Some advantages to note:
Metro - Washington's subway - is less crowded. Tourists often are the crowd, especially Europeans whose August traditionally is their travel time. Locals can feel superior when they see strangers puzzling over iPhones, looking for directions that are not always clear. One very buttoned up man with briefcase took time from his stride to counsel such a group alighting recently at Pentagon City mall and looking stranded on the platform. He stopped voluntarily when he saw their dilemma and asked to help.
The huge glass Mall hub above them hummed with activity - an obvious place to hide from hot air and sun.
Festivals are everywhere, and free entertainment of a high and low sort flourishes. Author readings continue nonstop at bookstores are since most authors these days must rely on personal appearances to spread the word. They offer the best antidote to warmed over TV shows, often still in repeat mode until September. Among the best of these lately was Ocean Vuong, a slender young man, sitting in conversation with poet Jenny Chang at Solid State on H St. NE. It was the last of these on his current schedule another standing room only audience drawn to his novel and its remarkable title: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. He was 'gorgeous' in manner and mind.
First, by praising the audience before he had even said a word about his book, pointing out their attendance as solid value to the community, of which the store is a vital part. That produced a round of clapping from his admirers who, not surprisingly, included a great variety of so-called minority faces. They rushed to hug him at the end, grateful to be acknowledged and impressed by his theme: survivorship may mean hardship but is at the same time "an incredibly creative act." Immigrants such as himself - the son of an illiterate Vietnamese mother - often grow up in harrowing circumstances and still learn to fashion themselves in original ways. For him, language was the tool; his early public school teachers showing him how to use it.
Metro - Washington's subway - is less crowded. Tourists often are the crowd, especially Europeans whose August traditionally is their travel time. Locals can feel superior when they see strangers puzzling over iPhones, looking for directions that are not always clear. One very buttoned up man with briefcase took time from his stride to counsel such a group alighting recently at Pentagon City mall and looking stranded on the platform. He stopped voluntarily when he saw their dilemma and asked to help.
The huge glass Mall hub above them hummed with activity - an obvious place to hide from hot air and sun.
Festivals are everywhere, and free entertainment of a high and low sort flourishes. Author readings continue nonstop at bookstores are since most authors these days must rely on personal appearances to spread the word. They offer the best antidote to warmed over TV shows, often still in repeat mode until September. Among the best of these lately was Ocean Vuong, a slender young man, sitting in conversation with poet Jenny Chang at Solid State on H St. NE. It was the last of these on his current schedule another standing room only audience drawn to his novel and its remarkable title: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. He was 'gorgeous' in manner and mind.
First, by praising the audience before he had even said a word about his book, pointing out their attendance as solid value to the community, of which the store is a vital part. That produced a round of clapping from his admirers who, not surprisingly, included a great variety of so-called minority faces. They rushed to hug him at the end, grateful to be acknowledged and impressed by his theme: survivorship may mean hardship but is at the same time "an incredibly creative act." Immigrants such as himself - the son of an illiterate Vietnamese mother - often grow up in harrowing circumstances and still learn to fashion themselves in original ways. For him, language was the tool; his early public school teachers showing him how to use it.
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