« January 2021 | Main | March 2021 »
February 26, 2021
304 East Capitol Street, N.E.
Someone I met when I was 18 sent me this picture. It's of where I lived on Capitol Hill after I was married. Federal style townhouse now about 130 years old painted the same regal blue. First-floor apartment. Just married, and both 29, a young associate and his smart, kind and so beautiful law student wife--the one who went to William and Mary, danced, played the violin, looked like Ali McGraw, was a vision and had worked as a buyer at Garfinckel's--lived there. Both driven. Both senior class presidents. 304 East Capitol is one block from the Folger Theater. Two blocks from SCOTUS. Three from the Capitol dome. Four from the subway. The neighborhood brims over with cocky, interesting, well-read, well-rounded and ambitious people. Pre-marriage girlfriends in the bars here and in Georgetown pouring beer on my head or leaving for Israel for something I'm sure I did or said. Hungover Sundays. The miracle of Spam. World-class academics, actors, musicians, statesmen and political pros just passing through. Gay men on bikes cruising me most summer days on way home from work. The Field and Stream splendor of the Tune Inn. Young men with names like Arvin from Salt Lake not only drinking like pros but trying to pick up waitresses with brogues named Maeve who would only eat them alive and humiliate them--in public--by critiquing their lovemaking the next day. The neighborhood has, say, 30 AA and NA meetings a week. Three rehabs. Interns named Muffin and Sugar. Resident members of Congress with their guards down. And within lunging distance of 10 churches, 8 parks, 12 secondary schools and maybe 60 restaurants and bars with names from D.C. history like Jenkins Hill and Tunnicliff's. Funny bartenders. Mean waitresses. Is this a great 'hood or what?
Original post: March 3, 2017
Posted by JD Hull at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)
February 23, 2021
A new mind
If you talk about it
long enough
you'll finally write it—
—William Carlos Williams 1883-1963 “Details for Paterson”
Posted by JD Hull at 06:03 AM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2021
111 Years.
A newsletter just reminded that the Boy Scouts of America turned 111 last week. It started here in the States on February 8, 1910. BSA meant a lot to me growing up in the Cincinnati suburb of Indian Hill, Ohio. Troop 502 was one of three in IH. The BSA’s “feeder” organization the Cub Scouts also helped me transition as a nine-year-old from Chicago to Cincinnati in 1962 when P&G moved John Hull and family to a new city yet again and for the last time. My “Den Mother” in the Cub Scouts that year was the late Ellen Hill, Bill Hill’s mom. The Hills also became our neighbor in the south Drake Road area when we moved there from Miami Road in 1964. In many ways since our move in 1962 I have been a Kid With Luck. I’ve always known it, too. Scouting played a huge role in just the right years.
Posted by JD Hull at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2021
Wilder
“If you’re going to tell the The Truth be funny or they’ll kill you.”
— Billy Wilder (1906-2002)
Posted by JD Hull at 02:07 PM
| Comments (0)
February 11, 2021
Valentine: Love in the Time of Covid
"Romeo and Juliet" by Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893)
Posted by JD Hull at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2021
Cooties.
Welcome to Grade School America. “Systematic Racism” is our New National Cooties. No one can tell you what it is. But Media, Academics and Progressives think everyone has it. I’ve met lots of Americans. Two or three racists. And thousands who are just royally pissed off.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2021
Fine 1985 work by a Nobel Prize winner.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)