Day 32

K had errands to run this morning and I left the apartment soon after her around 10:30. It had rained all morning and continued to drizzle so I expected the worst and didn't count on being out long. I walked down to the Capitol which is bustling with all the pompous and VERY important people involved in the Health care debate and upcoming votes. The grounds are alive with speeches and small crowds clapping for one point of view or another. At the foot of Capitol Hill, just before the National Botanical Gardens, a couple of confused Christian Evangelists were setting up their speaker's platform and props - a six foot high replica of the 10 Commandments. I asked them exactly how they thought they were honoring the 10 Commandments since one of the commandments is to make no "graven image" - like the one they were setting up. They didn't seem to understand and immediately started quoting irrelevant scripture at me. As I walked away they got on their microphone and kept increasing the volume yelling at me until the Capitol Police intervened and had them ratchet back a few notches.

I walked down to 14th St by the Washington Monument, spending a few minutes browsing at the Department of Agriculture's Friday Farmer's Market and then made my way back to the garden behind the Smithsonian Castle and found a new spot beside the Museum of African Art, surrounded by tropical plants and fountains.

Since I had finished most of the apocalyptic nonfiction I have been reading I decided on a departure and read a Joseph Conrad short story, "An Anarchist" (in honor of all the "self described anarchists" who were tear gassed, pepper sprayed, and arrested at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh yesterday for attempting to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of speech and assembly). A century on and some things just never change. I especially liked Conrad's criticism of the corporate advertising if his day - just like the corporate advertising of this day - exaggerated, unselfconscious, and designed for the gullible and uncritical.

After finishing the Conrad story I walked back up Independence Avenue to the National Garden I found yesterday and spent another hour reading in the far south east corner (pictured above right). I read a chapter of _Moby Dick_. I haven't mentioned that I started re-reading this book while still in Oregon and have been doing at most a chapter a day. Since most of the chapters are short - and there are MANY of them - it has taken a while and I still have a ways to go. I love this book but it needs to be done in small doses since each chapter is really a self-contained essay and most have nothing to do with plot.

We had guests at 6:00 for cocktails before the Theater. An old friend who is now the Assistant Undersecretary of the Navy and his partner came over and we killed a couple of bottles of wine before calling a cab to take us to the Harmon Center to see Helen Mirren in Racine's "Phaedra". As much as I love theater (and Helen Mirren), I have to say that this production sucked. The set was wonderful. That is the end of the positive statements. The lights were mediocre. The costumes were pedestrian and inconsistent. The blocking and general direction was terrible. I have seen High School productions with more soul. K and I have seen Helen Mirren on Broadway in Strindberg's "Dance of Death" and in the West End in London in Turgenev's "A Month in the Country" with John Hurt. Both of those were wonderful experiences in totally different ways. It's hard to believe she would allow herself to be associated with something this bad. And too bad for us, we had all looked forward to this night. It is seldom that DC has a theatrical experience that can count as truly unique. This show will not be playing elsewhere - of course, having seen it I think that 'elsewhere' is probably fortunate.