DC Redux: My Return to Capitol Hill

It's a Tuesday night in 2014 and I'm sitting here in a Capitol Hill apartment just one street over from where I used to live in 1992. I lived on the Hill for about 4 years give or take with Lou Lou and Peggy and then eventually by myself. 

I was thinking about how I got here in the first place. Lou Lou and I were working in the City. I was at a big law firm -- Willkie Farr and Gallagher. Lou was working in finance. We both wanted out, so Lou called her sister Rosey who was living in DC and going to Catholic U. And off we went.

At first we were both waitresses. I found a job with a company that catered big events like the Kennedy Center Honors. Lou eventually landed at the Dubliner, a purportedly IRA-financed, yet incredibly fun bar across the street from Union Station. I remember the catering manager for this company I worked for had a brother in soap operas. I'm going to look him up. Anyway, I thought he was so cool, even though now I realize he was like a skinny Jack Wagner from Melrose Place. But it was the 90's, so what can I say?

One day I was working at a luncheon at The Washington Post. As a waitress mind you. The Katherine Graham (then publisher of the paper) stood up to give a speech and she was so easy and funny and cool, I thought I don't want to cater parties here. I want to work here. I was lucky enough to have a connection through a friend of a friend from Connecticut. He was pretty high up in finance I think. Again need to find his name because boy do I owe him. His daughter's name was Missy. Maybe Cannistraro? (Nicholas Cannistraro Jr, SVP Sales and Marketing).

He got me an interview with HR which was basically fairly grim, aka apparently there are a lot of young people who would like to work at the Post. Then I got a call about a job with Herb Block, the paper's editorial cartoonist. Finally! I'm in. Or not. As it turns out, I was not their first choice. But when their first choice didn't work out, I was their second choice. 

I still have my Post ID card including a freaking perm that I was rocking at the time. As a young person, you often don't realize the spot you're in, until you no longer are. Such is the case with me. Man I had fun. That was the most fun working I ever had. 

Mr. Block was a hard worker but he also loved to joke around. And such a nice man. You would never know he was a Pulitzer and Peabody winner (more than once). His long-time assistant Jean and I became friends too, and remain so even after his death. Lucky for me because Jean is a great friend to have.

Tonight I am attending another Herblock Foundation Lecture and Prize ceremony. Bob Woodward is speaking. Like THE Bob Woodward from All the President's Men. But there have been many great speakers at these events, for example Barack Obama, Tim Russert before he died, Ben Bradlee and so on. 

Here's a confession. After Washington, I lived in New York briefly. One day I was walking through my neighborhood in the West Village and I spied Woodward's partner in crime, Carl Bernstein. I followed him down West 4th Street. I really don't know where I was going with this but I had become such a news hound at the Post that I couldn't help myself. Plus he was married to Nora Ephron whom I adored. This went on for a few blocks and then I realized I'd never get the courage to say something so I stopped. 

That's okay. Tonight I get to hear what Bob has to say in person. Should be entertaining. (It was!)

NB. I know I should've chosen some dignified picture to accompany this post about DC swanky journos but I chose instead this image of the Tune Inn, a bar about 3 blocks from my old place. Lou Lou and I spent so much time here the bartender would take messages for us and store our stuff, like ice skates and backpacks. His name was Chris. I remember him too.

The Long Ride Home

Patty Griffin is one of the best writers I know. The fact that she writes songs seems even harder to me. Somehow the words have to go with music and timing, phrasing and the rest of it. She sings many sad songs, but I can't help myself.

I don't think I get depressed by listening to her music. I just think wow. Amazing turn of phrase. Unbelievable irony. And I love her voice.

Her song Long Ride Home is about a husband attending his wife's funeral after a marriage that lasted 40 years. This is one of my favorite parts of this song:

Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed

Forty years of things you say you wish you'd never said

How hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead

I wonder as I stare up at the sky turning red

In June I went to a baby shower for one of my closest friends. Note I didn't say oldest. I've known her since circa 1978. She's having a baby. Actually she just had a baby named Maeve.

The baby shower hostess lives in a grand apartment on Park Avenue. In fact her home was featured in the New York Times because her architect/interior designer decided to set up a series of puzzles in the house à la Rube Goldberg. Okay this is where the weird confluence of events begins.

Weird coincidence #1 was my husband and I attended a lecture given by David Isay from NPR's Story Corps on Valentine's Day, He was promoting a compilation of their best love stories from Story Corps called All You Need is Love. One story was about a couple who met in New York on a rainy night when a man sitting in a cab spotted a woman walking down the street crying. He was so moved, he got out of the cab and came to comfort her. Apparently she initially thought he was crazy. But like all great love stories, what might seem crazy suddenly becomes a good idea.

I realized the baby shower hostess was the woman walking in the rain when I googled her. My friend having the baby had explained to me one night at her swanky NYC 40th birthday party that you have to google everybody. So I do. Weird coincidence #2. After googling the hostess, I found the story about her eccentric home in the City that had Rube Goldberg-type puzzles.

When I was a young woman, I worked at the Washington Post for a wonderful man named Herb Block the editorial cartoonist for the Post for 70 years. After Mr. Block's death, he established a foundation in his will - the Herb Block Foundation. You should look up the Foundation They do great things including awarding much needed scholarships.

Anyway, from time to time I get a parcel in the mail from Mr. Block's longtime associate and friend (also my friend), Jean Rickard. One time she sent me a Rube Goldberg book from Mr's B's library. Mr. Block knew Mr. Goldberg because Goldberg was also a cartoonist. I still have the book and thought of it when I went to this baby shower at the so-called "Rube Goldberg" like house. Weird coincidence #3.

