A new perspective
A Monumental Day
For a monumental city
On this day of symbolism, national monuments, deep exhalations, a Lady Gaga concert surrounded by a lot of important speeches, poems, and fervent testimonials, I’ve been shedding tears all afternoon. Tears of relief, most likely. Happiness, joy, restored faith in the system, whatever. Good tears.
And when I finally finished crying, I started laughing out loud, focusing on the televised visuals of our nation’s capital, and reminded of my many years of living in DC. It looks quite different today. But that’s not what made me start to giggle.
Years ago, when I worked in the Pentagon, my girlfriend Nancy came to visit and I gave her a personal tour of the inside of what we used to call the Puzzle Palace—or sometimes Fort Fumble. I thought she’d be impressed. It’s a powerful, commanding, awesome place!
But no. As we were leaving the building, she asked me, in her deep southern drawl, “So, Dee, how big around is this building?” I told her it was one mile in circumference, and that the female civil servants (mostly secretaries back then) put on their sneakers at noon and hiked the E-ring—the outermost of five concentric corridors of offices—for exercise.
