The polls in Virginia open at 6 so I usually get there as soon as they open. It’s typically just me and about a dozen geriatrics kicking it civics style in the NoVa at that hour, soon to be joined by a steady stream of others of all ages who start wandering in around 6:15 [...]
It took me a minute to isolate the source of the sound, a rhythmic chant among the shrieks and yells of the exuberant kids running around all over the place. Sitting in a circle on a raised platform section of one of those ubiquitous primary-colored plastic playground sets was a group of boys, maybe 4th [...]
This morning as I turned on the exit ramp to the interstate, the lightest touch of sunlight brushed the face of a rumpled man carefully walking his bicycle down the side of the ramp into the still darkness of the underpass. Fabric, cardboard, and plastic formed a large mass tethered to the bike. The man [...]
It snows a little. It clears off and is bright, shiny. It snows a little more. It clears off again. The wind sends seed pods aloft. They float for a while before settling in cracks in the sidewalk, my hair, your birdbath, under the windshield wipers. Daffodils and forsythia are emboldened. Birds pad their nests [...]
One security guard was patrolling the Memorial entrance at Arlington National Cemetery today. Despite the cold and wind, a few tourists straggled through the area, crossing the memorial bridge, walking among different sections of the cemetery, heading to and from the metro. Mostly it was deserted. The security guard spent most of his time pacing, [...]
Maybe it is because it’s January. Maybe it’s a wild hair. Whatever it is, something compelled a trim and fit man who looked like a cross between Terence Stamp and Patrick Stewart to don his Rollerblades, grab his hockey stick, and skate around in lazy eights in the parking lot adjacent to the farmers market [...]
In the post office on Christmas Eve was a sort-of scruffy-bearded young guy. Tall, lanky, and wearing golf shoes, khaki work pants, two hoodies, scarf, gloves and a knit cap that stretched its tiny stripes around his ponytail. Absolutely nothing he was wearing should have looked tidy but it did because it was help together [...]
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