy declares his wife an adulterer with almost no evidence, sends her to be killed and, as a consequence, loses his son as well), the second a resolution of sorts (guy repents -  how and why? -  and wins back her favor as well as gaining a daughter). The second part is played out in a sort of comedic celebration, oddly enough.

(Witmore said then 'as an artist you are changing things all the time' - that is the thrust of both art and nature, and the relationship between the two.  He takes this play's theme to be the author's most direct conversation with an audience, but the interpretation is pretty high-minded and might not mean much to anyone not much of Shakespeare scholar, as Witmore is.)

So kudos to the brave cast tackling the work in Washington DC through December 17, a tease to what  is promised  come the new year, 2024. Aha, there is that symbolism again: a sheltered fabled building - home to more of the  first folios (printings)  of Shakespeare's canon than anywhere else - will blossom anew. Make way for a rock star renewal.... it is also the time when Dr. Witmore is scheduled to leave his post and hand it over to the next person to head one of the city's (country's?) most beloved scholarly  institutions. 

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An image of a bear stays with me long after seeing the play. I take it to be a sign of strength and perseverance - in whatever seems most valuable: truth, kindness, curiosity. I'm reminded, too of a necessary look-back, through several 'winters of our discontent' during what is now simply labeled the pandemic. What is the paramount memory from those years?   

I tried to capture the feeling of the days in monthly (usually) notes on this blog. It spoke to the pleasure of reading - and my inaccurate count of titles reaching upward to 300 books. What had I gained but the necessary ingredients (see 'bear'!) for a long mostly inward isolating hibernation. Are we now 'free' or is it merely another short period to roam about planning for whatever is the next siege?

Meanwhile, much visiting about and collective memories are possible, more than ever, in Washington DC and environs. Attending a play with a live audience has satisfactions of its own. Even time out in a theater watching a film with strangers. And the rewarding search for public events that affirm companionship and strengthen the imagination.  A notice about a college alumnae book club that will take place in a public space - yes, a downtown city park - for an exchange of actual books. In those surroundings it would seem any strangers could join.

At the perennially misunderstood National Building Museum (no connection to the Smithsonian, sorry), a homage to brick buildings as well as a lecture on the connection between music and architecture. Stay tuned, indeed.

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    And a few more words about the magic generated occasionally in a windowless ground floor 'salon inside an equally unusual Washington DC  residential enclave called the Westchester. (The site consists of several apartment buildings near the high-and-mighty Washington Cathedral not far from Georgetown.)

The salon typically caters to men and women (of all ages) who are primarily local - that is, to say, inhabitants of the enclave since no advertising of its services can be found elsewhere. It happened that I made the acquaintance of the salons' primary caretaker and leaseholder through one such impressive person,now deceased, the former owner of two good-size upstairs properties upstairs.   RUmor or fact would have it that many such people never leave or have to leave the coop for years - except, perhaps, to check in at a doctor's office or hospital.

So you don't necessarily expect the wholesome welcome spirit of a place that really has no norms: all ages, cultures, backgrounds are represented in this hideaway. YOu don't expect to sit down while a slim energetic 70-year-old snips away at  the top of your head and quite suddenly, improvises his vision of what life must be after death. "There has got to be something, I've got to believe," and all he knows for sure that he would like to be buried under a tree - or become a tree in some fashion. Earlier W. has been busily trimming - more like harvesting a field  - the busy white locks of a gentleman friend seated in the stylist's chair. They talk about the possibility of going to Cuba, to hiring someone who knows where all the good music is played and touring the country while W. learns a specific instrument either only found or was born there.

W, however, has no US passport. He is Peruvian by birth and never bothered once he married an American woman. He is afraid the US may not want to let him back into the country where he has a good life as a grandfather, a professional guitar player, whose hair grooming methods he learned from, at first, his sister ("because you have to have a job to fall back on," is how I understood her reasoning to be) then later from celebrity stylist London-born Vidal Sassoon. Sassoon had shaken up the industry before he died - at 84, of leukemia,a multimillionaire - with dramatic geometric cuts that undercut the stuffy balloon looks preceding his era.  W. is also worried that, as a cancer survivor, he might not want to be far from his home turf should a relapse occur or anything might happen that would keep him away for a long time. Besides, as he often says, he loves his wife (a semi-retired accountant)  and laughs when he says it - often - as well as loving her resistance to having any artificial color in her hair

All this when I finally - a half hour later- sit down with the  long plastic protective bib and subject myself to the wicked chemicals that will give my unkempt tresses a soft blonde look. W is always full of chat (and always reminds he his wife objects to coloring but he still insists I should have hair color to match my eyebrows and skin, which seems an impossible task since my eyebrows are dyed daily with brush and my skin is objectively white..)  My chat is about the new stove I just had installed and how bewildering digital  dials (not really dials or buttons at all but something akin to finger pressure on a mysterious black surface) can be to a neophyte who is also a Luddite.

