*Bonus features are in bold italics*
As my first full year living in downtown DC is drawing to a close, it is time again to retrace the happenings since last December. I love living in the city; there is always something to do, and I am never bored. I made a new friend, Roumeen Islam, and enjoy spending as much time with her as I can. A highlight for us was the opera, Otello, at the Kennedy Center in later October. We have also taken Tango, Waltz, and Contra Dancing lessons. Work is work, but Sue Brunsell and Betsy Heathcote, friends for nearly 30 years, make it more fun. In addition to our sock fashion, we have had steady games of Scrabble on a magnetic board in an office there (I have only won once. They will deny it, but they cheat and put up specious words).
Travel: I got off to a fun start with my first trip to the Bahamas in January. I took my niece, Madelaine, and her friend, Julie, and we had a great time at the Atlantis resort. I loved the water slides, which was the reason I chose that place, and we had a number of good adventures (A highlight was snorkeling in their aquarium with a huge manta ray). In April, I did a long weekend in New York City, staying with Greg and Michael, loving it. In May, I went for a week to Toronto and Montreal solo. I liked Montreal better, but they were both fun and interesting, and I did some great runs. In July, I did the usual family week at Keuka Lake. The best trip was an epic 6 days of hiking the Kerry Way in Ireland in early September. I ran 5 miles every day, rain or shine, and hiked about 80 miles. The weather wasn’t too bad, except when I was hiking in the clouds, and it is such a beautiful area. I followed that up with a super fun 5 days in Bermuda with the Wakelys in mid October at their fantastic new waterside house. I did a staycation here in June nursing a sore hamstring, and attended three medical meetings in the area as well.
Health and Fitness: I recovered well from my December 7, 2018 right knee surgery and began running again in late January. It came back fast and I managed to finish 4th in my age group in the Parkway Classic Ten Miler in late April (out of 104, placing in the 140s overall out of 4300) in a decent time. I was disappointed to have a recurrence of hamstring troubles that bugged me in 2017 in June, and I have been unable to race since then, but I am in better shape now than in the past 4 years, partly due to quitting the expensive and annoying Equinox gym and joining the convenient and less crowded World Bank gym in July. Otherwise I am feeling great and still have endless energy. (I have been concentrating a lot on good posture, and once I get it right, an ongoing challenge, it is like I am a new person. I can’t emphasize it enough).
MUSIC : This was a great year. I was able to see quite a few live shows and I bought a lot of music. My favorite was Catfish and the Bottlemen – The Balance, and I got to see them at the Anthem here with my sister, Candace. They are great live (their fans, however…). Big Head Todd and the Monsters coaxed me to make my return to the 9:30 Club and I loved them so much I bought 4 albums when I got back: All the Love You Need, Live at Red Rocks 2015, Black Beehive, & Live Monsters. Their opening act was memorably good, Blue Water Highway. I got Heartbreak City and Things We Carry by them. I got Flight of the Conchords reunion show, Live in London, and I have not gotten tired of their repartee and the funny songs (The Summer of 1353 may be the cleverest song ever written). An inspired performance on The Late Show convinced me to get Tegan and Sara – Hey, I’m Just Like You, and I loved it, buying 3 other albums and an EP: Get Along (live), Sainthood, and If It Was You. My friend, Van Wagner, released 2 albums, Shortleaf Pine and the often electrified change of pace (it is really good) Wales, with his nephew on drums. Other good releases: Bob Mould – Sunshine Music; Idlewild – Interview Music and A Distant History: Rarities 1997-2007; The Joy Formidable – A Balloon Called Moaning. These were lesser efforts: Son Volt: Union (I saw them live as well at the 9:30, and they were good); Todd Snider – Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3 (not sorry there aren’t volumes 1, 2 and 4), Pixies – Beneath the Eyrie; and the downbeat solo album by a man I thought was a musical genius, Jon Fratelli – Bright Night Flowers. I also saw the Lemonheads at the 9:30 and Grant Lee Phillips at Jammin’ Java in Vienna (he is an American treasure, one of the most talented humans drawing breath). I also attended a Mozart concert and two operas (Faustus and Otello) at the nearby Kennedy Center.
BOOKS: I didn’t get to read anything at work, and I started running again most days, so I was no longer reading on the stationary bike. I didn’t get as much accomplished, but still a good variety. I continue reading most of the New Yorker weekly and the Atlantic.
1. Sally Rooney – Normal People – hard to say why, but brilliant. Her plotting and the flow of events are superb.
2. Mir Tamim Ansary – Games without Rules – an amusingly written history of Afghanistan and why it is impossible to rule by outsiders. Recommended by Roumeen - very good choice.
3. Rutger Bregman – Utopia for Realists – mind blowing. The world would be so much better if we only tried some of the ideas contained in here. We shouldn’t let the heartless ambitions of the greedy and power hungry ruin it for the vast majority of humans.
