Woman On a Metro Train

 The color, pattern and texture of a jacket  worn by a woman seated on the Metro train is similar to a garment I wore on my wedding day long ago.
I have a sudden shock of recognition and a memory still  clear about a peripatetic day in Athens when I spotted a long-sleeved top and long skirt designed with wonderful simplicity and appeal. A waffle weave, exquisitely made - possibly unique. Possibly silk.  Straight lines. Classic. Even tiny Chanel-like buttons down the front and a small shirt-style collar. No label name. It hung in a boutique on a side street in a fashionable part of town at a time when tourists were few. (The junta had just come into power.) I had no premonition of a ceremony; no groom in mind. But I knew then that having found the dress I would find the man. And so it happened..
 I wore the dress once on a hot July day. No jewelry and no veil. I carried red roses from a bush on the lawn of the very great old house where assorted guests had gathered. The dress turned yellowish with age and ended its wearable life in a collection of wedding dresses being assembled by a costume curator at Vassar College who intends one day to display them, with a history of each dress attached. Stay tuned.

Slick City Touts

An accomplished urban man of distinction,  who likes to answer to the description of 'flaneur' (which Webster's translates miserably as 'an idle man about town'), can be easily engaged in a name game about cities he has known and loved. He fancies ranking them in terms of the 'it-ness' of the moment - their individual allure based on what might in other people's minds be simply subjective impressions from a recent visit. He appears very firm in his judgments and by no means volunteers them to gain effect. He has traveled the world, lived at separate times in a number of celebrated places, and feels justified in his conclusions.
Take heed then: Paris is 'over.' The city stifles creativity chiefly because government policies and regulations discourage innovation. The talented young especially are all going to London. He says a friend reports recently that the language she heard most often in London was French. Berlin has replaced Paris as a continental city worth inhabiting. More verve and excitement. Sydney has it in spades over Melbourne, the latter being "tired" and mainly a refuge for - well, he can't exactly say but it isn't really alive. Forget Rome, Lisbon, Madrid, Moscow, Tokyo - though he might give the latter some praise.
 His own choice is New York - and the upper East Side of Manhattan, which has lost its allure for the luxe crowd  (Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue excluded). Rents are cheaper, live is easier since small service businesses still exist in the neighborhood. He can close his small apartment at any time and leave without regret for any wanderings he fancies. He is giving away most of his possessions and relying on digital devices to make his way. "Seven bus lines between New York and Washington," he exclaims - a lark for the last minute unencumbered traveler, even one on a day trip. 

BRAIN WAVES: Minding What Matters

• Neuroscience minds talking June 5/13 at an AAAS (www.aaas.org) Capitol Hill luncheon forum titled "Mapping the Brain" provided more details on efforts to decode that  three pound complicated mass of gray matter - those 186 billions of neurons, synapses, circuitry, what have you. Projections call for a 15 year target date to understand more than the rudiments of brain behavior, thanks in large part to the developing world of nanotechnology. (A nanometer, the customary measure in the field, is 50,000th of a hair width, if you dare to imagine it.) There's much to learn, with humility the guide, since isn't the task really the mind studying itself?  The search involves the invention of new tools - even new terms - well beyond very advanced MRI now providing  impressive insights into  the organ's functioning.
•  We need to learn about the "electrical, chemical, mechanical" elements - "what happens at every moment," in the words of Dr. Michael Lee Roukes, founding director of Caltech's Kavli Nanoscience Institute. He uses the word connectome  for understanding regional processes, spoke of connectivity gates (wiring), and said currently scientists have charted some 1000 out of a possible 50,000 channels. It's new worlds and worlds out there...
• Curiously, on the humble front, what we might begin to learn at the outset is why anesthesia works. We know how - patients and doctors know the effects - without understanding the intricacies within the brain that allow a person to lose consciousness and withstand pain. Further studies could lead to new treatments for relieving pain and depression. One study has focused on the after effects at different ages of  propofol, according to Dr. Emery Brown, of MIT, and a member of the NIH BRAIN Working Group. In what was almost an aside, he noted work done by Dr. Terri Monk of Duke University showing that up to 13 percent of the elderly (60 and over) have some mild cognitive impairment as long as six months after receiving such drugs in non-cardiac surgery. 

Helena Who?

How many US cities (much less state capitals) are named after women? More than you might think, although origins of many are somewhat obscure. Take Helena, the capital of Montana, that a Wikipedia account notes was possibly named after another town in another state or even another country.
Let's be charitable and a bit imaginative in believing the name was that of a miner's sweetheart since the city was the site long ago of vast fortunes - a treasure hunter's paradise. (The state's motto is Treasure State, and Helena's main street is called Last Chance Gulch.)  These days, the town of some 30,000 boasts both a huge civic auditorium, a symphony and an art museum, with the latter's new executive director just six months out of Washington, D.C.,'s Corcoran. It just so happens that much of the art collection belonging to that august institution on New York Ave. and 17th St. NW came from a former  US  Senator  from the Big Sky state named William Andrews Clark, one of the so-called Copper Kings. Mr. Clark's last surviving daughter died last year at the age of 104, a recluse in New York's Beth Israel Hospital, and left behind legal mess  over her disputed will.
Helena also boasts a capitol building  even Texans would envy if they didn't have such a prominent one of their own: an elegant edifice set on a hill with a view of distant mountains - definitely more mountains than Austin has.
Alas, the mighty New York Times neglected recently to include a single mention of the artistic ambitions of any of Montana's cities in a recent state alphabetical listing of the nation's cultural activities during the coming summer months. Why the lapse?

