Library of Congress

I walked over from Tom's house on Capitol Hill to the Library of Congress, this great 1893 monument to knowledge, to learning, to art and architecture. A relief it is there after eight years of an administration that put so little value on these keys to the human experience. And imagine having this edifice a few blocks away from one's home. Anyone can get a library card. I suspect there was some competition between this building and the public library on 5th Avenue in New York which must have been built around the same time. But, hey, Congress could just pass a law that a copy of every book published in the country had to be sent in. That's one way to stock the shelves. As stunning as the building and its holdings are, more impressive were the hundreds of school children who visit the library, who see the kind of glorious investments governments are capable of making when their heads are on straight (or not as the case may be).


I was reading the other day (yes, reading) that Socrates was strongly opposed to books and to reading. He felt that learning only really occurred when people were in dialogue with one another. And now we are at a time when books are being joined and perhaps jostled by other forms of communication (videos, blogs, an interactive web). Yet these monuments remain to remind us of the essential commonality of all these forms.

Another train, another culture

Came out to Washington to go to a memorial service for Marita. Caught the Acela train from Baltimore airport to Union Station. On the train, a culture shift occurs: white shirts, ties, jackets, business folks, lawyers, expensive cloth...it ain't Colorado (ahhh, the feeling of being a bumpkin). But, then, anyone can buy a small bottle of white wine in the club car to settle down into this new world.

And then one arrives, twenty minutes later, in the heart, well one of the hearts, of the District of Columbia (yes, DC does have a heart). The great hall of Union Station, reminding one of how the rails once tied the country together and still do and may do again.



I met Tom with time to share another glass of wine under the barrel vaults of the great hall, before grabbing a taxi to his place on Capitol Hill. And settling in with Charlotte and Halie for an evening meal.

A glimpse of Gambella

I was riding up the interstate to the mountains to go skiing. I turned on the radio. A journalist was conducting an interview in Gambella, Ethiopia. Gambella: a small town on the Baro River in the southwestern lowlands of that country. Nilotic cattle-herding tribes: the Anuak, the Dinka, the Shilluk mixed with highland peoples, the Amhara and the Oromo, to create a distinct medley of colors, sounds, dress and cultures.


Gambella was a two day walk from Dembi Dolo, my town in the late 1960s when I was a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in a secondary school. Friends and I would walk that trail during school vacations to hang out with other volunteers who ran a dormitory for refugees from the civil war that raged in the Sudan even back then. So it all came in a flood of memory as I drove up I-70 to the snow covered mountain ranges of Colorado. We are made up of present and past; memories and the current moment collide in stunning ways.

Up the Colorado

The train to Denver follows the course of the Colorado River, down through canyons too narrow for roads or even hiking trails. Snow was falling lightly as we left Glenwood Springs. The sky cleared as we rode east. Travelers filled the lounge car chairs, carrying on conversation, playing cards, watching the landscape for wildlife (eagles, deer, a few isolated moose). Broken crosses of abandoned telegraph poles lined the sides of the tracks.

I followed the route closely on my Colorado map, noting where another set of tracks split north to the coal mines of Steamboat, where we would enter the long, dark Moffat Tunnel under the Continental Divide, where we roll eastward down the Divide toward the night lights of the Front Range.

Charlotte sewed blocks for a new quilt as we rolled along. Mrs. Child wrote in The American Frugal Housewife (1832): "Little girls often have a great many bits of small cloth, and large remnants of time which they do not know what to do with. I think it better for them to make cradle-quilts for...their baby brothers than to be standing around, wishing for something to do." No idleness even on Amtrak when one can watch the mountains and work at the same time.


It is a long way from the sea. Last month, I went out to the Jersey shore for the funeral of my Aunt Edna, the last survivor of my father's four siblings. I had flown into Philadelphia airport and then headed east, as far as the road would take me, to the beach at Point Pleasant.

A cold, rain soaked wind was blowing across the hard, crusty sand. Waves crashed. And then I saw some surfers, black in their wet suits, moving out into the sea. They moved gracefully into their watery mountains, riding more deftly than our Colorado snow boarders, but with the same verve, the same joy in being challenged by gravity, physics, the forces of the earth. I watched from the beach for a good while, making touch with the edge of the continent. Then I got back into the car to go and join my cousins (and their children and their children's children)at the wake.

Hot Springs

We spent most of the day soaking, swimming, some yoga, around the pool. The morning cold (20 degrees) turns the water to steam...the vapors constantly shifting with the wind, now obscuring other bathers, the surrounding snow covered mountains, now revealing the clear water, the historic bathhouse, the Colorado Hotel on the hill. The hot springs form a perfect tonic for a day of skiing or hiking, but sometimes like today they are just an end in themselves...the warm waters slowing the pace of life to a lingering crawl.