"Why did you have to get a new stove?" I hear from a tall think man listening in. He comes from Wheaton, a suburb of DC, and knows the personnel here well, it seems. His hair doesn't look at all neglected but he obviously is the next client. So goes the give and take. Letitia, the Philippine born license holder, and her sister Elizabeth run the place. Tall Man teases her about not taking any time off, asking about her son (a physician in training in Norfolk  - four years to go minimum). She demures, taking a rare minute to sit down before going  moving over to another set of mirrors where she will put a client in tiny rollers and significantly - I've no doubt - brighten the woman's day with a combed out hairstyle.

Letitia is a workhorse, up to to her job at 7 until closing, everyday but Sunday, W only does a turn on Friday so his time  n W insists on a photo before the next nearly hair-bald man moves over to the chair. "He is a famous pianist," W says. No names are exchanged though it's a rigorous challenge trying. Piano man teaches a the Levine school nearby. We never really hear how anyone else came to cherish W's ministrations  we are so engaged in the moment. I learn in the course of a minute how Piano Man learned from a Japanese man (profession?) that to strike your hand on the opposite arm several times daily will alleviate creeping arthritis. Truly I think it works. I say how my Pilates trainer always spends time exercising arms and fingers  in my weekly workout, and how the fabled Taylor Swift is a master of manipulation with her left hand in her recent concert appearances around the globe. I've recently seen the film version, fixated on the way she cajoles, entices, connects with vast audiences this way.

W. questions with a sly laugh about what else such a talent might do...breaking a potentially serious conversation and sending me on my way. A pity, because it turns out that piano man had his childhood debut on the stage of a theater in a town in Montana where y son currently lives - and that I taught once upon a time at the Uof M in Missoula during the same years where he was 'matriculating.' I never learn his name but a solid connection is made. How peculiar such bonds in so few moments. What happened to him after graduation I may never know.

But first: photos, always, each client in turn.

Number Ten Come and Nearly Gone

         Which is what happens when the world erupts in turmoil and a person's everyday life shrinks in comparison.

    How Oct. 7 will be forever marked on the calendar of humankind's indescribable inhumanity to man (women, children, the sick and old, even the unborn). Who knows the consequences beyond whatever the curse of the gods sends down - and allows mere underlings to blame whomever  they chose.

    It may seem to have taken a tremendous  ego drive  this month to want to travel forthwith on a 'trip-for-no-reason' to a Mediterranean country blessedly free at the moment (and for past decades) of strife - beyond, that is, an election to office of Spain's political leader.  To take time off to share in positivity, the attitude of living life to the fullest in a minimalist way. That is - to enjoy each day on its own with no expectations  and no connection to the tragedies taking place elsewhere.

September 'Maybees'....

 

    So goes hopes for a predictable season when heat has abated and what counts as normal could return...

how banal one's hopes can seem these days.

    Many my thoughts still focus on the uneasy transition between so called rural and urban life - i.e. travel between small town Montana (largest city that is) and the paradoxical place that is Washington DC. How same and how different the two can be. A Native American (Crow) artist named Ben Pease, speaking recently at the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, described Billings as a 'border town, ' representing a clash of cultures between the two worlds. His talk was on how much art and culture are related but seldom considered in that light. The importance of images and their influence in our lives. The border, of course, between life then and now, when there is a revival of interest and consternation over the past existence of schools on or near reservations intended to try taking the 'native' out of young children and turning them into what passed as 'regular people, stripped of their cultural background.

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    A more than slight change of subject. To wit: the curious palavering involved in getting some straight answers on minor health matters (which, to some in other circumstances, might seem major). A late night barefoot run-in with a very solid chair leg produces a broken baby toe. It wiggles quite a bit and starts to swell. Still, I can sleep and desperately want to do so in spite of the ache that can seem like pain depending on my position in the bed. I forget that I should immediately surround the feckless bone with ice and keep doing so on days to come. But tomorrow I am hosting a neighborhood backyard 'get to know each other' party and by no means can I not be on my toes, so to speak (literally and figuratively).. The event, held during one of the record heat days, goes into twilight to take advantage of the absent sun. A slight breeze comes up. Cleaning up afterwards takes energy and action so the toe is left to worry about itself.   

