A newsLETTER blog about life for Sarah, Stephen and Alexandria Padre in Our Nation's Capital

Apr 27, 2010

Update on recent happenings

Rotary Club lunch

Last week I attended the weekly lunch meeting of the Rotary Club that meets up 16th St. a couple of blocks from my office at the University Club. I was investigating hosting an exchange student - if this club brings any foreign students over – and the president of the club had invited me to attend a lunch meeting as his guest so we could meet. My initial contact was made, and that business was taken care of, but I was also thrilled to get inside this exclusive club, which is essentially the in-city “athletic club” or “country club” (without the outdoor parts like tennis courts, pool or golf course).

Well, there wasn’t anything unique inside, at least the parts that I saw – nothing private or exclusive or new to me. It was all just very fancy and upscale. There were many wood-paneled rooms – the various bars and restaurants in the place. Certainly the bathroom had some extra amenities. You could use some mouthwash or a comb or polish your shoes with their little machine. The room the lunch was held in was on the second floor and was like a fancy hotel ballroom set up with round tables and a buffet table at the back – like any banquet at a hotel that you would attend. The source of arrogance for this place isn’t its location (on the water or in an exclusive suburb), but its location. I’m sure many of the city’s powerful businessmen, lobbyists and government workers frequent this place, which is just a few blocks from the White House, although I walk past it regularly and have rarely seen anybody well-known outside (I did pass Tom Ridge nearby one day on my way to work).

Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens

A couple of weekends ago, we took a few hours on a windy but sunny Saturday afternoon to visit the former estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post, which is just a few miles from our house, but which we had not really known about from living here (another hidden gem in the city; ask us about what we’ve discovered when you visit). Post was married and divorced about four times, and some of her husbands were wealthy and/or powerful, and she was also the heiress of C.W. Post of the Post cereal company, which later became General Foods. As a wealthy socialite, she purchased an estate here and set about collecting art – mostly Russian and French – and keeping a lavish garden, all the while entertaining famous guests.

Pictures of our visit are posted here.

All of our photos were taken outside, and most are of the gardens. We visited at exactly the right time for the gardens, which were in full bloom. I don’t think I’ve visited a private garden that had so many flowering plants before. It was simply spectacular. We were not allowed to take photos inside the mansion, which was Post’s house but is now a veritable museum. She expanded the house and added a lot of rooms here and there, many of which were just to show off her various art collections. There was about as much practical living space as there was space for the art and entertaining, like the “pavilion,” which was for showing movies and holding ballroom dances.

The mansion/museum was a bit familiar to us, since it was very much like a palace in Europe, of which we have seen many, only on a smaller scale. Honestly, I don’t know what was more spectacular – the house or gardens. For a private, little-known house-museum, it has something rare: Its centerpieces are a small handful of pieces by Faberge, including two of his famous eggs. The “surprises” in them (when you open them) have been long lost, however. There were several important portraits of Russian royalty throughout the house, and the grand piano in one of the sitting rooms had pictures of people she would entertain regularly. I spotted a framed picture of John and Jackie Kennedy at the end of the piano.

Drama on our block

Yesterday I had left the office at my earlier time, at 5:00. Sarah and Lexi were still not home from their weekend away, but were on their way home. As I approached the intersection where our house is, I crossed one street as usual and heard a fire truck approaching. I looked down the block and saw that it was coming toward me. I didn’t think this was a big deal, since we hear sirens all the time, sometimes even on our street – mostly police cars flying past. I expected it to continue down the street past our house. But then, as I crossed the other street in front of our house, I happened to look down another street and thought it looked foggy. It was odd, I thought, but then remembered that it had been a drizzly day with rain off and on since the night before. But then suddenly I connected the two – the fire truck and what was actually smoke! By then I had crossed in front of the fire truck, which had pulled up across the street but close to our house. A house across the street from our and a few doors down was on fire! I had arrived at precisely the right moment as the first fire truck arrived.

I went in the yard at the end of our house and watched all the fire fighters arrive and as all the other neighbors were coming out of their houses to see what was going on. Some were running out as the smoke billowed up from the roof in the back of a house. More fire trucks arrived, and at the peak of it all, there were a total of eight trucks occupying more than two blocks of the neighborhood, plus other police and fire vehicles and an ambulance at one point.

The trouble with this fire was that it was smack in the middle of an entire long block of row houses, and one could easily see that if they didn’t put it out soon, it would easily spread. So some policemen were going door to door and telling residents to get out. I saw them do this to one house, and the woman seemed unusually calm and left her house with her dog on a leash like she was going to take the dog for a walk anyway. I would have been quite concerned that my house was also going to go up in flames. Yes, I would have taken the dog, but certainly I would have left in a bigger hurry and would have been more visibly concerned. As it happened, the fire did spread to one adjacent house, and fire fighters were scrambling from all sides, breaking windows in the front second story windows to get in and accessing both houses from the roof with two ladder trucks.

One fire truck was there until about 9:00 last night – about three hours total. Today the two houses are boarded up. This was a big reminder of the dangers that we face – from the wiring I did when I installed new lighting fixtures in our dining room and entryway (did I do it correctly?) to living in a row house, where a fire in your neighbor’s house could mean certain destruction in your own house.