But, then, again you're sharing the water with folks like current drummer for Hall and Oaks (getting ready for a tour of Japan in a week or so) and Claus Obermeyer (the 92 year old founder of the modern ski ware industry). These are, after all, the hot springs just down the valley from Aspen. Hot water, like wine, proves a lubricant for conversation.

Inauguration in the Rockies

We came around a curve coming down the Fraser Valley as Barak Obama was being sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. The locomotive made the bend alongside the river. At 10:00 am, we raised a toast to the new administration. The lounge car, the living room of the Amtrak train, was not that full...being an off, off season. An Afro-American family traveling from New York to Salt Lake, at least one of whom was going to "make a new life." Karin Waltin, a friend, on her way to Portland to be grandmother to a new grandson. Charlotte and I making out way to the Hot Springs for a few days of soaking in the mountains. So what could be more appropriate, if one were not on the mall in Washington, DC, than to celebrate a new political era by riding on the the rails through the valleys and canyons of the Rocky Mountains.

The Midwest, the plains

But the roads along the corn fields led to relatives: brothers, nieces, nephews, grand nieces, in-laws...relations defined by genetics, culture, law. The landscape intertwined with kinship. One relative in South Bend lives in an apartment in the former Central High that had been converted into flats. She occupies the space of the former swimming pool, but it is now tiled and carpeted...her studio is in the deep end. A ladder leads through the ceiling into the master bedroom. She, Adrienne Werge, has an installation that recently opened at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport...we stopped there on our trek west. Her meditation of self, Vietnam, the war was moving. And the museum was itself a generous work of space and light, overlooking the Mississippi River whose waters seemed to be riding high.



The museum was almost the last one of this trip (the last was the Danish Museum in Elkhorn where we loaded up on Danish Christmas goods (and some Norwegian fiskeboller). When we arrived back in Fort Collins, we had driven some 4500 miles...it's a far piece, Maryland from Colorado. On the way out I was having problems figuring out why it was going to take so long, but then I had forgotten that you had to cross Ohio in addition to Illinois and Indiana and the rest. But each mile had given us time to observe, to talk, to listen to the radio or i-pod, and just to be...a kind of suspended animation across the eastern broadside of the land.

The Road

We traveled different roads on this trip: the interstate highway system (originally built to speed troops from one side of the continent to the other quickly in case of attack)still rocks in its way. The clarity of the grid, except in major cities, provides a logic for moving east-west, north-south, or on a diagonal. But coming from Fort Collins, the scale of its lanes and the rush of its vehicles in the cities is daunting. And then the back roads...trying to respectfully pass the Amish farmer riding in the same rain that our roof shielded us from. The older highways form a kind of intermediary...slowing down through the towns that funnel cars and trucks through their main streets. Any one day had these different types...at least until we hit Iowa. Then it was just mile after mile of I-80, spread like a black belt across the rolling hills and level corn fields.

The Bay

Our house was on Selby Bay, a cove off the South River, an estuary of the Chesapeake. So it's about water, a resource in short supply in Colorado. I spent as much time as temperature would permit on the dock and on the shoreline in early morning. The sun's rays would reflect off the clouds onto the water...leaving the waters not underneath the clouds to their natural blue/grey. Looking east across the cove, the sun had left a narrow band of unreflecting waters...stunning blue in contrast to the clouds pinks. The bands of color played against the benches on the dock. A good beginning to the day ahead.

Hanging Out

So the main idea of Thanksgiving is hanging out and eating. These are sequential in most cases...the big meal, then hanging out...but sometimes there are variations. Such as wine on the deck looking across the bay. Such as playing cards with friends who flew in from Brussels for the holiday.
Such as checking to see if some of apple pie is still available. Such as having a long, intense discussion about Kant (not). Being anthropologists, Charlotte and I have both had long years of training in hanging out...and then writing it up. Hmmmm....like this blog.

Thanksgiving

Of course before the turkey and mashed potatoes and squash and gravy and asparagus and pies, there is the table setting. Itself a work of art and artifice. The tables were set at Margaret and Tony's house, deep in the woods by the Severn River in Annapolis. We had our full families at the meal plus some friends. When we lived in Maryland, we would exchange Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hanukkah holiday meals. Such occasions were filled with good food, laughter, love. They still are.

