Straws in the Wind – Or This Land is Still Yours and Mine

As the current regime enters its third week, my antennae, like most of yours, have been raised to an unusually high level.  Both in reading, viewing, and everyday life, I’m on the lookout for signs of the times.  So I thought I’d just comment on a few personal experiences that have interested me.

  

1.         On a trip last week to DC on JetBlue I sat next to a young woman, and began chatting.  Lynn told me she was on her way to DC from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital for a quarterly steering committee meeting at NIH on genetic medicine.  I asked about her education and learned she was born south of Mumbai, and received her BA and MA in India, arrived in the U.S. three years ago (and she was completely unaccented), took another degree at the Unversity Michigan. 

2.         Just before the trip, I stopped at a new bakery café on Martha’s Vineyard.  A tiny lady with a chef’s toque came out and thanked me warmly for coming.  I said it was great to see this empty building open again.  She started to tell me her story.  Fifteen years ago her husband had come up from Brazil and got a job in a local non-chain supermarket.  Eight months later she came north with her three children, ages 10 to 14, to take a job there as a meat cutter, her home profession.  Both worked there until a few years ago, when her husband opened a tiny restaurant attached to a gas station.  When it seemed to be stable, she moved over there to bake desserts and breads.  Gradually the baking took over most of the space, and they began to look for a place to open their own bakery.  They offered to rent the space they’re now in, and after looking at their financials the landlord asked if they’d like to buy it.  They agreed, put down a substantial down payment, renovated, and are now in business.  Oh, and after 15 years they also own their own home, and their three children are grown and working.

 As Lin Manuel Miranda says, “Immigrants – we get the job done.”

  

3.         I’m a member of the Cosmos Club in DC.  Cosmos is certainly no leftist organization – it had to be taken to the Human Rights Commission in 1988 before it would admit women.   But it was founded for and by “men of science,” including John Wesley Powell and admits those who have "done meritorious original work in science, literature, or the arts, or... recognized as distinguished in a learned profession or in public service."  This includes everyone from Mark Twain to Carl Sagan, Louis Brandeis, to John Hope Franklin. So there's a certain respect for non-alternative facts and for the law.

            Anyway, I stay there when I’m in DC: on Dupont Circle, free breakfast and parking, interesting lectures, and rooms below average cost.  So last weekend I was in the bar when I noticed two of the Cocktails of the Month:

            Maid in Mexico (Tequila, Lime, Mint, and Cucumber)

            DC Mule (Moscow Mule)

Protest appears in the most surprising places.