Category: My life

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U Street & Black Heroes

U Street was a cultural center in the past and is so again.  It was where Duke Ellington played.  For a while it was the biggest and most prosperous black community area in the U.S.   It fell on hard times in the 1960s, but recently has bounced back. 

My friend Victor bought a townhouse in that neighborhood about fifteen years ago.  He got a really good deal on the place, but the neighborhood wasn’t nice back then.  We went to dinner at his house one time and somebody set a car on fire a couple of houses down from his.  Victor assured us that this had never happened before and it evidently was an abandoned car.   The fire was set more out of boredom than malice.  Still, it is not something you see every day and it is an unpleasant smell.  Things are much better now. A big plus is the Green Line Metro stop.   Development follows the Metro in the suburbs and redevelopment comes to neighborhoods near city Metro stops.  

At the Metro stop is the African American Civil War Monument.  It looks a little out of place.  Most civil war monuments are in the midst of fields and forests.   This one is a little cramped in the city, surrounded by streets and pavement.   There was not very much to see at the monument itself.  I walked around a couple of times, but there was a sign for a museum a couple blocks away, so I walked up there.

The museum was worth the trip because of Hari, one of the curators.   He had an obvious love for the history and a knowledge that went along with that.   He told me that around 10% of the Union Army was made up of African Americans.   They were often employed in reconnaissance and what today we would call counter insurgency.   They protected the camps and the supply lines.  It is a crucial and very dangerous task, but one that by its nature is largely done away from the main body in relative obscurity.   You can read more re the museum at www.afroamcivilwar.org.   It is worth going to see.  It covers a neglected part of our American history.  We should remember bravery and honor sacrifice.

Hari told me about a John Wells Jefferson, who was a colonel in the 8th Wisconsin Infantry, raised Wisconsin in 1861 and served primarily in the Mississippi Valley.  Jefferson was a descendant of Sally Hemmings and probably Thomas Jefferson (DNA evidence has recently indicated that Sally Hemming’s children were at least related to Jefferson).  John W. Jefferson was part African American, but passed as white, according to what Hari told me.  The connection is with Chrissy’s ancestor, who was with a Wisconsin regiment during the Civil War. I don’t know if he was in the 8th Wisconsin.  He wrote a series of letters home.  The originals are in Norwegian (the family had immigrated from Norway to Wisconsin only a couple years before). I saw translations but I don’t remember the details.  I will have to find the letters and see what I can find out.

I also saw Ben’s Chili Bowl.  It has been more popular since Barack Obama went in there for a bowl of Chili.  I like chili, but there was a big crowd so I didn’t go in.  I wasn’t that hungry.  Anyway, I have to be careful with chili.  I don’t get along with the commonly used chili spice – cumin. I cannot really taste it, but it gives me awful heartburn and is better avoided.

Above is the equestrian statue of Winfield Scott Hancock, one of the heroes of Gettysburg.

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The Mall

Not many people know the National Mall area better than I do.  During the winter, I get off the Metro at Smithsonian and walk across the Mall every workday.   When I commute by bike in the summer, I ride along the Mall.   When I run during lunch breaks, I run on the Mall and if I when I have time I walk from SA 44 along across the Mall to Main State.  

Today I got off at Federal Triangle.  It was a longer walk to work, but it is a nice walk.  I like the mornings because I have the place mostly to myself.  I also like the afternoons when it is crowded with people.  It is nice most of the time.

I have posted dozens of Mall pictures on this blog, so please look through the files if you want to see more.  Below are the branches of an elm tree.  Notice the buds are swelling.  Spring is on the way.  

There are always complaints that the Mall is getting a little scruffy.    This is nothing new and it is part of the charm.   Our National Mall is … OUR national Mall.  On warm afternoons it fills with citizens enjoying their capital’s front yard.   People play football or Frisbee on the grass.  They walk between the Smithsonian buildings.  There are various exhibitions set up along the Mall paths during the warm seasons.  Thousands of us crowd the Mall on the 4th of July.  Millions of Americans watched the President’s inauguration.  People think of it as their own and it is.  Of course, all this is hard on the grass and it makes the place a little scruffy.