Online I see little can be done, or so I read: little toe has to be taped to its 'buddy,' neighbor, which doesn't appear very solid itself. Still, I mostly ignore what I now surround with the tightest sandals in my closet. Only later does it occur to me to think there might be complications. Medstar Urgent Care is not far away. I have left  a message for my primary care doc whose nurse repeats what online med web sites tell me: not much can be done unless a metatarsal might be involved. (The slim vital connecting link to the rest of the foot.) But how would I know unless I went for an Xray, and so back and forth. Three days later I'm in the waiting room, then on the X-ray table, then awaiting diagnosis, which  seems not to show terrible news. At least I read it that way: there has been no 'displacement,' I read in between the jargon of health care reporting. Which I take to mean not too complicated and maybe even a clean break. I send a copy off to the portal where I expect my doctor will see it and might even respond. 

No such luck. I buy more tape and even gauze because it looks good - like I should be cosseting the digit more respectfully.  I find that I can easily tear the tape by hand (after struggling with scissors) and can even try this late in the day to soothe it with more ice. Even at night: a cellophane wrapper holding ice that inevitably leaks onto the bed. The Urgent care center calls twice - two different people - reminding me that I have been referred to as osteopedic doc. I hold out for simpler solutions and instead keep a boot on my foot, as it seems I saved this awkward man-size (seemingly too large for my thin foot) device from another such accident several years ago. Yes, Medstar has the record on that. But didn't I manage then not to overdo any invasive action - on the advice of another osteopedic  doc.. And didn't I survive in fine shape, so much so that I am now a walking fool - so that I could survive a pandemic by strolling/hiking miles a day outside?

All of this to say how I was eager to test the latest medical experience - recent CDC advice to sign up for free government Covid tests (noting expiration dates may not be important, depending.) and could do so by ordering them online (as long as I am an individual and not a company) or by calling an 800 number. The latter is what I choose, considering it the ultimate test of this behemoth's efficiency ( and in view of the fact that distribution of the latest CDC recommended vaccine booster is apparently mired in confusion.) Hah - and hooray. I'm delighted to say the robotic voice completed the job by phone, enough so that I have tracking info, expecting the goods in less than a week's time. An (almost) done deal.

Well, what do you  know...

August is an august transition between our fascination with July and whatever is to come...

 

    Of course the title makes little sense but it does fill in some time until we can really come to grips with a new month, the harbinger of the future when schools are back in session and Congress wrestles with itself and duties to escape or ignore.

    Meanwhile, vacation troops are moving around everywhere - full flights, errant weather,   unreconciled needs. The grizzled man on my left aboard a short stretch ( $371 for 50 minutes of airtime on Southwest, between Buffalo and BWI) complained how he had had a bad accident recently and how it took several months to get recompense. He lived in Florida, was returning from what I took to be a family visit. He seemed to want me to know why he was bent over, awaiting the wheelchair to speed him onward. On my right was a woman from South Carolina returning from a visit with family  up north where she previously lived and so had been immersed in doctor checkups, with former stalwart helpers. Lupus, she said - and there are two strains. She had great-granddaughters presumably scattered around. A five hour airport stay awaited her until her connection. "Last time I just ate crab cake." Now just why strangers felt the need to dwell on their miseries but I dared assume that each was fully engrossed in his/her physical health to the less interesting subject of the wellbeing of the country at large.

Of struggles elsewhere, a portion of my sympathy goes to the city of New York facing criticism from so many ends. The New York Times recently devoted an entire editorial asking for, it would seem in their word, a 'resurrection of the greatest city in the world.' It opts for 'grit and ingenuity,' two qualities I would guess are the ones most often in short supply. Especially in the summer's heat madness, where escape from the immediate environment is more pressing. So go back to the drawing board, you leaders and developers. We NYC lovers are helpless except to cheer you on.

And back at the ranch figuratively speaking: where I am part of the month is suburbia Montana,  far from the fabled mountain surround, where some residential communities are landscaped with a mix of real grass and stones, pines and aspens, picture perfect. Where the houses all seem constructed of similar materials in a different design but somehow can all seem similar. What unites them is a stone pillar by the curb within which is the mailbox erected just-so to allow a postal truck driver (likely out of the familiar uniform) need not get outside to deliver the paper goods. And the giant trash pickup conveyance has similar  restrictions: cans of uniform size and height that allow the single driver to control a huge mechanical arm to reach up, out, down, around and over dumping contents from the comfort of his seat.

