London

The two full days I spent in London were a whirlwind of activity.  The first day I toured the Churchill Wartime Bunkers beneath Britain's Treasury Department, rode in one of the fabled Black Taxis in London, ate lunch at a teeming outdoor market, visited historic Trafalgar Square, took High Tea at the Portrait Gallery and went to see the production of Company starring Patti LuPone at the West End that evening.

Things didn't slow down the second day.  I took a long walk along the Thames to go see all the statues around Parliament Square, visited the Supreme Court building and passed by Big Ben, had lunch at the Temple Gardens Hall, toured the replica Globe Theater, saw an all-female-of-color production of Richard the Secondhand walked by St. Paul's Cathedral when it was all lit up.

This was an exhausting pace but well worthwhile for the limited time we were in London.  There is so much history there, I saw pockmarks from a bomb dropped by a German zeppelin in World War I, a statue commemorating heroic first-responders during the London Blitz, the aforementioned Globe Theatre recreation, Parliament, the Thames and more.

The next morning we got up early to take a 6:30 a.m. chunnel train the Paris, and oddly, we had to show our passport to leave London.  Whenever the Uber driver made a turn or crossed over a street I always felt panic because at first glance it seemed he was driving down the opposing lane with oncoming traffic due to the insane way that British drivers drive from the wrong side of the car.

Government Shutdown

I'm out of work for the first time since I was 14, excepting for those times when I was in school, thanks to Ted Crud and his ilk in the Party of No (PON) as they try to bring down the country.  I'm disgusted to say that that guy worked at my agency at one time.

I'm embarrassed to be a federal worker (I'm "nonessential") and disappointed to be an American.  After all, who was it who sent these clowns to Congress, where they seem to be fixated on keeping access to affordable health care from the sick, the poor and the unemployed?  I guess it was you and I (although, truth be told, it's been a really long time since I last voted for anyone in the PON).

I'm disheartened by the reactions of people I know elsewhere.  When I called up a relative out west and glumly said I'm out of work and told this pious person that I was going to church on Sunday to pray for forgiveness for the PON members responsible (they want to extra-judicially overturn the last two presidential elections and the notorious Supremes decision), this relative disputed the responsibility I iterated in knee-jerk fashion by saying it's the president's fault.  That's empathy for ya, a quick dismissal of anything I might know or think I know from being one of the ones most intimately affected by the PON's irresponsible reckless actions or from living in DC where these, ahem, people reside most of the time.

Now they have their eyes set on the debt ceiling fight in two weeks, drooling over the prospect of roiling the global economy.  They're like an awakening little sleeper cell, quiescent since 2008-2009, determined to finish the stymied job of world ruination.

Party On

What a busy weekend for DC. Yesterday the running of the fifth National Marathon took over many city streets, the Tea Party was out in force around the Capitol in trying to intimidate wavering Democrats on the historic health care vote later today and the seventh anniversary of the Iraq invasion prompted an antiwar protest near the White House.

Saturday morning from my course marshal post on the race course at the bottom of Capitol Hill, I saw many friends go by. I also watched Tea Party members stream across the race route all morning enroute to the Capitol. When I gazed intently at their signs to try to read their scrawled messages (sample: Obama: B.O, B.S, Kill the Bill) I encountered hard stares back as if I was offering an affront by attempting to read their hand-lettered signs with my 57-year old eyes.

Local runner Michael Wardian won his fourth National Marathon (he was runner-up last year) in 21:58, and it was a thrill to see him go by my post at MP 16.5 almost five minutes ahead of the eventual runner-up (the man who beat him last year). Then as I threaded Tea Partiers through the marathoners on the race course so the partiers, exulting in their First Amendment rights, could exercise their views at the Capitol, a running club and coaching friend of mine ran by whom I hadn't seen since I resigned my position as DCRRC's president five months ago. Perhaps slightly befuddled by being on his seventeenth mile, he paused in his marathon and clasped me in a bear hug (I had offered him a high five), exclaiming, "Good to see you! Don't be a stranger!"

As his perspiration seeped through my dry clothes, I said, "Yeah, well times and things change." He ran off looking a little wounded (my bad) while I envied my friend being in the midst of running a marathon. I was worried that my Posterior Tibial Tendinitis (my aching ankle) would prevent me from ever running long again.

And meanwhile, Tea Partiers were hurling the N-word at an African-American Democrat Representative and the F-word at an openly-gay Democrat Representative who apparently are going to vote yes on today's historic health-care bill. Ugly ugly!