In honor of Inauguration Day 2009, I post this true story from the middle of the recent storm. Happy Day! david

August 29, 2003, Dulles International Airport

Washington DC was a swamp before the federals built our nation’s capital city here. It remains a swamp today. In the last week of August, thunder punctuates the end of each steaming day and the torrential rains recharge the source of tomorrow’s mugginess. No one escapes the humidity or the counter measures put up to thwart it. Either sweat or surrender, captive within the soft hum of artificially de-humidified isolation. Choose one.

A walk down the block nearly guarantees that I’ll sweat through whatever I’m wearing. Shirt, Pants, Socks. Shoes. Knap-sack shoulder straps. Monte Christo fedora. The natives seem better able to move through this semi-solid atmosphere. Some wear suits without appearing to sweat. Their sweat glands must have long ago shut down from over-use, having produced their allotted lifetime’s volume. Nothing else explains it.

The city has changed since my last visit. 9/11 happened and, while the district was heavily secured on that last stop, it was wide open compared to the present state. Large cement planters ring every government building, and most of the buildings are government buildings. Homeland Security's response to terrorist threats created a delightful unintended outcome- flowers. Each planter holds a well-tended little garden, brightly blooming within the constant humidification. The planters are there, I suppose, to prevent attack from car bombings, but they, encroaching into the District's wide boulevards, silently disrupt the traffic flow. The sidewalks narrow and access to the usual vistas strictly limited, when entry is allowed at all. The Capitol building looks like it’s under siege, the once open parking lot surrounded by a seven foot metal wall, which fails to hide the cement plant behind it. Someone’s building something’s behind that wall; probably not planters.

Gardens and sculptures are obscured by traffic baffles. Walking is detour-ridden. I was surprised to find access to the two large fountains on either side of the National Gallery of Art open and empty at seven on a Thursday evening. A semi-cool, bubbling respite spot. There are few such spots left in DC. Most of the Capitol grounds, an arboretum with trees from every state, is cordoned off. Barricades block off access to that wonderful view overlooking the Mall from the front of the Capitol building on the 40th anniversary of Dr. King’s I Have A Dream speech.

The White House has annexed another block on its Eastern side. The Stonewall Jackson memorial now stands behind crime scene tape. Planters block Pennsylvania Avenue at 15th. Only the street to the North of Layfayette Park carries traffic. Where planters and guard boxes do not limit access, small wire and cedar-slat fences and crime scene tape do.

Crime scene tape.

Most of downtown has been gentrified. New construction continues at a blazing rate, further narrowing many streets and creating moments of unbearable noise. The homeless are present in greater numbers than in San Francisco. The small parks L’Enfant designed as places for a moment out of the sun have become hobo camps. Enter these only if your heart is cold enough to deny a flurry of plaintive requests for money or food. The benches beneath the signs declaring sleeping illegal are homes for the homeless. Some still sleep.

Another crime scene.

The afternoon storms were extraordinary. On Tuesday afternoon, I took a wrong turn coming out of the Metro and found myself walking a few extra blocks. As I passed by Lafayette Park, I noticed a strange electricity in the air and a sudden puff of unanticipated wind. I had time to cross the street and take refuge in the doorway of St. John’s church [ editor’s note: the so-called Presidents’ Church, where this morning President-elect Obama attended services before his inaguration...] before a torrent of wind-driven rain arrived.

A small community huddled there; some homeless, some tourists, some natives on their way home from government jobs. The wind blew from the North, the wrong way down 16th street across Layfayette Park and into the face of the White House, while huge rain drops Kamikazes crashed into a swirling flood. Trees bent and broke under the assault. Lightening struck the buildings surrounding us. Thunder crashed terrifyingly. Still, some continued their hikes. A young mother pushing a stroller with two small children rushed by, kids soaked through and holding their hands over their faces. Some held futile umbrellas before them while the wind-driven rain soaked them anyway Every few minutes another group would wash up drenched under the church's overhang to huddle and stay or continue their upstream migration. I stayed put, watching, dry except for the unavoidable splash from the door jam above me.

The church’s doors were locked, though someone inside peeked out through the glass and nodded, acknowledging our presence. I imagined that he would invite us in out of the fury, but he sauntered back into the sanctuary, leaving the doors unopened. I imagined the storm to be retribution, an angry front pounding on the increasingly unreasonable administration, but the President was not home to answer the onslaught. We huddled, the homeless among us wondering whether their usual bedding spot would be habitable that night, the rest of us considering cabs. Some managed to flag taxis down. One group of six over-sized tourists crammed themselves into a single cab, soaking themselves while impossibly squeezing in like desperate clowns. Two young lovers stopped for a moment, shivering, saturated, before continuing their light jog into the maw.

