For the past several weeks, the temperatures have been basically in the 80s, with an occasional jump to the 90s or decline to the 70s. Today, the high is expected to be closer to 55, and the hourly forecast for rain or drizzle winds between 50% and 65%. Okay, that happens. What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that this is Star Wars Saturday at Nationals Park and, because 3 1/2 year old Izzy is a Star Wars fanatic, we decided this would be a good day for a family outing to the baseball game – and we invested in six tickets. The game is at 4 p.m., and I think it’s 50-50 whether they are going to call it off. The reason is that tomorrow, although the temperature is supposed to climb back into the 70s, the chances of rain and the intensity of the rain are likely to be higher than today, and that game is more likely to need to be canceled.

But the problem is that this series is against the Toronto Blue Jays, an American league team that the Nationals don’t play very often. How will they reschedule two games in Washington DC for these two teams? For that reason, my guess is that they will go out of their way to get today’s game in – that means rain delays. And rain delays generally last at least 45 minutes each, because each time you have to cover and then uncover the infield with a tarpaulin. (Sign of age? It took me a while – “tarp”, I knew, but what is it short for? “Tarpolion”? “Tarpulin”? Or was that one of the lesser known emperors of Rome?)

What to do? (Talk about first world problems?)

Yesterday, I had a pretty free day. I started with my normal early Friday morning bakery trip to pick up our weekly challah, and then had a 9 a.m. Zoom interview with a potential new board member for the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies. But other than that, nothing really scheduled until dinner.

I saw that the Reston VA library was holding its semi-annual sale and, even though it was Day 3 of the sale, I decided to take the drive. Reston, for those who don’t know it, was a planned city, about 20 miles west of Washington, still in Fairfax County, that was imagined and designed in the early 1960s by developer Robert E. Simon, who had an ego large enough to decide to name that place after himself. I remember the early days, when its survival was questionable, but where a town center and mid-rise apartments were built on the edge of a small but attractive lake, and middle and upper middle income housing subdivisions were carefully located nearby.

I remember that, when I started working at HUD in 1969, my direct superior lived in Reston and commuted to Southwest DC every day, something I then found astounding. I still find that commute astounding, although today, you can make the trip a bit easier (even considering much more traffic) either by taking a limited access toll road, or by taking the Metro (Reston is on the Silver Line that goes to Dulles Airport, about five miles further west).

Today, there is no question about Reston’s success. Its population is now over 60,000, and it’s skyline makes it look like a very successful mid-sized city. General Dynamics has its main headquarters in Reston, along with many other government contracting firms, especially those with a defense orientation, and Fannie Mae has a major facility there. It is no longer in the boondocks. (By the way, do you know that “boondocks” is a Tagalog word form the Philippines, and it means “mountains” and came into use in English as a remote place during the war in the Philippines at the end of the 19th century?)

At any rate, I went to the Reston library yesterday, and was a bit disappointed with the sale, perhaps because people already had two days to pick it over. I only bought two books, signed by the authors, and paid a total of $6.50.

The first is called Nofziger and it is from the early 1970s, a memoir by Lynn Nofziger, Richard Nixon’s and Ronald Reagan’s long time aid, and the man who John Dean said helped Nixon compose his “enemies list”. I met Nofziger once in what I would guess would have been the 70s. Nixon was no longer in office and Nofziger was working, I guess, as a consultant and had an office in an old town house, off Dupont Circle. I wish I could remember why I went to see him (it had something to do with my law practice, but I have no idea what) and was quite surprised. In those days, when lawyers wore two and sometimes three piece suits and every man seemed to wear a sport jacket, Lynn Nofziger had no jacket, just a dress shirt with an open collar. But more than that – he wasn’t wearing any shoes. He was in his stocking feet when he opened the door to meet me, when we spoke in his (quite elegant and comfortable) office and when he saw me out. That, I remember clearly. Why I was there? No clue.

The other book that I bought was one that I had never seen before or heard of. It was published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1939, is titled News is Where You Find It, and was written by Frederick William Wile, whom you have never heard of. Wile was a journalist – he passed away in 1941 – and I don’t (at this point) know anything about his career. But he had inscribed the book nicely and signed it, so I brought it home.

I must admit to some surprise when I opened it. Wile was born in La Porte Indiana in the 1870s. The first chapter, the only one I have looked at yet, told about his German father, who had immigrated to the United States in 1848 (no surprise there) from Binswangen, Germany. I looked up Binswangen (that’s what I do) and found it to be a very small town (under 2000 people even today) in the Rhineland. The Wikipedia entry says very little. In fact, all it talks about is its historic synagogue (spared by the Nazis from burning), now a community center, and the age of its historic Jewish community. That was it.

Going back to the book with this in mind, I was still surprised to see that his father was Jewish (as was his mother, a Guggenheim), and was a banker in La Porte and a founder of, and the “Reader” in, Congregation B’nei Zion in La Porte.

I have been to La Porte, located in northern Indiana, just southeast of Michigan City (on Lake Michigan), and never thought of it as a very interesting place, and certainly not as a center of Jewish life. I looked up Congregation B’nei Zion, and it no longer exists. In fact, it was already struggling when Wile wrote his book in 1939. But the B’nei Zion Cemetery is still maintaining its own (although it looks like it may not have had any burials in the past 15 years or so), and there are 18 Wiles buried in the cemetery, including Frederic William and his two parents.

In any event, I found all this very interesting. When I finish reading (re-reading) Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, I am going to go right to it, and see if it’s worth reading (slowly or quickly) through. If so, I will dul report and Fritz Wile will no longer be forgotten.

By the way, as to Michigan City, still considered a good weekend retreat from Chicago, was the home of my great aunt Sophie and her large family of Kottlers. Not sure where any of them are now.

That’s it for today. Now back to thinking about the weather. Go, Nats.