Bolton Hill

We came back up to Baltimore on Tuesday to have dinner with Elwin Guild, a friend whom we had not seen for some 15 years. Elwin, Charlotte and I worked together and, more important, helped one another get jobs over the course of several years. I got Elwin a job at the Peace Corps where he then went on to be a country director and now does consulting around the world, forming small trade associations, mainly in eastern Europe. Next week, Kosovo. And Elwin got me a job at USDA when I left the Peace Corps, a move that allowed us eventually to relocate to Colorado. And Charlotte had originally hired Elwin when she worked at USDA.

So the connections are old and significant. And now the connections are rewired. Elwin lives in the Bolton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore...an intact neighborhood of town houses and churches built in the 1880s. Elwin and Joan's house is of that era, but he has added decks, gardens, and a rich and eclectic set of art works, rugs, furniture for the light-filled, high ceilinged rooms. We'll be back.

Marita

On Monday and Tuesday, I was back with Rink and Marita. Marita is beginning to shut down, eating less, less able to communicate, hearing and sight going. The home hospice folks are excellent, especially Sherry, the nurse, who brings a sense of love, focus, humor, activity along with her knowledge of palliative medicines. Rink is the moral compass he always was when we lived down the street in University Park. He is caring, loving, strong, ready to learn what to do in the next step of care.



Also he maintains such an open and welcoming household for the tens of friends, neighbors, co-workers, soccer team members, and family who come to help, to visit, to bring food (check out the refrigerator), to say hello, to say goodbye. Dan came on Tuesday, his regular day, and so I left earlier than usual. But people come all day long...which you can see on http://maketheladyhappy.blogspot.com.


Rink's openness is a gift...Marita's presence in the community is a gift...they have always been so much a part of our family's life. And now they have given us so much more.

Baltimore

Tony, my brother-in-law, drove up to Baltimore on a MILA retreat. MILA stands for "Miller In-Law Association," an organization we founded three decades ago. Its goal is to provide recreational and educational opportunities for in-laws of the Miller siblings to network and share their experience and insight. A highlight of our Baltimore retreat was the discovery of an excellent Indian restaurant on North Charles Street just a few blocks from the Walters Art Gallery...a 19th century mansion turned into a wonderfully complete museum. We caught a few of the exhibits...great medieval collections, including some stunning medalians...and, then, headed back toward Annapolis. An urban MILA retreat...our first.

robwergeontheroad: Marita

robwergeontheroad: Marita

Marita

Most of my time in Maryland has been spent with Marita and Rink, neighbors up our old block in University Park. We moved away nearly 12 years ago, but we have kept in close contact over those years, attending each other's children's weddings, visiting whenever we can, checking in on email and telephone. Breast cancer is creating havoc with Marita's abilities: her hearing and eyesight are failing. A wheelchair has replaced her walking, running, playing soccer. The hospice nurse, social worker, chaplain make their rounds.

Yet Marita is surrounded by the great love of the love of her life, Rink. All day neighbors, friends, co-workers, and family come by and offer their visits, their time, their help. Charlotte came by on Friday and make some good Peruvian ceviche for Rink and did up the time line for his cooking on Thanksgiving. Vanessa brings the grandchildren by; their energies and noise fill the house. The comings and goings and love of these folks pass the hours.

Down to DC

We came down from Pennsylvania past the Cotoctin Mountains. We have fond memories of those hills, having spent long weekends and summers at the Quaker camp belonging to Baltimore Yearly Meeting. The apple trees were heavy with fruit. And pumpkins were set in audacious piles.


Before we knew it, traffic had begun to pile up; population density grew; tall buildings sprung from former wheat fields. We were in the city, the District of Columbia. I was able to catch a small, precise exhibit at the National Gallery: George De Forest Brush. The show covered only his renderings of American Indians…not captured by an ethnographic lens, but by one that emphasized their artistic sensibility…such as a sculptor showing an Aztec lord his recent work.



Outside, away from the quiet of the gallery, traffic jostled in the streets. The night lights came on the vast bureaucratic offices that line the mall

Gettysburg

We came across the mountains of southern Pennsylvania to the town of Gettysburg. In the morning we visited the massive new Visitor's Center with its museum, film and cyclorama which left us with a deepened sense of history and tragedy. We toured a bit of the battlefield and the hundreds of monuments to the regiments, the armies, the men who fought here. The moment seemed particularly fitting, given the election of Obama, and the role the battle and the war played in the end to slavery (not that long ago)and the continuing struggle for freedom.

Yet in a more political sense, the war was about "once in, could you leave the union? like, if you don't like the new president...in that case, Lincoln...could you just go bye-bye?" Well, the answer was "No" and it was delivered at places like Gettysburg. And the monuments, like the one above of the muse writing down the names of the dead from a New York regiment, testify to the cost of that "no."

