Semi-Charmed Life
September-October 2010
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10/26/10In Which I Discover What Goes Bump in the Night and Decide Against a Career in Pest ControlAh, the wonders of nature in all its forms. People will say the suburbs contain only a limited variety of wildlife. There are, for instance, rabbits, deer, raccoons and teenagers. Now and then, I see something a little less common. Like the red fox that faced me down when I was jogging last week. Or the red-shouldered hawk that stood on my fence, eating a mourning dove. Just this morning, I drove past the middle school a few minutes before class was to begin, and there were cars pulling over everywhere and kids streaming across the grounds, all familiar sights at that time of day. But as I waited for traffic to move, I noticed a different creature scurrying across the street and over the lawn toward the building. It was an opossum. I hope it wasn’t late for first... |
10/20/10In Which I Look at Bethesda the Way We See It Every Day: From Inside the CarI promise that sometime I will stop talking about cars and driving. But not yet. Recently I had a chance to see a photography exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York. Photographer Lee Friedlander, in his series America by Car, drove around the country for a year in a rental car, taking photos of the landscape as seen through the car window. The idea being that in the United States, this is often the primary way we experience a place. In Friedlander’s photos, you can always tell you’re in the car; you can usually see the side- or rear-view mirror, which reflects a different image than the photo’s main subject, and which also becomes part of the composition. I like the idea of taking pictures out the car window without hiding the fact. Even though it sounds... |
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10/15/10In Which I Am Nostalgic for a Long and Winding Road and a Faulty CarburetorIn the “olden days,” as my kids call any time before the Wii was invented, one did not need higher order computer skills to do basic car maintenance. Whereas in my current vehicle, just changing a tire involves a series of counterintuitive maneuvers similar to repairing the orbiting Space Shuttle. For one thing, in the olden days, when you lifted the hood of a car, you could see the actual parts that were involved in making a car run: Kids, this is what we really mean by ‘WYSIWYG.’ You could see where things were obviously connected to other things, where fluids were visibly too low, where the spark plugs were the wrong color, where the fan belt was cracked. Now, there is nothing under the hood that is discernible to a human being. There is instead, a... |
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10/07/10In Which I Discover Goji Berries and Launch a New CareerIt is good to have a store like Whole Foods nearby, because otherwise I might never have heard of the Goji berry. That is, unless I happened to visit the Himalayas, which is where they come from. I find it interesting that the same store that trumpets “Local peaches! From only 300 yards away! In fact you can go to a farm stand and buy them yourself without our mark-up, but instead we insist you buy them RIGHT HERE for so much more!” also stocks an item that must be carried down a mountain by yak, packed in the softest silk, and transported by boat, train, plane and truck, halfway around the world. And for what? What special faculties do we attribute to this magical ambrosia, this fruit of the gods, that make it worth the journey? Here, to satisfy your... |
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09/30/10In Which I Talk With a Resident of Northern Virginia to Find Out What She Could Possibly Be ThinkingIf you grow up in the Maryland suburbs, there is an unwritten rule: You do not go to Virginia. There are any number of legitimate reasons for this, whether you prefer to cite Civil War history, or merely the stark incompatibility of state mottos: Virginia is for lovers; Maryland, as we know, is for crabs. We like it that way. But, primarily, we do not go to Virginia because we don’t know how to get there. Or, perhaps more important, how to get back. By adulthood, we learn one thing about Virginia: How to get to the airport. In fact, your first drive to the airport is a rite of passage. (And possibly a different column. One that I will write as soon as I learn how to get there.) People from out of town do not understand the Virginia Moratorium. When “Newbies” move to... |
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09/22/10In Which My Bank Tries to Get IntimateNot long ago, I received a voicemail message from a representative of Bank of G. who claimed to be my “relationship banker.” At first I thought he wanted me to store my past relationships in a safe deposit box at his branch. But then he wrote me a letter, and it became clear that G. wanted more from me—much more. As a result, I was forced to write the kind of letter in response that one never wants to have to write. Here is my letter, in its entirety. Maybe it will be helpful to you, in case you ever need to do the same. Dear Bank of G., Thank you for your letter—a gallant gesture, and so much more personal than e-mail. You say that I’m special, and you want to know more about my needs. How can I not be flattered? But after I didn’t return your... Posted at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments: 2 |
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09/15/10In Which I Request PermissionRemember that game you played when you were a kid, called “Mother May I?”—in which the kid in charge tells you to do something, but you still have to remember to ask before you actually do it, because otherwise you’re penalized? Sort of like “Simon Says,” but with apron strings? This is a lot like that. Montgomery County is your mother, and it worries. Eleven years ago, we moved to Montgomery County from Washington, D.C., with our then-toddler, The Wanderer. The Wanderer required a fenced yard. This became the occasion for an important milestone in our new lives as County residents: We purchased our very first County permit. The yard in the new house was already fenced on three sides. We only wanted to finish enclosing the yard. Perhaps our past as... |
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09/07/10In Which Trees Fell, and Pepco Did Not Make a SoundOne day in late July, I stood in the doorway of my parents’ Silver Spring house and watched what I thought was a tornado. One hundred-foot trees were whipping around like licorice. Within a few minutes, the wind stopped, and the air was still. Once it was safe to drive, I went home to find that two trees at least 80 feet tall and 70 years old had fallen in our front yard, taking the power lines down with them. A lot of people ended up much worse off than we did. During Summer MegaStorm 2010, trees fell and power was knocked out to hundreds of thousands of homes, some for a few hours, some for up to four days. Traffic lights were out on major roads for up to three days. We have lost power many times over the years, often under mysterious circumstances having nothing to do... |
“Semi-Charmed Life is a blog about my personal impressions of life in the Maryland suburbs and the greater D.C. Metropolitan Area. How’s that for giving myself permission to write about anything? There we go: It’s a blog about anything. Please stay tuned.”