4. Andrew McCabe – The Threat – well written account of current events
5. Matthew Stewart – The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting it Wrong – Recounts how management training gets almost everything wrong and ignores the only reliable ways to get people to do more: pay them better and treat them better.
6. Jill LePore – These Truths – brilliant American history that shows how discrimination (racial and gender based) has penetrated every aspect of American society to its detriment since the first European settlements.
7. Michelle Obama – Becoming – moving and entertaining (especially once Barack appears) account of a remarkable person’s life.
8. Eric Idle – Always Look on the Bright Side of Life – the funniest and most name-dropping Monty Python memoir.
9. Sally Rooney – Conversations with Friends – again, brilliant.
Quotes:
Me: “Being alone is a lot more tolerable when you have other options.”
The New Yorker: “Other affect theorists noted that, amid a sense of dawning futility, many people seem to derive their greatest pleasure from making others feel bad; disaffection and disillusionment are contagions we can spread ourselves.”
Adam Gopnik: “The gingerly treatment of the secessionists gave the impression – more, it created the reality – that treason in the defense of slavery was a forgivable, even “honorable,” difference of opinion. Despite various halfhearted and soon rescinded congressional measures to prevent ex-Confederate leaders from returning to power, many of them didn’t just skip out but skipped right back into Congress.”
Matthew Stewart: “(Management) Strategy is therefore all about figuring out how to secure profits without having to make a better product, work harder, or be smarter.”
Me: “Einstein posited that time could indeed be relative. I have found that to be proven again and again in D.C. Time never moves slower than when you are waiting for a Metro train and watching the clock telling you when it should arrive. It moves very fast between the time I rinse out my cereal bowl and when I lock the door to my apartment to leave for work.”
In an article about Maxim Osipov, a Russian Cardiologist and author: “The disposition of the people he treated reminded him of the way Anton Chekhov, who had worked as a village doctor, described the human condition, as ‘a dislike of life strangely combined with a fear of death.’”
Rutger Bregman: “In fact, a British think tank estimated that for every pound earned by advertising executives, they destroy an equivalent of 7 pounds in the form of stress, overconsumption, pollution, and debt; conversely, each pound paid to a trash collector creates an equivalent of 12 pounds in terms of health and sustainability.”
And: “Billions of people are forced to sell their labor at a fraction of the price that they would get for it in the Land of Plenty (the developed world), all because of borders. Borders are the single biggest cause of discrimination in all of world history.”
And: “’A man with conviction is a hard man to change.’ So opens Leon Festinger’s account of these events in ‘When Prophecy Fails,’ first published in 1956 and a seminal text in social psychology to this day. “Tell him you disagree and he turns away,’ Festinger continues. “Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.’ …Cognitive dissonance, he termed it. When reality clashes with our deepest convictions, we’d rather recalibrate reality than amend our worldview.”
And, especially: “Meritocracy? Bring it on. Let’s finally pay people according to their real contributions. Waste collectors, nurses, and teachers would get a substantial raise, obviously, while quite a few lobbyists, lawyers and bankers would see their salaries dive into the negatives. If you want to do a job that hurts the public, go right ahead. But you’ll have to pay for the privilege with a heftier tax.” ED. This should go right along with things like riding a noisy motorcycle or owning polluting livestock.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (Polish poet): “When you arrive at the very bottom, you will hear knocking from below.”
And, finally, me again: “Food and wine don’t make people more interesting, but they can make them less interesting.”
I was inspired by Haikus posted in this area to try to write a few for this, but then I decided against it. I also vetoed the usual assortment of comedy lists, neologisms (English needs way more words!!), and observations. I will include these, though:
My time in the city running around in the early hours has revealed how a prosperous, wealthy city like this works: hundreds of people of color up early doing various sorts of dirty work in and around buildings and areas too expensive for them to live near. I am also often moved to gratitude for my own health and abilities at age 55 when I see so many overcoming challenges of health, injury, deformity, poverty and discrimination to go out and live their lives, asking no favors and only desiring a fair chance to show what they can do.
If you come to this city (and perhaps any other major city), I think the first thing you may notice is the abundance of scooters, which I cannot think of without profanity coming into my brain. The bleeping scooters, all the honking horns and the sirens from all the emergency vehicles and motorcades are the biggest negatives to city life.
I am not sure what the future holds for me here. I will probably move from this apartment to something a bit cheaper with less college students living in it if I stick with this job. My life otherwise is pretty great. I am very blessed and fortunate.
I hope all of you had a great year and that you have an even better one next year. Please keep in touch and I love visitors and showing people around.
2221 I (Eye) St. NW, Apartment 728
Washington, DC 20037
570-238-2084
instagram: drterryo64 (I only have 52 followers despite the high quality of my posts, so throw me a bone and follow me if you are not one of them and are on Instagram)
Facebook: T.L. O’Rourke (I don’t post much or look at it much anymore)
All my best to you in 2020!
Terry O’Rourke