Off the Sleeve

Washington. The Boss is away. Stroking the citizens of Clinton, Massachusetts and the world—this last, at the UN, where he sends out the good old, but apparently disturbing, word that the U.S. doesn’t like to see people shoved into loony bins for saying that things can be improved in Prague, Moscow, Guatemala City, or Washington, D.C.

In Washington, a perfection of spring. The cherry trees are little Japanese gentlemen blooming in the wisdom, not of Tanizaki’s mad old lustful man, but of the pictures of Hokusai and even more venerable depictors. The flowers peek and smile: “More of us are on the way.” I walk around the Washington I haven’t seen in 11 years; and it comes back, the formidable marble miles, the intermissions of sunken plazas, the magnolias, the squares, the odd nineteenth and—rare and getting rarer—eighteenth century nooks.

RS

About the Author

Richard Stern

Richard Stern is the vice president of the Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise at Advancing American Freedom.

Featured Tags

Washington. The Boss is away. Stroking the citizens of Clinton, Massachusetts and the world—this last, at the UN, where he sends out the good old, but apparently disturbing, word that the U.S. doesn’t like to see people shoved into loony bins for saying that things can be improved in Prague, Moscow, Guatemala City, or Washington, D.C.

In Washington, a perfection of spring. The cherry trees are little Japanese gentlemen blooming in the wisdom, not of Tanizaki’s mad old lustful man, but of the pictures of Hokusai and even more venerable depictors. The flowers peek and smile: “More of us are on the way.” I walk around the Washington I haven’t seen in 11 years; and it comes back, the formidable marble miles, the intermissions of sunken plazas, the magnolias, the squares, the odd nineteenth and—rare and getting rarer—eighteenth century nooks.