We go back to the beach to search more for my glasss. It’s rained pretty hard overnight, so it’s a fairly desperate, long-shot kinda search. We look for about half an hour before I decide to just about give up. I walk and search a bit north, far further north than I figure they are, far from where I thought I last had them.

And I find them.

Dawn leaves to go for a walk on the beach. She invites me to go with her, but I’m feeling drunk and lazy and decline. Just a few minutes later I change my mind and go running after her. I get to the beach and think I see her just a little ways north. I hurry to catch up, but then when I get closer I realize that I’m following someone else. So I turn back south.

It’s getting darker as it gets later. It’s not exactly dark, but it’s not especially bright anymore either. I take off my glasses, and I can see a little bit better. I hang them from the neck of my t-shirt.

I finally find Dawn, who’s walking back from her stroll to the south. We walk a little, then I go chasing after a little crab. A few minutes later I realize that I’ve lost my glasses.

We spend quite a while looking for them, as it gets darker and darker. As it does actually get dark. We can’t find them.

We rent bikes, Dawn and Erin and I do, from the rental place about a mile up the road. Then we ride them further north to the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. Takes about thirty-five minutes to ride to the lighthouse, a bit longer than I was calculating. And it’s hotter and sweatier work than I planned as well.

They’re strong, sturdy bikes. Lead sleds, Dave Corkran would’ve called them. There’s no gears, just the one speed. For a lot of the way we ride just on the edge of the roadway; other times there’s a path on the west side.

We rest on the front porch of the gift shop at the lighthouse for a while, Erin and Dawn in the rocking chairs on the porch. I go in and marvel over the models of ships that they have. The biggest most beautiful one is of a cutter, but it’s six-hundred dollars. The affordable one they’ve got for a hundred bucks is really just a cheap toy. An expensive cheap toy.

Up atop the lighthouse we try to spot a plane or planes taking Rob and Carol and John and Steve on a tour of the Outer Banks. Erin gets a text message from Steve just as they’re arriving, and we see the plane. I do giant waving and the pilot dips his wings. Great fun.

We take it slower on the ride back, stopping for a beer on the way. Erin is nice and lets me finish her beer as well. The bartender gives us a tip as to the ride back, telling us to take the private road through the country club. Dawn and Erin just want the straightest way back, but I take that scenic route. There’s one hill where I have to get off and push, but it’s a much more pleasant ride back. They get home maybe five, ten minutes before I do.

Feels so good just to fall back into the pool.

Today is Monday and fishing day for the boys. Last year we went trolling way the hell out in Pamlico Sound. Too fast, too loud. So this year we’re not going nearly as far or as fast. And turns out we don’t especially catch much either. But that’s okay.

And Erin joins us, so it’s not exactly just the boys. But since she seems to be a more avid (and better) fisher than most of us, it’s all okay by us.

We get to the boat rental place right around nine, and we’ve arrived before any proprieters or employees. Pete soon rides up on his bike though. We fill out forms and sign waivers and whatnot, and Pete then wades out to retrieve our boat. He brings it in and then shows us (mostly Rob) how to drive the thing. Plus how to switch gas tanks if we use up all of the one. We’re all aboard so Rob putters us out maybe a mile, to just under the bridge, and we cast off.

We mostly use shrimp as bait, although there are some blood worms as well. We have a pool for who catches the first fish and the most fish. We go home with no fish, as it turns out. Mostly Erin catches crabs, so I think she wins the pool, although I don’t think she ends up getting anyone’s money.

I mostly wear a life jacket and am the only one who does. I consider myself a pretty good swimmer, but I figure in any boating accident I’m going to get like bumped on the head and fall overboard unconscious, so I want the life jacket for when I’m out cold and unable to swim. It never does happen, and I look like an old woman wearing the stupid thing. Ah well.

We see some dolphins, which is pretty cool. Rob gets pretty good video. We’re all slathered up with sunblock, so nobody gets ridiculously burnt. We take home four crabs, at least one of them of legal size.

After Mass we head just a little east, over the bridge to Roanoke Island, then just a quick jaunt north to Manteo NC. We park close by the marina there, and I’m immediately captivated by a sailboat at the dock getting ready to cast off. And then there are boats and boats and more boats, so much eye candy to view. And then best of all is a short walk over the bridge to Roanoke Island Festival Park, where is docked the Elizabeth II. And she is glorious.

What she is, also, is a replica of a sixteenth century English merchant ship, like one that would have sailed across the Atlantic and landed at Roanoke Island in 1585. This Elizabeth was built here in Manteo beginning in 1982. She was launched in 1983 and formally presented to the state of North Carolina in 1984.

She’s a square-rigged ship, I’m excited to note, but she’s no ship of the line or even a frigate. As I’m talking to our guide aboard her, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with the yard on the mizzen mast. No, it’s not stowed, says he, as I’m guessing. It’s always like this, rigged fore and aft. It’s for a lateen, and that makes this ship a bark.

Later we tour the encampment on the island, and they’ve got something of a workshop going. There’s a foot-driven lathe made out of a pole lashed to a tree. And there’s a working forge, where the blacksmith makes us a nail right before our amazed eyes. Just before we leave I finally figure out what this one strange bench with contraption is all about. It’s a shaving horse! I grab the drawknife off the workbench and sit on the shaving horse, chucking a random piece of wood in the vise and locking it down with the foot pedals.

Back over the bridge we have lunch in Manteo at the Full Moon Cafe. It’s like utterly Arctic inside, so we sit outside. A badass-looking biker couple arrive to join us outside. I hear the badass biker dude lean over and tell his badass biker chick, “It’s really a cute cafe inside.”

We take a brochure and plan maybe to take a cruise on the Downeast Rover, but the not-unreasonable twenty-five bucks each fare is cash only. We could swing putting it on the credit card, but we’re a little strapped for cash this week, so we make a plan to take this cruise for sure next year.

Finally we drive just a little further up the island to the Elizabethan Gardens.

We’re up early, around six, as we start our vacation today. First step is of course the long drive to the Outer Banks. Dawn’s plan is to leave at seven, but for some reason I’m under the impression that we’re shooting for eight. So somehow neither of us is satisfied when we leave at seven-thirty. And I never am able the whole way to get any sleep while Dawn’s driving. Somehow the Jetta isn’t as comfortable for sleeping as the Taurus was, although it’s sure nicer with the CD player.