Below – I am reading lots of complaints that the crowds at the Obama inauguration killed the grass on the Mall.  It is damaged, but not dead.  I have seen it worse.   It will be back, as usual.

Scruffy is a point of pride for me and beauty.  Each of the bare spots is an indication of use.   The Smithsonian staff does a great job of keeping the grass reasonably healthy.   They rotate the fields to give grass a chance to recover.   And the fields are diverse; they have their share of clover and other “weeds”.   The Mall is not home to that chemically produced living Astroturf we too often see in our verdant manicured suburban lawns.

Above – this is how the rotate and manage the grass.  There is always a section closed off.  The grass there gets a rest.   Then they move the fence to protect a different place.  The grass on the Mall gets trampled every year, more during years with big events or inaugurations.   It grows back.   

This link has information about proposed restoration and improvements on the Mall.  It also shows the proposed location for the Martin Luther King Monument and other changes.

BTW – the bees are back.   A couple of years ago we were worried that honeybees were disappearing for mysterious reasons.  The reasons are not really mysterious.  Read about it at this link. The bees are back in town    

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Diversions Feb 28

Below is a view of the buildings looking toward Dunn Loring Metro. It is not much to see, but growing.  The building the the front is a big post office.  You get very good service there.

Below is public storage.  We have a lot of those things around here.   People have too much stuff.  If you can’t fit your stuff in your own house, you have too much stuff.  Of course some storage is for people who are moving, but not that much.

Above – the crowds at the Obama inauguration trampled much of the vegetation around the Mall.  I suppose it will recover.  Most of the plants were dormant during the winter anyway.

Above – the road widening/renewal project has flattened much of the territory, making it look almost like a new development area.  Newer, taller buildings will eventually rise from the rubble.

Below is the fast food court at Gallows Rd and Arlington Bvd.  It features Pizza Uno, Wendy’s, Sweetwater, Panda Express and some others.  It would be okay except for the impervious pavement for the parking.

Below is the construction on Gallows north of my house.  It is making progress.

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Time Well Spent

I depend on the Metro to get around.  That means I have to walk a lot and I think that is just fine.   You get to know a place a lot better when you literally put your feet on the ground.  Today, for example, I had a conference at FSI and had to walk from Ballston Metro.   It takes just over a half hour and it is a nice walk through Arlington.   I have included some pictures from my various walks.

  • This one is not from Arlington. This is the statue of Jame McPherson in Washington. McPherson commanded the Army of Tennessee during the Civil War. He was killed at the battle of Atlanta in 1864.
  • Ballston Mall near the Metro.
  • A pedestrian passage under Rt 50 on the way to FSI. This is a relic of an earlier time and I am surprised it stays open. It is very convenient however. If it were built today, it would need lots of other features and the government would pay millions of dollars for construction.
  • Housing in Arlington, VA
  • New construction near Ballston–February 20.
  • New construction near Ballston–November of last year.
  • Car stack near Ballston
  • Nature Conservancy across from Ballston Metro in Arlington. The Nature Conservancy is the best of the environmental groups, IMO. They actually buy, restore and manage ecologically sensitive places. Instead of just protesting or demanding something be done, they do something.
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Too Much Health Care

I thought that I would need a root canal in at least one of my teeth.  I counted on that or some other health care disaster, so I put money into my FSA account, but no such luck.  My teeth stayed healthy and so did the family and we put too much into the health care savings account that I have to use or lose by March 15.  This has never happened before.  Maybe I should just get that root canal preemptively.  

Below is a decoration at the Air & Space Museum.

