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Capital Punishment

Monday morning began with me stumbling through the predawn darkness approaching the Super Shuttle. I made it to the Minneapolis airport on time. I marched toward the skyway only to watch my suitcase flop down the escalator once I thought it had been propped safely. As I went down to retrieve it, it turned out that eventually it had caught itself and followed me to the second floor. After this of course, I got to see the morning rush hour at the security checkpoint. It was the heaviest traffic I had seen, but it was over very quickly and I found myself hungry for food and with a Bank of America ATM nowhere in sight. As a result, I bought a few books and starting reading them. One was terrible “The Floating Brothel”. The other, David Brock’s memoir, was heady stuff.
Landing at National Airport was easy enough but I managed to get lost in Colonial Alexandria for my hotel. The weight of it was killer and I almost pulled out my back. Luckily, the Morrison House proved to be a very nice place. Maybe I should have pulled back and stayed with the Greaney’s in Rockville, but that was further away than Alexandria.
I had reassured myself that the House was a few blocks from the King Street Metro Station. I had forgotten of course the exact address so I spend nearly an hour and a half dragging my huge and heavy suitcase through the scenic wilds of colonial Alexandria. However, the staff at the House was very nice and friendly. I marched back to the station and proceeded to head north into Foggy Bottom. At first I was feeling quite lonely and sad because of the great time I had in Minneapolis. However, I made it to George Washington University and looked around. It was not what you would be expecting, but despite this it was worth it I thought to relocate.
When that concluded, I went to the student union at GWU to look around. Also, very nice. By the time I had finished exploring, it was time for “Crossfire!” For those of you who have never seen “Crossfire!” it’s CNN’s longest running debate show. The current cabal of pundits are liberals Paul Begala and James Carville and Tucker Carlson and Bob Novak for the conservatives. Novak and Carville are the “senior talent” and both hate each other so I was impressed to see them both stomaching each other for a whole hour. To top it off, the guest was James Inhofe [R] of Oklahoma. He spent a whole twenty minutes talking to us in the audience before the program started. I didn’t bother to tell him that he’s going to have a hell of a time explaining why Don Rumsfeld cancelled the Crusader missile program that was being manufactured in Oklahoma. Overall it was highly entertaining, and when I was done I was feeling a bit rueful. I had dinner at Kinkead’s a famous fish house about a block away and then hit the Metro back to Alexandria.
I ordered the room service breakfast (which is pretty reasonable) $5 for eggs, hash brown and toast. The service charge though makes it more expensive of course, but remember, I paid $7 for breakfast at a Dallas-Ft. Worth McDonalds. I fell asleep again and proceeded to head north into Maryland…to a place called Friendship Heights. I was supposed to meet Great Aunt Winnie and her daughter Margaret at the Cheesecake Factory. Sure enough, it all went according to plan. I arrived a little late, had a great meal with Winnie and Margaret and her youngest son Luke. Of course, I almost got called “Tony” a few times but Winnie brought me a photo album of my ancestors. She seemed to think I wasn’t interested but I was actually quite fascinated. This was the first chance I had seen many of the people who were my forbears. Winnie also mentioned that her son, Bill Jr., worked as a lawyer. Then when I told her a friend of mine went to Harvard Law, she said “yeah that is where Billy went”. Then it came out that Bill worked at Covington and Burling on Pennsylvania Avenue. A true opportunist would have thought “Man I could have been a legacy at Harvard”…but instead…I was just excited to get his number and call him next week.
The escalator was broken at the Metro Station so I had to descend by foot a two story staircase to the station. From there, I rode to Tenleytown to investigate American University. This had to have been the most disappointing part of my trip. It took a good twenty minutes to walk to the law school because only American students can ride the shuttle from the Metro station to the school. As a result I walked along Nebraska Avenue and then turned north on Massachusetts. Quite by accident I passed by the Japanese Embassy, but it was closed to the public. The Swedish embassy was open, but I felt as if I needed to get to American as soon as possible.
I went through the entire building of the WCL and I was more or less unimpressed. It was not that building didn’t seem like a good law school. Instead it appeared to be on par with what I would get in Loyola and not much else. On the surface I would not be unhappy with that. However, I interviewed the desk manager ( a current student) about living situations.
He seemed to indicate most people lived on their own and had help from their parents. Given the neighborhood that American is in, it seemed hard to think this was all going to work. It seemed people were paying too much for rent and living around campus was a death wish. For all that I saw, it seemed pointless to relocate for American. I had to walk back all the way to the Metro Station and took the ride into the Metro Center stop to visit the Old Post Office. Much to my surprise, the entire place had become nothing more than a food court. Ten years ago I had been ecstatic to play mini golf and shop and eat food. Now instead there was not much. I walked out ready to leave when I asked two black security guards manning the metal detector what I should do for the 5 to 6 hour before dinner. The one guard, Michael Newby, ended up being so interested (or bored) that we began to discuss things for an hour and a half. I was really happy to talk to him, largely because of the insight he gave me. The security job was a temporary position wherein he had left the Navy as an engineer to pursue a civilian job. Security jobs were plentiful in DC these days. His ultimate goal was to gain clearance at the Pentagon to do a position there. Michael was very worried about America, saying that Bush was a new Caesar and that the whole country was in danger. He was also really interested in my opinions on Iraq. I told him that there was not much of a reason for it, and that I never would vote for a war I didn’t want to participate in. Finally we exchanged emails…and I headed off to this Brazilian steak place on 7th Street near the MCI Center.

posted by Thomas at 9:34 PM 0 comments