Art is 80

When we left this saga this morning…..we were expecting a FIOS representative to come to our house to fix the problems we were having with channels 4 and 9 (504 and 509). The last message we had from FIOS, after the confusion over whether we had Sunday, Monday or Tuesday appointments, was that the Tuesday appointment would be the one.

So, we were a little surprised when, at about 1:30 this afternoon, the door bell rang and Mr. FIOS was standing on the porch. The Sunday appointment, you may recall, was set by FIOS Lady #1, before I was told by FIOS Lady #2 that FIOS Lady #1 didn’t know what she was doing.

At any rate, 6′ 4″ Al (my guess as to his height) was here to help. He was amused by the story I told him about the many contradictory appointments and told me “Yup, that sounds about right.”

He found the problem immediately, saying that we had a unnecessary ether net wire connected to our main TV box, and that this is what was causing interference with some channels. He removed the wire and all was fine. He did not know why the FIOS rep from two weeks ago left the wire connected.

I thought we were done. But then he said: “Look at this splitter. It’s pretty old. I think I should replace it.” And then, “I am going to look all around the house on the outside.” When he was doing that, he replaced another splitter on the outside. Each time he did anything, of course, the TV went out..

He came back in the house and said, “you know, the main main box in the basement that controls TV, internet and phone together, is an old model, too. Let’s replace that and all your equipment will be our most up to date and we know everything will be compatible.” Of course, I said “OK” He then told me that all three would be out of commission for about 30 minutes, and that first he had to check the main main main cable box around the corner, and he left the house.

I didn’t hear him come back in, but apparently he did. When he was finished, he proudly showed me our new main main box in the basement and another new splitter he put in, left me his phone number, and disappeared into the Verizon horizon.

Let us hope all is well. For at least a while. If not, I have his cell number. And he was a very nice guy.

It started during the baseball playoffs, when one of the two channels showing the games was TBS, FIOS channel 552, and it would not come in on any of our three TV sets. I did all the self-correcting work prompted on my screen and, failing to access the station, I contacted FIOS. FIOS makes it relatively easy to get in touch with them. A phone call depends on how many hundreds are in line in front of you, but an on-line written “chat” can happen immediately. And it did.

The nice agent-man did all sorts of things. He gave me instructions, he took over my set, he ran many checks, he captured my phone’s camera so he could look around my house, and channel 552 got fixed. But he also told me my cable boxes were at least four generations old (I don’t know what that means under the concept of time, because we had received new ones within the last five years or so), and that he could send me the latest versions for no cost, and that in fact our monthly bill would be reduced by a few dollars. He asked if I wanted to get them. I asked if there was any possible downside. He said that there wasn’t. I asked if someone would come and set them up and he said they were to be self-installed and the instructions would be clear. The on-line chat lasted a little over 2 hours.

A few days later, I received a box via UPS. I put the box by the front door and looked at it for several days, and finally took a deep breath, opened everything up, found three little boxes, one big box, a lot of wires and some things I could not identify, and nothing that looked like clear instructions. I called Verizon once more and arranged to have a technician come out to help. The person I talked to said that the technician’s visit would probably cost me $99, but that it was up to the technician. The Verizon written confirmation said there would be no charge.

The technician came in a few days, and the installation took him almost two hours. He told me that many of the wires in the box were not needed and threw them out. He told me that one of our three televisions was too old for the new equipment, but that we could use our old equipment for that one, and he moved our old master cable box upstairs to our bedroom. There is no way that I (or anyone else) could have installed this new equipment by myself, although the technician told me that he had confidence in me, that I never would have given up in frustration and that I would eventually have done everything I needed to. I did not respond.

All seemed fine, but the next day, all of our TVs stopped working. I called the technician and he returned that day, and after conversing with the “home office”, told me that the problem was when he connected our old box to the upstairs TV, because he was told that our house could not use both the old and the newer systems at the same time. So he disconnected our upstairs TV, which is now of no value whatsoever, and will need to be replaced. That will happen one day – we hardly ever use the bedroom TV.

All seemed well (more or less) again until a week ago today (i.e., all was well for about 5 days). Last Sunday, I wanted to watch the Commanders game, and I discovered that channels 4 and 9 (or 504 and 509 in HD) were not working. I got the familiar “channel not available” sign with an “error message”, and again followed the on-screen instructions to no avail. I ignored the problem last week, which was a very busy week, and didn’t contact Verizon again until yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon, for some reason, the Verizon phone lines were clear and I could actually speak with someone without a wait. She was a nice soft spoken lady and, if I had to guess, I would say she was sitting somewhere in Hanoi. We spoke for about an hour and a half and she ran test after test, and nothing helped and she finally said that she had done (working with her “technical people”) all she could do, that there might be a wiring problem, and she would send a technician out. She then told me that the first available date was November 19. I told her that was ridiculous. She said that she might be able to expedite it, and came back on the line and said that a technician would be able to come tomorrow (today is tomorrow) and that someone would call me today (yesterday was today) and give me a time. She gave me a long “call number”. I thanked her.

Ten minutes later, chaos struck and the entire cable system went out. While I could have patiently waited until tomorrow, I called back and got a very nice Verizon lady, who was clearly somewhere in the United States (in my mind, she was in Columbus, Ohio, which is the most American American city I know). She was properly sympathetic and looked at my account, saw everything that went on and said – you do not have an appointment for tomorrow. She said that all the first lady did was request that someone call me to set up an appointment, but that she did not herself set up an appointment, and that she must not understand how Verizon appointments work. She also told me that the idea that the next regular appointment would be the 19th was ridiculous, that if that was the truth, she would advise me to leave Verizon and find another way to watch TV.

I spent another hour or so on the phone with her, running some of the same tests, and some new ones, being given some new instructions on what buttons to push and so forth and, lo and behold, eventually the cable came on and looked fine. But….I still was not getting channels 4 and 9 (504 and 509). She told me she would set up an appointment. We settled on Tuesday morning between 8 and 9 p.m., and I got a new “call number”.

I also got a text confirmation from her, something I did not get from the Vietnamese Verizon lady. But I was now sitting with two call numbers, one telling me that someone would come on Sunday and one telling me that someone would come on Tuesday.

Then what happened? I got a new text from Verizon, telling me that someone would come on Monday. I didn’t know if this was the Sunday time being delayed, the Monday time being expedited, or a third appointment altogether. But I wouldn’t be home for a Monday appointment, so I responded to the text saying that I would be available Tuesday, but not Monday.

I received another text asking me about possible Tuesday times. I selected the same time as the appointment that I thought I already had on Tuesday, and told Verizon in my response that I thought I already had an appointment, and gave them the call number. They responded with “yes”, and told me they would be here Tuesday.

In the meantime, when I was talking yesterday afternoon to the second Verizon lady, she asked me why our long time account was not registered on line with a Username and Password. I told her I just had never thought I needed it on line, and she asked me if I knew that with a Username and Password, by going to TV.Verizon.com on a computer, or by downloading the FIOS app on our smart phones, we could watch any station on the FIOS platform on the computer or phones. I admit I had no idea this was possible (does everyone else know this?), and I set everything up and, lo and behold once again, it works.

This meant that even though channel 4 (504) does not work on our TVs, we could watch Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live on our computer last night (and – if we wanted to – even record it on the computer to watch later), and that, I think, this afternoon I can watch the Commanders game on the computer, even though I won’t be able to watch in on the TV. Who knew this was possible?

That’s it. That’s my story. And I’m sticking to it.

I titled Part 8 of this series “Meridian Hill Park”, but wound up talking about the west side of 16th Street, and not venturing into the park at all. This time, we will look at the park, and nothing but the park, so help me, God.

