Understanding through dialouge

Wednesday’s field trip was to Washington’s Islamic Center. Unfortunately for us, the hour or the only two hours that it rained hard this week encompassed our seven block walk from the metro stop to the center. By the time we reached the gates, you wouldn’t have been able to tell whether or not I had taken the time to try my laundry. And with proper irony, the clouds decided to stop raining about 10 minutes after we got there.

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With our shoes off and the women’s heads wrapped, we entered the mosque. I sat watching intently the four guys intently praying in a rhythm and pattern wholly unknown to me.

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After a few minutes of observing, the mosque’s teacher came to speak with the group. He gave us a brief history of this particular mosque, where different parts of the building came from, and then he opened up for discussion. People asked questions, such as: what are Muslims’ perceptions of Christians; how is the Quran to be interpreted, contextually or literally; how does Jesus fit into Islam’s perspective; how have things changed for Muslims in D.C. following 9-11; and is a hijab required of Muslim women? His answers to each of these provided an interesting, much more moderated response than the media or “common knowledge” would lead one to believe.

Lazy Sunday

After sustaining a sprint-like pace during my time in Washington, Sunday’s breakfast was a much welcomed rest.

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During our visit to Trader Joe’s the day before (which is where we found out from a cashier that there was a methlab bust in a GW freshman dorm room), I discovered heaven in the form of food: pumpkin pancakes. I quickly bought two boxes, along with a box of spiced apple bread mix. As a result of this marvelous discovery, Jaclyn, Aaron, and I realized that brunch the next morning was a must.

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So at 10:30 a.m. we got up and started cooking. Jaclyn was in charge of the bacon, Aaron setting the table, and I had the pancakes. And in an attempt to expand my culinary skills, I tried making a Mickey Mouse head (which failed) and the first letters of each of our names (which worked out well for all of us, save Aaron’s A).

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Once the cooking was finished, we sat down to our OJ, coffee, bacon, and pancakes, and enjoyed the morning.

To new experiences

It is obvious that with Washington comes a lot of history, but U Street has a history all its own. After the start of the 20th century, the neighborhood began to transform from being predominately white to more racially diverse. This continued to grow, and the community was doing well, until the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., after which, the neighborhood turned into a thriving drug scene. Since then, the neighborhood has turned around and is now a very culturally-rich area of the city.

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So, in an effort to take full advantage of the unique experiences U Street offers, I planned Friday evening around dinner at Etete, an Ethiopian restaurant that made The Washingtonian’s Cheap Eats List, and tickets to a jazz performance at Bohemian Caverns.

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First, dinner. After a few minutes of walking U Street, we found the Etete in all of its understated glory. But what the restaurant lacks in size, it makes up for in flavor. In deference to the Cheap Eats recommendation, we ordered the sambusas, which are lentil-filled, deep-fried pastries. This turned out to be a wonderful decision, as the warm, triangular dishes were a perfect combination of salt and spice. For our main meal, we ordered a spicy meat dish (which, after the sambusas and our waitress making sure we wanted the spicy dish, we were worried would be too much to handle!). But, again, this was a great choice. When our meal came out we had in front of us, a pizza-shaped, spongy bread with a pile of meat and two piles of vegetables on it and a basket of more rolled, spongy bread. With no clue of how to appropriately consume our dinner, we looked around, saw everyone eating with their hands, and realized that our wet-wipes weren’t superfluous.

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Once filled to the brim with fantastic Ethiopian food, we made our way to Bohemian Caverns. With its distinctive lit-up, piano-key awning, the jazz club is hard to miss. After checking in with the bouncer, we opened the door and walked through a corridor lined with stalactites and stalagmites to make our way to the caverns.

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Darkly lit with a single candle on each table, Bohemian Caverns has an atmosphere unmatched by anything I have seen – yes, even better than a cave party. The sea of white tablecloths surrounded the stage, with some tables just an arm’s length from the performers.

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As for the evening’s actual event, the expectations set by the mere presence of the room were met and surpassed by Louis Hayes and his group.

Thoughts on a night with the police in SE D.C.

