City Treasures

of the mid-March week: the sun comes out, the wind dies down, and the inner city resident has a free afternoon thinking to join the two-hour long Drawing Workshop at the National Gallery of Art www.nga.gov, free for first comers. (offered monthly, several days at a time, through May, in the West Building, East Garden Court).
It was Friday in tourist season (spring break, etc.) the museum was alive with visitors. Alas, I arrived too late to sign, all 35 spaces had been taken earlier. They would become part of a class on "Point of View: Cezanne's Landscapes" using two kinds of charcoal, a chamois cloth, and large sheets of paper, under the instruction of a museum staffer and a practicing artist. The session began with an earnest lecture  on Cezanne in the busy noise-impacted gallery while participants adjusted to the portable stools supplied by the gallery, juggling drawing boards on their knees. Then artist Dan  did a brief illustration of how to look at the shadings of light in a typical quite visible and beautiful landscape - modulated planes, mostly pastels, a concentrated assembly of houses in Provence.  Next, the impromptu class of avid art aspirants - a mix of ages, mainly female - had 20 minutes to try to recreate on paper what they saw.
I grew tired of watching  - shunned by numbers, forced to standby position - and wandered off into the sunshine, finding myself stopped on Constitution Avenue by a Presidential motorcade making its way from Capitol Hill to the White House in  full regalia, ambulance included. All traffic in downtown Washington was arrested for at least one half hour though I hear not a single protesting horn; we natives may not be amused but we certainly are conditioned. And the procession, at least for visitors, is spectacular , with the gaggle of police cycles fore and aft the shrouded funereal black vehicles,  flags flying. It almost seems as though the Marine Band - 'the President's own"! - should be regular accompaniment on this ritual drive.
Headed down F Street, thinking to buy a pound of coffee beans from MS Swing's emporium a ways over at 17th and G NW, I duck into another local venue - one that tourists often miss. It is Fahrney's (www.farneyspens.com) famous pen shop, marked by an outsized green fountain pen suspended over the street. Within are some of the most exotic - and expensive - hand toys  anywhere. It's almost pornographic, so enticing the tools. I eyed celebrity-named versions of the MontBlanc (blue cartridges available for lawyers' needs when signing original documents, etc.) now 30 percent off its $900 price. What would Jonathan Swift say - the namesake on one of the sleek black and silver models? And with matching cuff links, a bit more. I settled instead for an slim $18 stylus ballpoint in purple, buying a second one in white (both useful when handling smartphones with greasy fingers) that the obliging clerk volunteered to wrap in either green striped or red paper. "It's a birthday present," I had mentioned. Back came a handsome package encased in a mountain of carefully arranged twirling ribbon. It slipped neatly into a green-on-white bag - "Fahrney's Pens: The Write Place Since 1929," noticeably bereft of the usual web site marker.
 Swing's was in full motion as usual: customers chatting over cups of various sizes at plain chairs and tables, the smell of fresh roasted coffee drawing people in like a drug. The pastry isn't much; besides good caffeine, the lure most days is Loraine, longtime employee dressed handsomely in glinting jewelry and TV-ready makeup. Such bliss, this sense of belonging in the bureaucratic kingdom and, then, the shock, a necessary one:
In front of the White House, outside the gates, two women with microphones call out   the names of all the Syrians killed to date in that country's ongoing civil war.
The world is always with us in this town.

More Metro Soundings

 Abroad underground: That was the lot of a group of British tourists encountered at Metro's Metro stop during the  latest snow day to stop Washington in its tracks. But not, fortunately, the subway tracks. (The trains have to be kept running in bad weather to keep tracks from freezing.) Buses were out of operation and no sensible car owner drove anywhere except on 'urgent business' - i.e. subway and hospital personnel. This high-spirited troop of visitors were on their way to the only museum open in the city - by a fluke, or perhaps because security guards made it in - the Air & Space Museum. With a guide's help, they had figured their chances of actually seeing something other than their Roslyn hotel room. Escaping the last weeks of steady rain at home may have contributed to their giddiness and make snow seem a blessing.
 That's when their Metro train got stuck; it would not, could not move. A joke of the transportation gods, perhaps. They were on their way to a quilting exhibit at the Lancaster County Convention Center - by way of whatever diversions Washington and Philadelphia offer. The women were quilters (cotton only, three layers) who entice husbands to go everywhere with them for quilt manifestations. A D.C. native popped into their locked Metro car when a trainman had manually opened half a door for a few minutes. Loud guffaws ensued: this local woman trying to be clever by jumping aboard   found herself a prisoner, just as they were. 