Meridian Hill Park is a beautifully designed, 12 acre park, bordered by W Street on the south, Euclid on the north, 16tth Street on the west and 15th on the east. Meridian Hill itself is a hill, but the park is designed on two flat levels. The north level is centered by a large open space, and the lower level by statuary and (when operating) an extensive cascade of water, with a pool and fountains. They are separated by elegant steps.

I did state before that, when Washington was planned, 16th Street was to be the longitudinal meridian from which other locations could be measured, and there was an early 19th century mansion named Meridian Hill at the top of what is now the park. That house burned and was not rebuilt, and the land was used for military purposes and known as Camp Cameron during the Civil War.  Mary Foote Henderson and her husband of the Henderson castle across the street had purchased part of the site in the hopes of convincing the government to build a new White House there, or to put the planned Lincoln Memorial there. Her plans failed, and the result, early in the 20th century, was this park, which is still operated by the National Park Service.

During the 1970s, there was a movement to rename the park for Malcolm X, but the new name was not officially approved, although even today, it is sometimes used.

These three pictures show the upper park on a weekday afternoon. Weekends are much more crowded. Dogs, children…..the usual. Along with a popular Sunday afternoon drum circle.

The cascading water has been turned off pending repairs. Will it ever be restored?

Now, let’s look at statuary.

Serenity, built to honor Navy Commander William Schuetze (misspelled on the statue), has seen better days. She sits, surrounded by greenery, on a side trail in the upper park. Schuetze was in the Navy during the Spanish-American War, and later, the president of International Harvester Company. The statue was commissioned by a classmate after Schuetze’s death.

Now, below.

I think this is the world’s only memorial to James Buchanan, whose presidency is ranked with Donald Trump’s. Certainly, there is no other in DC. The statue was commissioned by Buchanan’s niece and approved by Congress.

Joan was a gift to American women by the Ladies of France in Exile in New York in 1922. This is a cast of an earlier statue which sits in front of the Cathedral in Reims.

This is a copy of a statue in New York, meant to celebrate the successes of Italian Americans.

It’s November, I am having coffee outside in Cleveland Park, and the temperature is supposed to hit 80.

Our cousin Kiku had a 6:50 pm flight yesterday and we drove her to Dulles. Normally, it would take about 45 minutes, but the Dulles access highway is under repair, and we had to take an alternative route. My GPS has been playing with me a long time now, and yesterday, it led us on a wild plane chase that involved several counterintuitive turns and a long delay caused by a crash ahead of us. Yes, Kiku made her flight, but we understand it was close.

Yesterday was also our 48th anniversary, so we (okay, I) thought we should have an early, casual, unusual, and celebratory dinner somewhere near Dulles. Chaatwalla, in Herndon, an Indian street food restaurant with a 4.6 Yelp rating, seemed like a good choice.

It was not only casual, but very casual, and its extensive street food menu was hard to grasp. The friendly owner, from Delhi, became our menu advisor (yes, he had a conflict of interest), and we did all right, but I don’t think we will go there for our 49th.

You know, when you have a houseguest, you become a tourist in your own town, and are sometimes faced with questions you can’t quite answer satisfactorily.

Take the Corcoran Gallery of Art, for example.

Have you been there lately?

I know the answer to that question, because the Corcoran, founded in 1869, closed ten years ago, in 2014. The building is now part of, or perhaps the home of, The George Washington School of Art and Design. But, asked Kiku,  what happened to the art?

All I could answer is that it went to other museums. But now I know more.

The Corcoran was a great museum, and I remember feeling quite sad when I went to its closing exhibit.

I always underestimate the scale of a museum’s collection, and the Corcoran was no exception. But I now see that the Corcoran owned about 20,000 pieces of art, and the task of distributing the art was given to the National Gallery of Art. And yes, like the owner of Chaatwalla, it had a conflict of interest.

The National Gallery is now the owner of just less than half of the Corcoran Collection, about 9000 pieces. Yesterday, we visited the National Gallery with Kiku, and went through the part of their Corcoran exhibit that is housed in the East building. Here are a few examples:

But where are the remaining 11,000 pieces? You can download a list off the Corcoran website that will tell you where every piece is. The download itself is about 1200 pages long.

The answer is that the majority of pieces were given to the American University Museum in DC, with smaller numbers given to George Washington and Howard Universities and the University of the District of Columbia. Others were given to various Smithsonian museums, and to various DC government agencies. Very few were sent out of town.

Now you know as much as I do.

The founder of the Corcoran was also a founder of Riggs Bank, now part of PNC. And the original location was today’s Renwick Museum, dedicated to rotating craft exhibits for the most part. The museum moved to its final location in the 1890s.

Last week, the Phillips opened a new exhibit of art work by William Gropper. Everyone should see it. Most interesting are Gropper’s political cartoons, which he made for a number of periodicals in the 1930s and 1940s.

According to Wikipedia, Gropper became an anti-capitalist socialist for several reasons, including (1) the Triangle Shirtwaist  fire in 1911 where his aunt died, and (2) the failure of his Romanian-born father, university educated and fluent in 8 languages, to find an appropriate job. But, as Jewish American with immigrant parents, he was also very anti-Nazi.

A number of his cartoons,  like the one above, attacked prominent Americans who had expressed pro-Hitler positions in the lead-up to World War II. These included Charles Lindbergh, poet Ezra Pound, publisher William Randolph Hearst, and those members of the U.S. Congress who were isolationists and America Firsters.

Here is another:

On this one, Hitler is joined with Hearst, and with Lemke (I don’t know who this is), with Father Cooughlin spewing out racial hatred for the world to hear.

Perhaps most surprising to me is this third cartoon:

It has many of the same characters casting their shadows over the Capitol. But there is one additional name that really took me aback. That of famed American socialist Norman Thomas, who had always been somewhat of an intellectual hero to me, because he was one of the first to argue for social programs like Social Security, which we now take so much for granted.

Back to Wikipedia. It turns out that Thomas had been very much against American participation in the First World War, and carried that isolationist and pacifist position into the early years of Hitler. In fact, until Pearl Harbor, Thomas thought we should stay out of it and, even after Pearl Harbor, when American socialists were split on the question, he “reluctantly” (so says Wikipedia) supported our war effort. I did not know this.

(I told you the next few posts would be short. Use your extra time well.)

Although it’s been a while, and it was in fact several hurricanes ago, I have spent a fair amount of time in Puerto Rico, and I didn’t see much more garbage there than anywhere else. It is an absolutely beautiful island, and the many people I knew there were very sophisticated, and able. Yes, it is easy for an island to become overcrowded, and economically an island is just that, an island, far from other lands, with a limited market and a limited workforce. Puerto Rico is over 1000 miles from continental US. And Puerto Rico is in the odd position of being a territory of the United States, whatever that is, neither fish nor foul nor meat nor even tofu. Its economic fortunes depend on changing federal policies. It is unable to chart its own course.

On the other hand, even though they can not vote in federal elections, Puerto Ricans are American citizens with the right to move anywhere in the US and become voting citizens within a matter of days. But the island itself has no more representation in the US Congress than does the District of Columbia. And of course Puerto Ricans speak Spanish, not English, which adds an extra complication.

Yet, in addition to a thriving tourist industry, Puerto Rico has a strong and diverse economy, and a strong culture.

So when a featured speaker at a major Trump rally calls Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage, attention must be paid. And no, an apology from his campaign is insufficient. I must assume that the campaign approved the statement. I am sure that every speech at this culminating rally was approved in advance. You don’t just hire a comedian and say “Do whatever you want” in this type of situation.

As we come down to the wire, I hope the dark clips from the various speakers at the MSG rally induce some to switch to Harris. Comments reflecting much more than bias against Puerto Rico, but repeating all the nativist things Trump has said throughout the campaign.

