Row Houses in D.C.

I spent the day in undulant, fertile Virginia farmland and returned to D.C. during rush hour. The suburbs in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware are full of high-rise apartment buildings and condominiums, and tucked away among the trees are thousands of mansions for corporate tycoons, lobbyists, bankers, and politicians, some with boat ramps on the Potomac. But a large part of inner D.C. is old row houses, full of character and quirks like these near Howard University. I shot this picture from inside the car, and I'm posting it because until this trip I'd seen few visual images of Washington D.C. other than its monuments. I wondered where the people live.

It was a spectacular autumn day--bright and breezy, warm, almost balmy: a glorious late-summer day with a few rust-colored and yellow leaves fluttering in the breeze alongside the butterflies and the bees, while the Potomac glows like pewter in the sun.

What moved me most today was visiting the "Slave Burial Area" near Washington's tomb at Mt. Vernon. There are no individual markers, and the area is surprisingly small. There's an interesting Wiki article on Washington and slavery here, and I took a picture of the slave burial ground that is just about identical to the picture in that article.

The nearby plaque includes a truncated quotation from Washington's Will: "...it is my Will & desire that all the Slaves which I hold in my own right, shall receive their freedom."

The plaque does not mention the fact that the slaves were not to be freed until George's widow Martha died. He was willing to emancipate his slaves only so long as it didn't inconvenience the family. Standing on that land that must hold the dust of so many unnamed African workers, I thought about the perseverance of that kind of entitlement. Nice people with power and privilege--the power to enslave and the power to set people free, the power to make health care available for everyone or to keep it only for themselves--do occasionally choose to relieve the suffering of others, if it's not too much trouble, and if it's economically feasible for them.

Tomorrow I fly back to Oregon, and it will take twelve to fourteen hours, door to door, so don't look for a Blip that day. I'm looking forward to being home and to checking in on Occupy Portland.