Sound of Silence

Weekend mornings are the best for dog walking. I mean real morning. Before the sun is up. It's the quietest around here then. Late at night there tends to still be traffic. Big city, you know. But from maybe 3 AM until 6 AM on Saturday or Sunday the world around here is at rest. And quiet for once. It's especially quiet now because there are no birds. No insects. No "wild" life to break the stillness. But in the spring I'm guessing and hoping that the animal sounds will be back in force.

Not like the spring peepers in Pennsylvania mind you. In the spring near Tamarack Lake the chorus from the spring peepers could be deafening. Literally. An amazing sound. There aren't too many of those around here that I've heard. Sounds that are amazing.

Once in awhile since we live near water the lonely sound of a Canada Goose breaks through the traffic din. But you have to listen hard. And listening wasn't meant to be hard I don't think. You need the silence surrounding the sound to make the sound real and special and holy. Not much of that silence here. Not much holy sound. Just for a few hours each week. On Saturday and Sunday mornings.

The Big Picture

I was wondering what in the world to say today. But then I came across this: World Clock. Pretty much says it all doesn't it?

Blurry Photos

Cell phones don't make the best cameras when it's dark and as glazed as a frozen doughnut. But here is what mine captured earlier this morning (the marriage of Mac and Cell is saved . . . see my previous post!).

Snow and Ice

It's finally come! Snow. Softly falling yesterday all day. A couple of inches by the end of the day. Dry big flakes. Then it changed to freezing rain and drizzle. That's what's been spitting all night. Now there's a glaze of ice over the pressed down snow. A pretty sheen reflecting the city lights back at Kooper and me when we took our walk a bit ago.

So, the snow wasn't snowy for long. The wonderland faded into an icy, slushy mix that froze overnight.

Because of all of this most schools are now closed. Though the George Washington Parkway near the house is drivable enough. Just wet. The announcer on WETA (one of the local NPR stations) says it's the back streets and roads that are problematic. They are the icy ones. Not treated yet.

And Kooper and I know first hand how the sidewalks are. Glazed. Like a glazed doughnut only not as tasty or fattening.

I took a picture with my cell phone of the glaze and lights and snow earlier during our walk. But I can't download the photo to my computer. My phone and Mac aren't speaking at the moment. What we have here is a failure to communicate. Otherwise, you could see the beauty. And doughnut-like splendor. Maybe later. If my workplace is closed for the day I'll have plenty of time to play the marriage counselor between the two devices.

A Daily Dose of Laughter

On the Funny or Die website. This piece of parody is funny and the actor does a great Barack Obama impression: Letter from GW

In passing

I saw a funeral train this morning. Standing on the Braddock Road Metro station platform. The train was on the next track over. Holding row after row of stacked coffins wrapped in plastic. From Belledune, New Brunswick, Canada. Dead trees. Trimmed and smoothed. Stacked on pallets and shrouded in shrink wrap. Headed somewhere toward reincarnation. As a house. Or commercial building. Or barn. Or some other sort of box to hold stuff or plants or people or other animals of the non-people variety.

There was no black bunting draping the dead. No one weeping by the side of the train. No pomp and circumstance. No funeral dirges. Nothing but the low clouds and spitting snowflakes to set an appropriate tone: cold, damp, grey. Sad.

I said a prayer anyway.

"Mea culpe."

Let It Snow

It looks like this might be our first snowy week here in DC this winter. Scattered snow showers are forecast today. With snow - just snow - tomorrow. Wintry mix on Wednesday and snow showers again on Thursday. This will be interesting. To see if and how the DC snowfall brings things to a standstill as predicted.

Right now it's chilly but cloudy. The type of clouds that actually seem to keep things a bit snuglier and milder than they would otherwise be. They are the low, flat clouds.
The ones that reflect the city lights back down so that it seems brighter at night than it should be. Even at 3:00 AM if you happen to open your eyes a bit. And then you think it's late. And that you might have missed your alarm going off. So you check the time. And then your mind's engaged. And you know it's no use even trying to go back to sleep because you won't. But you try anyway. And you're right. It's no use. Those kind of clouds!

It's going to be a long day. I hate those kind of clouds.

And now, the news . . .

We interrupt the Washington Post Puzzle I was doing (a few tabs over on my web browser) to bring you the latest news from the DC Metro area. A political chill is settling back in after a temporary thaw of euphoria around the inauguration of a President who promises hope, audaciously. And just as audaciously, the old lines of power are being drawn down the aisles of the House and Senate chambers. Drawn across Pennsylvania Avenue - between the White House and the Capital. Winds of rhetoric are wafting in from the the left and right. Plant tops whose leaves were just starting to poke out in anticipation of a Washington spring are withdrawing back into the protection of the earth.