On a more personal note, Edie and I are happy to be hosting my cousin Kiku Day, who is visiting from Denmark, and my posts may be a little abbreviated while she is here. It’s her first visit to DC, and I am going to be showing her around.

We spent the afternoon at the Studio Theatre, watching the final performance of Exception to the Rule, a new play by Philadelphia playwright Dave Harris. It is a one act, 90 minute show, with a simple premise. The school day is over, but six teenagers have to stay after school in detention. The span of the detention is unclear; they have to stay until teacher Mr. Bernie signs a paper and tells them they can leave. But, unfortunately, Mr. Bernie is a Godot, and never shows up. They may have to stay in detention all weekend – and it’s a three day weekend.

All the kids in detention are Black. My assumption is, although it is nowhere stated, that all the students in the entire school are Black. Whether Mr. Bernie is Black or White, we don’t know. And we don’t even know if the voice over the intercom (played by veteran Washington actor Craig Wallace, who is definitely Black) is Black or White.

Five of the teenagers are regulars in detention, although we don’t know if they are the only regulars, because they never mention anyone else. The sixth teenager, Erica, is in detention for her first time. She is a “brain”, a goody-goody, a diligent student (“College Bound Erica” is one of her nicknames). But here she is in detention to everyone’s amazement. Why is she there?

A number of things don’t make sense. Some are big, like how could there be detention with the teacher in charge just not showing up? Others are small, like how could no one know what time it was, even though at least three of them had cell phones. And why couldn’t they communicate with the outside world, since at least three of them had cell phones. And how could the school be “locked down” after the end of the school day, so no one could get in or get out? Where is the fire marshall?

Oh, I guess I should say this. I thought this was a terrible play, and I felt like I was the one in forced detention for much of the 90 minutes of the show. I found the dialogue artificial and offensive. (Yes, I understand. I am 80 and these guys are about 17, and they are different than me.) I found the students each a stereotype, and not a very human one. I also thought that some of the actors were considerably better than others.

The gist of the script is that Erica was going to go on to college, make a big success of herself, and forget about her past and forget about her classmates. Erica on the other hand does not think she is very special, only that she is trying very hard, and she thinks that the other five, if they acted like she could, would be able to go to college and achieve the same degree of success. The ending is ambiguous, leaving this question (a big one, of course) open.

I guess the play is a comedy. I read a review on DC Theater Arts that berated the audience for not laughing at obviously funny jokes. I have the opposite reaction. The audience laughed a lot this afternoon. But I didn’t find any line funny or clever.

Dave Harris must have a very low view of most Black high school kids in this country. Or at least he must have this view of a significant portion of them, or he wouldn’t put these characters in his play as representative of Black teenagers, except for Erica, who is clearly the Exception to the Rule. You get the feeling that all they talk about is sex, except when Erica presses them on other subjects.

And, yes, I am sure that a group of Black kids in detention will speak with many non-PC words. After all, even a presidential candidate does that these days. And I know that certain groups of Blacks do use the word “nigger” without hesitation. And maybe 17 year olds do that in their regular conversation; at least maybe those who wind up in detention on a regular basis do. But in this 90 minute show, I counted the word “nigger” used 32 times. And I would guess that there were some that I missed.

Is this necessary? Is this appropriate? I understand that many Blacks think that they can call other Blacks niggers, and that there is nothing wrong with that. But Whites, like me, get in trouble even if they use the word in writing. Aren’t there those who want to ban Huckleberry Finn for this reason?

I submit that this double standard is totally misplaced. If “nigger” is a a word that Whites shouldn’t use, neither should Blacks. And because it is clearly an often-used word in at least part of the Black community, it should not be celebrated, but discouraged. A play like this which uses the word at least 32 times, is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Enough said about all of this. Exception to the Rule closed this afternoon. I hope the remainder of the Studio season is better. And I am willing to bet that it will be.

That’s what we decided to do yesterday, and in spite of a general light cloud cover, everything was very pretty. Where did we go? You can trace our steps. We went up Connecticut Avenue, around Chevy Chase Circle, and then went up 185 to 495 to 270 to 70 to Alt 40 to 34 across the Potomac and back again, but rather than coming back on 70, 270, 495 and 185, we picked up 28, 112 and 190.

The highlights included our lunch at The Main Cup in Middletown, a spot with two large dining rooms and a large outdoors section that, at 12:15 on a Saturday was crowded enough that we had to wait for a table. The food was very good (Edie’s avacado toast with two poached eggs and a side salad for $14 was the best) and we would go back the next time we are in Middletown.

Middletown is a very interesting old town of about 4,000 that is not on, but not far from, the Interstate, but you won’t get there by accident. Its history is well displayed by signage, and its largest church, Zion Lutheran, built in the 1850s, served as a hospital for Union soldiers wounded at Antietam.

It was a Union town in the war, but was occupied by Confederate troops for a while during the Gettysburg campaign.

You can get ice cream there, too.

And if you don’t like their ice cream, you can just go right across the street.

We left Middletown, continued on through Boonsboro, another town worth a stop, past Sharpsburg and the Antietam battlefield and historic cemetery, and crossed the Potomac into Shepherdstown WV.

We have been to Shepherdstown innumerable times. A very pleasant, historic city, up river from Harpers Ferry, with a university and a swath of tourist oriented shops and restaurants.

This time was different. It was the day (not that we knew) of the annual Fairy Festival. This meant that Shepherdstown was filled with people dressed in fairy costumes. Long skirts, gossamer wings, painted faces, canes that looked more like staffs, glitter and so forth. Yes, mainly groups of women in their 20s, but also groups of women in their 70s, as well as a few men. And craft booths selling things to the fairy market. I couldn’t believe anyone was buying such stuff, or even that anyone made any of it, but there it was.

I don’t know why, but I didn’t take any fairy pictures, but I did take a photo of a woman wearing a Caps jersey who went to the festival with her pet owl. That seemed a bit weird, too.

We did notice the political signs in front yards along the way, and found them pretty well evenly divided. Of course, Maryland is blue and West Virginia red, even if the Shepherdstown vote will strongly favor Harris.

One house outside of Middletown is worth looking at. It was a house festooned with Trump signs and signs warning of open borders and the dangers of socialism. It was also highly decorated for Halloween. But look:

There is a dartboard of Kamala Harris at the front door, and the window above…….a flag of Israel.  As Cole Porter said, “The world has gone mad today, black’s white today, day’s night today”.

I published a piece on Elon Musk on October 7. You may want to refer to it, if you didn’t see it or can’t remember what I said. Or, better, let me remind you. Musk runs Tesla, which will depend a lot on what the government does to restrict foreign vehicles from entering the country. Musk runs X, which gives him the power to decide what types of false information should be allowed to be provided to tens of millions of Americans, and what types should not be allowed, and he hasn’t done a very good sorting this out correctly. Musk runs SpaceX, on which American travel to the International Space Station and perhaps the moon and Mars, as well as putting satellites into orbit, depends, and he runs Starlink which fosters communication between earthlings via his network of satellites (and which he provides gratis to Ukraine).

Musk has firmly come out for Donald Trump, on the theory (one must presume) that Donald Trump will be better for Elon Musk. This, even though it is Joe Biden who has been touting the future of electric vehicles and Donald Trump, who has been championing the gas engine. Is there a method to his madness? Or is there just madness?

Since I published the first article, there have been two more bits of Musk news this week alone. First, that he is paying people to register and vote, and that he is holding a weekly $1 million lottery, open to people who will sign a petition saying they support the first two amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Second, there are reports that he has been having weekly (at least?) telephone calls with none other than Vladimir Putin. Both the first and the second of these pieces of news are, it appears, potentially illegal. Elon Musk does not seem to care.

Now there are several questions raised here. Why doesn’t Musk appear to care if he is breaking the law? Why does Musk support the candidate who is not supportive of electric vehicles? What does Musk talk to Putin about while he is supplying free Starlink services to Ukraine?