I was a little late for the shower because I was working and then I needed to make it into the City on the train. Plus I think it always takes me a little extra time to make it into the City because I have to figure out what to wear that doesn't make me feel like a gal from the Coldwater Creek collection running around Manhattan. You know sort of slouchy, with elastic waistbands and weird sandals.

I made it finally and was on my best behavior in front of the cool NY girls. Instead of having one too many Skinny Girl margaritas, I hung out with my girlfriend's mother Mary Agnes. I've always felt a special bond with Mary Ag as we call her. I think because my granny Helen was also an Agnes. Helen Agnes McDowell. Weird coincidence #4.

There actually aren't that many people named Agnes anymore. There was Agnes Moorehead from Bewitched. Not the Bewitched with Will Ferrell for you youngsters. The one before that with Elizabeth Montgomery and Darren who changed characters once or twice. Mary Agnes is Swedish where as my grandma was Scottish. But they share the middle name.

At the end of the shower I'd arranged for a car to pick me up and take me to Connecticut. The train into the City is fine, but the trains out start to get few and far between around 9pm. Mary Ag hitched a ride with me because we were going in the same direction.

On the way home we were talking about stories from back in the day. This was the 70's mind you so our stories are pretty fricking great. Mary Ag brought up the time she got so mad at us for being "lazy bones" - that's actually what she called us - that she started throwing our clothes out the window of my friend's bedroom. I'm thinking that one of our guy friends had also spent the night and was in bed with us too that morning.

So Mary Ag is chucking our clothes out the window because we'd overslept instead of cleaning my friend's room like we said we would. No, she was not chucking our clothes out the window because a guy slept over. Remember? It was the 70's.

Mary Ag said, "I don't know why I did that." And I said, "I think you were just sick of us not cleaning up. I totally get it." In a way, I think it was an apology. Something rare from Mary Ag because she has very strong opinions and in many cases she was dead on right.

I do totally get it, now. I really didn't think it was that strange then. Just very matter-of-fact. Get your butts out of bed or your clothes are going out the window. Makes complete sense.

We talked some more about husbands and wives and grandchildren. Her granddaugher was coming to visit from Chicago for Father's Day. I asked what they were going to do and Mary Ag said that she was worried that her granddaughter might be bored. The girl is 15 and Mary Ag and her husband are in the 80's.

She told me the granddaughter had visited them another time when they were staying out in Palm Desert, California. So I asked her, "Well what did you do when she was out in California?"

Mary Ag explained to me that she'd taught her granddaughter Katherine, then 14, to drive. She said, "You know she did so well we just decided to let her drive us around town." And I was thinking about my childhood and learning to drive a tractor in Texas from my Grandpa Fred. Almost couldn't reach the pedals. Then learning to drive a truck in New Mexico that time when I almost hit a cow. Maybe I get it now what my mom is always saying to me. As the mom, you're hyper-crazy about safety and rules, etc. As the grandparent, you've seen more of life and you know that although you can't legally drive at 14, some kids just have a knack for it.

Mary Ag and I came to peace that night on the long ride home from New York. This week Maeve was born and Armin left this world. And that is the tragic, beautiful reality of life. We are only here for a short while as Cat Stevens would say. Enjoy the ride.

Ben Bradlee at the Herblock Foundation

Ben Bradlee's birthday was August 26th. It's hard to explain how such a slight man could cast such a long shadow. He has a booming voice, movie-star good looks and as Mike Lupica recently said, "He should've played himself in All the President's Men."

In 2004, Mr. Bradlee gave a speech at the annual Herblock Foundation Prize & Lecture. I was there along with many others who worked at The Washington Post along side him. Here are my notes on his remarks The New Culture of Lying.

A quote from Stanley Walker, 1940's New York newsman. "What makes a good newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He's aware not only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of the accumulated wisdom of the ages. He is not only handsome, but he has the physical strength which enables him to perform great feats of energy. He can go nights on end without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. Men admire him; women adore him; tycoons and statesmen are willing to share their secrets with him. He hates lies and meanness and sham, but he keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and what he looks upon as his profession; whether it's a profession, or merely a craft, he resents attempts to debate it. When he dies a lot of people are sorry, and some of them remember him for several days."

At some point during the investigation of any story, a good reporters knows or senses when a source is lying. We've become immune to lying, from selling beer or war or soap or candidates.

During Vietnam it became difficult to believe the official version. JFK didn't have to lie about affairs because no women ever came forward. He lied about Addison's because he didn't want that coming out. Under Nixon, 40 people went to jail including the Attorney General. Our public figures were lying with a straight face. We ran some 400 stories about Watergate. At some point, we knew they were lying. We knew it. We felt it. We couldn't prove it.

Gerald Ford was not around long enough to lie significantly. Reagan lied about being a signal corps photographer who filmed horrors of the Nazi death camps.

In November 1983, Reagan told visiting Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that he served as a photographer in the US Army unit assigned to film the Nazi death camps. He repeated the story to Simon Wiesenthal the following February. Reagan never visited or filmed a concentration camp. He spent the war in Hollywood, making training films with the first Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Corps.

Another favorite Reagan lie was that Mount St. Helen's caused more pollution than cars. After opining in August 1980 that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do," Reagan arrived at a campaign rally to find a tree decorated with this sign: "Chop me down before I kill again."

The Big Lie? I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Clinton changed the relationship between the press and the President. While he admitted to being evasive, testifying falsely, misleading testimony, he never said he lied. Still hasn't.

As for this President (George W. Bush), we will see how history plays out. I'm guessing that Weapons of Mass Destruction one will come back to haunt him.

And now the big shots of American business are comfortably in step behind them. Those tobacco executives claiming they knew nothing. Thank God we got Martha. Crisis averted.