People are frustrated that where a new approach was promised, old ways are entrenched. Where cooperation was touted as the hope-filled way into an otherwise frightening future, pettiness is now promising to block that road. Diatribe is replacing dialogue. Hurt is precluding healing.

In the meantime, war still rages. People still hunger. Men and women still lose their jobs. And homes. And families. And children die.

And to top it all off. Despite of it all. We still hope. Hope that spring will come.

Inauguration - The End

And here's how we ended the day . . . Kooper (at home waiting patiently on the floor) and his Keepers (partying at the Ball with the Obamas). The party's over. Now to work.

Inauguration Part II

More from the Inauguration. Tomorrow two last photographs.

Inauguration

Here are some photographs from the wonderful Inauguration event yesterday. They run chronologically from when we got to the Braddock Road Metro station (at the top) to when things started to brighten up on the Mall on the bottom. If you click on each photo you can see it full size. Part II tomorrow!

Six More

In six minutes or so we'll be off on our trek to the National Mall to see the Inauguration (photographs tomorrow here in the space). After Kate gets back from taking Kooper on one last swing around the block to water some plants.

In six hours or so we'll have a new President. Peacefully. The transition will be anyway. There's not too much peace anywhere in the world.

In six days or months or years from now? Who knows. That's up to us I guess.

Loosened Grip

The deep winter's freeze finally loosened its grip on the DC area yesterday. The mercury actually rose to near 40 degrees (F) and for the first time in days I heard birds singing and saw squirrels out scurrying around looking for food. The wind shifted from the northwest to the south for awhile, bringing moister, milder air with it. Good thing too! The entertainers at the Lincoln Memorial would have had a hard time singing, and playing violins and woodwinds and guitars and the like in the single-digit temperatures of the prior several days.

My favorite of the Lincoln Memorial Inaugural celebration performances was when Pete Seeger, and his grandson and Bruce Springsteen sang "This Land is Your Land," an old Woody Guthrie anthem for the masses. You can see it here. Restored to its original glory with all of the verses that Woody Guthrie wrote. It seemed appropriate. With hints that the people are going to be invited into involvement in government again. With indications that a lot of the invited are ready to take up that challenge.

The eight-year chill - the Bush freeze - is about to loosen its grip too. Tomorrow at noon we can sing out along with the birds. For all to hear. "This land was made for you and me."

Four Year Old Post

I just today stumbled upon this post I entered into the Grist site four plus years ago during the Bush II - Kerry slugfest. Kind of prophetic in a spooky ironic sort of way . . .

The inability to govern

If anyone thinks that the nominee of either party in the current scheme of things can effectively govern, work against the impact of corporate money, buck the system and make meaningful change (whether its relating to the poor, rampant militarization or the environment), they're deluding themselves. The only real change works from the bottom up, at the grassroots level. The only way to energize that grassroots constituency is to smack them in the face and get them off their couches-away from their televisions. Kerry won't do that. In the end, he will have to compromise with a split congress to get anything through, and none of it will be meaningful. In the long term, maybe it will be better to have a puppet like Bush in power, attempting to clear-cut the nation and smog the skies. Maybe his blatant, empty-minded, stumbling ineptitude will get people off their butts and working for real change.

Posted at 7:08 AM on 22 Oct 2004

Tea and Toast

Drinking a hot chai latte on a cold winter's morning. With peanut butter toast. Crunchy. Both the toast and the peanut butter. Comfort food and drink.

It's nice in the morning before the masses awake and the cars start to roll down the streets and commerce starts to whir around in a recession-like kind of way. This time of day in the house it's just Kooper, the two cats and me who are awake. Time to think a bit. Which I do little of normally. And ponder. And write some, too. That puts the little thoughts down on electronic paper so they can stare back at me and see who created the strings of letters and spaces and punctuation marks, and if they or their creator make any sense.

Kooper likes peanut butter, too. Crunchy or not. But with his stomach being as sensitive as it is, it's not a good idea to give him globs of it. He does get to lick the nearly empty jar at the end of its useful life, though. Gives his tongue some exercise as he exorcises the jar of the last remnants of contents. It takes awhile and is always an entertaining five or ten minutes for Kate and me. But we are days away from an empty jar. Many morning pieces of toast to go before Kooper gets his end of the bargain.

In pet stores they should sell almost empty jars of peanut butter. I bet they would be a hit.