Elon Musk’s net worth, it appears, is about $235 billion.

Moving on….

A few days ago, news was released saying that the Los Angeles Times was not going to support a candidate for president this year. This was after the editorial board had drafted an article coming out for Kamala Harris, but the article was blocked by the owner of the newspaper, Patrick Soon-Shiong. Now we don’t know why Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the editorial endorsement, but there was a statement released today by his daughter, saying (paraphrasing) that endorsing Harris would mean endorsing the Biden-Harris administration which has been supporting Israel in its war against Hamas, and that the Los Angeles Times should not support a candidate who supports a genocide. Whether that is what she really said, or thinks, or whether or not that is why her farther blocked the endorsement we just don’t know.

There has been at least some fallout at the Times. The editor of the editorial page, Mariel Garza, has resigned from the Times as a result of this blockage by Soon-Shiong. Soon-Shiong, by the way, has a net worth of a measly $6.1 billion, it is said, only slightly higher than the $5.5 billion that Forbes thinks Donald Trump has.

And then there is the Washington Post, which announced yesterday that for the first time in about 50 years (since 1976), it was not going to come out for a candidate for the presidency. And, it turns out, that once again the editorial board of the Post had an article ready to go endorsing Kamala Harris and that the publication of the article was vetoed by Jeff Bezos, owner of the Post. Reports are that the Post staff is “reeling” from the decision, but I think it’s a little too early to see what actually will result from this decision, although one editor, Robert Kagan has announced his resignation, and another dozen or so seniorvPost reporters have made their position clear.

Elon Musk, with his $235 billion, is the richest man in the world. Jeff Bezos, with a mere $203 billion, is right behind him.

My daughter Michelle asks the right questions. She says that the Post this year has endorsed Angela Alsobrooks for the Maryland U.S. Senate seat, and local candidates in other races, meaning that it is only the endorsement of a presidential candidate is being blocked. She also asks why, in this election of all elections, is the Post making this decision. And, by the way, Michelle just canceled her subscription to the Post.

It seems obvious that Bezos is concerned that a President Trump would cancel Amazon’s many federal contracts. His motivation is the same as Musks’.

What does this tell us? It tells us that rich people are too rich and have much too much influence over what happens the world in its entirety. And it shows us that promises of editorial independence are not worth the newspaper that they are written in.

This is a consequential election (in case you did not know) and it is hard to see why newspapers, who have been accused by the Republican candidate of spewing fake news, of hiding opinion as fact, of being enemies of the American people, of being totally dishonest with their readers, are not supporting the candidate who is clearly in favor of free speech. Especially this is true when the investigative reports of these newspaper, and their editorial staffs, have been calling out the dangers of electing the Republican candidate for months, probably for years.

Of course, each individual is different. While Bezos and Soon-Shiong apparently want to appear neutral (if that is indeed what they want), Musk has no such goal and wants to appear all out MAGA. If Musk owned a newspaper (you know one day he will), there will be false neutrality displayed.

For years, people have been saying that newspaper endorsements don’t change votes, that they aren’t that important in the manner that they used to be. And perhaps this is true. But that does not mean, in a close election, there might not be anti-MAGA Republicans, or independent voters, who were leaning towards voting for Harris, but now might say: “Gee, if the Post/Times isn’t endorsing her, maybe there is something I don’t know. I think I will just sit it out this year and not vote.” And it may be that you won’t need many who think like this to have a real effect on the outcome.

I drafted this yesterday to send out this morning. It was fresh news then. Now, I am just repeating what everyone is saying.

And, by the way, Democracy Dies in Darkness. You know who really knew that? George Soros.

I knew going up 16th Street would be slow. I have published seven posts, and have traveled only about one and a half miles from our start.

We are now at the intersection of 16th and W (to the east) and Florida Ave (to the west). We start a fairly steep upward climb. On our right is Meridian Hill Park, which runs one very long block to Euclid on the north and reaches to 15th Street to the east. The park was in part formerly the home of a large home built in the early 1800s and, for a while, the residence of John Quincy Adams after he left the presidency. The house burned down, and in the early 20th century, the land was sold to the federal government for the construction of a 12 acre urban park. More on this later.

Do you remember why this is called Meridian Hill Park? When Washington was laid out in the 1790s, 16th Street, going straight north from the White House, was proposed to be a prime meridian, the longitudinal line from which all longitudes would be measured.  It never really worked out, and Greenwich became the internationally recognized prime meridian in the 1880s. But the name remained.

On the west side of 16th Street, in 1889, Mary Foote Henderson, and her husband, former Missouri Senator John Henderson, built a brownstone “castle” with 30 rooms, including a 100 foot ballroom, which became a centerpiece of Washington society. The castle is no longer there, demolished about 1950, and  replaced in the 1970s by about 100 expensive townhouses. But the walls of the estate still exist.

They lead to Crescent Place and the home of the Meridian International Center, which actively does something (in addition to renting space for weddings and the like), but I really am not sure what. Their expansive facilities include two enormous houses designed by John Russell Pope (we have spoken of him before, architect of the Jefferson Memorial, Archives, National Gallery, the Masonic Temple on 16th and much more). One of these houses, visible from 16th Street, was the home of Eugene Meyer, former Washington Post editor and father of Katharine Graham.

Soon, we are beyond the Meridian International Center, about one third of the way up the hill  and onto a block containing four multifamily buildings facing the park.

The Envoy and the Diplomat are rental properties, with studio and one bedroom apartments. The Envoy, originally Meridian Mansions, was opened in 1918 with large apartments for permanent residents and hotel rooms. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes was a resident, as was author Frances Parkinson Keyes. In later years, it became one of the first fully racially integrated residential buildings in the city. In 1979, the building was completely gutted and rebuilt.

The Henderson was a small apartment house redone and greatly expanded in 2017. The Art Deco Park Tower, built as a rental in 1929, is now a 90 unit condominium.

The building next to the Park Tower is the most interesting, a mansion built to house an embassy.

After building the Castle, Mary Foote Henderson bought up almost all the surrounding land. This included the land where the John Russell Pope mansions, the land where the beaux art French Embassy was built, and even the land that is now Meridian Hill Park (where she wanted a replacement White House to be built).

On the design of the embassy, she worked with long time French ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand. There is, by the way, a monument to him in Rock Creek Park, along Beach Drive.

Of course, the building is no longer the French Embassy.  It has been several things, including, for a while, the Embassy of Ghana, and has recently been purchased by the Turkish AK Party (that is Erdogen’s party) for its American offices (sounds odd, no?).

The last building we will look at will be the Dorchester, at the corner of 16th and Euclid. A large apartment house opened in 1941 with almost 400 units, it was once the home of a U.S.Naval Officer named John F. Kennedy. A client of mine wanted to convert the Dorchester to condominiums as one of the first such conversions in Washington.  I told him the building was too complicated and that I didn’t want to be involved. He was surprised at that, I am sure.  That was probably 40 years ago. It is still a rental.

We will save Meridian Hill Park itself for another day. It will be Part 9.

When I was young in St. Louis, I would occasionally go with my family to Pere Marquette Park, on the Illinois River about 50 miles from our house. The park is still there, all 8000 acres of it, run by the State of Illinois, complete with a lodge (built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930s) in which we never stayed, and a restaurant, where we would have lunch.

I also remember (perhaps you do, too) learning that Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet had “discovered” and explored the Mississippi River, although I don’t remember any of the details I learned in fifth (?) grade.

I hadn’t thought much about Marquette recently, but last weekend Edie and I went to the Georgetown Library annual book sale, and she stumbled on a book titled simply Jacques Marquette, written by and inscribed by one Joseph Donnelly, S.J. and published in 1968. I decided to read the book. Very glad I did.