We meet up with Dad and Main and crowd quite by accident at our usual McDonald’s on the way at about eight-thirty. We don’t especially join the caravan, however. We plan on seeing them again for lunch at the Border Station, but when I call Main when we arrive, they’re long past, on their way to Grandy’s. So then we tell them we’ll just see them at the Roadside in Duck, but then they’re still there at Grandy’s when we stop.

Traffic is terrible the last few miles to the Outer Banks, worst we’ve ever seen. And then there are no tables to be had at the Roadside, so Dawn and I head back to Kitty Hawk to hit the Wal-Mart for supplies. Then, finally, we make it to the house, Poet’s Loft.

After getting home from ballet class last week, Dawn and I walked up the block to Kevin’s house, to coordinate with him on taking care of our cats while we’re at the beach. Jonathan and Alana were on their stoop next door to Kevin, and we chatted with them for a few minutes. My first thought was that Alana looked pregnant, but I wasn’t going to say anything. Luckily, when I asked her how she was doing, she handily answered, “Pregnant.”

She’s about four months along. Jonathan saw me counting on my fingers and knew exactly what I was doing. He announced that the due date is February 9. Sonogram is scheduled in a couple weeks, so maybe they’ll know the sex after that.

And chatting with Alana, I told her the story of how I once witnessed childbirth. Always a good time telling that story. One of these days I’m really going to have to type it up and relate it here in this space.

I meet up after work with Kevin on the five-hundred block of Twelfth Street, on our way to ESPNZone for a drink before the kickball game. We were planning to meet at the Zone itself, but I happened to be walking by as he was parking his car. He goes to put change in the meter, but it’s after six-thirty so parking’s free. But then he totally has to give the change to the homeless guys begging for change, since he had told them he couldn’t give anything to them for having to feed the meter.

Kevin orders sliders to go with our beers. I’m surprised to learn when they arrive that sliders are apparently little burgers, like White Castle or Little Tavern. I have three of them anyway, but I feel bad for the poor little cows.

We make our way to the field, arriving right at seven-thirty. To our chagrin we find out that game time was seven-fifteen, not seven-thirty. But luckily the game before ours ran late, so we’re only just about to get started. Would’ve hated to forfeit because I was late.

The Parc Vista Ballers are in red shirts this season; last season they were in yellow. I remember this because I hung out with Kate last season on the night she reffed their game. And now I remember also that I was totally charmed by a particular young woman on their team. She, at first seemingly such a delicate thing, a rather pre-Raphaelite creature, kicked an infield fly that was easily caught by a defender, and she quietly but emphatically whispered a long, drawn out “fuuuuck” as she made her way back to her team.

We lose badly. The only good thing is that it’s the Ballers’ first win of the season. So good for them.

I was looking for an email that I thought I had sent out of my Yahoo account. Couldn’t find it, but I did notice something else.

Hey, did I make a typo in my signature? I did! I mis-spelled the yahoo domain, spelling it yhaoo.

What the hell? How long have I been sending that out?

A little research shows that I changed my signature somewhere between 22 Jan 2002 and 04 Feb 2002 from this:

to this:

Four and a half years it’s been! Hey, you people I’ve been emailing! Why haven’t you said anything, for pete’s sake?

Saturday morning. You know the drill. Eggs. Yoga. Whole Foods. Safeway. Home.

Then lunch and work on the house.

Except tonight we’ve got Becky coming over. It’s her birthday next week, Tuesday I think, and we’re having her to dinner. We’re making pizza. So we straighten and clean and make things presentable, instead of building like anything new. Then when Becky arrives we set down to some cooking.

It’s funny what people like on their pizza. I do mushrooms and black olives, Dawn black and green olives, and Becky green peppers. I don’t object to green peppers, actually, but we don’t usually do them on pizza. Dawn hates them, and hates them on pizza, I guess is why. I don’t like the green olives on my pizza. I figure black olives are canned, and therefore cooked, whereas green olives are bottled, as in preserved, in vinegar. Maybe they’re cooked beforehand, I don’t know. I think cucumbers are somehow cooked on their way to becoming pickles. But anyway, I love green olives, but only cold, either alone or in a martini. Don’t like ’em cooked.

Dawn also makes this cobbler thingy for dessert. Blueberry. No blueberries to be found in the produce department at Safeway, so we go with frozen. Or maybe there were some organic ones at some outrageous price. But frozen are fine for cooking. The cobble part of the cobbler comes from oats, which we find that we do not have when we go to look for them. Dawn saves me the trip back to Safeway when she decides that an instant oatmeal package will suffice.

We take a walk to and around Lincoln Park between pizza and dessert. I’m feeling quite fat and lazy, and have no desire to walk, but I’m glad that we do and feel all the better for it. And I’m also just generally pleased that we live so close to such a good size park. (Some quick calculations, measuring with Google Earth: A length of .16 miles and a width = .07 miles give us an area of .0112 square miles. At 640 acres per square mile, that’s a little over seven acres.)

We drive Becky home and then come back to all them dishes.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

(painting: Bruegel, Pieter, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c. 1558, Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm, Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels)

A poem about a painting! How wonderful!

Although the poem is not strictly about the painting, of course. The painting is but an example of the feeling that the poem is trying to convey. That life is big, huge, gigantic and that things balance out somehow. That we can somehow continue, when so much suffering surrounds us.

This is a good thing. This is not good.

But what else can we do? How else are we to respond to suffering, to rockets and bombs falling today across the world on innocents? How am I to face one more day walking by the women who sit outside the homeless center, one whose own face she constantly rubs raw, the other in a wheelchair and who has enormous swollen legs?

So we can blot it out, when we need to.

And the poem rhymes, by the way. You may not notice, but it does. You may not notice because the rhyme scheme is like abca dedb fgfg e hh ijkkij. I can’t offhand think of another poem with that same scheme. Heh.

When I’d been thinking about featuring poetry in this space, this was one on the top of the list, along with Yeats’s Irish Airman, or anything Wilfred Owen but especially Dulce et Decorum Est, or what will probably be next, In Tenebris II by Thomas Hardy.

ASH Kickers have our first game of the fall season. Yes, the fall season, starting in early August. But it does in fact run into October, so we’ll accept the description. But it is so hot, hot, hot today, reaching 99° in the afternoon, down to about 96° at game time.

We actually get our shirts on the first day this time, albeit only some of our shirts. A box lost in the mail somewhere, is what we’re told. This season we’re stylish black, as opposed to last season’s abominable tan. I’d prefer a bright color, but I’ll take black over tan.

