Cherries, Robins and Apples

This week is the week of the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC. The cherry trees that the Japanese government gave as a gift to the U.S. are supposed to peak later this week (the blossoms that is). That's good that the peak is later because this weekend is a bit damp. Mild but drizzly. Both are good. Mild because spring is finally here in its glory. Wet because we need the rain.

When Kooper and I morning-walked a bit ago the robins were singing the most I've heard all spring so far. Maybe in response to the warmth and wetness. Male robins were marking their territories in sound. It was a wonderful spring chorus. I lengthened our walk just to keep listening.

And I have my Apple computer back already! They shipped it from here to Texas on Wednesday. It got to Texas on Thursday, when the techies there replaced a faulty piece of hardware (and hilariously changed my wallpaper from one Firefly scene to another - it couldn't have been an accident - whoever worked on my Mac must be a Browncoat!). So my Apple is back. My fingers fit the keyboard again. And the world is a peace once more.

What was it Richard III said in Shakespeare's play? "A Mac! A Mac! My kingdom for a Mac!"

Duck Walk

Yesterday, Kate and I took a duck for a road trip into DC. Oh he was a real duck. Just not the kind with feathers and all. Didn't quack either. Except when the security guard in front of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building started to approach Groucho and me. Then Groucho did seem to get a little upset (Groucho isn't a cute name I call Kate, when she's acting a bit grouchy. It's the duck's name).

He was a colorfully painted paper cut-out duck from Erin's (my daughter's) preschool class in Meadville, PA. Her class sent the ducks all over to people whose task it was to take photos with the duck and send them back to the classroom. So, that's what we did. Groucho and we took the Metro into DC and saw some sights, ending up at the Kennedy Center, where the duck and we enoyed some Mozart and Bruckner. Here are some photos of Groucho and us along the way.

Mixed Up

I've noticed something about Washington DC neighborhoods. At least the middle class ones. On the whole they are heterogeneous. "Mixy," I call it. I know mixy is not a word, but it describes those neighborhoods well. A mix of houses and businesses. A mix of shops and stores. A mix of fancy and ordinary. A mix of people. Young. Old. Colorful. Not. Skinny. Not so. Straight. Bent over. A good model for urban living. Demonstrates every day that we aren't all black or poor or rich or white or senior or young or upwardly mobile or progressive or conservative.

Not a lot of places are like that. Alexandria is one of those not-like-that places. It's white, rich, "progressive" (in an "I know best" kind of way), and is proud of its openness while being very exclusive. Alexandria is an ungated, gated community. The gate is price. You gotta pay a high price to live here. And if you can't afford it? Well. We're sorry. Really we are.

I'd rather live in DC.

It's Dark

News Flash: It's almost 8 PM in the DC metropolitan area. And it's dark. The good news is that the days are getting slowly longer as we wend our way toward summer solstice. Which, ironically in the northern hemisphere, happens when the earth is farthest from the sun each year. That's a good trick question to ask people: "In the summer are we in the northern hemisphere closer to the sun or farther from the sun than in the winter on our annual trek around our nearest star?" Another good related question is "What is the star nearest the earth?"

Speaking of astronomical trivia (right up there in the preceding paragraph), I have a calendar where every day when you rip off the date, there is a new trivia question to try. Last week one of the questions was something like, "Besides the sun and the moon, what is the only other celestial object that casts a shadow on earth?" The answer was Venus. But that got me to thinking. Shadows are in the eye of the beholder, and if you had a sensitive enough instrument, I bet its "eye" (sensor) might be able to detect a shadow cast by some other celestial things. Plus (I know from my days as an oceanographer) the pelagic (look it up) zooplankton in the ocean respond to starlight by moving up and down in the water column. So, they must sense something there, and would sense the absence of that "something" (light) if some large object got in the way. Casting a shadow.

Eye of the beholder! Like a lot of other things. Beauty. Art. Truth. God.

Something to think about on a dark winter's night. Or not - depending on your viewpoint.