I will get right to the bottom line first. In the 1670s, the French who had been settling what was then New France and is now primarily the province of Quebec had been working very hard to do two things: first, make money off trading with the Indians for fur pelts, and second, turn all of the local Indians into good Catholics. I would give Marquette a C+ on his success as a religious converter (I think he would give himself a similar grade), but an A on his ability to communicate with and get along with the native Americans. He learned, they say, six separate native languages. But sadly, I have to report, Marquette died at age only 38 of some sort of infection he picked up and suffered with for perhaps the last six months of his life.

But what I learned from the book goes beyond those basic facts.

(1) Seventeenth century French education. Jacques Marquette was born in Laon in northern France into a middle class family (if there was such a thing in the mid 17th century); his father was a lawyer. He was a bright boy, and his parents sent him initially to a local school when he was about 5, and then to a boarding school in Reims when he was only about 9. The book describes all of the schooling Jacques received, over a period of about 20 years. Clearly the French and the Society of Jesus (where Marquette got his later education) were both very serious about quality education. And in their way of thinking, education was more than reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also heavily on classical Greek and Roman learning, which was viewed as essential to training the mind, and on communication skills. There was religious training to be sure but, as I understand it, the training was not by way of the study of religious texts, but by the observance of the religious rituals, all of the religious rituals, including those connected with every single feast day or saint’s day. And school days were long and full, and students were expected to be serious.
In addition to all of this book learning, the education also involved learning to be a good citizen. How to treat people, how to help people. That sort of thing. The study of classical ethics and philosophy. Something again taken very seriously, and something we could probably use more of today.

I should add that I am sure that girls’ education was different, but the book did not discuss that at all. But for boys, as they grew and matured, the subject matter of their training increased. They began to study ethics and philosophy, and – for those who were interested in the priesthood, they continued to learn religious practice (actual theological studies to come later, just before ordination).

Schools training prospective priests also had very strict discipline. Since priests were expected to lead a very disciplined life and hold their place in a very hierarchical institution, the discipline was deemed to be important for training for the future, to make sure that young priests would obey their elders. In addition, future priests were given non-academic training: they were isolated for periods of time so that they could mediate, pray and reflect, they were assigned work at hospitals helping with treatments, cleaning patients and buildings, and helping with the dead, and were sent out into society, usually in pairs, wearing religious garb but with no food and no shelter, learning to live by begging from others, an activity that was to teach them empathy with the poor. And they were expected to learn to teach. In fact they were usually teaching younger students while they were engaged in their own studies.

(2) Samuel Champlain, a Frenchman, came to Canada first in 1603, 17 years before the Mayflower went ashore in New England. And by the middle of that century, the French had established a number of settlements along the St. Lawrence River (Quebec being the chief settlement) and upper Great Lakes. Most settlements had governmental representatives (military and civilian), clergymen, and independent fur traders and businessmen. And, they these groups did not always see eye to eye on how to run a settlement, or how to deal with neighboring tribes.

The settlements had to be fortified against potential Indian attacks. Their members had to grow sufficient food (or be able to trade for it) and obtain needed supplies. Contacting the home country was difficult and took a lot of time, so they also had to be pretty well self-sufficient. And it was very, very cold up there in the long winters and life was consequently quite hard.

As far as the priests were concerned (and there was quite a number of them in New France), their jobs were not easy. They served the French settlers, they often had to build their own settlements as they tried to get closer to Indian villages they were charged with converting Indians (or trying to), and they had to serve and instruct natives whom they had already converted. Many jobs at once, and they were often called to travel from one settlement to another, even though the other might be hundreds of snowy miles away, and the only ways to travel were on foot, or by canoe (with an overabundance of portages). And it was cold – deep snow, frigid temperatures and freezing breezes. (By the way, they had no horses.)

(3). This was not empty country. There were a lot of Indian villages, although the Indians tended to be semi-nomadic and apparently didn’t expect to stay in one location for too long. Their reason to move was usually because some other Indian tribe was kicking them out, or threatening to. This is because the various tribes did not get along with each other most of the time. There were smaller tribes, like the Hurons and the Ottawas, many of whom stuck with (and were therefore protected by) the French, and then there were much bigger tribes – such as the Iroquois to the east, and the Sioux to the west, who were, by and large, much more aggressive and powerful and, therefore, harder to deal with. It was a complicated and fairly sophisticated society.

(4) The trip to locate the Mississippi (with Joliet, as leader of the small party; Marquette being the accompanying priest came about because there were stories from Indians of all sorts of the existence of a very big river west of where they were. The French wanted to explore this river. Did it go to the great ocean that would lead them eventually to China? Or did it go, instead, to the gulf of Mexico where the French would come into contact with the Spanish (something they wanted to avoid)? It turned out that river was not hard to find (go west at a certain latitude and you can’t miss it, after all). And it turned out that there were many Indian villages on the way, with residents of each friendly and happy to help with directions. They were told about the Illinois River, which was a shortcut on the way back, and they were intrigued on the Mississippi (where they ran into more Indian villages and saw the first herds of buffalo they had ever seen) when they passed the muddy Missouri (not yet named) and the Ohio, both of which feed the Mississippi.

As an aside, I must say that I was somewhat appalled at the general gall of the French (that’s a pun) who were convinced they were saving the souls of the natives by converting them, whose own beliefs just didn’t matter at all. And how serious they were doing this, for just that reason.

Marquette never made it back to his home base in now upper Michigan, but his remains eventually did, and he certainly has not been forgotten. Both Marquette University in Milwaukee, and Marquette the largest city on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, are named for him

A fact-filled book, discussing so many things I knew nothing about.

We start at U Street to continue our walk up 16th Street. The first building we see, on our left, is the Balfour Condominium.

The Balfour was built as a luxury apartment at the northern tip of developed 16th Street in 1900. Originally named something else, the building was renamed the Balfour in 1909. Arthur Balfour had left the British prime minister’s position in 1905. His Balfour Declaration was not issued until 1917, when he was serving as foreign minister.

The building has been renovated several times. When built, it had 36 rental units. Now, as a condo, it has 54. Units seem to sell between $500k and $700k.

Across the street from the Balfour is the Brittany, another rental building turned condominium,  built in 1914.

The Brittany has 57 units. Today, none are for sale.

As we continue up the street, with both townhouses and apartment houses, I saw a building with a flag I couldn’t identify, and no clear markings on the outside. The flag has red, white, blue, and green portions, and a tree in the middle. “What could it be?”, I asked Google and was told it’s the flag of Equatorial Guinea. So the building has been identified

We then cross V Street, and find ourselves in front of another enbassy, this time the embassy of Angola.

Next to this austere brick building is another building, of a very different style, but also owned by the government of Angola.

Looking once again across the street, we see the Camden Roosevelt Apartments, opened in 1920 and named after former President Theodore Roosevelt.

This building, like many, has had its ups and downs. It has been an apartment building, an apartment hotel, a seniors facility and again an apartment building. I believe all of the units are either efficienvies or one bedroom apartments.  They rent for about $2500 to $3000 a month.

Living at Washington House, at the corner of 16th and W Street is a little less expensive. This building, dating from 1941, has 142 relatively small units. It advertises mainly its views and its tight security.

This brings us to the end of a short, two block walk. Next? We start walking up Meridian Hill, and find the right (east) side of the street borders one of the most interesting and beautiful parks in D.C.  That will be Part 8.

I have the next segment of 16th Street ready to go, but before we move ahead there, here is something else to focus on.

My grandson’s fourth birthday party was held yesterday at the Harry Thomas Recreation Center in Washington’s Eckington neighborhood. The park is bounded by the Metropolitan Branch Trail that runs from Silver Spring to Union Station. The trail, at this spot, is separated from, I think, the CSX rail tracks by 30 adjoining decorated panels. Here are some of my favorites:

There are 22 more. And, on a beautiful Sunday morning, the trail and the rec center were very busy.