The FSA is one of those heath savings accounts.   They are great.  They deduct money from your paycheck each week.  It is tax free, with the caveat that it be used only for certified medical expenses and that it be used by March 15 of the year following when it was deducted, or else they just take it back, so you have to guess right.  You can use it to pay deductibles, medicines etc.   My insurance doesn’t cover most dental expenses, so I pay myself for all that Coke and Hershey cars I consumed in my misspent youth.    Tooth fillings don’t last forever, and the ones I got when I was young are breaking down.   I don’t fear the pain of the dentist, only the price.   FSA spreads that out over the year.

Below is the National War College, T. Roosevelt Hall.  The building was started in 1903 and finished in 1907. 

This is the first time I have put too much money into it.   Usually I don’t have enough and I get stuck with unexpected expenses, so this year I decided to be smarter.  It looks like smarter was dumber. I am sure that something will go seriously wrong on March 16 and I will be stuck again.  

I suppose I can stock up on aspirin, Pepto-Bismol and Nyquil, but you can only buy so much of that stuff before they suspect somebody is setting up a meth lab. It is odd to have this problem and it is better than the alternative, but I don’t want to throw away the money.   I will figure something out.  I suppose I can pay for something in advance.

The thing about health care is either you need it or not.   It is not discretionary.   I generally dislike going to doctors and avoid them if I can.   My father went to the doctor only once between when he was discharged for the Army Air Corps in 1945 and when he died more than fifty years later.   I am not trying to match his record but we have done all the routine checkups, even the colonoscopy I should have gotten three years ago.   If medical visits can make you healthy, I am there. 

As long as I am on the subject of forfeiting heath related stuff, let’s talk about sick leave.   The USG gives me four hours of sick leave every two weeks.   We can roll the hours over at the end of the year and I have been saving it up.   I now have 2275.50 hours of sick leave saved up.    If you count in paid holidays, I could be sick for around a year and a half before I ran out of sick leave.   This is good.  It provides a de-facto disability insurance and I don’t need Aflac.   But the government, in its wisdom, has decided that it will just zero out all those hours when I retire.    This is the “new” retirement system that came into force the year I joined the FS.   Unused sick leave was added to your retirement in the old system.  Some in Congress are talking about changing the rules for the new one, but given the hard economic circumstances I don’t suppose anything will come of it.   

Frankly, this doesn’t bother me too much.  They can have the sick time back; I am just glad I never was sick enough to use it up.   But a significant number of people evidently view sick leave as just another form of vacation day and giving sick leave days an expiration date doesn’t encourage thrift or conservation, especially as so many employees are approaching their own expiration dates.   The first generations of employees in the new system are approaching retirement and absenteeism will no doubt rise among those in the new system within a few years of retirement.    

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Privacy Ancient & Modern

Below is a statue of Admiral David Farragut.  He captured New Orleans in 1862, which split the Confederacy and virtually stopped the export of southern cotton.  His famous quote, “damn the torpedoes, go ahead full speed ahead” comes from the battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. In those days, they called naval mines torpedoes. The harbor was mined but Farragut ordered it forward anyway.

It is only embarrassing if you don’t talk about it. I had my first colonoscopy today and I am happy to say that I don’t need another one for ten years.  The actual procedure is very easy. They use general anesthesia and it is no more uncomfortable than an afternoon nap.

The preparation is the hard part. You have to drink about three liters of some chalky stuff.  It is really hard to drink that much of anything and this stuff is harder than most. You also cannot eat anything the day before. This was not as hard as I thought.  

Modern medicine is wonderful.  Things that used to be hard are now easy. They are very careful legally, however. I had to sign lots of forms and they told me lots of things about privacy. They worry too much.  I think we should expect reasonable – not absolute – privacy.  

Absolute privacy, the privacy where you were really unknown, is a thing of the past. Hanging onto this old fashioned privacy illusion is silly and counterproductive.    While some people are busily reinforcing the front gate with ridiculously stringent laws and regulations, they are eagerly tearing down the back walls, by putting all sorts of really personal information on Facebook or their cell phones.  Internet has got you anyway. The only way you can hide from Google is to have a really common name. Chrissy (Christine Johnson) is immune to Google search.  Most people are not.     