Kevin arrives via bicycle. I’m so very glad he’s joining us, as we needed male bodies for the field, and he is single, attractive, gainfully employed, and quite personable and charming, so thus a great catch for any girl with any sense. Kate shows up as well, returning to the team even though no longer working for ASH. It’s good to see her and to catch up.

We actually win the game, although it’s close. Again I play catcher and master of ceremonies. Seems like everyone on the Postmasters of the Universe gets up to bat (kick?) at least three times. And, despite league rules deeming such behavior officially douchebag, the Postmasters have guys who do indeed bunt.

We have only one minor dustup, where one of the newer ASH Kickers makes a minor mistake but gets very flustered and upset. I myself get a little worked and gruff around the same time, so I worry maybe I’ve said something loud or otherwise out of turn in anger. But I talk to her later and am cleared of any wrongdoing. Had nothing to do with me.

We head to Irish Times after the game, Elisa and Gill staying behind to ref the following game. Kate wants to travel by way of stopping by the MLK Library to drop off some books, declaring that it’s only two blocks out of our way. She’s nuts, of course, as it’s many blocks out of our way. Kevin quite graciously offers to take the books back on his back and meet us at the bar. And in fact he still arrives before we do, snagging us a good table.

I generally have some trouble hearing conversation, what with the music being cranked so loud. It’s mostly eighties hits, unfortunately, including an abominable Journey song, to which all the kids seeem to know the words. But I end up talking for a minute with an utter cupcake from the Parc Vista Ballers, who sit at the adjoining table. Her name is Ally, she’s 25 and works for the State Department doing some sort of editing on their website. She and Kevin and I discuss digital cameras, as mine is getting old and won’t take pictures now in dim light.

Kevin and I leave after about an hour or so, before the flip-cup games begin. We catch the 96 bus at Union Station, stashing Kevin’s bike on the front rack of the bus. We worry while waiting for the bus that it’s going to be complicated getting the bike secured, but it turns out to be pretty easy. Arriving at home Kevin turns to go down the alley to his back gate, and we talk a few minutes to Clarence’s brother, who is just leaving, and is a little drunk.

I hook up with Gordon after work, taking the Blue Line to King Street then walking to meet him at Dave’s comic shop. We then head down to the Holiday Inn, where we meet up with Babs and Ally at the dog happy hour that they have every Tuesday and Thursday. Yup. People, dogs, and booze.

We go over to Books A Million. Ranan isn’t there, but an old Crownee is name of Connie. Gordon had asked me if I remembered him, and I couldn’t place anybody. But then I immediately remembered him when I saw him. In the back room they have pictures of the employees up on a display on one wall, each one like on a sort of bookmark like tag. Everybody’s has their start date. Ranan’s has 1983, with an additional note, something like, “Yes, 1983” for those who can’t quite believe it. He’s probably got co-workers who weren’t even born before 1983.

We stop and go through McDonalds drive-thru for Ally, then take her food with us to Hard Times. I’m amazed, but seems like they’re pretty used to serving adults while the kids eat something else.

Back at Chez Scott we look at old photo albums. I help Ally with some origami. Babs serves tasty cherries. Gordon pops in a VHS tape of us playing charades at a New Year’s party sometime in the late eighties. Gordon notes that he still had a beautiful head of hair back then. I have a pony tail, and I mug shamelessly for the camera.

My dashing young protege, one Kate Conrad, is leaving ASH. We have a going-away happy hour for her. Happily, it’s not at Rumours, for once. It’s at one of Kate’s favoriate bars, the Big Hunt. It’s one of my favorite bars as well.

We leave, a large throng of us, right at five, for the long trek over to Connecticut Avenue. I’m excited so I lead the way and am the first through the door. Sadly, we had planned to be out on the deck upstairs out back, in the tree house as Kate calls it, but they’ve got it closed on account of the heat. So we stay inside, in the upstairs room next to the bar with the pool table.

My camera won’t focus in the dim light, so I make Kate give me her camera. And I take posed portraits of Kate with everyone. I’m no good at candids. And I’m not happy with my camera anymore, not after it won’t work, you know? I need to find out what kind Kate’s is and where she got it.

I’m going to miss that Kate, but I’m glad she’s off pursuing other opportunities, doing better things than the admin stuff she was doing at ASH. She’s off to be a teacher. A high school teacher in PG County. English and Speech and Theater.

I used to be a huge space geek. Really huge. Big fan of the American space program from Alan Shepard through even Skylab 3 or, heck, let’s throw in Apollo-Soyuz.

Mostly though it was the Apollo program. Men on the Moon. Men on the Moon! As in the Onion headline from July 21, 1969 — Holy Shit: Man Walks on Fucking Moon.

I worked back in the early nineties for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, but I wasn’t yet space geek boy then. A shame, really. I even met Buzz Aldrin at the annual meeting in 1991. I shook his hand, but I was utterly speechless.

It was a couple of years later, while I was working at the help desk for Crown Books. We were in Landover MD but we got calls from stores all over the country. California stores closed as late as ten p.m. Pacific time, so we worked for an hour after that, which was two a.m. Eastern. Some late nights, many of them pretty boring, is what the point is.

But it was a bookstore company, so there were books around. We had under this one unused desk a box of books, returns or something, that we used for testing inventory and scan wands and whatever. One of the books was a paperback copy of Carrying the Fire by Mike Collins, command module pilot on Apollo 11. I started reading it one night for no good reason and just caught the bug right there.

I went on to read a ton of stuff, A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin and Apollo by Charles Murray and Catherine Bly Cox being the best, but hell I even found me and read an old beat up copy of Jim Irwin’s autobiography from a used bookstore in Atlanta. I had a pretty decent space library for a while, maybe a couple dozen books.

All that’s long gone now, except for a little vague knowledge of astronomy that can still pop into my mind on a cold winter night, and I can help you find Aldeberan, although sadly I no longer know which in Ursa Major is Merak, Alcor, Mizar, or Dubhe.

On July 20, 1969, I remember being at my grandparents’ house, watching the events in snowy black and white on the TV. It must have been much later than I was used to being awake, after eleven p.m. local time, and I was all of five years old. I don’t remember watching much, or for very long. Mostly I remember running back and forth between the living room and what we called the rumpus room. But I know that I watched some of the space stuff.