Ah but rural suburbia can be different in so many ways. Conversation styles vary but the custom is to acknowledge strangers while walking or biking on paths built by the town for outdoor exercise. Drivers exercise restraint when backed up in what is considered heavy traffic:  no or little horn beeping. Patience wins the day where, of course, the views are fine so why complain. A 'town ranch' is no surprise to see in those burbs, little or big. Horses grazing in a sublimely wide grassy field. And on some days of mottled weather a mountain can resemble a cloud and vice versa.

My July - and Why

    Why so much heat in so many places, why now?  To be determined...as 90 degrees and higher takes over and humidity most days is way up beyond comfort. What is the 'good' about summer anyway, except for the longer light.

    Apart from the discomfort, what use, too, is the well-meaning off-putting question a person sometimes says to another person he/she knows only slightly.  "How Are You?" or "How Have You Been?"

    Well, I could say, "I've an itch in one eye that is bothersome but not fatal. My microbiome seems to have taken over my life, becoming unruly in the most embarrassing ways. It seems to have its own mind about things. And I've arthritis in one index finger that shows slight swelling. My bunion isn't getting any better either. Skin dry and liable to bruise at the slightest bump. "

    Better perhaps might be the answer "Well, I know how I've been but how about you?" Wait to see what unfolds.  You might get a litany of woes that will take your mind off your own physical and mental condition. Surely, that someone has troubles far more difficult than your own. You just have to ask.

    Or maybe switch the conversation to: What are you up to? Because that is a more positive approach   - the assumption that a person before you has energy, is not ailing, conceivably would like to talk about his/her own interests and might lead to  a discussion of the interests you two have in common.

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    No photo needed - if you are alive and aware while walking the streets of the US capital city, called, dismissively, a 'District'. Much to see and appreciate if you are in good enough health to stomach the air, pollution, smoke, etc. Go out early or late. Another question often heard in social scenes:  'And what do you do all day?"  That is directed at almost anyone without a Title, so beholden to denizens of the fabled bureaucracy.   The implication is that, if a person is not noticeably employed, he or she must be 'subsidized,' whether privately or publicly, or in that indefinite phase called retirement.  Hence, what comes often is a sense of freedom not to be pegged at all. Often a longtime resident finds he/she relates well to a neighborhood simply by being a longterm rental or owner. A more innocent inquiry such as 'where are you from? stems from a common assumption that no one likely has been born in the DC. It sparks a conversation along neutral lines and can lead to a rich conversation of one kind or another.

    Or just look at the vitality of the sidewalks: the guardians of the pre-school age children going by in little wagons like trains or walking hand-in-hand in groups, all with their water bottles and (some) sunhat. Do they have sunscreen on them, I wonder? Are they even cognizant of their surroundings, with buses and cars whizzing by?  Then the dog walkers doing choreography as they marshal their pets adroitly on pedestrian walkways. The Eastern Market plaza one morning was filled with young people dancing in some elaborate joyful formation in the  tune of an inchoate  boombox. The dancers singing in identical t-shirt each with a partner and some shorter ones matched with tall. Adolescents. "Singing for the Light,"  as the shirts read. What was this all about I wondered.  "Singing for Jesus," I was told when I asked a woman standing by who looked like a chaperone. I didn't ask further, thinking maybe a Christian summer camp  embracing public space with abandon. They looked thoroughly engaged, and happy.  Likely they had practiced often together and took as their right the chance to show off on public property. Probably no permit  was requested - likely not even required.

   Having a sense of wonder:  It's all about being in the moment. And understanding why that  sense or abandonment to the scene is so difficult to acquire. How, perhaps,  only with time and years a person can really learn to live in the moment, to appreciate  diversity  in the widest way. The shapes of people and buildings, the sounds of city or country life like a symphony (not always pleasant).  To go with the flow. That terrible cliche that mindfulness 'experts' have exploited for gain. Whatever the conditions, a hot mid-summer time has some advantages. Fewer people in public, many on vacation. A better time to shop for the everyday necessities and repairs. Taking each day as it comes. Knowing you are at nature's whim in so many ways. 

     Take time to make time: engage others, try the small talk with strangers. Show a smile when the children go by. Say hello to dogs since their owners likely will respond. Make friends in superficial ways in order to improve your image of yourself. Surprise can be its own reward. It takes considerable self-effacement. .Create your own wellbeing by assuming  strangers like to be surprised. It's primal.