It doesn’t bother me if somebody can find out my buying or travel habits.  I voluntarily share information with Amazon, Safeway, CVS or Marriott, among others.    I don’t mind if this helps them tailor their offerings to my tastes, although I am mildly annoyed that some computer program can fairly predict my behavior by extrapolating from my previous choices.  As a Federal employee, I give the government the right to monitor my office computer use.  Frankly, I find this a type of protection from scammers etc.  Privacy?  All I want is that people cannot compel me to do things or buy things.   They can offer all they want. 

Below is the National Portrait Gallery, one of the most interesting museums in Washington.

Generally, I figure anybody who wants to find out about me can do so but they will soon get bored and go away.   I do, however, like to be unconnected.   I don’t own cell phone and I don’t use the one the government gives me if not on duty.  When I go down to the woods it is very hard to find me.   We can still get lost.  This is the kind of privacy we can still choose, but it is the kind of privacy most people don’t want.  They want to be connected all the time.   I hate it when those clowns talk on the phone when they are driving.   Few things are so urgent that you really need to take a call when driving … or doing most other things for that matter.  

But you don’t need details about everything.  That is why I included only the unrelated pictures in this privacy article.

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Slothful & Indifferent

“Being yourself” is overrated and it is terrible advice to give a young person.  Much education and virtually all professional training is specifically designed to teach you to be different – and better.  Most success in life depends on your ability to play the proper roles.   This is as it should be. 

On the left is me when I was 19 and knew everything.  I actually had hair back then.

People left to just be themselves will often behave with slothful indifference, or worse. Doing the right thing is hard work that requires significant discipline and preparation.  Those doing the wrong things often rationalize away their failings, since the wrong thing usually results from the sin of omission rather than commission.  People neglect preparation or lack reasonable foresight and then find themselves in an untenable position.  Portraying themselves as victims, they plaintively ask, “What else could I do?” as circumstances “force” them into some questionable actions.

Random chance – luck – is an important factor in any result, but the chronically unlucky are probably making poor choices, often by what they are choosing NOT to do, as I discuss above.   

Below is a picture of my father (the guy w/o the hat) back in the summer of 1941, when he was 19 and knew everything. Even from our distant time, we can feel the joy of care free youth.  The Great Depression was ending.  Young men could find jobs. Later that year the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  By the next summer, my father was in Europe at the request of his Uncle Sam.

I am a natural procrastinator.  I have known that since I was a kid.   I compensate for this because I am a quick study with a significant talent to “think on my feet” or “wing it.”  I don’t say this to boast, but rather to point out the mixed blessing.  These skills allow me to get away with insufficient preparation and even when I pull off a success, it may not be the best I could do.  Because I recognize the problem, I can fight against the tendency, but I will forever struggle against the tendency to “be myself.” 

We are our own first creation.  We demonstrate who we are by what we aspire to be, by the choices we make and by the roles we choose.  My “self” is defined by my family, my forests, my diplomacy career and various long term habits such as reading and running.   I doubt anybody would have predicted this for me when I was born.  The things are do now are not the default option; I am not being my “natural” self,  but I am certainly being “me” – the me I have chosen, the one I want to be, not the one I was stuck with.  Sure glad I didn’t try too hard to be myself when I was younger.

My advice to the kids is don’t just be yourself; be better.  It will be more satisfying.

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Happy Birthday Espen

Below is Frogner Park in Norway, where Espen was born.

Today is Espen’s birthday. The youngest of the kids is now eighteen. I remember the day he was born eighteen years ago.   Espen was born in Baerum Sykehus near Oslo. It snowed the day before he was born.  The snow mostly stays on the ground in Norway between November and March, but I remember looking out the hospital window at the fresh coat of white.  

