Just Keeping the Streak Alive

Today has been a pretty busy day. After I got in my daily walk this morning, my daughter played her first competitive lacrosse game, and she looked pretty good. She's pretty quiet normally, but if you put her in a mask, mouth guard, and give her a stick she shows and assertiveness that comes as a bit of a surprise. That's a great thing to see.

The rest of the day was largely spent getting ready to get into the 5 mile high aluminum tube.

That's it for tonight. No pictures...just keeping the streak alive one more day. Sometimes that's the best you can do. We'll see how it all unfolds tomorrow. 

Grind It Out Friday

Not every day is brilliant sunsets and visions that inspire thoughts of romantic travel during simpler times. Somedays, I just have to grind it out, and today was one of those days. There was a forty page presentation due by 0700 this morning, so I skipped the morning walk and went in and smashed it out. The rest of the day seemed like a series on non-stop little emergencies and prep work for what's coming our way next week. The time ended up flying by, and before I knew it, the time had come to head out to the ice rink to watch the kiddos skate.

I eked out a mile and a half on the road during the ice skating event, and came home with not a whole lot of time before it was time to get some rest before starting tomorrow. There was a sunset.

Naval Station Annapolis Sunset

While the storm clouds in the distance were pretty impressive in person, the lighting was a bit washed out, so they're a little less impressive here in the photo. They did managed to coagulate into an energetic lightning storm after the sky grew dark. The smudge ended up an orange smear of tepid light just before the sky grew black.  Probably the best thing about this photo is a porta-john on the right. When you're out on the road, a porta-john can save you a fair amount of grief. Sometimes a porta-john is the best thing that the day has to offer, so I availed myself of the facilities and headed on down the road.

Heading down the Road at Naval Station Annapolis

I'm not quite sure where these roads I'm taking right now are leading. On days like today, it feels like they're not leading anywhere that I particularly want to be going. When a day like this comes along, there's only one thing to do. 

Grind it out.

Toad - Naval Station Annapolis

Toward the end of my wanderings, I happened across this little guy and about half a dozen of his warty brown friends. Not the easiest creature to get a photo of in the dark, but there it is. 

Sometimes you'll have days of doubt and thoughts about the futility of the journey ahead.  Days where the most exciting things you find are a lonely porta-john and a toad. When you get to those days, grind it out. You never know what might be waiting for you just around the next corner. I'm looking forward to whatever that might reveal itself as I wander the road of life tomorrow.

Train Stations

There is something about a train station that evokes a little thrill of adventure coupled with a bit of a sad nostalgia yearning for the reality of the image of simpler times. I walked down to Union Station today, and the white Vermont granite of the exterior seemed to capture the thrill and freedom of climbing into a mahogany and teak Pullman train car hauled by a fast locomotive toward points west.

Union Station - Washington, DC

I'll be headed out on the road again soon, but instead of eating roast beef and carrots and drinking coffee in the dining car on a multi-day trip accompanied by the rhythmic click and slap of the great iron steam pistons, I'll be climbing into an aluminum tube to be pushed past the ground five miles above the earth lulled to a shallow sleep by the pitched whine of twin turbofan engines.  

There is something to be said for being able to cover 1200 miles in about four hours, but today I was longing for the myth of simpler times. Times when travel was slower and instead of avoiding my fellow pilgrims we would exchange greetings and banter about whatever news we all brought from our smaller and somehow more isolated sections of the country.

After spending a few minutes dreaming of the open air freedom of travel in a rail car, I turned on my heel and headed back toward the river, relishing the lightning sky in the east and the gentle breeze on my forehead.

Tomorrow morning will bring a new set of dreams and visions, and I'm looking forward to seeing them unfold one moment at a time.

Learning and Reiterating

Today I think I learned that stirring rhetoric recorded from the Justices of the Supreme Court are much rarer than stirring rhetoric from actors, authors, politicians, and others.

Supreme Court at Daybreak

I was looking for a caption to go along with this photo in a Facebook post, and I had a pretty hard time finding a quote from a Supreme Court Justice that seemed to fit the bill.  Ultimately, I was successful, but the search took awhile. To a degree I find that heartening. To be a widely recognized public figure and to have the discipline to keep truly remarkable quotations to yourself in this day and age is quite a feat. I'm sure that they try in the interest of maintaining the court's long held reputation as a place non-partisan institution. Be that as it may, the discipline to pull off that sort of accomplishment is nothing short of remarkable.

Capitol Building in the Waning Dark

Given a short notice tasker to "gist" about six pages of single spaced, font 10 text into six sentences, I discovered that the writing I've been practicing here on a fairly regular basis really is paying dividends that I did not anticipate. Jut on the mechanical side, my typing, which was already reasonable fast, has gotten quite a bit better. I can't quantify the improvement, but I know that speed has improved, and I'm less prone to mistakes. On the more creative front, I didn't really find it too difficult to digest the information and churn out an acceptable product in less than ten minutes. It was an assignment that I would have struggled with several months ago, but today the words seemed to flow through the fingers.