I really don’t know a lot about Elon Musk. My concern is that he is too rich, too young, too powerful, and apparently absolutely nuts. I find this to be worrisome.

Musk controls at least these companies: X, Space X (which includes Starlink), and Tesla. But here is my question: what role does he actually play in connection with each of these enormous companies? And how essential is he to these businesses?

I think I understand X the best. He bought Twitter, installed his own people, streamlined the operation, and decided that free speech trumps (ha ha) responsible ownership. This means that the company has lost a lot of money, lost a lot of responsible users, gained a large number of irresponsible users, and – perhaps, to a large extent – become more of a danger than it had been when it was Twitter. It also means that, as owner, Musk can change the direction of Twitter at will. He could make it the Newsmax of social media companies if he wants, and ban all but far-right political voices. Yes, he could. How much time does he spend on X? (That is a purposely ambiguous question.)

As to Tesla, I have no idea how much time Musk devotes to Tesla. After an extraordinary increase in production, he now sees production slowed or falling, and is obviously facing competition from other electric vehicle makers (domestic and foreign, especially Chinese) while the interest of American consumers buying electric vehicles has become somewhat shaky. At the same time, Musk seems convinced that electric vehicles are the future (more on this below). I have heard Musk talk about this, and I have heard him talk about his other focus: cars without drivers (his Tesla driverless system nowvunder investigation). But how much does Tesla depend on Musk himself?

I ask a similar question about Space X, and here the question is much more important. Space X, under contract to NASA, is now our only way to reach the International Space Station (other than through Russia). This is important. Space X is also way ahead, I believe, in the development of reusable rockets, and has been very successful as recently as last week on capturing a returning rocket forcreuse.

Through Space X, Musk also controls Starlink, which is a way to communicate through a low orbit satellite network. Starlink, for example, is the way Ukraine’s army communicates, and it does this through Musk’s largesse – he is providing this to Ukraine for a cost of $Zero. And this is not being done with the United States as an intermediary; at least, I don’t think the U.S. is formally involved. What to make of this? If Musk wants to cut off his Ukraine largesse, he could do it. Immediately, if he wanted. Or if Trump asked him to.

Elon Musk “runs” (in various ways) each of these companies, and more that I haven’t listed here (such as The Boring Company – Google it). At Space X, he is Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technical Officer. At Tesla, he is chief Executive Officer. At X, he is the Chairman.

This seems like more than enough for one person. Even if he is a technical genius or a business genius.  But he wants more.

Musk has come out strongly for Donald Trump. I could say that this decision alone raises questions about Musk’s sanity, but I will forego that here. But the way he has announced his support for Trump is a different story. He has so far donated at least $75,000,000 (a pittance for Musk, of course). On X, he has not only allowed Trump back on the app (he was banned when it was Twitter), but he has himself not only posted about Trump over and over, but shared hundreds of others’ posts about Trump (many with fake news), while (I have read) having the algorithm altered so that more X users see Musk’s posts. He is currently scheduling a number of events in which he will participate to promote Trump in the last few weeks of the campaign.

In return, Trump has said that, if elected, he will bring Musk into his cabinet and put him in charge of governmental efficiency. If so, I ask, wouldn’t that be a full time job? And does Musk think he can take a cabinet position and at the same time run his various companies? Both with regard to time and energy, and of course, with regard to conflicts.  On second thought, if conflicts don’t bother Trump, why should they bother Musk?

What else does Musk expect to gain? Much more business for Space X, I assume? Taking advantage of Trump cutting business regulations in general? Having an influence in government regulation of social media companies, of course?

And what about Tesla? Trump has been vocal against the future of electric vehicles. Clearly, Musk wants at least to neutralize Trump on electric cars, and wants to encourage Trump to put confiscatory tariffs on foreign made vehicles.

And Trump? If Trump tells Musk to cut off Starlink access to Ukraine to help Putin win the war, for example?

By the way, what do you think they really think about each other? Musk used to say that Trump is too old, and Trump used to call Musk a bullshit artist.

Yuck, I say. And Musk is right about Trump’s age. And – one last big problem – Musk is only 53. He could be active another 30 years.

Cheers.

You wonder why I am mentioning this on October 19, and not on January 2? It’s because I made it on Rosh Hashanah, just two or so weeks ago. I know that most people don’t make new year resolutions on Rosh Hashanah, but I couldn’t come up with a good reason why they don’t, so I decided to start a new trend. We will see if it catches on.

My resolution related to my biggest problem as an American citizen in 2024. It’s perhaps the reason that I don’t understand why Kamala Harris isn’t running away with the election. My problem is that I don’t, and really never have (or at least haven’t since I was, maybe, 17) understood contemporary American culture. I haven’t followed musical trends since high school. When someone talks about going to a “concert”, I automatically think of, say, the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And when they tell me that concert was some pop or rock or hip-hop, or rap singer, I can’t figure out why they call that a “concert”. And, truth be told (I think), I have never been to a “concert” that didn’t feature a classical performance.

Similarly, I haven’t watched network TV shows is, I don’t know, forty years? Maybe fifty. So when someone tells me that “everyone loves Raymond”, I have to admit that I don’t, because I have no idea who Raymond is. Someone’s young son? A visitor from outer space? A dog? No clue.

I could go on and on. At times, I have vowed to correct this insufficiency, but have always failed. Then, sometime last year, I thought I might have found a way to do this. I saw that you could get a master’s degree in “popular culture” from Bowling Green State University. Then, I realized that not only would this be impractical, but that I might have to spend a year in Cleveland and even thinking about that brought a black cloud over my head that I knew would not go away until sometime in May. Plus I probably would not be eligible for a full scholarship.

I needed something different. And that’s what led to my Rosh Hashanah resolution.

We are among the few subscribers to the New York Times who still actually receive a printed newspaper every day. (Statistics that I have seen put us in a category comprised of only about 10% of Times subscribers.) Each day there is an Arts section. Yes, perhaps it is New York centered and a bit high-brow, but I can deal with that. And clearly, it’s a start. So my New Year’s Resolution was to read (or at least read through) the Times’ Arts section every day. And so far I have.

Of course, I have discovered (as you might suspect) that I hardly remember anything I read – after all, at 81 and 5/6 it is getting harder and harder to remember names of people, or books, or films and so forth. So I have to live with that, and assume that – as I look every day – things will begin to add up in my mind. We will see.

I find that the articles that mean the most to me, not surprisingly, are those from the classical music critics and, since I always have a phone or computer by my side, I make it a point to sample parts of what I read about. I have discovered already new composers, and recommend you go to YouTube and listen to music by Gabriela Ortiz, Mark Andre, and Osvaldo Golijov. And the articles about ballet, something I have had little contact with, are also interesting, and you can then watch parts of the dance.

As to less highbrow music, often the stories are biographical, which is always interesting. For example, there is a story about Van Halen today and how Alex dealt with the death of his brother Eddie. It was interesting (and probably forgetful), but at least today I know that Van Halen was a family name and the name of a hard metal rock group (I really don’t know what that means) that came to prominence about 40 (is that right?) years ago. And that Alex and Eddie Van Halen were brothers, one sort of the lead singer and the other the bassist and writer (if I have that right).

I will admit that I don’t have enough curiosity to play an Van Halen music (maybe I should drum up my courage), but there are some young musicians that I think are pretty good. What comes to mind is Chappell Roan, a 25 year old fellow Missourian, whom of course I had never heard of, and whose music I find really enjoyable. And, by the way, although she isn’t a singer, I found reading about another almost-Roan, actress Saoirse Ronan, very interesting. What a serious and adaptable actress she is. (And I learned how to pronounce Saoirse.)