Two Super Photo Shows

Go quickly before the spring rush to the National Gallery of Art www.nga.gov where a splendid eye-popping new exhibit opens next week that is sure to warm the heart of all urbanophiles : A first-time ever - in terms of depth and content - of the black and white photographs of Garry Winogrand, late of New York, Texas, Arizona and California. Feast on the loving but often wicked eye of this 'street-smart' urbanite who could also put the soul of rural towns memorably in a viewer's head. There is little sentiment and a  lot of soul in his work. "An epic picture of American life" from the '50s until his death in 1984, in words of guest curator, Leo Rubinfien, a longtime friend of Winogrand.  He portrayed "the spirit of the nation"  and "a set of values that had to do with living itself." There was a love of the immediate experience, and a rejection of the idea of someone 'out to make good photos.' He probably invented the genre of street photography but not as a voyeur or exploiter. "The core theme is freedom itself," Rubinfein noted in a press preview. Don't miss either the long video of Winogrand teaching and smiling - but hardly "lecturing' -  included in the show.
Everything here is cool in the very best sense of the word - a word that has many dimensions and declensions.
Luckily, the National Portrait Gallery has recently mounted its own take on 'cool' with an exhibit of close-ups of Americans living and dead who best embody cool. (Credit goes to jazz musician Lester Young for coining the word in the context that most people seldom question today.) Jimi Hendrix is the poster 'boy' while Madonna is one of the first women portraits to catch the eye as you enter the building's upstairs hall. Who doesn't want to be cool or, at the very least, enjoy images of famous Americans whose very faces alone show us its meaning.

Winter's Discontent

Shakespeare's 'Richard III' - now in a splendid new production at Washington's Folger Shakespeare Theatre - www.folger.edu/theatre - says it best in his ominous opening lines about winter being the time of 'our discontent,' thereby labeling his own and England's (read you and the USA)  political and atmospheric situation as something less than ideal.
Indeed, we are now fully into the current season's unpredictable blasts of weather and woe. But why lose heart when there are such inventive and absorbing stagings of the classics to be seen locally? The staging of the play, which runs through March 9, 2014, is magnificent - on a par with the performance by New York actor Drew Cortese in the title role. For the first time in its history, the Folger is transformed into a theater-in-the-round with fantastic light and sound in an innovative design that gives Arena Stage a tough competitor. (It led one critic to state off-the-cuff, how Arena now looks "more suburban" than urban - ie a bit old-fashioned and staid.) Audiences should rally to this work to marvel at the scene while they ponder the grim moral of the gruesome tale. Do unto others as they would do unto you, at least in these historic royal precincts, and you end up quite dead.

NAPOLI AMORE

This city talks - constantly, rapidly, urgently. But considering all the bustle -  plus horrendous traffic due greatly to very long term road and subway construction projects - I'd wager that "anxiety" isn't much of a disease in these parts. This is Southern Italy, after all, where self-expression is the norm. Where letting it all out in voice and gesture is both therapy and entertainment. It was surprising on a single day's visit recently (October 2013) the paucity of honks, given chaotic driving and parking styles; how laid-back (relatively) were the taxi drivers, two of them relishing the chance to tell about their  trips to America  - one on a honeymoon that took him to New York and Key West - and then pointing with pride to parts of Naples where they grew up and where they still live.  Families. Groundedness. Government is a joke but who cares if your kids are cute and the trains run (mostly on time). "Two million inhabitants and six million cars, " said one driver, laughing. He didn't even mention multiple-million motorcycles. It's a fair guess to say that the best escapes are underground. An immense subterranean landscape exists, maybe more tunneling than anywhere outside of wartime Vietnam, available for tourists to admire. The still-evolving subway is a marvel, limited as it is - being only two lines, one of which runs for the moment on a single track. The vast corridors of brilliant blue tiles are a delight, mirroring the expansive Mediterranean seacoast outside. Like much else in Italy, style often substitutes for substance - a country's vast potential draining away in dramatics.

Bezos Rules

So Washington Post's new owner talks: Surprise me, he says. Tell me things I can't learn elsewhere. He points to profiles and features - hardly the bottom line of daily journalism but, it seems in his view, the key to survival. Case in Point: the biography of a bouncer at DC's 9:30 club (alas, only after the guy has died). Would others like to know about the elaborately attired biker I met in Whole Foods this week, sporting so many electronic contraptions on his head that I thought he might topple over before he paid for his food? (Varied goods to be stuffed into two identical waterproof bike bags, presumably for his own use.) The clerk smiled when he approached the register but I saw nobody else reacting to the scene. Surely patrons aren't indifferent to the sight of a man with a load of cameras, wires, helmet and other gear stored atop a sturdy frame. What gives? I asked him. He was only too eager to say: a self-motivated self-employed surveyor of DC's transportation scene. A founding member of the DC bikers club, a whistle-blower marking when DOT falls down, even to stated measurements  of roadways and such. And willing to confess how he helped a 'mentally handicapped' friend of his adapt to riding a bike. "You get her one of those folding ones, low to the ground, tell her to think of it at first as a scooter, get her legs moving and eventually she - true story - used the pedals and set off." He wanted to tell me more but my ice cream was melting...

Also - why not harp in newspapers on lost causes/topics, the ones seldom noticed in public, such as the man I saw on a Metro one night lugging around a giant harp. It wasn't gold, didn't have a label, and was occupying one of the Orange Line's double seats. Other passengers were looking on but staying silent. He had crafted the harp by hand, he told me when I approached him (he handed me a card), and uses it on behalf of a Christian group helping to save souls.

