A Dawdle Day

 Call it an unsentimental journey, tripping around Manhattan at New Year's end, looking past and thinking forward. There is no reason these days to suppose the scene has changed much on in decades the subway. Except  still maybe an occasioal throwback to times when a sense of community was uppermost and mattered. When the perennial inward look of subway patrons was never without cognizance of Those Others around them in the metal tube sweeping them upwards and onwards in  their journey. Still, early on the night of December 29, 2019, somewhere along the northbound IRT #1 from Penn Station to upper west side, a weary shape of a man, eyes closed,  bent over in a seat with a long white chord extending from his ear. He could be asleep, unconscious or otherwise out of touch except for an iPhone/smartphone connecting to the world. He is immobile,  shoulders bent, seemingly lost to strangers around him. Otherwise, how would he not know the phone had slipped to the floor of the car.  He doesn't notice until a stranger in a seat opposite him leans over to touch him on the shoulder, to alert him in to the fact that he has put his phone/iPod in danger. The man looks up in alarm, then gives a nod and a smile of thanks. The exchange is momentary, unheralded. Maybe unexpected, but valued. No further recognition necessary: I'd do it for me if  you had found me in the same position.

Strangers in the city hide behind a facade of indifference until challenged for a reason, I conclude.
It's easy to engage, but one has to be prepared to reciprocate in some measure.
I ask at the Joyce Theater (strictly dance performances) why so many security guards are around at the show, on the outside mainly but possibly also in the lobby. Everywhere these days patrons are asked to  uncover the insides of their shoulder bags and purses. (Heaven forbid they should have backpacks, which have to be stored.) I ask one of the casually garbed guardians why it seems to be more of a custom than in Washington, DC., where I've come. He says = offhandedly - "we're more high strung."

Great and Lesser Divides

           Much is made of  late about political and social divisions in American life  - old/young, rich/poor, red/blue, etc. The long standing rural/urban  categorization is  real, too and may go back even further in our history. A recent experience inside a Washington public high school made me see how   such labels can be subdivided, even turned upside down. This happened to me as a volunteer in a program called Writers In Schools run by the prestigious PEN/Faulkner organization (a nonprofit) associated with Washington, D.C.'s Folger Library. The program invites published authors to read and speak to small groups, at the invitation of individual school authorities. It also occasionally offers help to students writing the personal application essay usually required for entrance into another, possibly more highly rated  public school, or for college. Students willing to enter their essay in a competition sponsored by the PEN chapter might find themselves winner of a $100 for the one judged best among the submissions.
           Locals know how real is the split among the District's Wards in terms of income and educational opportunities. Overall, one half of all public  school children in DC are said to be 'at risk,' requiring help of some kind (food stamps, housing, etc),  17 percent  of whom are 'special needs' children having either physical or mental (emotional?) handicaps. Going into a class of 11th grade essay writers in  newly established high school in the area across the  Anacostia River (Wards 7 and 8), I had little notion of some of the very real everyday barriers the students face in light of those dismaying statistics. Barriers that are individual, sometimes familial.
            For an exercise intended to get students to express feelings on paper, they were asked to write  out nonstop in longhand or by computer about a conflict in their lives and how they had or were trying to overcome it. The idea being, of course, a way for admissions counselors to know a student's character in a positive light. How much gumption and determination they had. Their degree of maturity.
           Anacostia is full of rolling hills and an abundance of trees - topography often associated more with suburbs and small towns  than with a bustling urban milieu that downtown Washington represents. Restaurants, groceries, stores of any kind are far-flung. Streets and sidewalks generally are devoid of people in the middle of the day. Any notion of 'community' is difficult  for a stranger to comprehend. I had to stretch my own imagination to understand how a young woman could write - and then explain to me in a private session - how her parents  simply do not understand digital communication - can not see why she isn't able to write school papers in longhand the way "they always did." How  the parents will have nothing to do with computers, and, further, that she had no concept of anyone in their 60s (her definition) ever using a computer.
              "Do people over 65 use computers?" she asked me.
              This is within a few miles of one of the most highly computerized governments in the world.
               She said she had had a summer job to earn money to buy herself a modest computer and now struggled in the essay how to tell about the life she is living inside her home  as student that consumed most of her days - one whose expectations and requirements were beyond what her family would understand. She had  a challenge: to show her  interests and initiative without undermining either her respect for or relationships with her parents. The split, and possible shame, was keeping her from writing what could be one of the best and most important essays of her life. Might it help her get into the college of her choice, set her on a path of her own?
                If she seemed 'naive' about such matters, I could be considered equally innocent. Why would I assume she had contact with older people outside her own milieu? Is it possible, I wondered, that she never had been associated with such people and perhaps even had not ventured often, if ever, into the city itself?  There was no fundamental religious issue behind her parents' viewpoint, she said; it was simply their own disapproval of a fast-changing world - the one that would undoubtedly require their daughter to embrace one way or another.
               

