Metro Notes #?

On a cold wet gray day I am in a Metro car reading from a library book that I like so much I cannot bear to leave it at home. A few minutes extra to be absorbed in the text is all I expect so I hunker down, concentrate. But it never is possible to stay isolated on a subway car. The man in front of me is slaked out, deadbeat, mumbling to himself as he slides into a soporific pose. The woman across  the aisle looks wide awake by contrast. Even more so, it would seem, when she looks me over and reads the title of the book in my hands. Before long, she has moved over to the empty seat beside me, asking  abruptly "How do you like that book?" ('Lila,' by Marilynne Robinson, 3rd in a trilogy set in the mythical Gilead, in Iowa. The book's dedication reads" To IOWA.) She is casually and warmly dressed, and has an easy manner about her. No introductions are necessary, I feel.. Had I read the other two books, she wonders. I answer at once and say, smiling in response,  how it might be possible to have a reading group in the subway somewhere, how there once (DC or NYC?) had been lines of poetry spelled out in the cars or on the billboards spread out on platforms, and whatever happened to those? Oh, yes, it was New York, she asserts. I continue with my idea (still sure I saw some similar effort on Metro), imagining how Metro's any book readers might connect through a bulletin board, or a sign in a station, recommending or not various titles. Then suddenly we are at  Metro Center.  Up on our feet and out the door, doing in two different directions. No goodbye. No need for one.
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Curious how the same night on a return trip from downtown, I decide to study my fellow passengers shoes. As though it is possible to tell a person's background or personality by what they wear on their feet. A couple waiting on the platform in front of me look vaguely familiar - at least enough so I let my eyes linger on both their faces and feet. He has on sturdy brown shoes of no particular distinction. The woman, whom he draws close in a slight brief embrace, is in sturdy stylish black flats secured to her feet by broad velcro bands. The shape of the shoe is entirely familiar to me: they are a mirror image of the same style I am wearing at the moment. I follow the feet until we arrive at our stop, then lose them in the crowd.

Boundary Matters

Yes, boundaries matter. Especially when it comes to planning the original District of Columbia. Originally, it was  a 100 square mile federal territory stretching across the Potomac River into Maryland and Virginia, with marker stones in place every ten miles. A geographer's dream, or maybe nightmare. although the first survey was led by a major (Andrew Ellicott -  think Maryland's Ellicott City)  with the help of astronomer and surveyor Benjamin Banneker - namesake of one of the modern city's major academic public high schools. Of the original 40 milestones on four lines, 36 remain: most of them sturdy sandstone blocks behind iron railings -  the oldest federally placed monuments in the US, claims Wikipedia. They are worth a look, often entailing a colorful walk to out-of-the-way places. Or accessible at unusual places that few passersby would bother to notice. Look on the southwestern side :
-At a cornerstone now in a seawall of Jones Point Lighthouse, 1 Jones Point Drive, Alexandria, Va. Not far from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge traffic streaming overhead over the square's south corner. River view guaranteed.
-Southwest No. 3 boundary marker in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church, 2952 King St. Don't bump into it while backing up...
- Southwest No. 6 in a grassy lane divider on So. Jefferson St., south of junction with Columbia Pike, on your way to REI and Gold's Gym. (Pull over and park, then  carefully cross the road while cars go whizzing by honking at you.)
One could joke and say the stones mark the only time when Washington DC really was attuned to order. given that its citizens are 'stateless," their home officially a disenfranchised 'federal district,' since their federal election votes don't matter. Stuck inside the boundary.

Pyramid Complex

Guess what, and where?


A piece of public art in a provocative place. The angle may be confusing, but the idea is to tease those who consider themselves fervent cityscape lovers and who may have recently walked the Southwest turf by the sea. Look around  and you may stumble upon a sculpture of familiar proportions  - so much of Washington seems built on pyramid schemes - literal and figurative, the hierarchical mode being a common pattern.  Rankings are rife, to say the least. This probably wasn't Byron Peck's idea when he produced the colorful tile piece in 2011. A plaque says it is to honor 'Diamond Teague and the other Earth Conservation Corps volunteers who devote their lives to the restoration of the Anacostia River."

A House In Chania

Chania is the largest town in western Crete and the island's former capital, a village more than a city. We were  seven women visitors, ages 50 to 85,  during the last weeks of September, witnessing  a change of seasons with the sirocco winds blowing in  to herald the beginning of autumn.  Our 'perch' above the harbor gave us an unparalleled view of the workings of the town - sights, smells, sounds - throughout the day, into night. What we couldn't see from windows or a roof terrace we easily spied in short trips foraging  in the streets and surrounding countryside.
What makes a village is being able to become familiar with the patterns of people in only a few days.  We were lucky to be staying in one of the old Venetian buildings overlooking the iconic lighthouse and mosque that mark the port - symbols of past centuries. Ruins are everywhere, in progress of being charted. It was a humble reminder of history's broad sweep to see in one of the stately shipbuilding edifices open to the public along the harbor  a copy of a 16th century BC Minoan ship made to order for Greece's 2004 Olympics.

