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“A short distance away is the Tidal Basin, ringed by cherry trees that every year produce flowers, an event to which Washingtonians react as though it were the Second Coming of Christ.”
― Dave Barry, Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway

“The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, is a city consecrated to the worship of a father-son dynasty. (I came to think of them, with their nuclear-family implications, as 'Fat Man and Little Boy.') And a river runs through it. And on this river, the Taedong River, is moored the only American naval vessel in captivity. It was in January 1968 that the U.S.S. Pueblo strayed into North Korean waters, and was boarded and captured. One sailor was killed; the rest were held for nearly a year before being released. I looked over the spy ship, its radio antennae and surveillance equipment still intact, and found photographs of the captain and crew with their hands on their heads in gestures of abject surrender. Copies of their groveling 'confessions,' written in tremulous script, were also on show. So was a humiliating document from the United States government, admitting wrongdoing in the penetration of North Korean waters and petitioning the 'D.P.R.K.' (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) for 'lenience.' Kim Il Sung ('Fat Man') was eventually lenient about the men, but not about the ship. Madeleine Albright didn't ask to see the vessel on her visit last October, during which she described the gruesome, depopulated vistas of Pyongyang as 'beautiful.' As I got back onto the wharf, I noticed a refreshment cart, staffed by two women under a frayed umbrella. It didn't look like much—one of its three wheels was missing and a piece of brick was propping it up—but it was the only such cart I'd see. What toothsome local snacks might the ladies be offering? The choices turned out to be slices of dry bread and cups of warm water.

Nor did Madeleine Albright visit the absurdly misnamed 'Demilitarized Zone,' one of the most heavily militarized strips of land on earth. Across the waist of the Korean peninsula lies a wasteland, roughly following the 38th parallel, and packed with a titanic concentration of potential violence. It is four kilometers wide (I have now looked apprehensively at it from both sides) and very near to the capital cities of both North and South. On the day I spent on the northern side, I met a group of aging Chinese veterans, all from Szechuan, touring the old battlefields and reliving a war they helped North Korea nearly win (China sacrificed perhaps a million soldiers in that campaign, including Mao Anying, son of Mao himself). Across the frontier are 37,000 United States soldiers. Their arsenal, which has included undeclared nuclear weapons, is the reason given by Washington for its refusal to sign the land-mines treaty. In August 1976, U.S. officers entered the neutral zone to trim a tree that was obscuring the view of an observation post. A posse of North Koreans came after them, and one, seizing the ax with which the trimming was to be done, hacked two U.S. servicemen to death with it. I visited the ax also; it's proudly displayed in a glass case on the North Korean side.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“Watching the towers fall in New York, with civilians incinerated on the planes and in the buildings, I felt something that I couldn’t analyze at first and didn't fully grasp (partly because I was far from my family in Washington, who had a very grueling day) until the day itself was nearly over. I am only slightly embarrassed to tell you that this was a feeling of exhilaration. Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“Virginians don’t belong in Maryland for the same reason Marylanders don’t belong in Virginia. When we meet, it should be in DC where everyone is the same kind of nasty: feds.”
― Ian Kirkpatrick, Bleed More, Bodymore

“Bad as political fiction can be, there is always a politician prepared to make it look artistic by comparison.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“*Poem: Washington D.C. (The District)*

I love it
In this square
of columns and obelisks��
and monuments designed
to align
with constellations:
To symbolize our protection.
Serius. Virgo. Sun.

Washington,
Here where Virginia and Maryland meet, and greet.

Streets and corner-stones laid
In the glorious shapes
of Pentagrams and Christian crosses
And cubes and pyramids,
And the Blazing Star set on a ley line,
And the temple in the eye.

Homes, made
of red-brick, and granite
Stones.

Laus Deo!

Answers
May be somewhere
Off the shores
Of the Potomac;
Where my father
Once baptized me,

And the waters
Of the district
Touched my skin.