Espen was named after a little Norwegian boy who we hardly knew.   It was one of Mariza’s classmates at the preschool and evidently a brat.    Mariza would come home complaining about this Espen.   “Espen slo pa mai.” (Espen hit me) Espen kastet jord pa mai.” (Espen threw dirt on me.)   My apologies to any Norwegian readers for the mistakes I made in spelling and grammar.   We liked the name.    All of the kids names are associated with countries.  Mariza was born in Brazil, so she has a Brazilian name.   We spelled it with a z instead of an s so that Americans would pronounce it closer to the Portuguese and not call her Marissa.  Alex’s  name was chosen when I expected to go to the Soviet Union.  Espen is actually a Norwegian name with a Danish origin.

The third kid in the family gets the advantage of having the first two break in the parents, so Espen developed fast.   He really loved a kind of bouncing swing that hung from the door frame.   I taught him to swim at the Kolsas pool before he could walk.   Like all kids, he could climb before he could walk, but he was especially good at it.   Our house in Norway had three floors, so he could make us nervous on several levels.

Espen only spent a year and a half in Norway, so he doesn’t remember it, but Norway was a great place for little kids.   It is safe & clean and there are lots of parks.  I am sure it made an impression on him, although the detail is forgotten.   

We moved to Silver Spring, Maryland for Polish training when Espen was about 1 ½ years old, so his first language was American English.   We got a house with a big yard and a fence.   Espen learned to climb over the fence right away. We moved to Krakow about a year later.

Espen adjusted well to Krakow and went to a Polish pre-school up the street.   He called it “two cats” because the woman who ran the school had two cats.  He learned Polish w/o knowing what he was doing and I got a great insight into language learning from him.   I heard him speaking to the cleaning woman in Polish, but he denied being able to speak the language when I asked him about it.   He told me that he didn’t speak Polish.  “Those are just the words I have to use with her,” he explained.  

We bought a house in Virginia after we came back from Poland in 1997.  Espen went to Strevewood Grade School.  Espen and Alex had a lot of friends during our three years there.   Espen played on the Fairfax County little kids’ league. His team was called the little wizards and they were good.

We moved back to Poland in 2000, this time to Warsaw.   Espen and the other kids attended the American School in Warsaw and they were lucky enough to get a brand new school building.   The American School in Warsaw was a very posh place.  It is hard for working diplomats to have kids in this sort of school, because many of their local classmates are fabulously rich.  The government pays for our kids but those local guys who can afford the tuition themselves are very well off.    Espen went to one birthday party where they drove around in little Mercedes go-karts and got helicopter rides.   He wondered why his birthday parties were so pedestrian.   The locals think that all American diplomats are rich, but we just can’t play in their world.   

Below is our home in New Hampshire.

We came back to the U.S. in 2003, but lived up in New Hampshire, as I got the job as State Department Fellow at Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy.   Espen attended the Middle School in Londonderry, NH.   It was hard for the kids.   Many of the families have been established there for generations.   It is hard for newcomers, especially since we knew we would be there only for a year. 

We moved back to Virginia in 2004, same place where we lived before.  Espen went to Kilmer Middle School and then George C Marshall HS.  He still had some friends here and made new ones.  As I write this, I hear them all downstairs talking.  Parents can’t compete with friends at that age.  Virginia is home now.

These are my brief thoughts about my son on his birthday. Of course, there is a lot more than I am writing.  Suffice to say, I am thinking about the last eighteen years.  I miss the baby and the child, and I love and I am proud of the young man he has become.  

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Cranes of the Southwest

We lived at the Oakwood temporary apartments near Waterfront Plaza in SW when I was studying Norwegian in 1988.  The area didn’t change much over the next two decades, until a few months ago. Now it is a forest of cranes and new construction is going up all over.  The crane above, BTW, is on the frozen river.