Neil Armstrong screwed up his famous words, when he stepped off the ladder and on to the surface. He meant to say that it was a small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. Makes much more sense that way. The way he actually said it always confused me as a kid.

I love the exploration aspect of our space programs. I can take or leave the science of it, although I suppose that’s the best excuse for it really. I don’t care that we beat the Soviets to the Moon. (And then they said that they weren’t really trying, and don’t you believe them.) None of that rah rah patriotism for me. Mike Collins in his book talks about how he travelled the world after coming back and everywhere he went people would talk about how “we,” as in humans, went to the Moon. Not just America, but all of us.

I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see us get to Mars. I love those little rovers they send up there, though. That’ll do for now.

Happy Moon Landing Day, everybody.

I finish reading Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O’Brien’s twenty-odd books, and I’m sorry to say that I’m not thrilled.

I’ve discussed with Gordon many times the phenomenon of expectations. The more you’re looking forward to something, the more likely it is to be disappointing. The more you want to like something, the less you end up liking it.

Such it was with Jack Aubrey. I was bummed that I had finished reading all the Hornblower books, and so I was excited that there was this other series about naval warfare during the wars with Napoleon, with even more books, just sitting there fat and ripe and waiting to be read. And I understood that the O’Brien books were written in more of the vernacular of the times, with the nautical arcana left mostly unexplained. That sounded cool.

So then the actual book was a bit disappointing. Not that much action, relatively speaking. Or, maybe, not as much action, not to a Hornblower-esque degree anyway. And throwing Dr. Maturin onboard, and having to have things explained to him, wasn’t much leaving arcana unexplained, turns out.

And Jack Aubrey was by turns likable and unlikable. No Horatio, anyway.

But then in some ways Horatio is an insufferable prig. And but so then in other ways he’s redeemed a whole lot by his clinical depression, though. Jack Aubrey, on the other hand, is more of a pig. And where he’s supposed to be redeemed by his love of music, well, to me, not so much. Although then other times Horatio is a rascal.

Jack Aubrey is really more a realistic product of his time, seemingly a real character of the times, rather than how Horatio sometimes seems a product of our contemporary times, but thrust back into the early nineteenth century. The biggest example of all this is the two characters’ views of the prize system, where Jack is realistically enthusiastic, whereas Horatio views it as barbaric. (It was barbaric, of course. But that’s just how we see it now, looking back.)

But I guess I’ll read the next Aubrey-Maturin, Post Captain, and see how it goes. I’m hoping I like it more, which means I’ll probably be disappointed.

Just saw Joe Wilson.

Ambassador Wilson has fabulous hair.

He was talking on his cell phone, and I was walking back to the office with Kate, my dashing young protege. Otherwise I probably would’ve pestered him.

Go all the way to Springfield to the Woodcraft store to buy a Kreg Pocket Hole Jig, specifically the Rocket Jig. But they’re out of stock.

They’ve got the Mini Jig Kit, but while that’s got the step drill bit, collar, and hex wrench, it’s only got the single-hole jig, and lacks the clamp. They’ve also got the K3 Master System and Super Kit, but those are $149 and $199, respectively. I’m not going to be doing production work, thank goodness. I need the Rocket Jig.

Man says they’ll have more on Monday, but it’s tough to get back here, especially on a Monday night. So later I end up ordering one on Amazon. For five bucks cheaper, too.

Next door to Woodcraft there’s a South Asian market. We buy some ghee and also some cumin seeds.

Another sign of the inexorable aging process this morning. For no apparent reason, I was thinking about an old Steve Martin routine, where he posits speaking only gibberish to a child from birth to school age. Then, the child’s first day of school, he or she speaks up in class, in this nonsensical language.

And I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the child says. Something something banana patch. I could feel the meter, two syllables, trochaic, but couldn’t just maddeningly couldn’t remember the words.

I walked in a funk for a number of minutes before it came to me.

Dawn and I leave work early, around 4:30 p.m. We meet as usual at Federal Triangle. Dawn has crackers and cheese that she’s bought for dinner. The cheese is very stinky. I mean that in a good way.

We eat quickly when we get home, then we hop in the car. We’re off to Rockville for Celebration 50, the fiftieth anniversary recital of the Academy of Theatrical Arts, where Dawn used to take ballet class. Yahoo/MapQuest directions suggest going up the GW Parkway, to the American Legion Bridge, to get to I-270 North. We do a quick check on traffic at WashingtonPost.com and see that traffic is backed up on the Inner Loop from I-66 all the way around to Connecticut Avenue, so we decide to go up 295 to the Beltway, the Outer Loop way, instead. We have a few minutes of congestion on 295 around Greenbelt, but then it’s smooth sailing once we’re on the Beltway. We see the horrible mess on the other side and are very glad we’ve taken this route.

We end up getting to the venue, the Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center at Montgomery College, about fifty minutes before showtime. We wander around the campus for a while. It’s a remarkably ugly campus, squat charmless brick utilitarian buildings. We walk by a pond, and we notice quite a lot of raccoon shit on the grass and sidewalk. What’s the deal? Oh, wait, that’s not raccoon shit, that’s goose shit. And sure enough we turn the corner and find a flock of geese walking around. I honk at them and want to generally observe and annoy them, but Dawn pulls me away and asks me to at least try to act like an adult.

And there’s another show going on, turns out, some sort of dinner theater in the Theatre Arts Building. Damn Yankees, we find out later. We see the actor playing the Devil wandering around. But best of all is that there’s a bar set up outside the building, with a not too shabby selection of beers. I get a Sam Adams Summer Ale and Dawn gets an Amstel Light. We sit on a bench and have a lovely few minutes.

Finally close to time for the show to begin, we meander back over to the Parilla Center. In the lobby we chat with Rosemary, who used to take ballet with Dawn. We make our way to our seats, and I read Horatio while Dawn peruses the program. There will be two acts separated by a fifteen-minute intermission, with about a dozen performances in each act.

The show itself begins with an American flag projected on the large back scrim, accompanied by a recording of God Bless America. Which song I pretty much loathe, by the way, although I wish I were a bigger fan of its alter-ego, This Land is Your Land.

The rest of the show breezes by, with inspired amateur adults interspersed with perfectly adorable children. Of special note are the wonderfully-named elderly sisters, Helen and Joan Bonk, the no longer tiny now just little Gena Basha (her sister Maya now the tiny one), and the amazingly poised teenager Julissa Hernandez.