And the consciousness of America
Was rebirthed in me.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr., The Pursuit of Happiness: A Book of Poems Honoring Our American Values

“I know where a lot of them [the elite or elitists] live.

Where's that?

Well, in our nation's capital and New York City. I've seen it. I've lived there.”
― John McCain

“Margo Brinker always thought summer would never end. It always felt like an annual celebration that thankfully stayed alive long day after long day, and warm night after warm night. And DC was the best place for it. Every year, spring would vanish with an explosion of cherry blossoms that let forth the confetti of silky little pink petals, giving way to the joys of summer.
Farmer's markets popped up on every roadside. Vendors sold fresh, shining fruits, vegetables and herbs, wine from family vineyards, and handed over warm loaves of bread. Anyone with enough money and enough to do on a Sunday morning would peruse the tents, trying slices of crisp peaches and bites of juicy smoked sausage, and fill their fisherman net bags with weekly wares.
Of all the summer months, Margo liked June the best. The sun-drunk beginning, when the days were long, long, long with the promise that summer would last forever. Sleeping late, waking only to catch the best tanning hours. It was the time when the last school year felt like a lifetime ago, and there were ages to go until the next one. Weekend cookouts smelled like the backyard- basil, tomatoes on the vine, and freshly cut grass. That familiar backyard scent was then smoked by the rich addition of burgers, hot dogs, and buttered buns sizzling over charcoal.”
― Beth Harbison, The Cookbook Club: A Novel of Food and Friendship

“Washington is a city of spectacles. Every four years, imposing Presidential inaugurations attract the great and the mighty. Kings, prime ministers, heroes and celebrities of every description have been feted there for more than 150 years. But in its entire glittering history, Washington had never seen a spectacle of the size and grandeur that assembled there on August 28, 1963. Among the nearly 250,000 people who journeyed that day to the capital, there were many dignitaries and many celebrities, but the stirring emotion came from the mass of ordinary people who stood in majestic dignity as witnesses to their single-minded determination to achieve democracy in their time.

They came from almost every state in the union; they came in every form of transportation; they gave up from one to three days' pay plus the cost of transportation, which for many was a heavy financial sacrifice. They were good-humored and relaxed, yet disciplined and thoughtful. They applauded their leaders generously, but the leaders, in their own hearts, applauded their audience. Many a Negro speaker that day had his respect for his own people deepened as he felt the strength of their dedication. The enormous multitude was the living, beating heart of an infinitely noble movement. It was an army without guns, but not without strength. It was an army into which no one had to be drafted. It was white and Negro, and of all ages. It had adherents of every faith, members of every class, every profession, every political party, united by a single ideal. It was a fighting army, but no one could mistake that its most powerful weapon was love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

“...the longest I'm in Washington the more I realize that most people in this town tend to act with the calm forethought of a beheaded chicken.”
― Herman Wouk, Inside, Outside: A Novel

“English lecturers... who treat the Americans as a race of barbarians without any history should be taken for a tour round Washington before they are permitted to speak!”
― Vera Brittain, Selected Letters of Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain, 1920-1935

“If I don’t sound like a typical Washington politician, it’s because I’m NOT a politician. If I don’t always play by the rules of the Washington Establishment, it’s because I was elected to fight for YOU, harder than anyone ever has before.”
― Donald J. Trump

“To-do list:
1. Science �� stop people from getting sick and dying.
2. Keep people economically solvent �� as you request their help in fighting the pandemic.

Some states do better at one. Others, at the other. None strike the right balance. Everything collapses. Utter failure.

