1. Rudi and I head out on our bikes along the C&O Canal towpath, hoping to see ducklings. We see some, as well as three families of goslings in various states of growth.

2. Saturday was E.U. Day, so many of the union’s members held open houses at their embassies to celebrate. We stopped by Austria for drinks, by Slovakia for food and folk dancing, and by Hungary to see a dog.

3. Rudi obligingly had a round birthday today, so I decided to mark it by throwing him a surprise party. Friends from all aspects of our D.C. lives came together in uncommunicativeness so that when he walked into the room, he really was surprised.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

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babies, embassies, and surprise

1. Howard County was filled with fields like this:

2. A dapper, bearded older man rounds the corner. He’s dressed in a three-piece pin-stripe suit, with a tall bowler hat on his head and a walking stick topped with a silver lion in his hand.

3. A half-dozen men in their 20s are outside the fence playing a spirited game of cricket, with a deflated orange traffic cone as one of the wickets. I don’t understand the game, but they declare me an honorary player when I track down and retrieve for them the ball they inadvertently hit into the garden. (If I hadn’t been pressed for time, I would have stayed to watch for a longer while.)

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

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buttered fields, gent, and the pitch

1. There’s a single cupcake left at the software training.

2. The first strawberries of the season at today’s farmers market.

3. A nice weekend visiting my family includes pool, vegetarian dinners, and lunch and milkshakes with Karen.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

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just in time, two pints, and connecticut

Thanks, as always, to Clare, who inspired the original post and whose daily meditations continue to be enjoyed so many years later.

Here are three from the past week:

1. John and Nicole pull off a near-perfect wedding with touches that reflect the two of them as individuals and as a couple. There are Chinese containers containing noodly appetizers, lemonade, and local beer; vases of yellow flowers and tea lights bedeck the tables; vegan and meaty food share the menu; and the favors are heart-shaped tea strainers. Nicole’s younger sister became ordained so she could officiate the ceremony, and her words of and for the couple are filled with love and mirth. Nicole trips over her lines, and John can’t take his eyes off her. Toasts are offered. Dancing (and drinking) lasts until late into the night, when the wedding party (and a few of us random stragglers) parade out of the mansion and up the street trailing decorations, cake, and chuppah.

2. Five days later and I’m still finding sparkles on me, making them even more pervasive than beach sand. Glitter may have become part of my DNA. (That would be an awesome genetic modification, by the way.)

3. Giddy glee pours through me until it feels necessary to twirl like an ice skater or Wonder Woman to share some of it with the world. So I put my bag down, make sure no one is close enough for me to run into them, and, spreading my arms wide, gyre until I’m so dizzy I can’t see and laugh until I’m out of breath.

Now, how about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

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brings us together, glitter, and twirling

This is from my work computer:

1. “Don’t Stop” — Patrick & Eugene
2. “I Heard Someone Crying” — cast from the Broadway show The Secret Garden
3. “Turkledove” — Peter, Bethany, & Rufus
4. “The Boxer” — Simon & Garfunkel
5. “Without One” — Chuck E. Costa
6. “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (in Perfect Harmony)” — The New Seekers
7. “Shule Aru” — Peter, Bethany, & Rufus
8. “It’s the End of the World (And I Feel Fine)” — REM
9. “Come to My Garden/Lift Me Up” — cast from the Broadway show The Secret Garden
10. “Marilyn Monroe” — Dala

(Apparently my computer was in the mood for kids’ folk songs and show tunes.)

Feel free to share your track list in the comments.

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random ten

First, and foremost, let me urge anyone in D.C. who’s registered to vote here to do so. Even if you don’t care who wins the council seat, there is a referendum question on the ballot that is an important one to address. It concerns the District’s ability to decide how to use the money, such as tax revenue, that it raises.

Currently, we are at Congress’ whims for all our budgetary concerns. Regardless of how you might feel about the Founding Fathers’ opinions about D.C. governance and our representation (or lack thereof) in Congress, it seems only fair that we should have some autonomy in setting our own budget priorities. You know how everyone’s talking about how sequestration will affect various government bodies? D.C.’s one of them. When the government threatens to shut down all non-essential federal agencies? That includes D.C.’s libraries, because Congress gets final sign-off on our entire budget. An argument could be made that it is fair that the national government should oversee the District’s use of federal funds. However, it is harder to see how it’s fair that they dictate how we spend the percentage of our budget (roughly 70%, by the way) that comes into our coffers via our own sources of funding, such as local taxes. Voting yes tomorrow on the referendum will indicate that residents of D.C. would like and expect to receive that same privilege that other local governments take for granted.