Afterwards there’s much giving of flowers to Ms. Jackson and Mr. G. amidst much hugs and tears. It’s amazing that they’ve been doing this for fifty years. How many students they’ve had! How much passion and hard work they’ve passed on to so many people. They are treasures.

Also, I do a little Googling and find Mr. Garney quoted in the Washington Post in one of its original stories about Rep. Wilbur Mills and Fanne Foxe. How utterly funny & wonderful.

I was happily immersed in popular culture as a child. As a young adult, I viewed it with a somewhat arch and ironic eye. Now it just makes me queasy. I feel totally violated at the grocery store by all the magazine covers shrieking at me, every one of them with Jen & Brad & Angelina and now the baby, with Britney, with that horror show Jessica Simpson and her oaf Nick Lachey.

Today it’s one Star Jones. Who exactly is this Star Jones? How did she become famous? What can we do at this point to put a stop to it? Seriously. Queasy.

(Later, the Television column in Slate handily recounts, and therein I learn, the history of this show called The View on ABC daytime, whence rose this particular Star.)

I get on the train at Farragut West, as per usual. It’s not that crowded. I don’t get a seat, but I’m not pressing up against other flesh trying to hang on.

I hear some snippet of obnoxious rap music, and I think that if that’s coming out of some guy’s headphones he’s going to be deaf by the end of the train ride. But then I see a woman in front of me on the right lean forward and tell someone to the left, “Turn that down. Don’t nobody want to hear that.” I see to the left who it is she’s addressing, a kid, maybe eight, with a cell phone. Apparently the snippet of rap is his ring tone.

It goes off again. The woman again tells him to cool it. But he doesn’t.

A man maybe in his late twenties or early thirties leans down to the kid and really gives it to him, telling him to knock it off. “For real,” he emphasizes. But this kid is not backing down. Off goes the snippet, again and again.

By this time I’m way past being offended by the noise. I’m just impressed now, in awe and amazement at the balls that this kid’s got. He’s just this little thing, in simple jeans and a t-shirt, sitting there with his legs that don’t even reach the floor. But he’s not taking any shit from anybody. This is his world and we just live in it.

Later the woman and man both leave, getting off at Metro Center or L’Enfant Plaza, I don’t remember where. Dawn gets on and we get the seats right in front of this kid, who by this time has grown bored with the rap ringtone and is just cycling through the various rings available on the phone, at a really loud volume. Dawn turns around, ready to say something, but I tell her not to bother.

There’s an older kid sitting next to the phone kid, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, dressed similarly in jeans and t-shirt. I guess he’s the older brother. He makes no attempt to either discipline the phone kid or to shield him from others’ wrath. He mumbles comments to the kid every so often, encouragement or daring him to continue or threats, I don’t ever know.

But phone kid, he just does what he wants to do. He’s my hero. I wish I had his guts at my age, that he’s got at eight.

Back to the Kennedy Center on Saturday night for ballet. Tonight it’s the Royal Ballet with Sleeping Beauty. Our performance features the lovely Marianela Nuñez as the Princess Aurora. (She apparently played the Lilac Fairy in the performance reviewed in the Washington Post.)

What amazes me most is not just her beautiful technique, but her astonishing endurance. She completes an amazing scene, and my legs are aching from the effort. But then she comes back for yet another scene.

Elizabeth McGorian looks like she’s having great fun, hamming it up as the evil Carabosse. She seems to be accompanied by an army of refugee mice from The Nutcracker, who drive her in a funky evil vulture carriage.

Later, Little Red Riding Hood and a truly disturbing Puss in Boots show up. Strange.

We arrive at the Polo Grill, late, grumpy, argue-y. I’m not pleased about having been pulled over and given a ticket. I’m angry at myself. Dawn’s angry at me too, but at least she has someone at whom to direct her anger. Mine’s got nowhere else to go.

The subject of the ticket comes up quickly after we greet and seat. Dad immediately wonders why I was even on that particular stretch of road in the first place. Why didn’t I take 95 down to exit such and such?

Well, fuck me, I don’t know why I didn’t go a different way, okay? How exactly are you helping things by asking me this? Thankfully Main is a little more perceptive, announcing that it’s likely a sore subject and we should maybe just move on to discussing something else.

Dawn orders about the only vegetarian thing on the menu, the spinach-artichoke dip. I opt for the étouffée. The name intrigues my sister, who asks me what étouffée is. Although I just ordered it, I really don’t know what it is. It’s got crawfish in it. It’s a cajun thing, a gumbo thing, spicy, rice maybe, is all I know. I have to refer back to the menu for a better description. I come to the conclusion that I ordered it because it’s called étouffée.

Or, I suppose, maybe, because, how often are you out somewhere and étouffée is an option on the menu? Don’t you like have to jump at the chance, when you can?

We leave around 11:40 a.m. to go to Lorton to meet my family for lunch. Mom is coming through town on her way to Florida, driving with Main from NJ to board the autotrain. Why there’s a train that goes from Lorton VA to Florida and carries cars, I don’t know. But Mom loves the autotrain. We’ll be meeting at the Polo Grill, one of Mom’s favorite places. Rob & Carol will be there, as will Dad.

I’ve just turned left off of Alban, where years ago there used to just be a stop sign, but now it’s a big intersection. To the right is Rolling Road. To the left it becomes Pohick Road at some point. There’s a long stretch as it goes over Interstate 95. I see way up ahead at the top of the hill a bunch of cops parked over on the right shoulder. There’s a cop standing there pointing a radar gun at me. He’s nailed me. He motions for me to pull over.

Dawn is pissed already.

I stop and roll down the window and get out my wallet. I pull out the drivers license. Dawn in the meantime has gotten out of the glove compartment the registration and insurance card.

“Good afternoon, officer,” I say as he walks up. He tells me that he’s Officer Kushener, and he clocked me going forty-eight in a thirty-five mile-per-hour zone. He apparently doesn’t need the insurance card. I keep my wallet on the dashboard, and my hands where he can see them, on the steering wheel at ten and two o’clock. If it were night time I’d have the interior light on.

He asks me something like if I’m on my way anywhere in particular.

Now, I’ve thought about this quite a bit, actually, being stopped by the cops, and what to say and not say thereto. I have this general rule where one should say only three things to cops: (1) Yes, Officer (2) No, Officer and (3) I’m sorry, Officer. It’s called inmate sincerity. I mean, anything else is pretty much superfluous. I don’t think I’m going to argue my way out of anything. And I don’t especially want to admit guilt to anything either. Best is to just keep my mouth shut.