Thursday night after work, I was able to go on a ride-along through the Sixth District, including Anacostia and other parts south east of the Capitol. While on the ride along, I was able to talk a bit with each officer about the trends they see in crime; their thoughts on what promotes it and what best combats it; how they thought public housing affects crime; how they though public housing is doing generally, both in how it serves the individuals and its effectiveness; and how they thought the city ought to make changes in the way it combats crime and helps the poor. I also was able to witness, first-hand, the different policing styles and the subjectivity in application of the law. While social programs are always created with the intent of helping people and making up for what they’ve missed out on in society, if not properly executed they are both a detriment to the individual’s growth and they’re a waste of taxpayer dollars.

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I will begin where my ride-along started, which is with the near-arrest of three 20-somethings that were driving in Clay Terrace, the worse public housing complex in the Sixth District, their grandmother’s rented car that was past due. Having been the second police car to arrive, Officer --------- was not the primary on the incident and, therefore, was not in charge of making decisions regarding arrests. Although the three individuals met the requirements for the unauthorized use of a vehicle, the primary officer did not arrest them because he believed that they were simply stuck in an unfortunate situation. This decision was out of the norm, as the officer was asked to explain his reasoning to dissenting officers on 4 different occasions. Even -------------- thought that it was a “cut-and-dry UV.” From what I could gather, this differing decision was a result of two things: the particular officer’s compassion for people and the fact that the occupants of the vehicle were dressed fairly well, were respectful, and had a dialect that was, for the most part, free of slang. I think that while their respect had a significant impact — as it rightfully should — on the officer’s decision, I believe that the first and last factors did as well.

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To begin the discussion on housing, I will start with ----------‘s brief description of the history of public housing in D.C. In the 1960s and 1070s there was a large expansion of social programs and, consequently, a large number of public housing units were built. The prevailing thought was that, if all of the underprivileged were gathered together through a common, free place to live, then that area could be flooded with services such as vocational training, health care, child care, and the like. This way, some of the burdens they experience being poor, would be alleviated in the hopes that they would be able to work to a point where they could be self-sufficient.

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This is a great plan in theory, but having neglected the fact that these services would be the first to be cut during an economic downturn, public housing units have turned into quagmires for uninspired people, crime, and poor living conditions. Additionally, the simple fact that housing is free makes public housing a frustrating predicament in that, while it allows for people to currently live under a roof it: 1) disincentivizes legal work because as soon as the individual begins working, they no longer qualify for public housing, have to pay for their own housing, and have to work; 2) makes public housing seem standard and normal because the individual grows up within a community that does not work and does not see the opportunity for a better future; and 3) allocates a group of people that have nothing to do all day and, in turn, end up drinking.

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Having always been focused on meeting the needs of people, I neglected to consider the long-term effects of providing for them. Now, I am not entirely abandoning my caretaker mentality, but rather recognizing that it is not a benefit to provide for people unconditionally. Rather than the current public housing system, one with restrictions on certain habits, such as drinking and smoking, would be appropriate. For anyone that would argue that it violates their freedom, I would counter that they are free to live elsewhere and drink all they want, but when they’re living off someone else’s money, regulations ought to be allowed. Similarly, I would advocate for well-defined time periods in which a person is allowed to live in public housing. In the same way that a person is not allowed to collect unemployment checks indefinitely, public housing ought to be cut off at some predetermined point. Obviously, this would not include people with disabilities, who are not able to work.

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In sum, while my ride-along with the Metropolitan Police Department was not action-packed, it provided me with the unique opportunity for conversations with police officers who deal with the effects of effective and ineffective social policies, specifically public housing. Seeing it up-close forced me to grapple with the reality of tangible money being wasted, because when removed from the situation, it can become too easy to accept ineffective social programs instead of working toward better solutions, leaving the individuals worse-off and the taxpayers out more money.

Government entities

Wednesday began with a metro ride over to Foggy Bottom. There, I went to both the State Department and was able to listen and talk with a woman who had spent her career working as a mediator with FCMS.

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The first stop was at the FCMS building. There, we heard what was essentially an extension of the class — what it was like to be a mediator, the things she had done, and tricks she had picked up along the way. One interesting aspect of her job was that it could go all hours of the night, and because of that she always brought a change of clothes and would sneak off to wash up and change so that she would always appear fresh and ready to go, which made mediating sound so much more like a game than one would ever hope.

