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strolls in a Trumpian Washington
Friday, January 20 2017
location: eighth floor, Watergate East Apartment Building, Washington, DC
This morning soon after I awoke, I decided to deploy that scary email server code whose development kicked my ass for most of this past month. There'd been a bunch of big mailings yesterday, but they were all over now and in that calm it seemed like a good time to pull the trigger. And so I did, and nothing bad happened. The trickle of emails that go to people a certain number of days after they first sign up seemed to still be going out at the normal rate (and to be going out via the correct Postfix instances). I would continue monitoring its performance for the rest of the day, but happily nothing bad ended up happening. This made it possible to fully participate in the events of the day (while occasionally teleporting into my remote workplace to do things like assign tasks; our boss was still in Los Angeles after his retreat enjoying a rare couple days of vacation).
At some point in the early afternoon we realized that administration of one Donald J. Trump had begun. The fact we weren't waving at each other from hurdling remnants of Planet Earth counted as a good thing at this point, though it wouldn't be long before the absurdities of the new regime started appearing in the news.
The four of us went for a rather long walk, first northwestward along the bank of the Potomac past the Swedish embassy and the ice rink (now wet and glistening in the warmish weather) and then northward into Georgetown. It was a typical stroll with the inlaws, with lots of looking into shop windows and reading menus of restaurants there was no immediate interest to dine in. As you know, this sort of aimless strolling is not my thing at all, though I did take brief delight in the C & O Canal, part of which was being restored. Its locks looked exactly like the ones I'd recently passed through on the Rhone, only much smaller. These looked like they could only accommodate boats having a width of 12 feet. While I was marveling at these things with Gretchen's mother, the other two charged ahead, never looking behind to see if perhaps we'd found something that interested us. I was about to call Gretchen when I saw her and her father emergeing from some stupid Georgetown restaurant.
When we finally went to lunch, it was at a classy Thai restaurant called Bangkok Joe's down near the Potomac. After a little confused ordering (vegetarian menu items were identified, though these were not necessarily vegan), we had our order. The most surprisingly item was the radish tater tots, which were unexpectedly creamy and delightful (though, according to the menu, they might've contained egg). By the time I'd eaten most of my noodle curry dish, my gut was distended in pain. I don't remember much of what we discussed except Donald Trump, though there was probably some discussion of food preparation and tomorrow's logistics, two topics that tend to make my eyes glaze over. I much prefer it when Gretchen's father is holding forth on some matter of household finances or ethics in medical policy.
Our guts full of food, we ambled southeastward along the Potomac, eventually noting a couple small Coast Guard boats plying the waters. These were each equipped with large machine guns mounted on tripods with black-clad young men at the ready to start shooting. It was a terrifying vision, and I wondered if perhaps Donald Trump had already declared himself Absolute Ruler. But as one of these boats drew closer to the shore, we (and others) snapped pictures and some even chatted with the gunner, who seemed bored and on not-especially-high alert. He was asking a woman on the shore whom he seemed to know what had been written on the black sign carried past a couple minutes before by a group of jolly protestors. (It had read something like, "We really f*cked up this time!")
We walked all the way to the place where Rock Creek (and the C & O Canal) meets up with the Potomac. It's an important geographic spot in Washington and the name of the nearby Watergate complex may be a reference to it.
At the Watergate, we went into its Hotel, which is both super-classy and cozy. I was most struck by a lounge whose walls are made entirely of illuminated liquor bottles. We went up to the roof of the hotel and looked out over the complex, trying to find the balcony belonging to Gretchen's parents and speculating on which of the balconies of Watergate South belong to Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
This afternoon, both Gretchen and I took a long nap in an effort to do something about our sleep deficit.
This evening, the four of us dined on leftover noodles from our noodle party at the kitchen table (a smaller version of a similar table we used to sit around in their old house). Dinner conversation consisted mostly of logistical planning for tomorrow's activities (the "Women's March" against Trump). I contributed nothing to that conversation, partly because I had no strong opinions and partly because I knew too little about the sequence of events or the associated geography. Eventually I went off to bed, checking the email server one last time for putting my head under a pillow and falling asleep.
The gunboat on the Potomac, with the Kennedy Center in the background. The Kennedy Center is just beyond the Watergate, a tiny bit of which can be seen in this photo.
The Watergate from the roof of the hotel. Watergate East (the concave part where Gretchen's parents live) is on the left, and Watergate South (the convex part where Ruth Bader Ginsburg lives) is on the right.
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