Harder for me to offer insight into is the at-large council race seat that’s being contested. This is the seat that opened up when Phil Mendelson won election to council chair, which in turn was vacated by Kwame Brown in a corruption scandal. So at its heart, this election should be about ethics. And, at least on the surface, it is. All the current contenders bandy the term about. If we eliminate the candidate who’s already dropped out (but who still remains on the ballot and, thus, will take at least a certain percentage of the vote), we’re still left with six candidates, four of whom are running in the District’s de facto single party.

Among the Democrats, we have Paul Zukerberg, whose main issue is that the legalization of marijuana will help to erase (or at least ease) many of the city’s ills. He’s the least likely to win.

Anita Bonds has spent years in the breastpocket of those who were running the city. She’s accepted a lot of corporate donations and does not seem to have a lot of press out there about about actual policy intentions. And her leadership of the District’s Democratic State Committee suggests incompetence at best and corruption at worst, with donations at odds with bylaws and an ongoing refusal to hold mandated elections. Sadly, she was the frontrunner in the one poll that was held prior to this election, currently is holding the seat in question in a temporary capacity, and has the most name recognition of the six candidates still in the race.

Matt Frumin, whose big issue is education, comes from the well-heeled ward of the city and has big donations from a lot of influencers. However, those people are also his neighbors, and I’m disinclined to shout down someone for taking donations from other District residents, regardless of how they earn their money. I’m less excited about his out-of-state donations, but he’s got a past in Michigan, and his progressive stances should count for more than where his funders live. He’s also a stretch, but not an impossible one and would probably do a perfectly fine job if elected.

Elissa Silverman is the progressive’s progressive candidate. She’s a former newspaper columnist and current policy wonk specializing in budget issues. She’s promised transparency if elected, but allegations have recently arisen that she asked Frumin to withdraw in order to avoid siphoning votes away from her. It’s understandable to do that, and it’s a common practice, but it’s irksome in a candidate who should be bigger than that, and it makes one wonder what else she’s willing to do.

Pat Mara is a Republican, which in any other place in the U.S., would probably have some standing. Here, it’s something he has to overcome. And, frankly, he’s a liberal Republican, who supports voting rights and marriage equality and mass transit and other left-leaning issues. However, he also supports lowering taxes for rich people (who already enjoy a low tax rate) and follows party lines on fiscal issues.

Perry Redd is the Green Party candidate, which in most other places would make him a joke, but here merely consigns him to an also-ran status. Like Bonds, he’s an African American in a city where, for the time being, that still matters (although it’s rapidly a disappearing advantage). However, like Silverman, he’s smart and knows his policy, particularly on issues relating to class and to ex-felon rights. Also like Silverman, Redd refused to accept corporate contributions to fund his campaign.

With mere hours until the polls open and less than a day until they we know the end results, I’m still torn between several relatively progressive candidates, none of whom is a perfect match to me and all I want out of an elected official. I am not wed to my party, and I believe that you should vote your conscience. However, if no candidate perfectly meshes with your beliefs, do you leverage your vote to try to prevent a certain candidate from winning? Do you vote for a candidate you know won’t ever win in order to encourage a future run and additional attention? Do you reward good behavior on issues that matter most to you even if a candidate is significantly at odds with you on issues that personally matter less (but that still do matter)?

When you’re voting, how do you pick your candidates when choosing among several who will probably reflect your opinions half the time and not shame you tremendously the other half?

What criteria are most important to you when you enter the voting booth?

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elections — again

1. The soil in the part of the garden that Rudi’s been working on looks like he ran it through a sieve. No fibrous roots or lumps, like I’ve left in my part of the garden.

2. Tulips on my way to work in candy colors.

3. I take a solo spin up to our local indie bookstore for their monthly trivia night and join the team of two strangers from Northern Virginia. We come in fifth (or so), and although I am mildly ashamed that I couldn’t name Herman Melville as the author of Moby Dick (I blanked!), I did correctly identify the cover of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the author of The Fight Club, Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” the reason for the nickname “The Bean Belt,” and the commonality between a parliament, an exultation, and a murder.

How about you? What beautiful things caught your attention this week?

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fine, pastels, and trivial excursion

I wish you poems and prayers and promises tonight and forever on.

Namaste. The light within me salutes the light within you.

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music on monday: what i wish for us all

It started out as this:

I still have to tackle the potato bed and plant peas and do some management of the strawberry section, but now our plot looks like this:

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april garden news

1. A hibiscus-mint iced tea after biking without a water bottle on a 90-degree day.

2. New flip flops for the first day of sandal weather and a new cherry red dress for the first Nats game.

3. Scrubbing the dirt from my fingernails and hands after hours of working at the garden.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

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quenched, raiment, and nail brush