Ever since we moved to Washington we have been crammed in tiny apartments while we decided if we wanted to stay in Washington, DC. Last summer we made the decision to buy a house and stay.  Almost as soon as we started looking at homes, we found a house that we liked: an old Sears Bungalow-style house in the historic district of the racially and ( Read more... )

We have known for a long time that my father’s heart was weak, but this summer he started sleeping a good portion of the day and complained of chronic fatigue. His doctors discovered that he had an infected gallbladder and we had high hopes that having it removed would help him feel better. It didn’t ( Read more... )

Lately I have been plugging away at some books I should have read long ago. A full list of the books I’ve blown off is shameful, though the shame lessens every year. There was a time when reading great books seemed a moral enterprise to me, a kind of duty to civilization-and by that standard I was a hopeless moral defective.  English majors, even ( Read more... )

I don’t know if we’ll stay in DC but I must say that for the last six months the city has seemed especially beautiful. Some mornings I bike to work and my route takes me along the National Mall. Usually I am rushing to make the 8:15am shuttle, and at that hour the streets are empty and the air is frosty and clear. The rush of the wind and the rasp ( Read more... )

Earlier this month Yoko and I visited Asheville, a small city nestled in the North Carolina mountains. After a long day's drive we drove into town not really knowing what to expect.  I knew the town had a reputation as an artists' haven, but didn't know what this meant for a place situated right smack dab in the middle of Appalachia. One of the ( Read more... )

I decided to take the day off of work because I have decided, conclusively and irredeemably, that I hate information technology (IT).

In an abstract way I can see why IT could be interesting: it can involve a kind of Sudoku-like sense of playing puzzles. For me, however, I despise the way it feels entirely divorced from any sort of human meaning. By ( Read more... )

At work this afternoon I watched the entirety of Jesus Christ, Superstar on YouTube.  I honestly cannot tell you how or why I ended up on this little slice of Jesus freakery, but given that I have absolutely no work tasks to occupy myself with this week its supernatural appearance on my computer monitor turned out to be a bit of an, uh, godsend.

( Read more... )

Last night we saw Bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley perform at the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA.

Stanley is 85 years old and no longer as spry as he used to be. Once particularly known for his banjo picking--a three finger  style sometimes known as "Stanley style"--he as now largely given those duties over to another banjo player.

Dr. Ralph Stanley (he ( Read more... )

There was a time in my life when I would have been loathe to admit I was reading The Seven Habits of Highly Influential People. Those were the days when acting smart and hip was at least theoretically a possibility for me, long before I first time looked at a photograph of myself and noticed how much I looked like my fat, bald Republican engineer ( Read more... )

Washington, DC has a reputation for being a straightlaced town populated with career minded overachievers. There is certainly some truth to the rap. It is now intern time in DC and my train ride into the city been a mashup of perky, scheming interns and the normal crowd of sullen bureaucrats reading the Economist. All those bright-eyed interns ( Read more... )