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Instead, what caught my attention was her brief mention that “it was good that those employees were unionized.” As soon as she said this, I scribbled down a question to ask her later. So, following her presentation, I walked to the front of the room to discuss her thoughts on unions, as she is often the one directly working with unions and their disputing party to make a solution. Her thoughts were that the quality of a union depends on its leadership. If the leadership is out for what’s in their best interest, whether that be wealth or pride, obviously the union isn’t served well. But if they do have good leadership, she thought they were a good thing — she included the teamsters in this category. While this makes for more effective meetings between large disputing parties, I don’t think unions are good for broad policy changes.

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In between FCMS and the State Department, I had lunch at a place where, every hour, on the half hour, the waitresses and cooks come out to dance to a song amongst all the patrons. It was uncomfortable for me and for them, and to make things better, there were tourists with their cameras in the face of a poor girl who happened to be dancing near their table.

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The State Department, on the other hand, was impressive in our ability to visit it (albeit we weren’t allowed to see any of the building, not even the bathroom, without an escort), but our speaker was less than candid, making for a moderately engaging discussion on the U.S.’s efforts to combat terrorism abroad.

Contrasts as consequences

To start Sunday off right, I went to the White House Gardens tour. Happening only twice a year, this is a special event. Getting up early in the hopes of avoiding what I thought would be long lines for tickets, I was pleasantly, and quizzically surprised at how easily people were able to get tickets to walk around, essentially, the backyard of the White House. In order to get an official tour—which is not even that extensive—one would need to apply at least two months in advance, wait in long lines, and have a government issued ID. But for our tour, one need only to pick up a ticket that they were handing out on the street, rip off the stub, and walk through a metal detector—no ID or prior check in.

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Once allowed in, you’re free to see the backyard swing set, the putting green, the fountain up-close, the gardens, the Children’s Gardens, and the outside of the Oval Office. As I was taking pictures of the Oval Office and of the yard space where a soccer ball had been left from some previously played game (and where Bo had, apparently, been running around only an hour earlier), I was awestruck. Awestruck of the historical decisions that had been made here. Awestruck of the ordinariness of the people who had lived here. Awestruck that I, and 12,000 others, could get this close.

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After the White House, we walked over to the Old Post Office, to relax, look at the city’s historic monuments from an aerial perspective, and realize that the city is a lot closer and condensed than riding the metro everywhere grants it.

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On to Monday. In a complete change of pace, I had a paper due in Monday night’s class and to top it off, we had a 130-page document for the secretary come in that needed to be expedited. What this translated into was a really busy, multi-tasking Monday.

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While my lack of paper writing was my own fault, and I was the one who had to deal with the procrastination, the life of an editor is much less in control. We, as editors, were obviously not in control of when we first received the document. Yet, we were the ones that were under the pressure to make the deadline. This can be frustrating when you’re dealing with more than one office that has classified a document as “high priority.”

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The frustration of this particular priority caused me to reflect a bit on my internship. While on the one hand I am really coming to appreciate what I am learning, how I will be able to incorporate it into my work back at Luther and The Gadfly, and how, through editing, I have developed a keener eye for the strengths/weaknesses of arguments and for clear/unclear writing, it lacks the inspiring creative process that excites me. I would much rather be the one writing the original documents than the one polishing them. And with this experience, my creative writing in the future will be polished to the point where I won’t need an editor.

City life

In true Darling form, Saturday started with two cups of coffee, both at the apartment and at Dean and Deluca. After two cups of liquid alertness, I went on to roam the streets of Georgetown.

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While enjoying a scenic walk amongst busy streets and numerous cafes and shops, I stumbled upon a used book store. Nestled into a neighborhood not more than a block off a main Georgetown road, I decided to venture inside and see if there were any treasures to be found.

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Considering the recent recognition of Vargas Llosa and my upcoming trip to Peru, I combed through the books looking for something, anything of his. But my efforts were in vain.

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Later in the evening, I went out with a few friends toward Vienna. Having never ridden the metro past Rosslyn, I did not expect the Vienna to be as far out as it was, given the layout of the metro map. And in the same underassumption of distance, Jacklyn, our navigator for the evening—whose one-time stint ends here—thought that the place that we were going was not more than a few blocks away from the stop. Having opted to wear heels that night, I wasn’t particularly happy to learn that her estimate was only a mile and a half off.