One party is full of bad ideas that their rivals merely rubber-stamp. Like a reverse Robin Hood, they scapegoat the powerless, while simultaneously handing out checks to the richest stakeholders. The other party has few ideas, except for a few bad ones of their own that they throw into the mix. Businesses, flush with cash, appear almost embarrassed to take public money. But they soon get over their initial shame.”
― Gary J. Floyd, Eyes Open With Your Mask On

“It was night time, Inspector Thompson wrote. Those in the plane were transfixed with delight to look down from the windows and see the amazing spectacle of a whole city lighted up. Washington represented something immensely precious. Freedom, hope, strength. We had not seen an illuminated city for two years. My heart filled.”
― Erik Larson, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

“In a city that attracted protesters, organizers, and activists of every variety, debating issues across the political spectrum and with a huge population of black people, the messages in his lyrics were received with enthusiasm. “This was Chocolate City. People in DC were pretty sophisticated and they liked his political wit, and I think he liked speaking truth to power in the heart of the government.”
― Marcus Baram, Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man

“Wells supposed the United States had been lucky to have D.C. If the capital had stayed in the North, the South might have seceded a decade earlier, before the Union Army could bring it to heel. And if the South had broken away, at least three countries would have formed in the area now occupied by the United States - a North, a South, and a West. Then the United States wouldn't have been the dominant world power in the twentieth century. Perhaps World War I or even World War II would have ended differently. On and on the counterfactual history ran.”
― Alex Berenson, The Midnight House

“Like the mouse creeping out of the scarlet crack,
the sunset gnaws hungrily the electric
cheese of the outskirts, erected
by those who clearly trust their knack

for surviving everything: by termites.
Warehouses, surgeries. Having measured
there the proximity of the desert,
the cinnamon-tinted earth waylays its

horizontality in the fake
pyramids, porticoes, rooftops' ripple,

as the train creeps knowingly, like a snake,
to the capital's only nipple.”
― Joseph Brodsky, To Urania: Poems

“Later, Tara and other leaders, roughly the same age, lead marches through the streets. Like lambs to the slaughter, we follow. We target the banks. They’re put on notice that their day is over. It’s street theater and people who work there watch the show from windows, high above. Next, the girls lead us to the Chamber of Commerce where plainclothes ex-military protect the movers and shakers from a scattering of college girls and a collection of workers who need better jobs. They watch us through mirrored sunglasses and communicate via hidden microphones and listening devices. It’s a routine that everyone, except us, knows.”
― Gary J. Floyd, Liberté: The Days of Rage 1990-2020

“Friday night, under the dim atrium lights, we sit on wrought iron chairs, drinking beer in the cool antiseptic air. Near the fake flagstones snaking through the fake trees, ferns, and the bubbling, chlorine-infused, somnolent brook. Anytown USA. A fake park superimposed on the Washington swamp. Outside, oversized windows overlook the city, streaked with: rain, humidity, and tears.”
― Gary J. Floyd

“[...] there I was, trying to hold up my end in a city where you can't even buy a decent bagel. I don't mean to make it sound as if it's all about being Jewish, but that's another thing about Washington. It makes you feel really Jewish if that's what you are.”
― Nora Ephron, Heartburn

“Saturday: the bill is debated. That morning, the union fills the viewing
area. Some people get in. I don’t. I stand outside holding a placard someone else
wrote. Some people in suits, who work for the people who run this town, are
disdainful. We take their seats in the public viewing area. They think, “Why
don’t you go home?”
― Gary Floyd, Liberté: Days of Rage: 1990-2020

“I have never really liked this city. It was forced on me against my will by ambitious parents in search of greater opportunities and better lives. That’s why everyone comes here, to this seductive monument to self-advancement or at the very least, self-preservation. It’s a city that doesn’t take risks. Men wear boxy suit jackets over golf shirts tucked into khakis. Women wear sensible skirts, pantsuits and pumps. They all pull roller backpacks behind them because of subway ads enumerating the signs and evils of scoliosis as they walk to big-box buildings made of similarly colored sandstone. You can’t get lost here because there’s nothing to lose yourself in. These avenues, at least downtown, are not built for wanderers, and these monuments are constructed to inspire awe not contemplation. But things have changed if only to protect the desire to remain the same. The streets have more barricades because the streets have more impromptu protesters, a dismal lot with their posterboard signs and hoarse-voiced chants against the monster in power and his minions. There are more armored vehicles now and more police officers in tactical gear and body armor wielding large black guns. It’s a brave new world wrapped around the old one to make it great again.”
― Uzodinma Iweala, Speak No Evil