But he’s asked me this, and I don’t really know why he’s asking, except that he’s maybe trying to get me to like plead extenuating circumstances or something. I don’t get the sense that he’s being devious or anything, but I don’t get the sense either that anything I say is going to change things. So, what the hell, I tell him the truth.

“Just going to meet my mother for lunch, Officer.”

He’s nice enough after that, saying that he’s going to write me up for a ticket and try to get me on my way as soon as possible.

As we wait, I watch the other cops stop other cars. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. As soon as they’re done writing up a ticket, they grab the radar gun and point it at the first car coming, then flag them down to give them a ticket. This is some easy pickings, right here on this stretch of road.

I honestly had no idea how fast I was going, but I also didn’t much care either. I was running later than I wanted to be, so I probably was going faster than maybe I otherwise would have been. But if you’d have asked me, out of the blue, what the speed limit was on that stretch, I would have guessed forty-five rather than thirty-five.

Officer Kushener returns with his clipboard, on the back of which is a sticker, the word Whining surrounded by the international symbol for Not, the red circle with the line through it. It’s not so much a ticket as a couple pieces of paper. He explains, a little mumblingly, about signing not being an admission of guilt and the hearing date being listed and prepayment and the fifty-seven dollar processing fee.

That seems a bit dear to me, fifty-seven dollars. I was hoping the fine was going to be about that much. It may well be, actually, but whatever is the fine, it’s fifty-seven dollars on top of that just for kicks.

Dawn’s not pleased about this either.

Seems like I haven’t been to ballet in a long time. Seems like Jessica B. has taken my spot at the barre, after having taken over it for a while before the recital and then inexplicably relinquishing it for a while after that. Seems like I can’t frappe for shit. Seems like it’s really hot up here in the studio. Seems like a really colorful funky top that Anne is wearing. Seems like a long walk home.

Oh, hey. I kinda screwed up.

I had been thinking about featuring a poem or two in this space. First, of course, so I can show off my vast knowledge of poetry. (Heh.) But also to share some of my faves with all of you, my loyal readers. (You two know who you are.)

This thinking had started somewhat earlier in the year, but then really coalesced when I had done the Memorial Day entry and mentioned Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. I hadn’t included that poem then, saying it belonged for another day. Which was true. But also I thought that if I started throwing out poems, I should start with the one that I somewhat consider my first favorite poem, the first poem that really made me dig deeper and actually appreciate poetry.

But then one day, without thinking, in haste maybe, desperate for a blog entry, I just kinda coughed up Shakespeare Sonnet #30. Sure, it’s a favorite, it’s great and all, but it’s not the one I had decided to be the first poem featured here. That great honor was supposed to go to Yeats’s An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.

I KNOW that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

I first encountered this poem watching a movie, actually. My all-time favorite stripper Christina had recommended this movie Memphis Belle to me. I don’t remember if I then rented it or just found it on cable somewhere. I think maybe I just happened to catch it on cable. I do remember that I watched it at my mother’s house, upstairs in the loft, on that TV up there. Must have been 1996 or 1997.

The eponymous Memphis Belle is an aircraft in World War Two, a bomber. Maybe a B-17 or B-29, doesn’t really matter. The ensemble cast are crewmen on the plane, and one of them is Eric Stoltz. He plays like this sensitive guy, and the others are always teasing him about how he’s always writing stuff down in his notebook. At one point somebody snatches it away from him and starts reading it, and I think Eric Stoltz snatches it back. But anyway they make him read aloud from it. And he reads this poem.

And he reads it as if it were something that he himself wrote. But later in the movie he’s wounded, and unconscious, and then after that when he comes back to consciousness, even just as he’s coming back around, he’s saying, “I didn’t write that. W.B. Yeats wrote that.”

But I had liked it so much when he had read it, aloud. And it made so much sense in context, in the context of his situation. (Now I can look back and think that maybe it’s a little too apropos, but whatever, right?) And it was lovely and sad. And then when you read it on the page, you see that it’s nice and traditional, good rhyme and meter. So, again, like the Shakespeare sonnet, it’s satisfying in content in a traditional form. That sums up a lot of my poetry sensibility right there.

So, Eric Stoltz reads this lovely & poignant poem, and then later announces that it’s actually from Yeats. And I know that I’ve heard of Yeats, right? I remember getting Yeats and Keats mixed up when I was in high school, or maybe later. But I’ve at least heard of this Yeats guy. Like maybe he wrote that Ozymandias poem, or maybe that was Keats. (It’s actually Shelley.) But I know Yeats totally wrote that Second Coming poem. You know, “What rough beast … slouching toward Bethlehem to be born,” that one? In Stephen King’s The Stand, one character refers to this poem, and mispronounces Yeats’s name, using the long “e” and calling him Yeets.

But anyway, I had grabbed my old copy of The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, which I had owned for years but hardly glanced at ever, except maybe for trying to read Gerard Manley Hopkins one time, when my then-girlfriend Cathy had gotten into him. And the Norton had like fifty pages of Yeats, including The Second Coming and An Irish Airman Foresees His Death. And so I started reading some Yeats.

And some of them I liked and some of them I didn’t. But some of them I liked(!), which was great. And new to me as well. I had thought poetry to be pretty useless, like in high school, declaring that if somebody decided to write something in secret code, why the hell should I bother to try to figure it out. I even once wrote a poem, snarkily called Emily Dickinson Eats Worms, for a community college class. But then here I was, older, in my early thirties, not so full of myself now, with nothing to fear or prove, just reading and enjoying. I wasn’t being forced to read it either. Maybe that was part of it too. But whatever, here I had this amazingly great book of poetry, with annotations and explanations and short biographical sketches to fill in what otherwise I couldn’t figure out for myself.

And this particular poem, Irish Airman, I really like for a lot of reasons. First, as I said, I first heard it read aloud. And in that reading, I didn’t especially notice the rhyme or meter. It just sounded beautifully sad. But then looking at it, it does have a quite traditional scheme. And I love the contrast of the two lines about love and hate, that sort of bewilderment, that understanding but not understanding of where he is and why & whom he’s fighting for and against. I love of course his declaration of solidarity for Ireland, although he fights for England. And even more his declaration of solidarity for the poor of his county. And finally that weariness, that sadness, where the years behind and the years ahead are all even just a waste of breath.

Although it was featured in this Word War Two movie, it’s actually about a pilot in World War One, and he did actually die. Yeats wrote it for a friend, whose son is the airman in the poem. He did die.

