|
Welcome 2003
We are writing on the first day of
2003,
writing as we have for the last week, looking
out through the large picture window onto the tall office buildings facing us.
It's a rainy day in Rosslyn, VA,
Gerry is a bit sick, almost everything is closed for New Year's day,
and we each have a computer to play with.
So why go out?
Before we came to Washington, DC we arranged two places to live in.
The first,
in Georgetown,
was only for two weeks, because that is how long the owner would be away.
On our first morning there we got up, had our breakfast, and walked here via the Key Bridge
to Rosslyn to finalize this deal.
We had agreed to the place based on information on the web and a phone call.
We had a bit of trouble finding the building because the streets and street addresses here are set up for cars,
but we did find it.
As soon as we walked into the apartment we were sure we wanted it: The picture window sold us.
Wonderful light.
Only after we had been here a few days did we realize how much of a problem not having a table was.
We sublease from a new graduate and he has bare, minimal funiture: two swivel chairs,
a director's chair, a thing that is charitably called a sofa, and a bed.
We guess it is like that because as a recent graduate, he has a small pocket book,
and knows how to do without things.
(We, unbelievably, were once young too and lived like that!) Fortunately for us within a few days
we found somebody actually giving away a table: she just wanted somebody to handle the disposal for her.
And so we had a table.
We now have someplace to eat; or at least our dishes are not in our laps.
We wanted to share our luxury with others, so already have dinner guests invirted for the coming weekend.
Would you care to come over?
At Jan's insistence, we put the table in front of the big picture window and it is very nice to look
out while eating, just reading the newspaper, or, as now, when it is dark
and the buildings opposite are all lit up, typing at the computer.
If we were on the other side of the building we would have a great view of the Washington, Lincoln,
and Jefferson Memorials across the Potomac.
Early this week Gerry discovered that a colleague from his New Jersey days has an office
just across the street.
We went over and had a very nice chat.
Their office is high enough that we could see over our apartment building and get the
great view described.
Political Predilections
One piece of semi-big news is that two weeks ago we were on TV.
We had gone to a public policy forum held in one of the office buildings for the House of Representatives.
The presentation was recorded for later showing on C-SPAN,
a 24-hour a day public affairs TV channel.
About 4-5 days after the event we were watching C-SPAN when we realized
it was the event which we had attended.
Sure enough, very shortly thereafter we saw ourselves in the audience.
We look out for such presentations and one morning we heard on the radio that the Brookings Institution was having
a presentation on possible policies for smallpox vacination in the face of terrorists threats.
We rushed through breakfast and got over to their seminar room in time to hear most of the presentation.
Our only regret is that we didn't realize before eating at home that Brookings would have a fine breakfast
buffet.
Since then the spigot of interesting forums has run dry.
We're looking forward to next week when Congress is back in session and we can go to more political meetings.
Museum Moments
In the meantime we'll make do with another museum or three.
Since moving here we have increased our museum going.
We spent a whole day at the Air & Space Museum and even Jan, who
complained that she had seen the museum soooo many times, managed to find
one or two interesting things to look at. Perhaps the best thing was
the actual Breitling Orbiter that made the first ever balloon trip around the world.
If you had been thinking they were in an old-fashioned wicker basket,
as we sort of vaguely imagined, you would have been wrong.
It was more like a cigar shaped space capsule - pressurized, heated, etc.
While four or five times as roomy as an automobile, that is still pretty cramped
to spend a month going around the world
Another day was spent at the National Gallery, both east and west wings.
In the older, more classic ("better") wing there is a recently expanded and re-opened sculture gallery.
Two hours there was hardly enough time for Gerry.
Jan, at the same time was off in the 14-15th Century Dutch galleries.
They are magnificient.
This was our second visit in a fortnight to the National Gallery West wing.
The first time it was Gerry who went to the Dutch galleries while Jan went to the 18th-19th
century American galleries.
The next day we went to the Sackler gallery and saw a fantastic exhibit of bronze statues of Indian gods
such as Shiva and Uma, Krishna and Ganesh. It made us feel quite homesick
for our own souvenirs from that part of the world.
We have been trying to get to all of the free museums on the
Mall but have yet to see the Hirschorn, the Freer Gallery, the Museum of African Art,
and the other half of the National Gallery. Guess we have
just enough time to finish them off! We've seen two off the mall (Renwich
Gallery and Corocoran) but there are plenty that we probably will have to miss.
Propaganda Moments
Our second visit to the National Gallery was really to see their free movies in Russian made in the ex-USSR.
They were "Battle for Ukraine" (1943) and "Victory in Ukraine" (1945).
One reason for going was so that Jan could practice Russian.
She has made tremendous progress in the last year.
This time it seemed to her that she understood as much as 50% of the spoken word.
Gerry had to make do with the subtitles, which usually were very good.
The first film covered the liberation of the eastern part of Ukraine, through 1943,
and the second the complete expulsion of the Germans from Ukraine by late 1944.
They were very interesting, showing lots of scenes of troops, including German troops in German footage.
Because we had so recently been there the mention of battles in
Kiev,
Korosten,
Zhytomyr,
and Lviv
were of particular interest.
The narration rightly berated Hitler and the forces he controlled.
But, things went overboard.
Stalin's minions spoke as if Stalin himself was pure as snow and there was only one
country possibly guilty of such enormous atrocities and how the Germans should
be despised for all the future.
Well, that was too much for us knowing what
Stalin and his crowd did to their own people before, during, and after WWII.
In fact, we suspect that in the history of despots Stalin was the originator,
Hitler the copycat to extended the evil, Mao the one who took it to what
seemed to be its ultimate limits, and Pol Pot who really did reach the seventh hell.
Wandering Whereabouts
We're walking a bit less now that we have moved across the bridge from Georgetown to Rosslyn.
There the distance and ambience was just right for walking into Museum row.
Here, and we've done it once, to get from the Mall by foot means going along freeways
with cars roaring by and the disagreeable possiblity they might veer off the road into our laps.
We did go for a long walk around Arlington National Cemetery the other day.
We can't see it from our building but just across the road from the
building's other side is the Marine Corp's memorial Iwo Jima statue, beyond that the Netherlands Carrillon,
and then the cemetery.
It is perhaps most famous as the site of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers.
But it is also famous as the place where John Kenndy (JFK)
and his brother Robert (RFK) are buried. Around their graves are words
from JFK's 1960 inauguaration address and from various speeches RFK gave.
They are stirring words.
Particularly appropriate today, in the light of
events relating to terrorism and Iraq are the words "Let Friend and Foe alike
know that we will pay any price in the defense of liberty." In the
cemetery we also visited Arlington House, which was owned by Robert E. Lee,
the famous Confederate General who for most of his career was a soldier in the U.S.Army.
When we came out we found just starting an open air
10th anniversary memorial service for those lost over Lockerbie, Scotland
and attended for a while.
Holiday Happenings
We sort of had a white Christmas here.
Apparently (from the news) it snowed as much as 3 feet north of NYC.
If we had still been in New York City we would have had plenty of snowman material.
But here we got the southern tail of it, just a sprinkling of powder
that came down faster and slower and faster as the day progressed.
We were pretty divorced from all the pre-Christmas hustle and bustle, having steered clear of shopping
malls and the like since we got here. We did listen to a whole evening of Carols on Christmas Eve,
which was just about the perfect amount.
And on the last day of the year we did go to a mall to see what it was all about.
We hadn't been missing much.
|
