Spring Comes to the Nation's Capital

Last week’s blogpost contained a tribute to the stately live oak of the South Carolina Lowcountry.  Today, I’m thinking instead about my own city and its adopted favorite tree, the cherry.  Visitors to the Nation’s Capital understand early April to be the most glorious time for a visit, both because of the weather and because of the cherry blossoms.  Guidebooks funnel these tourists to the Tidal Basin of the National Mall, where cherry trees majestically line the perimeter.  But locals know there are better places to appreciate the blossoms without even needing to go to Japan.   I am speaking of the narrow, winding streets in the suburbs where cherry trees form a canopy of blossoms that engulf anyone who is blessed to walk or drive by.  I had the pleasure of taking such a stroll this morning.  I was with my bichon, Benny, who was just groomed yesterday.  His fur and those flowers were a perfect match – Blonde on Blonde, as Bob Dylan might say.  So fresh, so restful, so bright … so un-Washington. 

Forbes recently ranked Washington DC as the fourth most stressful city in the United States.  But the three above us (L.A., N.Y., and Chicago) are all many times larger.  So perhaps I can state the obvious – pound-for-pound, we’re number one.  People come here to enhance their career.  They find a job.  They go to work.  They stay at work – hour after hour after hour.  They spend another hour or more commuting home, either on a metro train where nobody smiles or among the nation’s most congested roads.  When they get home in the evening, they consume themselves with their addiction to that form of mud-wrestling otherwise known as American politics.  Eventually, they start fantasizing about moving away to someplace more bucolic – like just about anywhere. 

This past week was the beginning of baseball season, which is definitely a major event in Washington D.C.  Gradually, we’ve been becoming a baseball city – oh, not of the caliber of St. Louis, for example, but we’re not exactly Miami either.  This past Tuesday evening, we showed baseball fans all over the country that D.C. is a place to be reckoned with.  Philadelphia was in town, and that means that the Phillies’ Bryce Harper – who the Washington Nationals signed to a rookie contract and who for years was the Nationals’ biggest star – was making his first return to his former home town.  The Baseball Gods have ordained the etiquette that cities are supposed to follow in situations like these.  First, Harper should get a video tribute from his old team, during which his former fans should cheer him in appreciation for his years of loyal and glorious service to the city.  Next, in his first at bat for the visiting team, the home fans should give him one final standing ovation in recognition of his past service.  And then, in his second at-bat --and for as long thereafter as the mood feels right -- his former fans should boo the roof off the stadium as soon as he enters the batter’s box.   That’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Well, here in (arguably) America’s most stressful city, we made a little modification.  From the moment the Harper video tribute began, he was booed.  Relentlessly.  Tens of thousands of fans stood up and called him a traitor.  Then, whenever it was time for him to hit or catch a baseball, the boo-birds kept on chirping.  That stadium was loud, and the people were nasty.  It was one big F-U to a guy in his mid-20s whose sole offense was to manifest a desire to earn market wages, which the owner of his former team wasn’t willing to pay.  And here’s the funny thing about the whole episode: everyone in D.C. loved it!  It wasn’t that we begrudge Bryce Harper the right to earn $330 million in the next 13 years.  It was that we enjoyed witnessing so many Washingtonians care so much about our city that they would scream bloody murder against a man whose cardinal sin was to leave it. 

Does that sound strange to you?  Perhaps it should.  But I totally get while the local commentators are universally glowing about Tuesday’s Boo-Fest.  It showed civic pride – in an odd way I admit, but it was there nonetheless.  Washingtonians are sick of hearing what a gross place this is, sick of being on all the wrong lists (most stress, worst weather, most violence, etc.), and tired of watching their sports teams lose all the time.  They’re also done with seeing fans in other cities go crazy about their teams while their own stadiums are filled largely with visiting fans or local transplants who continue to root for the teams they grew up with.  Last year’s D.C. hockey team won the Stanley Cup, and we all watched as loyal fans finally were rewarded after decades of futility.  It reminded people that Washington is as real and legit a place to be from as anywhere else. Strangely enough, that was apparent from the energy behind those boos. 

Of course, it’s stressful here.  Everyone knows that.  Everyone knows also that our weather stinks in the summer and isn’t so great in the winter.  Everyone knows that this is a one-industry town that caters to hypocrites, sycophants, and phonies who take themselves incredibly seriously.  Everyone knows that what stinks about D.C. tends to be lasting and what’s great about D.C. tends to be ephemeral.  (No sooner do you make a good friend then you start having to listen to them talk about moving away.  Hell, even the cherry blossoms last only for two weeks a year or less.)   

But for one glorious night, none of that mattered. That’s because tens of thousands of Washingtonians – and hundreds of thousands more (like me) who were watching on TV – got to express our pride in our home town.  And yes, we did it in a characteristically crazy way: by booing relentlessly at the sight of a hardworking man who did nothing wrong except move away from our city.  It was one hell of a primal scream.  And it was truly a tribute, only it wasn’t Bryce Harper who was being celebrated, but rather having the loyalty to remain in your town, even if it’s as obviously flawed and as often disgusting as Washington D.C.

What?  Do you think I’m being hyperbolic?  Do you think D.C. is no more disgusting than any place else?  Notwithstanding my loyalty to the old home town, I’ve got to admit that this place can get downright ugly.  Only a couple of days after the Harper-booing incident, we Washingtonians were graced with a far more familiar kind of event.  It took place in the “People’s House” – the chamber of the House of Representatives.  There, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell addressed her colleagues on behalf of a bill that would enhance limits on guns for people who have been convicted of crimes involving domestic abuse.  Who wouldn’t support such a bill, right?  Who wants a man convicted of beating his wife or stalking his ex-wife to carry a gun?  Well, click on this link, watch this video, and you’ll hear a bunch of faceless Congresspeople boo Dingell as if she were Bryce Harper leaving the on-deck circle.  https://ijr.com/debbie-dingell-nra-speech/

I don’t know the names of the folks who did the booing.  But we can all guess.  They’re virtually all rich, white men whose titles begin with the term “The Honorable.”    And there is nothing whatsoever appealing about their performance in booing Debbie Dingell.

Yeah, we Washingtonians know what kind of city we live in.   We are even more aware of its problems than any anti-Government curmudgeon from Kansas, Kentucky or Kalamazoo.  But we love our Cherry Blossoms, we love our baseball team, and we love the fact that in this city, people care about politics and public policy.  That ultimately is what unites all of us boo-birds – Nationals fans, Democratic Congresspeople, Republican Congresspeople, you name it.   No matter who you are, if you live in this city, the stress will get to you and some of your neighbors will at times make you sick.   Yet there is also a bond here that stems from the fact that friend or foe, we’re all in this thing together.  No matter what side of the aisle we occupy, we all care about the local industry – enough, in fact, that we’re generally able to cope with the stresses and keep on fighting.  Every now and again, we even get to assemble and let out a primal scream – together – knowing that tomorrow we’ll be back in our respective corners fighting for our respective causes.

So let’s celebrate the baseball season of 2019.  But let’s not kid ourselves – the real sporting season of Washington D.C. begins in June.  For a local junkie like me, those debates can’t come soon enough.