 So to the market on a Sunday afternoon for good cheese and sword bites but also to be a social animal. From the cheese man two slivers of the same kind of cheese (he drops it from a knife into my outstretched palm) and an exchange with a woman asking for something I don't quite get - it is her accent, rounded vowels. I look at her and smile as if to ask what she is ordering. 'It's my New Zealand accent," she confesses, and, yes, I say it is different from the Australian, at which point she smiles at my observation."Best place to get the best cheese," I remark and she nods in agreement. We could go on from there but by now her purchase is in her hand. Hooray for soccer I say - New Zealand now being host to women's soccer World Cup now getting frost page status.

 I turn to leave so not to miss the chance to talk to the young man  vendor at an outside stand the frozen meat (organic, etc.) and CBD bottles beside tables of wonderfully fresh greens and radishes. A vendor at the cheese stand inside suddenly appears - looking to buy. I pick up a $6 bag of basil - and I'm on my way home. At the traffic-free intersection, closed off on weekends, I stop to admire a small group of solidly mature men in red t-shirts singing  accapella with a director offering introductory remarks before each tune. No pieces of music in sight. Simple old songs rendered full of heart. 'Take Me Back to West Virginia.." .  So goes an amble through  my 'hood. But I always look around carefully to see where the 'mystery man' - bearded and athletic - has claimed space for his shopping cart (and more) full of assorted (miscellaneous with a capital M) belongings. At one point, on a quiet sun-filled day, he sat fully clothes atop one of the splash pad's sprays looking fully content, almost like a portable statue.

So go the wonders of a city stroll.

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Not so wonderful the slow release of water from a ceiling pipe above the downstairs kitchen and front 'sitting room.' It made me scared, unhinged - emotional than I expected - as though my own body were being invaded, stripped down. A sanguine plumber appeared the next day to rip apart the offending spot that sent a load of dirty water onto a plastic tarp on the floor. It's  surreal and revelatory to be confronted by the  floor boards of a 150-year-old wooden house. As though one were somehow looking back on the history of the manse. An encounter with ghosts in physical form. Solid and strong boards, one hopes, from a time when old hard trees were used for construction in my Capitol Hill neighborhood. The offending pipe not so much so - blackened with age, emitting ugly marks on pristine walls of white and gold. The plumber measures and saws a small copper replacement  to stop the leak. A gaping hole remains for days - oppressive in its way of showing the fragility of things native to the world.  I'm still shocked at my own fragility in response, confused about the source of my reaction. That big ugly gash - like a wound on the house and on my spirit. I did not calm down until two days later.

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Closing out the longest month  warmest (it seems to have been), I read a 'cool' story about the time recently a Los Angeles Tesla made waves (tracks?)  in the small SE Montana town of Ekalaka, pop. 400, as reported in the state's very independent and substantial online publication called the Free Press. How a couple visiting a museum in that town were delighted to find unusually enough an electric charger attended to a public light post in what passes for a main street. Lo and behold the curiosity, fascination and disturbing revelation that perhaps this couple, innocently enough, were 'stealing' a considerable amount of the locale's electricity supply. Innocent because who would even be able to estimate the sum? Turns out that the conscientious couple appealed to authorities when asked if they knew what they were doing. (No,not really, just doing the usual necessary plug-in operation.)  Somehow a calculation was made, so  $60 was handed over to rectify their error....

Ah, the contrast between the large and small, the emotional and physical contrast for people like me who journey between such worlds.

What happened when a Tesla came to Ekalaka

A Los Angeles couple, an electric vehicle and an unattended utility outlet energized the gossip mill in the 400-person eastern Montana town last week.

by Eric Dietrich07.27.2023

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The front page of the Ekalaka Eagle featuring an “unidentified electric vehicle” discovered charging on the population-400 town’s Main Street.  Credit: Eric Dietrich / MTFP

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An “unidentified electric vehicle” — actually a Tesla Model Y — accused of siphoning power from the local electric utility energized the gossip mill in the small eastern Montana town of Ekalaka last week, prompting front page newspaper coverage, a frantic apology and, in the end, much jawboning about the future of transportation in one of the most remote counties in the lower 48 states.