Women On the Rise

   

   Yes, they have risen all the way to the top in one of Washington DC's most treasured and historic institutions - the Smithsonian. All cheers, to find now how many  of the most fabled  buildings in the city have women directors.
    Count them: Air & Space, National Museum of American History, Museum of American Art  and the Renwick Gallery (teamed), the National Portrait Gallery, and National Gallery of Art (which is part federal and part private), the US Botanic Garden and director of the Smithsonian Gardens.
I( may have missed a few, but a program at the Portrait Gallery on 12/17 is highlighting such leadership with a public roundtable session honoring Women Leaders at the Smithsonian alone.
     Not only in renown government centers are women making their mark. The new chairman of the National Geographic Society, headquartered in down town DC, is Jean Case - first such female to hold the job. It's probably no accident that she comes out of the ever encroaching digital world, having had a hand in making AOL (remember that one?) popular in the early internet age.
      Note, too, the recent announcement that the"former CIA official" who has just been named second person in charge at the Smithsonian's central office is a woman. She is Meroe Park, the first deputy head to be named in many years and the first major hire under Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, founder of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.
       

Here and There: Observations

I'm old enough to be proudly curmudgeonly when the occasion calls for it - taking refuge in my status as elderly to lean on younger Comcast customer relations personnel and not mind when they refer to their grandmothers as 'being capable of learning.' That  happens even when they don't know my age; they are judging on the phone by the way I ask question.
Such questions that, to them I gather, are ridiculous.
Such as why is there not a detailed outline of how your service works - in print - so that I don't have to bother you to find out on the phone.
Why am I expected to rely on my remote and the Guide to scroll for each day's events when I might otherwise be able to plan far in advance what I'd like to watch? Say even two weeks ahead, so I can get my calendar ready...
What are those letters doing on the remote?  ABCD. Why did nobody tell me when I bought your service? I know I am expected to learn by doing - teach myself - but I've found questions arise beyond what is offered in an explanation on the screen? C, I believe, is the sports info option - assuming the whole world, females included, dote on sports. And why isn't D working at all? (This was confirmed in our conversation.)
The two times I had this conversation with admittedly quite polite (if sometimes impatient) personnel, I was struck by their resistance to being stuck. One of them had to concede I had no choice in the matter of how to plan more than two weeks ahead - that I could not.
This assumption that people no longer read print instructions or use paper guides is old-fashioned, in my opinion.  It is comply common sense to rely on the simplest easiest form at hand - the more portable printed page.

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Hard times are upon us, most  people agree. The world is crashing down, all standards becoming erased.
Well not all of them, it turns out. Not if you  consider the plasticized card issued by Washington DC's 'elite' private Cosmos Club to its members.
"Dress Code At the Club" it says under a little red imprint of the club's seal.
Over all, the club hopes its members will know such rules by heart, though it can be confusing since  the codes change according to season: Labor Day through Memorial Day and 'Summer Dress - Memorial Day through Labor Day."
Refreshing to see some hard and fast attention paid as well to  computer and phone usage "in the clubhouse." Five permitted areas are listed where digital communication  is allowed. Takes a bit of time to look them over so I suppose members have to carry the card around to be sure.
Guests apparently to not have to adhere to the rules. A Sunday brunch in the dining room was attended by a young man in wrinkled shirt and pants, minus a tie (as required "only in the Garden Dining Room at Sunday brunch, and at lunch and dinner."
"Ladies" take note.  Their attire requirements follow after those for the 'gentlemen,'  as it is written. "in an equivalent fashion."  But no leggings or tights (unless worn with shirts, dresses, or long jackets), please.

Washington A Woman's Town?

   

         A remarkable time in the capital city, a trend of amazing proportions that has yet to be given much attention. How it has come about that the heads of many major museums and government institutions in town now are women. Suddenly, it seems. Notably the Kennedy Center, the Hirshhorn, the National Gallery of Fine Art, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and its neighbor the American Art Museum, as well as the often overlooked US Botanic Garden (NOT the often mentioned Arboretum) are being so capably managed by career professionals  whose credits do not include (at least unproved as such) simply being a woman in a time of @metoo.
          Not to forget the private institutions such as the Phillips Collection, founded by a man and now run by Dorothy Kosinski.