Cocktail Hour

But, of course, it is not all about the road. Sometimes it's about the evening at the end of the road for that day. We load the coolers into the motel along with the bags of clothes, the computer, the detritus of everyday life. And whilst I go out for a walk, Charlotte cuts the cheese, puts out the crackers, cuts up an apple, opens the wine (vino verde for most of the trip), gets out the wine glasses from their bubble wrap, lowers the lights and it's cocktail time. So is the trip about the road...as Rink calls it "the Obama-Werge-Miller-Canas Victory Tour"...or is it about cocktail time? Ask me after a few glasses.

Off the Highway

So you turn off the highway into the sprawl of a small town in Pennsylvania and your eye catches the sign for "Keilbasa and Kraut $4.95" at the Summit Dinner and man, is it good but way too much for lunch so you spot the county courthouse some blocks away and to walk off the keilbasa and mashed potatoes you head up the hill and the courthouse (once you pass through security) is a gem. Built 1904 and restored in this century. Just blows your socks off. On the journey, it is the surprises, the unexpected discoveries, that so delight.

Across the Missouri, the Mississippi, the Ohio

We crossed the Missouri at Kansas City, the Mississippi at Saint Louis, the Ohio at Wheeling. The sprawl of corporate motels, restaurants, gas stations does not hide the economic decline of these cities and the towns along the way. I-70 parallels the first national highway, well on the first, Interstate 40 whose broad-backed bridge spans the Ohio at Wheeling. We stumble across history...the marker at the Federal Customs House (1795) at Wheeling that housed the convention in 1861 at which West Virginia succeeded from Virginia in the opening days of the Civil War...and the old Victorian houses of North Wheeling that, despite their grandeur, can't seem to resist the wear of time. Nor can the myriad churches, like "The Church of God and Saints of Christ" which even with its classic proportions, do not overcome the need for paint and repair and worshipers. Still details of an earlier, more prosperous, time emerge around corners to delight the senses, to remind us of a more optimistic time along the river.

We arrived in Kansas City...actually Kansas City, Kansas across the Kansas River from Kansas City, Missouri. We had made stops along the way: "The Cathedral of the Plains" a massive church and convent built by Germans from Russia's Volga River. Each family was tasked with bringing 260 stones from a distant quarry to build the edifice. The giant easel in the town of Goodland with a replica of Van Gogh's Sunflowers 24 feet by 32 feet (the easel is 80 feet high). The Huron Cemetery in which the last of the Wyandot Indians (originally from the area of Lake Huron) were buried after being swindled out of lands in Ohio and Michigan. The Wyandots had actually organized themselves into a territorial government and applied for admission into the United States, but Congress had rejected their application because they were Indians.


We spent a few hours at the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum with its new addition built partly underground...world class collections. Oldenberg's shuttlecocks on the lawn...perhaps not that different in concept from Goodland's Van Gogh. One of my favorite paintings was Jacobshaven's scene of the Platte River at sunset. So art, history, the highway miles converge as we move east.

Across the High Plains

We headed east across the high plains two days after the election. Time to reconnect with the landscape; time to reconnect with family and friends back on the east coast. Our first stop, Deep Trail, a small town hanging on for dear life on the side of I-70. The restaurant/bakery we had lunch in was closing down that day. The business was moving west to another town along I-70, closer to the sprawling suburbs of Denver.

Yet we have connections to Deer Trail. The town had once been home to a Friends (Quaker) Meeting. Most of its members had left years ago, but the daughter of one of the members now worships with us in Fort Collins Friends Meeting. This year when the Deer Trail meeting was formally "laid down," Fort Collins Friends received the last of the funds that was being held in the name of Deer Trail.
So we are connected and reconnected again...this prairie and the western foothills.

Election Night

Well were we happy? Yes, along with several hundred Obama and Democratic Party supporters who jammed into the ballroom (well, I'm not sure they actually hold any balls there)of the Fort Collins Marriott to yell, scream, cry, shout, and jump for joy at the results of the election.

God, the lifting of this burden, the feeling that the country had been hijacked by the radical right wing, that the people have been turned over as prey to the corporations, that the values of the country have been turned upside down...over, over, over. At least for now. Now it's just back to eternal vigilance.

Charlotte spent most of the past year working on one campaign or another. A favorite? Betsy Markey finally overthrew Marilyn (constitutional amendment against single-sex marriage) Musgrave. After six long years. Still waiting to hear a concession call from Marilyn...sore loser? It's been amazing to watch the transformation of Colorado over the past twelve years...moving beyond the strangle hold of the right wing of the Republican party to something more moderate, something reasonable. Something that reflects the values of the country.