I see, today, that Lin-Manuel Miranda and someone I never heard of are putting out a new album (I don’t know what that means today) called “Warriors” that is based (I don’t know how) on a 1979 film (which I have not seen) also called “Warriors”, which was “about a group of gang members fighting their way home from Brooklyn to the Bronx”. The article, which talked extensively about the film, said it was based on the ancient Greek book “Anabasis” by Xenophon. Aha! Now we are getting somewhere close to something I know a little about. And I know that “Anabasis” is a surprisingly enjoyable book about a Greek mercenary army enticed to come to Persia to help fight off the barbarians, only to discover that they were really expected to fight a civil war against the king’s brother, who wanted the throne. At least that’s what I remember. And they refused to get involved, and had to get back to Athens, which took them on adventure after adventure. Just like going from Brooklyn to the Bronx.

So, there is one more thing to add to my routine. I give myself a year to see what it does to me. If I find myself becoming an expert on American popular culture, I just may apply for a position to teach at Bowling Green. As long as I don’t have to move to Cleveland.

I think Part 5 of this series was a bit confusing in that I organized the tour by type of building, not by address. I won’t do that again.

We start today at 16th and Q and walk north.

The Chastleton contains 300 units, opened as a rental, and is now a co-op. It has had several lives, including at times being partially or fully occupied as a hotel, and was almost seized by the federal government during World War II to house female government workers. It was originally opened in 1920, and was most recently renovated in 2007. It appears that recent 1 bedroom unit sales average about $450,000.

Next to the Chastleton is the masonic Scottish Rite Temple.

This building was completed in 1915. If it reminds you of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, don’t be alarmed. That was the model, and the architect was John Russell Pope, who also designed the National Gallery, the National Archives, the Jefferson Memorial and more.

You can go through the Masonic meeting rooms, the library, the archives, the Robert Burns collection, and more with tours given three or four times daily. The building was built on a deep lot going all the way to 15th Street. The back lot is now home to a large, new, attractive apartment development, still in its initial leasing.

We continue walking and pass on our left the Universalist National Memorial Church, built to be the main Universalist church in the country, as I understand it, and now a standard Unitarian Universalist church. It opened in 1930. Its architect also designed the Riverside Church in New York,  although you can’t tell by looking.

Continuing to walk, up from the church, you find elegant townhouses, most of which are now broken into apartment units, some rental and some condo.

There was one for sale sign in front of a very nice building. I looked it up. It was a $400,000, 525 square foot, one bedroom unit.

Continuing, we see high rise buildings interspersed between groups of townhouses, and one small hotel, the Windsor, whose website pictures look a bit austere.

We then see two unusual buildings. One is an art deco apartment house, built rather late for the neighborhood in 1952, and looking out of place, but intriguing. There are only ten units in the building, and they may be the least expensive in the neighborhood. The building is named the Stanford.

Across the street from the Stanford, there is a modest building with an awning with the initials ICUA prominently displayed.

The ICUA is the Interdenominational Church Ushers Association.  Its mission is to provide training for church ushers and networking opportunities, but its website has no upcoming events listed, so whether or not it is functioning, I do not know.

We are now at the intersection where 16th, New Hampshire and U Street meet. U Street is a major commercial street, and this gives us one of the few opportunities to see anything commercial on 16th Street. We look to our left at this corner and see a building housing a Starbucks. We do not go in.

In part 7, we will explore two more blocks. And then, the neighborhood changes.

There are several very important buildings to look at on this two block stretch of 16th.  First, the churches.

Let’s start with the Church of the Holy City (1611 16th). The Church of the Holy City dates from the 1890s, and was built by, and is still owned by, the Swedenborgian Church, something that may surprise you, since nothing on the outside sign identifies it that way. In spite of its long history, the congregation no longer needs a church this size (that may not surprise you), and the building has recently been put up for sale (that may surprise you because there is no “for sale” sign). ln the meantime,  it appears there is little activity in the building itself, and most events, including Sunday services, are virtual. The website points out that Helen Keller, a Swedenborgian, spoke here several times.

The second church is the Foundry Methodist Church (1500 16th).

I have been in this building several times, not to attend services, but to attend small theaters’ performances in the church social hall. The inside is as gray and heavy as the outside, and I always feel that I have stepped back in time a few centuries. The building dates from 1904, the congregation from 1815. The church has hosted many presidents.

There is only one embassy on this stretch of 16th Street, that of the Republic of Congo. (Let’s recall that Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are two separate countries, even though their capitals, Brazzaville and Kinshasa, are directly across the Congo River from each other, and could almost be considered one city).

The Congolese embassy (1720 16th) is in a large house built in 1894 for Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown, the justice who is known for authoring the Plessy v. Ferguson separate but equal decision, and perhaps not much else. It has housed the Congo for 12 years, and has had other owners before that, including Iran (then known as Persia) and, for a period of six years ending in 1848, the Zionists of America.

I said there is one embassy. Perhaps I should have said there are two. But one is the embassy of a country that does not exist – Kurdistan.

Now to the Carnegie Institute of Washington building (1407 16th).

In 1902, Andrew Carnegie created the Carnegie Institute as a scientific research organization.  He housed its administrative offices this building. Its research facility is located on Broad Branch Road NW, about a half mile from our house, in a park-like setting. I don’t think anyone really has any idea what goes on there.

But the 16th Street building no longer houses the Carnegie offices, I don’t think. The building was sold to Qatar about three years ago, with the expectation that it would become its embassy. The current embassy is on 25th Street NW in DC’s West End, and I don’t know where the move to 16th Street stands. But maybe I should have said there are three embassies.

There is no sign referencing Qatar in front of the building. Around the side on P Street, there is a modest entrance with an even more modest sign that says Embassy of the State of Qatar. If memory serves, a decade or more ago, that side entrance took you into a separate suite, then occupied by Ralph Nader. The building also has a large formal auditorium, seldom used for public events.

There are residential buildings, as well, on these two blocks, including the art deco building, Hightowers, where our cousin Alison lives. She can tell you about the ghost of Hightowers.

Three more buildings, and then we will stop for the day.

This converted residence, complete with an anti-circus circus elephant in front, is the DC headquarters of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), standing at the corner of 16th and Q.

Directly across the street is the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center, a building we have been in hundreds of times and where daughter Michelle has for years and years taught pre-schooler music classes.

An entire column could be written about this building, which houses two theaters (this is where the professional Theater J is housed), a gym, a swimming pool, a basketball court, meeting rooms, etc, and from time to time, a restaurant.

The building was opened as the JCC in 1926. When a new JCC was built in Rockville MD, the DCJCC was closed in 1968 and the building sold to the DC government. In 1997, the building was sold back to the Jewish community, totally renovated and reopened once again as a Jewish Community Center. Of course, the Rockville Center is still thriving, and a third active Jewish Community Center is now operating in Fairfax County VA.

The last building is another old red brick house with a sign in front and another around the side.

We will continue our slow walk up 16th Street soon. In the meantime, I should tell you that this is the 700th consecutive day when I have published a post. Perhaps I will break the Cal Ripken record yet.

This one will be a little different, but bear with me. I know you will learn something.

Edie’s first cousin, once removed (the son of her first cousin, Ted), Steven Tepper was inaugurated as the President of Hamilton College about two weeks ago. Before taking on this enormous responsibility, Steven had occupied senior level positions at Princeton, Vanderbilt and Arizona State. We watched the impressive inauguration ceremonies on YouTube last night.

Hamilton is located, as you may know, in upstate New York, in the “village” of Clinton. I was on the campus one time, about twenty five years ago, when Hannah was looking for schools and she and I did a New York/New England trip. I was very impressed with Hamilton then (we had a very good tour leader), and thought that it would be a very good place for Hannah. She, as I recall, had no interest in the place, and the second she stepped on the Sarah Lawrence campus, said “this is where I want to go”. She made a good choice.