I had met earlier with a colleague, retired Army, who delicately introduced the subject of the present administration. He fussed over the disrespect shown the departing head of the Army, who was co-opted by tenacious ideologues. The whole city, he explained, is hunkered down, afraid to do what they know is right, their leaders directing them toward irresponsible objectives. Fear and loathing reign. The government has become the exclusive property of a few. The day before, Amy called to report on her visit to a Howard Dean rally in Spokane, where a thousand people appeared to hear an eloquent speaker tell it like it is. Fifteen thousand showed up the night before in Seattle. While the President travels in closed circles, inviting a few wealthy supporters to gather and congratulate themselves, Howard Dean invites everyone and responds to their questions and concerns not with hollow promises but with open explanations and honest disagreement when he honestly disagrees.

Half of the present Federal workforce will be eligible for retirement in the next five years, and many can't wait to leave. The cost of service has become too high. The price of fulfilling policies they cannot in good conscience support has become too great. I suppose many of these jobs will be outsourced to third world countries where someone with fewer scruples than needs will gladly accept them. And the government of, by, and for the people will take another step away from its center, toward a government that simply exploits and oppresses while ignoring the legitimate interests of those who were supposed to be employing it as a means for owning their own destinies.

The homeless man huddled in that doorway with me looks like an honest citizen. The homeless woman next to him complains about having to walk across town to her storage locker to get dry clothes so she can go to work. None of us despaired within the storm. We huddled together, otherwise inappropriately close, staying as dry as we could, hoping for an early secession of hostilities. And the storm cleared, albeit begrudgingly. Pedestrians reappeared. Some soaked. Others dry. Office buildings emptied and the commute continued. The oppressive heat humbled for a few hours. The sky distantly grumbling like a stomach recovering from an over-rich meal.

I was here to research. Here to access the greatest store of knowledge in the world. To sit humbly in the Library of Congress’ Art-Deco reading rooms, fingering books. Gathering data. Considering deeply. The visit included more considering than research. There are only so many external sources of one’s own wisdom. Was I looking for confirmation more than information? I was seeking patterns, which arrived in their usual, well-performed forms. The cordoned walkways and flower-edged buildings were there expressly for my consideration. The long walks past parks cordoned with crime scene tape brought enough of the movie to life before my eyes. As always, plotline and purpose open to my own interpretation.

I leave with a pack filled with notes which I might not refer to again. I will most certainly not carefully reconstruct the facts I collected in my long library hours. I took notes and carefully captured sources, but such precision could not have been the purpose of my investigation. Such material can be at best the medium within which some understanding emerges. What understanding is that? Not an important question. Like the traveler who’s journey is more purposeful than his destination, the time spent huddled in a doorway considering this storm will become the real purpose of my research. The day spent visiting my book in bookstores reminded me what a very small world this continues to be- and how very well connected we are. I walked down K Street, sweating from my hike from Georgetown, and spotting a bookstore, enter to find that my book had been there, sold out, and is on re-order. The book buyer was delighted to order a few extra copies and take some promotional cards. All this reassures me.

We might imagine ourselves strangers, separated by unfathomable distances, or family, isolated only by the illusion of separation. Our choice. When the storm comes none of us will get to choose which doorway we take refuge in. We will take the one most convenient at the time. And that stranger beside us then will not seem so strange once you’ve survived together a close lightening strike or two, and successfully out-witted a determined wind. Class differences dissolve in these torrents, and every meaningful distinction that should collapse- does. The St. Regis hotel stood solidly across the street from my protecting doorway. It’s broad portico sheltering the taxis and their passengers as they arrived and departed untouched by the storm. I thought for a while that, had I been smart, I would have stepped into that glittering lobby and sat out the trouble in a brass and marble bar, but my feelings switched to deep gratitude for having avoided that indifferent isolation.

The storm burped back into being as I hurried back to my hotel, so I stepped into what I mistook for a neighborhood bar for a quick beer to avoid a drenching. The bartender wondered how I could be so dry. “I walked between the raindrops,” I replied, noticing only then that the small stage in the back held a naked young woman dancing by herself. In the soft, reddish light, her body looked featureless. Some men sat rapt before her, projecting details and soaking up something that no storm could provide them. I gulped the flat Guinness and left before I discovered the secret attracting them there.

Back into my tiny hotel room, I showered away the residue from my day's three full sweat drenchings. I had successfully avoided the external dousing, but had three times soaked myself from the inside out that day. I'd found much to consider. Sitting on top of my cool, dry bed, temporarily isolated within a dehumidifying hum and three stories above any crime scene, my considering continued.

david