Frozen in Time

It's one. Degree that is. Well, not really. But it feels like it's one. That's what the weather page on my computer says. That's what my frozen fingers told me (ungloved) as I walked Kooper a few minutes ago. I think the temperature is actually seven or some similarly thin digit, but at this point 1 or 7 or something else without a companion numeral is cold for these here parts. Kooper didn't seem to care. He was still of a mind to take his time and sniff his way along our path. I nudged him along a bit faster than we normally go. Trading which hand was in my pocket and which was exposed and holding the leash.

That worked until Kooper took a dump. Then I was into cleanup mode and had a small bag of detritus to haul along back home. That couldn't go into the pocket, with or without my hand.

We made it back home and disposed of the doggy doo-doo. Closed the door behind us and re-warmed. I found my gloves now. I'll definitely wear them on the way to the Metro.

It's a TGIF day before what's shaping up to be a nice four-day weekend. I am off Monday (Martin Luther King, Jr.) and Tuesday (Inauguration). I'll be going in a bit on Monday to work to help unload some food that some community people are bringing in to our food pantry at work. It's part of their community service work that day. A lot of other people are doing community service that day too. In honor of Martin. In anticipation of and hope for things to come beginning Tuesday. Work for the hungry and poor and homeless. The ones out in the cold right now. Without gloves. Not knowing if it's one or seven or whatever. Just knowing that it's freezing. And that they are too.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

We've decided not go on with adoption process. It's taking forever. China is slow at their end. I'm getting older (I don't think Kate is, but I am). Who knows if and when the creeping slowness of the process will uncreep. If ever.

So, we've come to the slow realization that it's a better idea not to have a baby. Now. For a lot of reasons.

It seemed like a good idea. A great idea. Hundreds of years ago when we said yes.

But not now.

Down

Kooper is feeling down. He must have eaten something he shouldn't have. Which is practically anything besides his regular dog food. Or dairy. He seems okay with dairy. Cheese, yogurt, that kind of food. It may have been the bits of pizza crusts on Sunday. Leftovers from the football watching pizza I made.

It had been awhile since I pieced together the warm water, yeast, sugar and flour to make the dough from scratch. But it was good. The cold months are good times to bake. The oven adds extra warmth to the kitchen. The smell of bread (pizza dough) baking is a home kind of smell. Soups make good winter weather recipes too. And they are easy to throw together. Almost any mix of tasty base foods thrown into a broth of some sort will simmer into a glorious concoction. I'd give Kooper some chicken soup for his stomach but that would just make things worse I think. "Chicken Soup for the Kooper" wouldn't be a best seller.

Maybe chicken soup for the nation. We need something like that after the stomach-upsetting, nausea-inducing diet of lies and diatribe spewed out from our current president yesterday during his final (thank God) news conference. The Bush administration soup has been a sour mixture from the beginning. Not at all a home kind of soup. More like a syrup of ipecac that we were forced (?) to swallow on a routine basis.

The new soup is simmering. One week to go. Should be nice and ready to go by then. Big servings. Yum!

The Big Freeze

It's cold. No. Not in Alexandria or Washington really. But in our office. The heat is out of service. It's normally chilly where I sit anyway. That's with the heat working. When the heat's off it's downright cold. I think it's in the 20s outside and maybe in the 50s in here. Practically balmy!

I won't complain though. It's much colder up north. And getting colder. By mid-week it will be one of those "highs in the single-digits" kinds of freezes up in the Great Lakes.

Keep warm everyone!

Blah

Okay. It's been awhile. Since I wrote in the blog. But a lot has gone on. I won the office football pool in an office I was at two offices ago. Actually that happened well before my last blog. But I'm looking for something to write here so cut me a break. Oh! And Barack Obama won the Presidential election. Yeah, I know. That's old news, too.

It's just that the midwinter blahs have set in now that the rush of the election and the end of the football pool season are over. Now that I've reached level 80 in World of Warcraft. Oh I know there's still the post-season football fantasy league that I'm in. but I'm dead last in that after the first week. At least I have room for improvement. And then there's the hope of the upcoming baseball season. It's only about a month until spring training. I hope the lowly Yankees can improve over last year. Like me in fantasy football, at least they have room for improvement. Speaking of room - they will have a new playroom this season. A new Yankee Stadium.

The flow through of visitors has ebbed. it was fun while it lasted. We are down to the standard two cats, one dog and two humans again. In an oversized, overpriced house. Supersized. Like the Big Mac and Whopper.

Off meat now too. Prompted by a viewing of the movie "Fast Food Nation." I'm totally meatless. Not vegan. Still eating and drinking dairy and eggs (eating, not drinking). Hopefully the hens and dairy cows are humanely treated. Maybe. Depends. Kate's eating fish flesh (the fish industrial complex wasn't featured in the movie, so . . .). Gasp!