I had not focused on the obvious. Hamilton College was named after Alexander Hamilton. It was founded, I learned last night, by a Presbyterian minister named Samuel Kirkland with the active cooperation of Alexander Hamilton in the 1790s, and officially chartered in 1812 and named after Hamilton eight years after he was killed by Aaron Burr in 1804. Kirkland also was no longer alive when the school was formally chartered as Hamilton College.

The ceremonies began with a reference to the College being established on the land of the Oneida Indians, and with a further reference to the work that Rev. Kirkland had done with the Oneidas. It was proudly stated that the school was started as a school for both “White” and native boys, and that this was unique and something to be proud of. I was intrigued and decided to look a little further.

Well…….

Samuel Kirkland spent decades among the Oneidas and other Iroquois tribes. But it wasn’t because he loved them; it was because he wanted to civilize them and convert them to Christianity. In this, I believe he was somewhat successful. But he was also a negotiator who convinced the Oneidas to sell their land, or a part of it, to the State of New York, and to the federal government, and in the process he himself wound up to be a landowner. And he started the school (as you would expect in those times) as a Christian seminary, and (as Wikipedia tells it), none of the Oneidas who enrolled in the new school lasted more than a year. None of this was mentioned during the inauguration ceremony.

I am not necessarily being critical of the ceremony planners (I really don’t know enough to be critical), but as I have listened to several classes of the eleven class series involving Yale and its relationship to slaves and slavery by Professor David Blight, and how Yale has had a special project to dig into this touchy question, I wonder whether Hamilton has done the same, and if they will under Steven’s leadership.

Samuel Kirkland died in 1808. He and his wife had six children, only two of whom survived into full adulthood, a son and a daughter. His son, John Thornton Kirkland, became a Unitarian, not a Presbyterian, minister and more importantly became president of Harvard, where he served from 1810 to 1828. He was an important Harvard president, liked by all. Not that I have searched hard, but I haven’t found anyone who had anything to say about Kirkland that wasn’t good, as a teacher, an administrator and a human being. Kirkland House at Harvard, one of the Harvard residential houses, each of which is named after an ex-president, was (I guess, obviously) named after John Kirkland. I lived in Kirkland House for three years (Suite B-22, overlooking Boylston Street), and never once thought to look to find out anything about John Kirkland. I don’t even think I knew President Kirkland had a first name.

Samuel Kirkland’s daughter married a man named Lothrop, and her daughter (Samuel’s granddaughter) confused things completely when she, a Lothrop, married a man named Lathrop, John Hiram Lathrop. John Hiram Lathrop was also a university administrator in the mid-19th century.

Ready for this? Lathrop became the first President of the University of Missouri at Columbia (the first state land grant college west of the Mississippi), and then became the first Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and then became (not the first) President of the University of Indiana, following which he became, for the second time, the President of the University of Missouri. Before his administrative career, he had graduated from Yale, taught high school, become a lawyer, become a professor of mathematics, a professor of philosophy, and a professor of English literature. Oh, yes, one more thing. Before he took the Missouri job, his professorial work was at Hamilton.

So, you can’t say you didn’t learn anything today.

As Steven begins his career as the President of Hamilton College, we wish him nothing but the best. I think Hamilton and Steven both made a very good choice, and am sure they will both go from strength to strength.

At Adas Israel, the Conservative congregation we belong to, Yom Kippur is an extravaganza. In fact all holidays are. Located about a mile from our house, just off Connecticut Avenue, the latest statistic that I have seen shows Adas with about 1900 membership units (a membership unit can be a family of 12, or a single individual). On Yom Kippur, for the most part, Adas holds three simultaneous services, a service in the sanctuary (which holds about 900), a more traditional service in a smaller room (which holds about 300), and an outdoors service under a large tent (which, according to one of the rabbis yesterday, has been set up with 2500 chairs). So, all in all, about 4000 people attend Yom Kippur services at Adas Israel.

We spent Friday night and Saturday in the tent. Throughout the day yesterday, the tent was pretty well filled. Yom Kippur at Adas Israel is also an all-day affair. Services begin at 9 a.m. The published schedule showed the services primarily ending with the blowing of the shofar (the only blowing this Yom Kippur, since the shofar is not blown on Shabbat) at 7:18 p.m. In fact, the shofar was blown at 7:18 p.m. Like clockwork.

Over Yom Kippur, we heard two sermons, one by each of the two senior rabbis. I thought they were both good. (I don’t always feel that way, of course). My very short descriptions of the sermons here won’t do them justice, and (in fact) may not even be accurate, but it is what I remember.

Rabbi Holtzblatt’s sermon was on being true to oneself in recognizing who and what you really are, something that she says is often hidden as you put up an identity for the public (and often private) that may not be your true self at all. She hears this as a rabbi when she counsels people and discovers that they may not, deep inside, be anything like what they appear to be. And she talked about herself. Her message was that Adas Israel was a community, and in this community, you should not be afraid to express and be your true self and, as a community member, you should be accepting and encouraging to those who let you in on who they really are. That Adas Israel should, in effect, be a safe space.

Rabbi Alexander’s sermon was on what happens after one’s life ends. No, not heaven and hell, or gehenna or any of those things. Not about resurrection of the dead, either. But about how the presence of people who have passed away continue to permeate one’s life. His prime examples related to his mother, who died eight years ago. When Rabbi Alexander and his brother were playing music together, he felt his mother’s presence. When he met the grandmother of a newborn (the grandmother not a member of the Congregation) and they both learned that she had worked with Rabbi’s Alexander’s mother in Florida for years and that they were very close, he felt his mother’s presence in the conversation. He elaborated from there, and went on to other things, but frankly I don’t remember where he went with the sermon, although I do recall that it was very passionate. Someone will remember this better than I, and tell me what I have already forgotten.

During the quiet time between the end of the morning service (which doesn’t end until close to 2 p.m., and the start of the afternoon service (about 4:30 or 5:00, I think), there is usually a prominent guest who gives an informal presentation. Last year, it was Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, who is a congregant and was back as a congregant this year. This year it was Lin-Manuel Miranda and his father Luis. I didn’t attend the talk (I am not that interested in the Mirandas), but I understand that the tent was packed and it was well received. The Mirandas, of course, are not Jewish, but there has been a fair amount of Jewish connection in their lives. One of the other Adas rabbis, the education director, was a college classmate of Lin-Manuel’s at Wesleyan (I think, Wesleyan) and they sang together in a Jewish acapella group at college. And, it turns out, that he has connections with a number of Adas congregants (who knew?).

Coincidentally, a law school classmate of mine who attends a synagogue in Los Angeles sent around a recording of a guest lecture from his synagogue yesterday, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. Booker is someone else who is not Jewish, but who has been surrounded by Jews his entire life, and whatever he says is, in my opinion, always inspiring.

At any rate, it was a very successful day at Adas Israel and, of course, when you attend, you do have a chance to greet and talk with many people you have known forever, but don’t necessarily see that often. And, yes, our daughters, son-in-law and grand children were there for part of the day as well. 9 year old Joan spent most of the time with her friends – neither her parents nor we had any idea where she was much of the time. And 3 year old Izzy got his glo-stick (is that what it is called?) to be able to join his sister and the other young children on the bima during the shofar blowing. Of course, he left the bima before the shofar blowing, heading into the crowd, and giving his sister (who was in charge of him) a panic attack. Naturally, all was well.

A break-fast at our house for our entire family (including those who are not Jewish or were unable to attend services) finished the day with equal success. Only two bagels remained uneaten – I thought that was almost as efficient as holding the 7:18 shofar blowing at 7:18.