All posts tagged: Random DJB Thoughts

This is where I put anything that is not easily categorized…

All the King’s Men…and the Health Care Debate

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On Saturday of our vacation it rained hard all day as the remnants of Hurricane Bill sent showers our way.  With no opportunity for biking or canoeing, Candice and I pulled out the 1949 Academy Award winning movie All the King’s Men starring Broderick Crawford and settled in for an afternoon with Willie Stark, Sadie Burke, and Jack Burden. I had a high school English teacher who loved Southern literature, so my first introduction to this powerful Robert Penn Warren novel came early in life.  I’ve read it on several occasions since then but it has been a long time since I’ve revisited the tale of political idealism gone wrong.  Seeing the movie – which won Best Movie, a Best Actor award for Crawford and a Best Supporting Actress award for Mercedes McCambridge as Sadie Burke – was a timely reminder that demagoguery is part of the American experience and not something new as part of the current health care debate. Willie has many memorable lines in the movie.  One that I’ve always remembered is …

Summer Saturdays

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As summer Saturdays go, this was a pretty good one. First of all, I’m focused on moving things off my desk so that both my head AND office are cleared to begin vacation on Monday.  So I went into work this morning.  That may not sound like fun on a summer day, but if no one’s around and you can put on the Bluegrass Instrumentals playlist off the iTunes site and crank up the sound, it makes for a great setting for getting things done. I didn’t stay too long, however, as I wanted to catch the championship game of the Cal Ripken, Sr. Baseball League, featuring the Bethesda Big Train.  My colleague at work (and fellow baseball enthusiast) Dolores and her son Noah joined me at Povich Field where – after the strangest “sun downpour” (this was more than a shower) – the Big Train played a stellar game and beat the Maryland Redbirds 7-0. to cap a 31-10 season with both the regular season and playoff titles.  The Big Train pitcher had a …

Happy July 4th

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We’re at the end of a busy July 4th celebration here in the Brown household.  The picture at left is a photo Andrew took this evening of the fireworks on the National Mall as viewed from the grounds of the National Cathedral (with a bit of a time lapse). But I’m getting ahead of myself. Andrew and Claire returned from a pilgrimage to Northern Ireland  on Friday (pictures to come in the days ahead) which meant we jumped right in to the July 4th celebration.  They had a swim meet this morning, so Andrew and Claire left with Candice bright and early while I began to put the house together following a week’s worth of painting. One of the down sides of July 4th falling on a Saturday is that we have a swim meet and miss the annual 4th of July parade in Takoma Park.  We’ve been going for years, and love the quirky, small town sensibilities the parade provides in this unique community full of eclectic historic houses.  So I’ll post a photo …

Exploring the Empty Nester Life

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Quick test:  What do leisurely strolls through Politics & Prose bookstore, dinner in Adams Morgan, two days in a row working out together at the gym, almost no time spent in the car, naps, no early Saturday morning swim meet, dim sum, and a racing President all have in common? Answer:  Things we do when Andrew and Claire are out of town. Friday afternoon we put Andrew and Claire on a plane with a group of teenagers from church and their chaperons for a week-long pilgrimage to Northern Ireland.  (I think my high school church group went to Opryland for our pilgrimage!)  While we’re not eager to see the empty nest years arrive, this was the first extended time when Candice and I were here and the children were elsewhere.  We weren’t sure how we’d react, but we’ve taken to it nicely. After that stroll through our favorite bookstore (Candice picked up an Alice Waters cookbook while I bought the new Richard Wolffe book Renegade on Obama’s candidacy), we went to a Mexican restaurant in …

9:45:00 GMT

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Andrew wrote the following essay for an English class and it was accepted for the literary magazine at his high school.  So – from today’s guest blogger Andrew Brown – I’m proud to present 9:45:00 GMT. * * * * * Today’s society uses time as its matrix. Everything we do commences at time x and concludes at time y. Every person who wants to live in our urban environment needs some way to tell time if they wish to function properly in our world, whether by wristwatch, cell phone, or computer. We use time as the basis for everything we do. My day begins at 5:45 every morning, classes begin at 8:00; lunch is at 1:30 p.m., and sports begin at 3:30; I arrive at home anywhere from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., depending on what I do after school. I eat dinner, finish my homework, and go to bed any time from 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. This schedule has become more than a routine: now it’s more a state of existence. I first …