January Thaw

It should soon be upon us. Time for the January Thaw. That warm-up time that lets you get through the cold and snow of winter and allows you to take a breath, pause, build up your energy, and plow through the rest of the season toward the hoped-for spring.

Except we here in the DC area really can't thaw so much as milden up a bit. It' a mild winter to begin with. Few freezes. No snow. Nothing to thaw from. No need to pause. Breaths of warm air - or at least temperate - are plentiful. So, like Pennsylvania, we've left January Thaws behind, as well.

Maybe it will be replaced by July Chills.

We happily have more guests this week. Pat is staying here while Jen attends a conference across the River in DC. And a friend from Massachusetts, Allison, stops by tonight on her way south to Florida. It's good to have a house filled with people. That's what houses are good for. Holding people. Being the places of food, friendship and connection.

Ordinary

Today begins the ordinary days. Those between the beginning of winter set of holidays and the beginning of spring set of holidays. Today normality sets in. Whatever that is.

The trips are over. It seems that between late November and this weekend that we added a few thousand miles on the car. Maybe it seems that way because we did. If I recall correctly there were about four round trips to northwestern Pennsylvania during that period. At about 300 miles one way that's . . . let's see . . . yes that's almost a few thousand.

The tree is up still. But that will make its way into mulch during the week. And the ornaments on the tree will be packaged away. As well as those spread around the house and the lights and candles there to remind us to be of good cheer during this time of darkness and long nights.

The weekdays will be full of working hours instead of broken up by days off. At least for the next two weeks. Then we celebrate the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the hope of Barrack Obama with two consecutive days off. Back to work means the roads and mass transit system will be full again.

Ordinary is good. Too much out-of-the-ordinary would be too chaotic for most people. Change is constant. Ordinary in a strange kind of way. But chaos - change gone amok - would be a bit stressful if it were constant too. The chaos will come eventually. It always does. But I'll take the ordinary for now.

Clinging and Clawing

I read today that our role in life is to bring an open heart to a clinging and clawing world. That's a graphic image. But one that rings true. The clinging and clawing. Especially at the end of life when most people want to hold on to that sense of aliveness for a few more minutes or seconds. Or maybe days or years. It doesn't matter. It's the clinging to our frozen life-form that is the image here.
I heard once that living things are like ice cubes in a sea of liquid water that is the Universe or God or Whatever you want to call it. Life is water just like the rest of the universe, but solid. And life tends to think of that solid form as the ideal. Something to fight for. To cling to. To claw at. But in the end life just melts into the liquid form that it's swimming in despite the clinging. The clawing can't reverse that inevitability.

Maybe what the open heart does is to warm up our frozen existence as solid, living ice forms. Making real the understanding that we are really water after all. Like God. Like the Universe. And that in dying we become like that which we were searching for all along.

So. My New Year's resolution. Relax. Don't grasp at the ice form. Allow warmth to melt the solid into the liquid.

I hate new year's resolutions by the way.

Are We There Yet?

It seems as if the time to the Inauguration and new administration is moving verrryyyy slowly. It may be that time is moving slower than normal anyway (see yesterday's blog about the extra second as one example). But it seems to be an inordinately long time since election night. And a long time yet to go until January 20.

It may be the waiting. Waiting (for a Christmas morning for example) lengthens the time until the big event. It's a well established scientific fact that a watched pot never boils. That's because we are there waiting for it to boil. But turn away for a second - let your mind drift to one, microsecond's worth of an alternative thought - then the water will boil away. With or without you.

I saw proof of this once on Star Trek: The Next Generation when the android, Data, was watching the same amount of water boil time and time again only to find that it boiled in the same amount of time each event. Seemingly disproving the watched pot never boiling maxim. But Data was an android. His mind was an errorless, perfect computer. No mind-drifting to vary the time it takes. No random thoughts to allow the experiment to alter.

In quantum physics, there's a theory called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It more or less says that you can't observe something without changing it. Maybe the Inauguration won't come if we keep waiting for it anxiously: observing time's passage as we await the change. Maybe the change won't happen at all unless we stop anticipating it. Like the pot of water. Time will just go on infinitely more and more slowly. Adding not only seconds each day. But minutes. Hours. Years. Eons.

And we'll never make it to January 20. George W. Bush will be President for eternity!

Tick

We gained a second yesterday. At 6:59:59 PM EST the clock at the U.S. Naval Observatory stopped for a second. A leap second. To align the orbit of the earth with the clocks of the world.

I thought yesterday seemed long.

Now today will go by that much faster!

Happy New Years Day to all (and don't forget to adjust your clocks)!