Oh those terrible service calls - ie people, their annoyance - finally reversed

         I write to save the reputation of some 'folks' called upon to get us through life but who are often resoundly cursed. The  infamous forever on holds, survey questions, rude and brusque exchanges  for no discernible purpose other than to cause unnecessary friction in our lives.
         Because the opposite also can be true: really competent experts who do their job and are seemingly pleased to do so. Take Tyler, the Miele dishwasher repair man come to rescue me from my incompetence with the beautiful piece of German machinery I own. A staple that has been stable for a decade or more - probably more - then suddenly shifts moods. He is the son in a family designated by Miele to resolve all such company complaints in the greater Washington area. Or so I figure when I can find no other resource. He was seven years old when he set out to learn his trade, and has kept at it under the tutorship of his father. His mother generally answers the phone; his father takes messages and I think then consults with his son on scheduling. I hear Truths from Tyler that doubtless no other professional would offer: Miele really is  better than Bosch (and both are owned by the same company) but developers, etc. put Bosch appliances in new luxury buildings because they are less expensive Miele can stand up under the assault I have been handing it - my way of repair was to shove, push harder to get the thing to start. All in vain. It is an item meant to last. Just be sure to give it a cleansing periodically -  buying online the curious little canister needed to run with a single empty washington.
     How happy I am when my Miele is humming quietly, doing its job, a reassuring sign that my house is in order, at least for the moment.

        Another 'service provider' of unusual talent very worthy of mention. I'd give him a prize if I could find the right trophy. That is the man distinguished for his  loving, longtime care and concern for hair. You won't find him in any advertisement, though he once ran a downtown DC salon called simply 2000 because he opened it that year. Previously he had been boosted up the competitive ladder of styling professionals by his association with the late Londoner Vidal Sassoon. He was to be made a 'hairdresser to the stars' in Hollywood, invited to live the wild life in the town of angels, but something (much of which was his wife) pulled him back. He didn't need the call of fame and fast living he decided - abandoning tinseltown in favor of the Virginia suburbs and then eventually a roost of his own on the first floor level of the Westchester  housing complex on Cathedral Avenue in DC. There he caters for men and women, often many of advancing age, giving them loving attention and a bevy of charm.

Who is Emilie?

My welcome to Emilie's the night before dining there:

	Cancellation Policy If you need to cancel your reservation, please do so before 7:00 PM on Tue, Oct 15 or your card may be charged a no show fee of $100.00.

        The newly anticipated restaurant in my Capitol Hill neighborhood is named Emilie's for no reason that I can see. Nothing on the menu, or rather what passes for a menu, which is a handful of  prettily printed pages listing an array of dishes. The pickled things on one. Side dishes on another, then 'family' items or maybe all that is just how I remember the jumble of instructions and staffers coming by. Emilie is every one of these smiling folk, apparently, the first  choice being the usual  question of plain or sparkling and soon wine selections by the glass. We're offered a sample of two temptations, no problem to reject one in favor of another. The wine steward is an especially vivacious woman - talkative and smiling. She drops by, answers a few question and soon flits away. This is a large ground floor operation spreading over, it seems, half the block of Pennsylvania and 11th with a round inviting colorful bar in the corner entrance room.  The place is full, buzzing at 7 p.m.on a week night. We were no doubt lucky to find a spot open at the last minute the day before -- but, as is the custom I find, reservations could be made only online and only for one month ahead. 

       I'd come in person the day before "as a neighbor," hoping to score, thinking 'local' was the winning word.  It took some time before I was told I had some luck for the next night though I couldn't book on the spot. A multitude of digital communications followed. I had to leave a credit card number to vouch my interest, with the warning each member of my party would be charged $25  - on my card -if we didn't show up. We were in danger of losing $100 on a night of wretched traffic, with three of us coming from far away. Confirmation had to be definite by 7 p.m. the evening before.. Reminders began: to confirm please reply confirm. To cancel use cancel. The next day I was told that my party was due in 30 minutes. It seemed  no excuse was acceptable: the computer was holding us hostage.

branzino collage

      Such is the new norm in these high-end establishments where the bread (shockingly) can cost $9 for a single piece a person and have nobody complain. Where so-called main courses can resemble fine art rather than memorable - if 'interesting'  visually - food. Where, in small print, is the notice that 4 percent is added to the bill for the sake of staff's  health needs. Entertainment at least is free: the chefs working hard behind a counter that takes up half the room.