It’s similar, the poem, to another poem, High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee. Contrast “this tumult in the clouds” in Yeats to Magee’s “tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds.” Except High Flight to me is really treacly, while Irish Airman is not. Not nearly so much, anyway. And the airman in Yeats is at least cognizant of why he flies and fights, and how unimportant he himself is in the scheme of things, whereas in Magee the pilot is all too self-absorbed, telling us how he has done things that we have never even dreamed of doing. And worst of all, Magee’s pilot declares that he has “touched the face of God.”

Number one, ew, as in it’s a bit gauche and grandiose, even for poetic metaphor. And but then number two, have you now, really? I’d figure the dead pilot of Yeats is a lot closer to God than Magee’s obnoxious braggart.

But, then, sadly, Magee did in fact die, at the tender age of nineteen, in a mid-air collision during a flight. Yeats lived to a ripe old age.

Finally, there’s one other little tidbit, regarding my love for Yeats. Having mentioned Wilfred Owen more than once now, you know that I’m a huge fan of the War Poets. But Yeats himself wasn’t, a fan, actually. Of Rupert Brooke’s poetic talent, Yeats once said that Brooke was “the handsomest young man in England.”

In all the excitement of my life of late, I’ve neglected to mention here in this forum a couple of our cultural outings to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A week ago Saturday it was with Mother Dillon to the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre to see Mame starring Christine Baranski.

I had the idea after talking to my mother that Mame was originally played by Rosalind Russell. This turns out to be true but also somewhat confusing. Apparently first there was a novel called Auntie Mame, by Patrick Dennis, published in 1955. Then there was a play in 1956, on Broadway, starring Rosalind Russell, who went on the star in the movie version in 1958. But then there was a musical version, called simply Mame, which ran on Broadway from 1966 to 1970, and was again revived in 1983, starring Angela Lansbury as Mame. Got all that?

So anyway, we get Christine Baranski in the musical version. And it seems like a Christine Baranski kind of role, actually. I’m a little underwhelmed in general by the whole thing, as it’s really to me such a threadbare plot, more like just a lot of songs stitched together by an afterthought of a story. I’m shocked to learn that there’s an actual novel as the basis for all this. But by the second act I’ve grown a little fonder of the thing, and I end up enjoying myself.

And it’s fun during intermission, in a Washington DC as both big city and small town kind of way, that we see and chat with a friend from St. Matt’s, on the Adult Formation Committee with me, Pat Durham. And sitting near us, whom we chat with briefly later, is Nancy Lutz, another St. Matt’s person. She’s on the Hospitality Committee.

Our seats are nominally terrible, up in the balcony, all the way up against the back wall, but the Eisenhower Theatre isn’t really all that big, so it’s not a problem. And at these prices, we aren’t going to pay the tons more to be much closer. And we can generally hear just fine, as the performers are miked, although there are a few audio dropouts here and there. And at one point, one of the actors, giving Christine Baranski/Mame a hug, speaks his line right into her lavalier, his voice hugely booming out so as to be heard I swear in the whole tri-state area.

And then just Saturday last Dawn and I go to see the Kirov production of Giselle in the Kennedy Center Opera House. I’ve seen Giselle before, and I’ve seen the Kirov before, but I’ve never seen the Kirov’s Giselle before. They’ve renamed Hilarion in their version as simply Hans.

I think Leonid Sarafanov as Count Albrecht is a tad girly, until the second act where his tour jete is spectacularly high, like his back leg practically brushes the Opera House chandelier. Viktoria Tereshkina as Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, (scary!), is the same, leaping ridiculously high. And those Wilis are awesome. There’re 27 of them, counting Queen Myrtha. Beautiful and haunting, and all of the dancers in amazingly exacting precision. Dawn says that Olesya Novikova as Giselle is praiseworthy for not hamming it all up during her mad scene.

And more small town-ness, we meet Dawn’s old dance St. Mark’s partner Francis during intermission. He apparently has just come from being in the first act, during the hunting scene, when the servants enter bearing the day’s kill hung upside down on poles. (The scene was noteworthy to me because the dead animals were so clearly stuffed animals. It was kind of funny but then also reminded me of the time we saw that man carrying his poor dead dog in his arms a month or two back. These stuffed animals’ heads didn’t hang down right, like that dog’s head did.) We hadn’t recognized Francis, sadly, during his star turn on stage.

And a quick word from the architecture critic in me, although I know really so little about architecture. The Kennedy Center itself is one of the few more modern buildings that I actually like, although I only like it to a certain extent. I think from far away it’s great, but I think that I think that because it’s somewhat deceptive as far as its scale. Far away it looks like a smaller building. Up close it’s just yet another modern example of huge expanses of way way too much plain façade. Or at least I think so.

And this coming weekend we’re going back to the Opera House to see the Royal Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty on Saturday. Then Sunday it’s the Washington Ballet at their studio theater.

I talk to Dawn. She says that she doesn’t like that Shakespeare sonnet. Just too much self pity. And she did indeed read Swann’s Way but didn’t like that either.

Took the Blue Line to Springfield after work, where Gordon picked me up and drove us to Vienna VA. I haven’t lived in VA for a long time, apparently, since I couldn’t think of how one should go to get from Springfield to Vienna. I would have hopped on the Fairfax County Parkway for lack of a better idea.

Gordon wisely took 495 to 66 to Vienna. We would have been to the show in a little better time but for Maple Ave being completely shut down for a stretch of a few blocks. We had to detour and sit in traffic on the side streets for precious minutes. When we finally arrived at Jammin’ Java it was standing room only.

But as we stood there, me feeling sorry for us while Gordon was proactively putting together broken chairs sitting by the soundboard, I saw a man in the aisle gesturing to a woman sitting down. Looked to me like he’d found better seats and was trying to get her to come along with him to them. So when she stood up, I asked her, “Moving on to greener pastures?” She was indeed, so I grabbed the vacant seats. I looked around for Gordon, who seemed to have quite impressively built like a ziggurat of parts into some actual seating, and he abandoned his construction and came and sat down.

Gordon stayed and saved my seat for me while I went to rustle up dinner. The barmaid looked about fourteen. The guy at the register maybe seventeen. But they had turkey sandwiches and Sam Adams. I brought Gordon his beer while waiting for the sandwiches to be made. I finished my beer while waiting for the sandwiches to be made. I got another beer while waiting for the sandwiches to be made. They came out just as the lights were going down.

