Soccer Spanish

I am not athletic or sporty, I exercise in the way I brush my teeth. It's important, so I do it, and pay some attention to the results. However, I watch the Olympics - curling was especially interesting in Vancouver this year - and I am following the World Cup. I have been watching the Univision evening re-broadcasts and am hopeful my Spanish will improve. "Gol" is just short for "golazo," which is a reference to the complete phrase, "goool, golaazo, GO-LAA-ZOO," in crescendo. I also know that "la pelota no rueda mas" means the end of a period. Above all, I find it fascinating that coaches range from well-coiffed and elegantly suited to round-tubbed spitting types. Check back soon to see if I've learned more.

Pigeon Paradiso

One tried to build a nest in my pot of purple pansies, settling its rear in the center and knitting twigs around; I squawked and it flew away. Don't diss the pigeons, though, all the garbage they eat, they're saving the city millions in collection. When I walk to work, there are clans of them perched on the ledges of the Agriculture Department, threatening to poop on the commuters pouring out of the metro. Don't diss the pigeons, though, when it's late at night and a shifty character lurks behind, a pigeon fluttering can be the clue, the alert. The window cleaner hanging off the building by a thread, wipes clean the glass; no sooner, it is dirty again. Don't diss the pigeons, though, without their contributions, gardens the city over would be out thousands in fertilizer. The sleek, the chubby, the weak, the strong, we all belong.

Let there be light?

A jazz band's natural habitat is a dark nightclub with a crowded floor, smoke in the air, glasses clinking, a hint of the illicit, a revolt against conformity, a resistance against the fixity of a score, an unscripted, unpredictable performance. Transplanted to a gallery space, the artifice clears - the rhythm is precise, the volume controlled, the silences are conscious, the musicians tightly coordinated. This is no chaos. Except, that under the bright lights, old habits are revealed. Random water bottles are scattered among the instruments. Electric cords wander like stray serpents across the stage. The drummer set down next to him two lumpy knapsacks. The hefty keyboardist - in the middle of a tune - turns his back to the audience and bends over to connect two instruments with a cord. Wet umbrellas in plastic wraps tumble in the corner. Hipsters of the dark, revealed in the light.

50% great

The label said
when I bought the shirt
that it was made
50% with cotton grown
without the use of hazardous chemicals.
Which made me think
about the other 50%.

Working conditions

Steam heat descended on DC early this year, turning many office buildings into human freezer boxes. Meetings, however, remain at tedious to moderate levels of excitement, making the coffee pots ever more alluring. They beckon, even though I do not really like coffee that much. Coffee makes me anxious and nervous when the sky is blue; the breeze is gentle; my family, happy; my friends, kind. A German business leader appeared in a newspaper, she is a mother of eight and author of several novels, slyly hinting that all her note taking at meetings might have little to do with the meetings themselves. Maybe I have found my coffee substitute.

Spa chick

Late spring is just ducky in DC. A museum officer reportedly stopped traffic along a main thoroughfare to allow a mother and her chicks to cross the road, only later to scoop them into a duck bucket and move them to the nearest body of water. The city is dotted by water fountains, the condo-version of lakes and oceans. Artificialized ponds with running clear water, surrounded by a constant supply of chips and burger buns wheedled from the knapsacks of migrating tourists. No wonder there are six boy ducks in my favorite watering hole today. A fraternity, alternately preening and tossing, napping and flapping. The noisiest bunch, though are the tiny tawny birds that visit the Haupt Garden behind the Castle. Between the rose garden and the African Art museum, with a rippling cascade and of round gurgling basins at each planting corner, connected with channels of water. On purpose or not, they are the perfect bird baths. Once in, the big shove the small, there are cliques, there are loud mouths, there are lookouts. Dozens indulge at once, chattering away, flipping droplets all around, wary of intruding humans.

Sit down and veg

Should you ever need to take load off, Room 305b at the Hirshhorn is a good place to start. The Hirsh is the Smithsonian’s contemporary art museum. Experimental and current in a city of beige trench coats and blue shirt/khaki pants combos. The Hirsh has no First Ladies’ Gowns or Hope Diamond, which translates to more galleries than visitors. You can’t miss it when you walk by. It’s round, basically tubular in form. Observed from the Mall it appears to be wearing a space-age visor – 3D on the landscape. That visor is precisely Room 305b, dedicated to the memory of Abraham Lerner. From in looking out, there is the Mall Panorama. On the left, the Castle, the Washington Monument, the Postal Building clock tower, the Natural History (here resides the Hope Diamond), the National Archives (here resides the Declaration of Independence), the National Gallery (here resides Ginevra, Mona Lisa’s first cousin), the Capitol Building (you know who resides here). And there, for your comfort, is a ring of low slung couches, creased and loungy, grey/black and clubby, dissolute as much as it is possible for furniture to be in a pristine white gallery smack in the middle of monumentality.