    

    

June Too Soon

 

    In a pre-Solstice wave of decent weather (ie no or low humidity), the wildfires in eastern Canada plaguing the East Coast  the have sent a reminder that changing climate conditions are ever with us to 'temper' the most sanguine of minds. Smoky haze, high pollution counts. Bye bye to blue. And yet, pleasant surprises are ever with us, too. A person can always find reason to celebrate in new ways. Hence,  on June 2, my seemingly inconsequential but remarkable trip home to DC from the MSP  airport in an all-new A321N (NEO - yes, the proper title) Delta aircraft. Two weeks old and the first time transporting commercial passengers. An overhead interior filled with soothing soft checkerboard patterned ceiling; wider aisles; quieter sound.  All together a novel experience. I felt compelled to celebrate - to ask for a bubbly drink. The attendant happily obliged with a small tall can of sparkling wine produced by an all-women California enterprise, appropriately titled 'Femme.'  See photos...

Skipping Ahead...to May

     How did April slip away? Thirty days, into a morass of decrepitude, overall laziness, insufficient energy - to do what?  How does a person mark monthly achievements anyway? A short memorable excursion to the Big Apple in ideal spring weather, celebrating the long ago passing of a friend from Covid most likely pneumonia as a cover. Consult the wee datebook and find no discernible uptick in enlightenment or possibly even what might pass for joy among the living. But joy often is transitory and barely discernible. It can happen in the most unexpected ways.

Which brings me to what many some people might consider an entirely superficial pleasure that can take up time without any conscious notion of time passing - going shopping. What's more, shopping in a superbly equipped Goodwill emporium. The word emporium is used judiciously and correctly - for such outlets, many of them, sell used goods operating in a very formal fashion under their own terms. On a single ground level are arrayed clearly the items for men as separate from women, though often the two are mixed. (As in: extra large t-shirts perfect for women wanting a loose feeling over swim suits or even as substitute  sleepwear.)  

The back of the store is a well regulated jumble of miscellaneous home and hobby goods - the usual mix of frames, dishes, TVs, utensils, what-have-you. Everything you didn't think you needed until now. There is no need to rush through the place, barely even any need at all when you first enter with a friend, taking an hour out of the day to  browse with nothing in mind but the filmiest goal of all: to buy something at a bargain price, to feel somehow free of the overpriced commercial marketplace. A treasure hunt - a game women play best.

We see few men the morning when a friend and I walk into an especially welcoming Goodwill store just off to Route 50 in Arlington, Va. Shoes to note are placed above the racks of, well just about every item of clothing a person could want. Signs point to the bargain color of the day - lavender strings are 50 % off, we see. My friend has an especially astute eye for worthy purchases; her sense of style is innate. It is admirable and not transferable.

 We both have a casual incentive for prowling widely here: she is about to travel late spring to a cosmopolitan city where temps can be cooler than average. Probably she could find suitable duds in her own closet but the thrill is finding one 'extra' that will mark the trip as special. Besides there is satisfaction an ego jump, in choosing a treasure out of all the mayhem spread before us. The mingling of garments is such that seasons don't matter. She can pick out like a flying gull going for a fish in the sea the singular perfect enhancement to her wardrobe, which she always does. This time it is a light wool black and white top that registers 'designer' even though the label isn't  well known name. Sometimes the thrill is pouncing on fabric that is above and beyond the polyester norm. Other times it is casing the aisles long enough to find two unrelated items -  Merino wool sweater and heavy cotton Adidas trousers, for example. Casual wear elevated with that interior gleam of 'I've just invented something, just for me.'

It helps to have that motivation. In my case I  was intent on sniffing out the right color top to match the multi=colored silk scarf that had inspired the previous purchase at a high-end well-branded women's clothing of a boldly colored linen trouser suit and jacket. No real style but what I challenged myself to create on my own. It was never a question of real need - maybe only the need to brag  about buying a skirt for 6 dollars, a sweater for 3.

You cruise the aisles anonymously. There is no pressure to buy, to try. At the end of the hour you might well end up, as I did, with seven items costing a mere $40, including tax and a wee donation to round out the sum. The receipt tells me of the special savings - how I somehow managed to save $3.75 on each of two items mysteriously listed as 'women's sweater and women's pajamas. Never mind that original purpose is entirely irrelevant. The cashier stuffs my lot in a large plastic  bag and tells me to 'have a good day,' or a familiar pleasantry that somehow cheers us on our way out the door with a sense of gratification and a sense of feeling time well spent.

Besides, it's all going to a good cause isn't it?  The stacks of donor merchandise piled up outside the building under big tents, handled by employees in blue short with experienced efficiency: a reminder of how (but really?) the stuff can be recycled or somehow reinvented into funds for the less fortunate, as the saying goes. Money for training and rehab. Whatever. The name Goodwill says it all.