I had been to Jammin’ Java once before, to see Peter Case. For that show there were tables set up, so there were like thirty or so people there tops. And some young dude opened the show, and seemed like there were a lot of groupie chicks there just to see him, so it even emptied out a bit before Peter Case played. For Marshall Crenshaw there weren’t any tables, just rows of chairs. And Marshall himself came out right away. No opening act, although he did announce a few minutes later that management had asked him to split the show into two parts. So there would be an intermission anyway.

He opened with There She Goes Again, saying it was from way back, “back from day one,” he said. I don’t remember the rest of the setlists, but he also at some point played Something’s Gonna Happen, Fantastic Planet of Love, Mary Anne, Someday Someway, Cynical Girl, and You’re My Favorite Waste of Time. Whenever You’re on My Mind, too, maybe. Some covers as well: Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown, a Buddy Holly song something like Annie is Working the Midnight Shift, two Gene Pitney songs – Love My Life Away (Marshall said that used to close his shows with this, back when he played with his brother at CBGBs) and Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa (apparently written by Burt Bacharach). Some newer stuff I didn’t know: Sunday Blues and a sweet song, about moving into a new place, called Twenty-Five Forty-One. Maybe Gordon will remember if I’ve missed anything.

The crowd was old, like us, although they started trickling out before the show was over, while we toughed it out. We started worming our way up closer as people bailed on their seats. We had started out in the 8th row, towards the side wall, but ended up like in the 3rd row on the aisle for the last song. We could only see his head from way in back, but up close we could see that he was playing a beautiful old hollow-body Gibson, itself patched into a little Fender amp, which amp had a microphone in front of it. He sang into a mic as well, of course, but there was another one down by his foot, to amplify his foot tapping for percussion I guess. It was his left foot, I noticed, because the shoe on his right foot for some reason didn’t have any laces.

This is one of my favorite poems. I can recite it from memory, although Dawn tells me that I do it in an especially annoying way. I think maybe I do it in some sort of stylized performance. Or as an acting audition, more likely, probably how my first wife would have. Or how she maybe actually even did, although I seem to remember that she used sonnet number twenty-nine as an audition piece.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste;
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,
And moan th’expense of many a vanished sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

I remember, not being an especially literate dude, and not speaking French either, being taken a little aback by the phrase in the second line, “remembrance of things past,” when I first read it. Hey, that’s Proust, I said. Only later would I learn that À la recherche du temps perdu is in fact more literally translated, and is more accepted as the English title nowadays as, In Search of Lost Time. I’ve never even tried to read Proust, though. I think Dawn’s said that she’s read Swann’s Way. Anybody else out there Proust fans?

What I love about this poem though is that it’s honest and true in content but also delicious in form. It’s so utterly grandly over-dramatic, describing the mere act of thinking of the past in so tragic of terms. Just remembering is heart-wrenching drama. But that way the present dear friend can then be so greatly contrasted, I guess. But still, I love that “which I new pay as if not paid before,” that totally reliving whatever pain that still lingers.

But then all of this is couched in the beautiful language that Shakespeare could rattle off endlessly, apparently effortlessly. This poem is like candy in the mouth when reciting out loud. It just makes the mouth feel good to recite these words.

Try it.

Dawn and I both take the day off from work and visit museums with Sarah. We go to two of the Smithsonian museums, first American Indian and then American History. Apparently I haven’t been to a history museum in a while, as I find myself pretty much overwhelmed by the overstimulation. It’s just all too much.

The docent at the NMAI directs us to the fourth floor, where there’s an introductory film that plays every twenty minutes in the Lelawi Theater. We get up there about halfway through the eleven o’clock showing, sow we wait ten minutes or so for the next one. Inside the theater there are no seats proper, just risers for seating, with the screen in the middle, ampitheatre style. The screen is a triangular wooden structure with three blankets, one on each side, on which is projected the film that we watch, called Who We Are. There’s a boulder beneath the screen structure on which images are projected as well. And there’s a domed ceiling above us, again with images. There’s a lot to look at.

The film itself is rather shapeless, just sort of meandering from cliches about respecting the land and losing & refinding ancient practices. There’s one montage that I like, showing the immense diversity of this group of peoples: people dancing around a fire, then like someone bowling, then an astronaut, that sort of thing.

We exit from the theater and are led immediately to the Our Universes exhibition. I try to find some structure here, but I fail. There’s a sign at the beginning saying that the stars on the ceiling and the equinoxes & solstices on the floor will help guide us. I see stars, but nothing on the floor. I do eventually come to recognize that there are eight galleries in the exhibition, four groups of two, each group probably representing a season or one of the equinoxes or solstices, but it’s pretty vague. I’m looking for more signage.

Each gallery is presented to us by a particular “community,” e.g. Pueblo or Quechua. Here again we’re faced with the remarkable diversity of the subject of the museum, the peoples themselves stretching from Point Barrow to Cape Horn. That’s a lot of territory to cover. A lot of people.

There are no straight paths anywhere in the museum. All of the wall curve one way or the other. At times the glass of the exhibit cases throw off weird reflections of the light, so I have to sort of dodge back and forth to try to see whatever is in the case. The galleries are all shaped differently, so I lose my way and double back at times when I’m trying to go a different way. It’s all part of the experience, I guess, a deliberate anti-linear-ness. A different way of thinking.

We eat in the Mitsitam Native Foods Café. It’s a cafeteria setup with different stations representing different regions. Dawn & I both grab from the South American foods, where apparently tamales is the plural of tamal & I have one. Dawn has the quinoa. Sarah goes for a wild rice salad.

There’s more overstimulation at American History, where we tour the America on the Move exhibition. It’s all more like the American Nostalgia Museum to me. Like for instance, you’d figure that a history of American transportation exhibit would include the automobile, and you’d be right. But do they really need the 1948 Tucker and the 1950 Studebaker and the 1953 Glasspar and the 1954 Buick and the 1965 Ford LTD and the 1965 Mustang and the 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix and the 1972 VW Beetle and the 1977 Honda Civic and …

Well, you get the idea.

I do actually have a hootin’ good time at the American Maritime Enterprise exhibit. There’re lots of models of sailing ships of all scales. Good Horatio fun, although they do have a lot of stupid stuff from before and after the Napoleonic Wars, like anybody’d be interested in that. I go through the hall twice, and then we go through again when we leave.