Not all is a cheery blossom...

Consider that zillions come to DC each spring with hopes of seeing cheery cherry blossoms a'bloom - and then find the weather has tricked them.
But not everything worth seeing in the city is a tree. The National Museum of African Art this year has a sumptuous earth art exhibit displayed around the Castle and the Enid Haupt Garden that features works of an entirely different sort: inspirations of African artists (some live there; some in the US). Take, for instance, the multi-textured cement, stone and wood piece that landed like some asteroid beside some early blooming magnolias. Behind it, not far away, is a triangular construction in progress, mirroring in shape the glass dome that erupts on the National Gallery of Art's west plaza - or the Egyptian pyramids and the visions of I.M. Pei when he put angles on the NGA's East Wing. Attaching natural materials in manmade ways to their natural home, the earth. Open to all.

METRO NOTES

METRO NOTES
Passengers stand out as characters on a stage because the platforms are so dark for anyone or anything to be recognized except on the interior of cars. What's with the obscure lighting of stations?

Of men and hair: from the back of one with braids tight to the head and flowing down the neck, I could not tell the gender. (From the large leather jacket I guessed a man.) Across the aisle a man with copper-colored sneakers and a head full of rasta braids in full flower.

 Sights to behold: The immaculately made-up woman in the wheelchair, stylish throughout, with an artificial leg swinging from rear handle of her motorized wheelchair  complete with high heel shoe. And the very self-absorbed woman who spent at least three station stops brushing with a dark pencil, over and over  on a single brow to form a perfect arc. Not to mention the abundance of intriguing and inventive hair styles on African-American women.

Ok, ok, I know this is redundant even patronizing talk, and Chris Rock did the subject a queasy favor with his "Good Hair" film. When the irony is how self-mutilating much of the 'creative' styles can be; the insane use of harmful chemicals to promote - freedom?  Ironic, too, how much of the money in the hair trade stays out of the country. Isn't there a pushback of sorts? Yes and no. It seems to be too profitable for too many people, and attitudes change too slowly. Rock wimped a bit at the end, showing off his kids and saying that what is important about their heads is what is inside... yah,ok.

And what is the sense of this nonsense, on a poster far up on a Dupont Station wall: "When you believe more, you sleep less."A Verizon post, I found hidden among squiggles in the background. This line was followed by the words "Powerful Answers." Oblique intrigue. The person who spends her time trying to parse the sentence will undoubtedly lose sleep.

'Time keeps on slippin'' is the refrain that the lavishly overpaid Metro establishment uses to excuse its inexorably bad performance regarding upgrades on the system. So the poster promising that Dupont Circle's repairs would be completed by July 11/11 has a black notice attached in the corner of the original saying that April 12 is now the estimated completion date. 'Better Hurry up' was written underneath the slogan, presumably by one of DC's frustrated commuters. A polite request, under the circumstances. Graffiti is the only defense method a rider has...

There is some value to the Metro platforms besides their use as holding pens  - perfect performing venues.

Perhaps  overpaid system managers could hire musicians to entertain between long waits and delays, especially on weekends. One distraction available has been a group at Metro Center turning up ad hoc with their doo-wop a cappella songs providing much-needed charm and cheer. The be-hatted men with rhythm belt out harmonies so smoothly syncopated  they might as well be under stage lights instead of the lusterless bulbs of our once reputable public transportation system.

Mind Your Brain

Leave it to the American Association for the Advancement of Science  - www.aaas.org - to tackle one of the most debated questions of the moment: "Are We Only Our Genes?", sponsored by the AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. It was a call-and-response scenario between Dr. Denis Alexander of Cambridge, England, and  American author-journalist Steve Paulson, known for his public radio program "To the Best of Our Knowledge,"  the respondent.

Dr. Alexander's wry approach included some subtle disclaimers about the plausibility of any sort of dichotomy. Genes, the blueprint of life, are so integrated into our environmental surroundings and inheritance that he felt 'driven' to create a new slogan he calls DICI - for Developmental Integrated Complementary Interaction. (At that point, the audience was warmed up enough to laugh along with him, because of the seemingly limitless implications of those word.) New mutations constantly change the original blueprint, he asserted. He also tackled the word 'heritability' by saying this "relates to variation in the traits but is not what causes traits themselves."  No single gene encompasses any single form of behavior and the there is  also the issue of  RNA, the switching mechanism whereby "genes function according to the company they keep."

Determinism is a very slippery concept, indeed. The gene stew is just that, a nearly indecipherable melange. Bacterial genes in our bodies also influence us.

Who are we, after all? And what is the mind - if not "consciousness' and a property of nature? Mr. Paulson is producer of a forthcoming series on just that subject. Stay tuned.