That development was another heartening event. Given the readership here (hint, there isn't any that I can discern), I sometimes find myself wondering if this effort is serving any purpose at all. Today, the benefit manifested itself in some unanticipated ways.

As is my custom, I'm looking forward to what the sea of tomorrow will bring in with the tide of dawn.

A City Set Upon a HIll

In The Sermon on the Mount, the parable of Salt and Light is related to the disciples and followers of Jesus. Today, as I made my morning walk, I remembered that this parable had become part of a long standing tradition in American political discourse.  The first reported use was by John Winthrop to the founding members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony while they were still on their ship bound for the new world. It has been used to describe the United States from that point forward by a number of politicians and leaders like Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.

Shining Beacon on a Hill

As I walked past the Capitol Building today, I was struck by the difference in discourse between the current murder of Presidential hopefuls and some of the more respected leaders of the past. Presidents Kennedy and Reagan portrayed powerful visions of the great gifts and responsibilities we share as American citizens. They each had a profoundly optimistic vision of this country and a vision to lead us all to realizing each of our own potentials. I think they were loved for this trait.

Today, I hear talk of returning to America to greatness and defeating the menacing threats that we face. Economic, social, and military calamity are shouted about like they are all but certain should we not choose the correct person to bring us all back from the abyss.

I reject these pessimistic and fear based notions of who we are and where we are going.  Walking this country, in California, Alabama, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Kentucky, Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, I have been struck almost speechless at the bounty and opportunity that are within grasp of all of us...even the most modest of means.

Anacostia Sunrise with USS Barry

I have walked shoulder to shoulder with business and political leaders, middle class engineers, housewives, and lawyers, and doctors, and the homeless. I've even had the occasion to speak to the self proclaimed "best bass guitar player" in the great state of Maryland.

We do not need some demagogue to restore us to greatness. The greatness we seek is all around us. It's manifested in the vast material wealth that is available for the enjoyment of almost anyone. It is manifested in the history of the generations that have come before us. It is manifested in the hope and optimism for a future expressed in the children of my friends and my own family. It is manifested in the majesty of the daily sunrise and sunsets, the Moon and Venus tracking across the blackness of the universe, the wind and the rain, the sun and the cold.

We are not a people on the downslope of history. We need only to acknowledge the greatness in ourselves and put our shoulders to the wheel of destiny to fulfill our purpose. We need no one to restore something that has never been lost.

I look forward to what tomorrow will bring, and I'm going to walk on...with the set face and sense of purpose of a man sent out to subdue Captain America. Time to turn off the television and discover our destiny. 

Yea though I walk through the valley...

Today at approximately 1440 (according to reports), Larry Russell Dawson was shot by a Capitol Police Officer in the Capitol Visitor Center after setting off a metal detector and removing what appeared to be a gun from his clothing. I saw none of this even though it happened along one of my frequent walking routes.

Before heading out on a glorious spring afternoon, I captured the DC skyline from the top of the parking garage that I frequent.

DC Skyline from the top of Building 28

Apart from the striking blue of the sky (the dark ages are finally over, I think) with a scattering of cumulous clouds, I noticed that more of the scaffolding put up in support of the Capitol Dome restoration project had been removed over the weekend. I headed out to try and capture some panoramas of the dome as the process of the unveiling progresses.

On my way up Capitol Hill, Rory Conlan informed me that there had been a shooting at the Capitol earlier in the morning and that a police officer had been injured by a self-proclaimed "prophet of god." Rory also suggested that the security situation might be tighter than I have become accustomed to experiencing. When I walked up East Capitol Street, the area had been secured by yellow tape emblazoned with "Police Line, Do Not Cross" and there were a number of Capitol Police Officers about in numbers that were slightly higher than normal. Other than that there were at least five television broadcast vans and ten camera and lighting setups with various reporters talking about what I presume to be the earlier incident.

The police tape did keep me far enough away from the Capitol that I couldn't get a very good angle to see the work on the dome since the sun was setting as a backdrop. This is the best that I could manage, and the tree in the foreground really takes away from what was really a pretty neat view.

Capitol Building with Scaffolding being Removed

I'll have to give it another "shot" (no pun intended) tomorrow. I would like to capture a semi-comprehensive set of photos documenting the transformation of the Capitol from restoration site to fully unmasked in the coming weeks.

I managed another safe commute to and from work today, and I'm grateful that the most dangerous activity that I participated in all day (the commute) came off without incident. We'll see what happens tomorrow. It's been an interesting several days already.

Easter 2016

No photos. I walked, but for the most part today was a day of rest.