Jazz Brunch

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You gotta love search engines and teenagers. Today is Candice’s birthday.  She loves food and loves listening to jazz.  So I asked Andrew to find us a place for a Sunday jazz brunch. Typing “Jazz Brunch Washington DC” into Google turned up a range of options.  We skimmed them, realized that Chef Geoff’s in Wesley Heights was a five minute drive from the Cathedral, made sure there was something on the menu for everyone, and then Andrew made our online reservations. Just like that we had our birthday plans covered and earlier today were introduced to a new (for us) restaurant in Washington.   The two guitar & bass jazz trio was good.  The food was vary tasty.  And the time to celebrate with Candice couldn’t have been better. All in all, a delightful way to spend a couple of hours on a beautiful spring Sunday. More to come… DJB

Nashville Cats

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In his 1996 book on the Southernization of America entitled Dixie Rising:  How the South is Shaping American Values, Politics, and Culture, former New York Times Atlanta bureau-chief Peter Applebome compares Charlotte, North Carolina and Nashville, Tennessee.  Much of Applebome’s thesis was turned on its head with the election of 2008.  But one thing he said has always stuck with me and it came back today as I was traveling to New Orleans. In comparing the two cities he notes that Nashville is a lot like Charlotte – except that its major industry is music and not banking.  And that difference makes all the difference in the world. I had a layover today in the Nashville airport.  You have to love a city where the airport has live music (in at least two places, including the food court) AND a photo exhibit by none other than Marty Stuart.  Heck, the musicians could have been employees of the Burger King.  The Lovin’ Spoonful’s Nashville Cats immediately jumped to mind: Well, there’s thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar …

Good Friday 2009

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Good Friday was a day of heightened – and mixed – emotions.  It began with an email from Andrew’s school about the irrational act of a disturbed man that some of the students observed.  In the early evening, Candice and I helped Andrew and Claire’s youth group prepare sandwiches and meals for Grate Patrol.  And while they delivered the sandwiches to the homeless throughout Washington, Candice and I closed out the day with the powerful Good Friday meditation at the National Cathedral. We’ve been around the Washington National Cathedral for years, but I only discovered this Good Friday service a couple of years ago.  It quickly became my favorite. Held in the St. Joseph of Arimethea chapel (photo) – the most appropriate of spaces – the service showcases all that is wonderful about the Cathedral.  The stone and marble combine with the vaults and intimate space to send the music on a magical journey to your ears.  And make no mistake – this is a service made for music. A hauntingly beautiful cello solo – Candice …

Opening Day

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A few observations from around the big leagues on Opening Day: Those young Nats pitchers may be in need of a bit of seasoning.  Maybe those Baseball Prospectus writers were right.  Still we have 161 games to go! Nonetheless, it was good to see Adam Dunn hit his first Nats dinger during game 1. O’s rout the Yankees.  Way to go O’s! What did C.C. Sabathia do all winter?  Eat all the money given to him by the Yankees? New look Braves looked pretty good against the Phillies. More to come… DJB

Vintage Roadside has New Route 66 Design

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Last October I wrote a post about the Vintage Roadside folks and their great t-shirt designs from old and often defunct roadside businesses.  This morning, the weather in Washington promised to be warm enough to get around in a t-shirt, so I pulled out my Route 66 t-shirt (see photo at left) from Vintage Roadside and didn’t think much more of it. But when I opened up the blog this morning and went to the Word Press home page, there was a blog posting from a Route 66 News blog that featured a great new design from – you guessed it – the Vintage Roadside folks.  Just too cool and too much of a coincidence not to write a bit about it.  I posted a comment on the blog and took the opportunity to give a shout out to the wonderful folks at Vintage Roadside.   To top it off, they are members of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and contribute some of the proceeds to help save historic places.  If the great designs aren’t enough to …