D.C.

(Mary Cassatt)

D.C. is gorgeous now.  Today is the Cherry Blossom Parade, though the trees bloomed early and there are no blossoms to be seen.  But the sky is clear blue and the daytime temperatures run up into the seventies.  I'm staying at a very good hotel, The Madison, just blocks from the White House.  The day I arrived, there was a reopening of the Howard Theater where all the legends of jazz were featured.  That night, the lobby was crawling with music dignitaries.  Dione Warwick kept me up all night knocking on my door.  I finally had to call hotel security to get her to stop it.  Smokey Robinson lived up to his name and was of no help to me at all.  I kept yelling through the closed door that they were too old to stay up so late, but they have doctors who keep them pumped with strange chemicals from South America so that they never really sleep.

I'm kidding a little.  But there are pockets of truth to the story.

Last night I ate with a group at a restaurant that features beers instead of wine.  They had a beer sommelier, so the sassy woman of the group called for him.  He was also a part owner, he said, and so he had given himself the title.  We sampled many beers from the list but barely made a dent.  There really is something to it all, though.  They chose the right beer to go with my duck if you can imagine such a thing.

I spent the first day at the National Gallery of Art.  I worked all day yesterday. . . if you can call it that.  I was hosted by a book company at the National Geographic headquarters and met many of their top editors and explorers.  The real treat was going into their photo archives which stores well over a million images.  The biggest thrill was viewing some of the original autochromes that their photographers had made.  I argued with the archivist about the process being unknown today.  He said that there some people who had figured it out, and I challenged him to name one.  He wouldn't or couldn't, I don't know, but I'd give anything to be able to make them.  John Minnicks, the fellow who made The Liberator, said he is going to learn to produce them, but they are going to be some bastard version of the original.  Anyway, my knees were weak as I put the loop to them on the light table.

The function is now over and the group is gone, and suddenly it is strange to be alone.  It is always like that after the party, I think, a sense of isolation and fragility.  But this is a good and friendly town and there is much to do, and I need to shower and hit the street.

I am relying on images from the National Gallery's archives as I forgot to bring the cable that would allow me to download the images from my camera.  That will have to wait.

(Paul Cezanne)