Our perspective was providentially skewed as temporary denizens of Dorothy's Dream House www.dorothys-dream.com, which has a special history of its own. The duplex  available for rental for groups of six (or more) was named for an American woman artist who made Chania her home for decades, cementing friendships with many of the people who still live there. (The mosque one night was the venue for a show of resident artists' works but no longer does a muezzin send out his call.) Back streets, beyond the more overt commercial  byways - surprisingly full of brand names in English - artisans sell their wares in small shops under bougainvillea trees.
 The hills above town are wonderfully forested  - row upon row of olive trees in differing shapes - between open areas where livestock roam. In one  minuscule village we feasted the afternoon away on locally grown food cooked solely on wood in large decorative clay pots. Customers eat what host Stellios and his wife made that day, accompanied by homemade wine. Pork and goat, greens and salad - traditional Cretan fare - served under palapa-like shelters in a hearty breeze.  On hot days we could walk to a town beach only minutes away for a swim in clear waters. Or stay secluded and cool in Dorothy's living room, feasting on a splendid library collection. Other excursions took us to Balos on the island's far western peninsula, where dreamy blue-green waters curling on white sand drew all too many others like us willing to take a rocky hike down to - alas, the all too busy beach. (A curse of sorts: the site is often found on the cover of Greek tourist brochures.) Another time we hiked at one of the area's famed monasteries where we could then buy homegrown oil, honey and wine. Crete is country unto itself, and Chania one of its  treasures.

A Mighty Merger

Merger isn't the most apt word. since what's happening is more of a temporary partnership between two leading arts institutions in the most institutionally minded city in the country. To wit, the National Gallery of Art www.nga.gov and Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts www.kennedy_center.org have combined forces to celebrate  Edgar Degas' iconic sculpture "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen." An original musical based on the piece debuts in Washington (at Kennedy Center) Oct. 25 at the same time on ongoing exhibit is open at the former big league venue.
What lay behind the collaboration is a sequence of largely unheralded events, beginning with director/choreographer Susan Stroman  asking the show's writer Lynn Ahrens "What was she thinking, do you suppose?"
That was five years ago. The woman these two Broadway power women had in mind was the teenage ballerina named Marie van Goethem who first posed for the artist in 1878. The statue (or statuette, the Gallery's term) that Degas labored over for many years may be the only one of his works that never travels, its unorthodox materials a mix of beeswax, clay, metal armature, rope, paintbrushes, human hair, linen, silk and rubber, cotton and silk. She might be brooding or bored but the low forehead, jutting chin, outstretched leg, arms behind her back is a compelling stance.  Stroman and Ahrens couldn't let go of their question. (Marie was dismissed from the Paris Opera Ballet in 1882 and her fate is unknown; long live American musical  as a revival forum.)
Deborah Ziska, NGA's press head, one year ago broached the possibility of timing the current NGA exhibit ('Degas's Little Dancer")  with the  world premiere of the musical (which the Kennedy Center is producing) and rallied the gallery's marketing team along with Dodge Thompson, the chief of exhibits who oversees gallery curators.  Deborah Rutter, Kennedy Center's new president, in describing the musical as "a little bit of history and a little bit of magic,"  hailed the cooperative effort  as "an example of what institutions ought to do."
Let's have more.
The gallery's exhibit runs from Oct. 5 to January 11 and is presented with several other objects from their collection, including an oil painting and a pastel from the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
October 5, 2014–January 11, 2015

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Thinking thing on 8/16/14 in Wash Post

So what does constitute an ideal 'urban experience'? Journalist Philip Kennicott raises the question today in the Washington Post by tackling the aesthetics and  effects of a new sterilized downtown 'City Center' complex replacing the old moribund Convention Center site. This one comes with the backing of Qatar money and may be the vision of a British architect (Norman Foster) imagining what Washington is or should be. The upshot does not look good for our fair DC city: bland, impersonal, slick, copycat modernity. Worth a thought or two...

DC VS NYC

The subject is routine: differences in 'quality of life' between Washington, D.C., and New York (meaning Manhattan and/or Brooklyn). From whose perspective, you may ask. Take a genial 35-year-old single man earning minimal income: where is he to find housing in 'hot' neighborhoods in either place? He once lived in the upper reaches - black and Hispanic - of Manhattan and now resides in a decidedly - but probably only temporarily - 'uncool' outlying D.C. neighborhood without a car. He walks 20 minutes to Metro, where previously in New York he sat on the stoop of his close-packed Manhattan dwelling and was the only white man on the block. Compare 'quality of life?" He was never mugged until he came to DC and lived for a time in the still-developing Shaw - and lived through the experience three times, the last time with a mugger who shook his hand after robbing him, saying 'Have a great day.' What does he conclude? That he never feels really safe in DC; that hostility by darker skinned people towards him is much more prevalent in DC. In New York, he actually was warned by his stoop fellows to be careful. In a way, they looked after him, feeling one of them since police assumed he was a downtown whitey coming uptown only for drugs. What explains the disparity? Southern blacks with a more vivid history of slavery in their ones populate DC, where Caribbean natives or offspring are more common in NY? The population density in Manhattan lends  itself more easily to familiarity, hence even family feelings? Who knows...