A lot of the change is related to the new Metro. Development follows the Metro, even if it takes a few years, even in bad neighborhoods.   But the neighborhoods have also improved.   Back in 1988, this area was not so nice. That was the time of the crack epidemic.   During my year in Iraq, I never heard a shot fired in anger.  During my six months in SW in 1988, I heard several.   DC also had that horrible mayor back in 1988. I couldn’t understand how he could get elected and reelected, but his constituency evidently viewed honesty, law & order with less enthusiasm than I did. That Washington is just a bad memory and things are getting better.

SW has lots of advantages.  You could see that even in the bad old days. There are lots of parks. The waterfront is pleasant and features restaurants and shops selling the harvests of the Chesapeake and other seafood.   You are within walking distance of the Capitol and the Smithsonian museums, as well as the Library of Congress.   Now that the Green Line connects this neighborhood to the rest of the Washington Metro region, it has everything.  

Below used to be the Oakwood Apartments where we lived in 1988.  Now they are condos.

Places can bring back memories and this place reminds me of Alex and Mariza when they were little.  Alex was born while I was taking Norwegian and we brought him home to the Oakwood.   I remember walking with the kids over to the Waterfront Mall, the one that is now torn down and rising from the rubble.  It was a sad place back then and we didn’t go after dark, but it had a Roy Rogers, Pizza Hut & a Blimpie and it was within walking distance.   We used to walk the kids.   Alex was a happy baby and Mariza was cute.  

Below is just after dawn on the Mall.  I am taking pictures more or less from this same spot to look at the changes of seasons.

I was posted in Brazil when Chrissy got pregnant with Alex.  Mariza was born in Brazil, but Chrissy and Mariza were medivaced to Wisconsin for Alex’s birth.  They left in mid-January because after that time it would not be good for Chrissy to fly.  I had to finish my duties in Porto Alegre and stay until March, when they sent me to Washington for Norwegian training. I had to take annual leave and pay my own way up to Wisconsin (the FS was less into those family rights in those days). I was up there for Alex’s birth, but then had to go back to Washington to finish Norwegian.   Chrissy stayed with her parents and came down a few weeks later with the kids. Mariza was just over 2 years old.  A few weeks is a long time in the life of 2 years old and when I met them at the airport she was a little shy, but then she stood next to me and followed me around.  I remember those times fondly, but it was tough. I don’t think I could learn a language under those conditions today. 

Below shows the tough market.  A couple years ago you couldn’t find a rental. 

I developed a system for language learning, not very original or subtle but effective.  I just memorized about ten minutes of useful generic sentences, things like comparisons (on the one hand … on the other hand) or intros (Considering the conditions five years ago …) etc.  When I would walk around or run, I would just repeat the whole story. Over & over.  Language is a physical skill.  You just have to keep saying it out loud until it is driven down into the subconscious. From the basic words and phrases, you can branch out with variations. People think you are crazy talking to yourself, but it works.  For weeks I talked to myself constantly. When I finally passed my Norwegian exam and went silent, I felt strange.  I remember running around Haines Point and noticing how lonely it was with nobody to talk to. 

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Walking Around

Above is the Washington harbor on the Anacostia.

Today was bright and cool with a persistent west wind.  I am still working on the CENTCOM assessment and getting sick of it.   Actually, I am just anxious to get to my ordinary job.    That is what I signed up to do and there are many places where I think I can add value … once I get to focus on it.

I don’t have anything good to write today, but I did walk from HST to NDU and have pictures. I have to walk around when I have a problem to solve or a system to understand. It makes thinking easier. Man is meant to be in motion. I just don’t think clearly sitting at my desk. I can sit looking at my work for hours w/o making much progress, but if I go out and walk around I have no trouble finishing when I get back. When you are clear on what you need to do, doing it usually easy. Besides, Washington is such a beautiful city and the monuments provide a constant inspiration for anybody working for the government.

Above are sycamore trees near the WWII memorial.

Above WWII Memorial looking east.

Above is the next generation of cherry trees around the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial. In a couple of months, this place will be covered in flowers.