“Four years to the day after Fairchild's 1908 gift of the trees to Washington's schools, on March 27, 1912, Mrs. Taft broke dirt during the private ceremony in West Potomac Park near the banks of the Potomac River. The wife of the Japanese ambassador was invited to plant the second tree. Eliza Scidmore and David Fairchild took shovels not long after. The 3,020 trees were more than could fit around the tidal basin. Gardeners planted extras on the White House grounds, in Rock Creek Park, and near the corner of Seventeenth and B streets close to the new headquarters of the American Red Cross. It took only two springs for the trees to become universally adored, at least enough for the American government to feel the itch to reciprocate. No American tree could rival the delicate glamour of the sakura, but officials decided to offer Japan the next best thing, a shipment of flowering dogwoods, native to the United States, with bright white blooms.
Meanwhile, the cherry blossoms in Washington would endure over one hundred years, each tree replaced by clones and cuttings every quarter century to keep them spry. As the trees grew, so did a cottage industry around them: an elite group of gardeners, a team to manage their public relations, and weather-monitoring officials to forecast "peak bloom"---an occasion around which tourists would be encouraged to plan their visits. Eventually, cuttings from the original Washington, D.C, trees would also make their way to other American cities with hospitable climates. Denver, Colorado; Birmingham, Alabama; Saint Paul, Minnesota.”
― Daniel Stone, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats

“America isn’t the picture of barbecues, guns, freedom, and hot girls eating hamburgers you probably saw on TV. That’s the old America and one I’m not even sure ever existed. The glowies parade that picture around every time they want to put people at ease and push them back into place. DC is especially made of glowies. You can’t talk to anyone because maybe they’re gonna send you to the dungeon or maybe they know someone who can.”
― Ian Kirkpatrick, Boom, Boom, Boom

“The cost of living is first on all of our minds this important year. Yet the President [Nixon] has decided that it is a year for travel. I ask–when is he going to make a "Trip to Peking" in regard to the basic problems facing us in the United States this year? He is willing to go halfway 'round the world--yet he doesn't have time to walk ten blocks from the White House in Washington and look at the lives people are living under Phase II.

(From Voices of Multicultural America)”
― Shirley Chisholm

“She was thinking about prejudice, how it might begin so simply--they come from elsewhere, they don't look the way I do. Why did people want to match? And here they were in the great multicultural city of the first African-American but also half-white U.S. president in history.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, There Is No Long Distance Now

“Coming from an impoverished background may cause us to financially live in the moment. Our brain becomes wired to spend and societal pressures cause our lives to dwindle to prove we have money–that we have finally arrived.”
― Nijiama Smalls, The Black Family's Guide to Healing Emotional Wounds

“Washington, it has been said, is Hollywood for ugly people.”
― James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington

“Washington is certainly not a city of restaurants, any more than it is a city of theaters. It is a city of official cocktail parties and excellent home-cooked dinners with wonderful conversation afterward and that provides all the entertaining anyone needs. It's also a city of whispering, maneuvering, tattling, declaiming - a city that's still having growing pains, that naive in spite of its imagined sophistication, that's beautiful in the same way an adolescent is beautiful, though he insists on pretending to a maturity and a mellowness that he hasn't achieved.”
― Frances Parkinson Keyes, Joy Street

“ان كان التاريخ قد علمنا شيئاً، فهو ان الافكار الغريبة التي نرفضها اليوم ستكون يوماً ما اهم حقائقنا.
دعني اذكرك انه في فترة من الفترات كانت المع العقول تعتبر الارض مسطحة، وتضن انها لو كانت كروية لانسكبت البحار منها، تخيل كم كانوا ليسخروا منك لو انك اعلنت ان الارض الكروية.”
― Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol