Culture Vulture

I seem to have developed an addition to arts and music – no, perhaps an addiction is too strong a word – a sort of cultural habit. It’s easy in Washington, with its plethora of free events at the Smithsonian, the National Gallery, and every day at the Kennedy Center. I can get half-price tickets at TicketPlace. I know which seats in which theaters have excellent views for a bargain – the back row seats at the Lansburgh, for example, and parterre at the KC Symphony Hall. I see two to three programs a week – an art exhibit, theater, a music concert, a lecture. Is hit a sign of underemployment, I wonder? But I hold a full-time job. I published a book last year. I hold positions in community organizations. Is it the sort of habit, like drinking, that when one does it alone one sips too quickly and too often? But, I thought it was a social activity, the opportunity for a chance encounter, or even the observation to fill my notebooks.

My two old men

Lars a full head of white hair, straight back, dapperly dressed. Always on time, which I am not. Always alert, I admit to the occasional doze. Today he was in chipper mood, greeting by smile and nod, fully pulled together. Bob, also a full head of gray hair, but also with a beard, a bit straggly. Also, nearly always on time, he looks like he lives on the street, but it is always clean, always singing with the hymns, always shaking hands during the Peace. Today at the Lord’s Prayer he crossed the aisle to link hands with mine, I alone in my pew. At the end of service he invited me to have a snack at the coffee hour. Today, when I though I would have no one to talk to, I had Lars and Bob.

Memo, repeat

Michael Mussa, an economist around town, known to you in the field of international economics, once said that the job of the academic was to provoke while the job of the government official was to repeat the same truths over and over again, so long as they remain true. The public has got into its head that some of the numbers I have occasion to crunch are a useless pack of lies. Sometimes, this is indeed the case, but in this instance, the reason many people don’t like these numbers because they are not particularly flattering. It’s the scale that must be off, I can’t imagine where those extra ten pounds came from. Never mind that I’m clearly bursting at the seams.

So, once again, a senior official who has heard from the public that the figures are a pack of lies has turned to us staff to explain then anew. I have about a half-dozen old memos, a recent powerpoint presentation, and a handful of emails, all addressing this singular subject. I look back at my files, a memo in October of last year, in July twice, three times in June, and again in May. The previous year, I have notes on the subject in October, twice in September, and once in July. The file stretches back further, but let me not impose my tedium on you. Truth to power sometimes is tested in the crucible of crisis. Oftener it is simply the long suffering grind.

Coffee Crema

A man marches in with an armful of cook books, color-tagged with post it notes. A dinner party? A talk with a publisher? A food photographer? On my left, a bespectacled redhead urgently working on a paper full of footnotes. If it had been going well, he wouldn't be here now. Across from me another fellow, greying, a huge development report printed out. 200 pages he goes through in the space of a coffee. And then there is me. Needing my breakfast and tea, chewing over a Sunday Times abandoned by a crimson-tied patron, noting those around me.

Season of Lost

A brown hat at the bottom of the stair. A child's glove along the garden sidewalk. An umbrella dropped in a hallway. A scarf fallen, retrieved, and tied to a fence. A missent note for a neighbor. An email disappeared into the ether. A package with no one to sign. A friend who fades round the curb of memory.