That diligent doo-wap group holding forth periodically downstairs at Metro Center, between Orange and Blue tracks. Who are they, doesn't anybody want to know? What's their daily take?

Urban Healing

Cleveland's famed clinic (formally CCF, for Cleveland Clinic Foundation) is a city within a city.  The ever-expanding non-profit institution owns miles of buildings downtown (a total 43,000 employes worldwide) and is the second largest private employer in Ohio after Walmart. The 167 acre property includes three hotels, subsidized transport, and  a system of regional healthcare centers that reach to Florida, Nevada, and a new billion-dollar outpost rising in Abu Dhabi. The latest planned expansion is a new medical education center on 11 acres carved out of the middle of its main urban campus, a cooperative effort with Case Western - the separate medical institution nearby - being designed by  London architect Norman Foster.

 This 4th largest medical center in the US ranked first in cardiology by US News & World Report  operates in military mode, doing battle with morbidity and mortality along with  shifting local and national political priorities. No more than 16 people are in charge atop a descending pyramid of responsible others. Doctors are paid salaries, just like generals. No wonder an efficiency-minded President Obama  endorsed the place as a model of the future in an early visit trumpeting the Affordable Care Act, now the law of the land. They really do seem to be trying to implement cost controls and "change the culture" to emphasize teamwork i.e. improve cooperation and reduce redundancies in patient care, the major contributor at present to US escalating healthcare costs. (Upward of 18 percent of the country's annual budget at present.)

"We don't use human assets as well as we could," confesses one of the staff  orthopedic surgeon. "Everyone can improve." Physicians will find their jobs changed, he warns.

 Among many innovations to be found at this empire of healing is the existence of a second CEO known as Chief Experience Officer. The experienced guide on a recent tour titled him "chief empathy officer," a job currently held by a staff surgeon. As in patients' experience, emphasizing - upping the ante on relationships while on hospital grounds.  A nice trick since surgeons not famously empathic professionals. Alas, we had no chance to meet either this sanctified leader nor any patients, though one experienced staff surgeon spoke hopefully of "patients having their own ownership in the outcome." Of what exactly? Their health, yes. Also - timely note - of implementation of the ACA that is going to find thousands, if not millions, more patients at their door. 

 Though as an aside, I must add an anecdote passed on to me that shows the outreach effort can be catching on many levels: a grateful royal personage in residence at the swank VIP rooms for months, having various organs transplanted  would have free pizza delivered weekly to CCF employes. (Probably not all 43,000.) Apocryphal? Perhaps, but that is just the sort of story suited to the institution's legend.  It helps to report that my source (then visiting a friend's hospitalized sister) was Cleveland-born and announced herself as a staffer for a key member of the US Senate. CFF President and heart surgeon Toby Cosgrove himself turned up to offer her a tour of robotics in use.

Surprise # 2: anyone ailing is welcome at CCF. Whoever you are or wherever you live, you are guaranteed to be given an appointment to be seen the day you call. (No further detail supplied by clinic's public relations professionals but it's likely that follow-through will be a little more complicated, depending on your gripe and your location.) All part of the much-touted empathic program no doubt. Try it - and see for yourself. Call 1-888-223-CARE.

Facts and figures and VIP names roll on in great numbers about the place on Wikipedia, a virtual honor roll of celebrity. Those lucky - wealthy - folks can claim a top drawer suite with commanding views and enough electronics to run a business from their bed.  On the other hand, the clinic says it had 150 million charity cases in 2012.

Part of the healing process includes visual therapy, to judge by what is on all the walls: a fulltime PhD art curator on staff takes care of acquisitions that enhance pristine soft blue-gray opaque glass paneling on the halls. Would that military quarters -see CCF's origins 91 years ago - 

Big Brother or Big Daddy definitely is in charge here: an anesthesiologist who confessed at the recent Chautauqua Institution's theme week on healthcare that he is a reformed soda pop (Dr. Pepper) addict manages the institution's wellness program seeking to improve the health of every employe. Anyone not coming up to speed doesn't last long at CCF.  Smokers and fatties don't get hired. Get with the program or else. Try meditation, leaner diets, and exercise  (10,000 steps a day) according to Dr. Mike Roizen, known fondly and familiarly as the clinic's energizer bunny. (He got  his friend, TV's Dr. Oz, to help  cure him.)

The main entrance is a curving wall of windows behind a round constantly moving water feature that is said to promote a feeling of security. The doors open onto white and off=white public areas - a strategically designed welcoming space. The lighting is worthy of theater,  carefully executed to emphasize the grandeur of CCF's calling.  Pedestrian skyways link various parts of the immediate campus - with institutes organized into "diseases and body parts" -  show videos in constant motion. Little if anything is stagnant here; a piece of stray paper dropped on the ground would probably disappear on the spot out of sheer shame. Dr. Toby would almost certainly be on it, if not.