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learning about Glen Echo
Friday, August 16 2024
location: upper floor, Apartment [REDACTED], East Watergate Building, Washington, DC
This morning before we got out of bed, Gretchen found a few VHS cassettes in the room we'd been sleeping in and decided to play them on a device that was conveniently there, a one-piece entertainment unit comprised of a CRT-based color television, a VHS deck, and a DVD player. The first clip was a local news broadcast from something like 1997 in which Gretchen, then serving as a coordinator at a NY-based non-profit for women experiencing sexual harrassment on the job, was interviewed along side a man representing an insurance company for companies seeking to hedge against sexual harrassment lawsuits. 1997's Gretchen, who looked somewhat goth in the clip, came off as cock-sure and knowledgeable, though today's Gretchen had to chuckle at how little the 26 year old Gretchen actually knew at the time. Next we watched a video of Gretchen giving a poetry reading in Staunton, in an event arranged (at least in part) by mother. That cut a little too close to home, and when one of Gretchen's poems name-dropped Michelangelo, Gretchen couldn't bear it any more, and switched to something else. The last clip we watched was of our wedding ceremony, attended by just close friends and family (people like Dina, my friend Nathan, my late uncle Bob, Bob's dog Venus, our dog Sally, my mother, Gretchen's parents, brother, and sister-in-law). It's uncanny seeing oneself on video, and especially so back when one was young and had no idea how the future would play out. But Gretchen and I have had a good life together, giving a sweet poigniancy to the vows we exchanged during the brief ceremony in front of a family law judge. We'd actually watched all or most of these clips in the past, though Gretchen (who doesn't have a good memory for such things) probably had forgotten.
Down in the kitchen, Gretchen's father made me some coffee and we grazed on fruit and scones Gretchen had bought at Grindcore in Philadelphia while reading and commenting on the news, which continued to be full of positive Kamala Harris stories and bewildering Trump fumbles.
The big activity today was to drive out to Miracle Theatre, a venue near the US Capitol, to see Ain't No Back of a Merry Go Round, a documentary featured during the DC Black Film Festival. The film was produced by a woman named Alana whom Gretchen and Dina know and whom I was introduced to when I first flew out to New York to stay with Gretchen back in 2001. We arrived a little early, so, while Gretchen's mother (who needs another knee replacement) waited for us at the theatre, Gretchen, her father, and I walked around. We were in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and it's a cozy, walkable place, with nice trees and inviting shops. There's also the entrance to a military barracks. We ducked into a donut shop at some point just to ask if they had vegan donuts (mostly to create a demand for them), and of course they didn't. So I bought an ice coffee so I'd be a bit more caffeinated for the documentary we were about to see.
Just before the lights dimmed in the theatre, Dina, Gilaud, and their kids all showed up.
Ain't No Back of a Merry Go Round is the story of how DC-area amusement park called Glen Echo camed to be desegregated. We've all heard about the desegregation struggles in the South, but Glen Echo is in suburban Maryland near Bethesda. The documentary focuses on a few individuals, especially a man who, as a poor boy from the deep south, managed to talk his way into becoming a student at Howard University, which (at the time) was mostly attended by the children of the Black upper class, such as it was. (Howard University also taught a fair number of students from Ethiopia, which is part of the reason there are so many Ethiopians in Washington to this day.), It also brings in the story of various Jews who lived in a nearby suburban community called Bannockburn who, horrified by segregation at Glen Echo, joined Blacks to picket it. Part of their motivation, as they explained to the filmmaker, was the fresh memory of what had happened in Germany less than 20 years before. In response to this picketing, members of the so-called American Nazi Party held counter-demonstrations, wearing swastika arm bands and carrying signs emblazoned with grotesque racist slogans. It took a season of picketing and the threat of another before the park opened its admission to non-whites. Interestingly, the owners of the park claimed at the time that they themselves weren't racist but that they feared opening the park to Blacks would cause whites to stop coming. And it's possible they did stop coming, because the park eventually closed in 1968 due to weak numbers. Now it is a national park, though all the water features have been closed and perhaps dismantled. It was an eye-opening tale and one neither Gretchen nor I had any knowledge of, though we both grew up (at least in part) in the area.
Alana, the producer, is white and Jewish, but an important message of the movie was the important role of Jews in the civil rights movement, a fact that some seem to have forgotten.
After the film, Alana the producer and was interviewed on stage by a guy from the film festival, and then Alana took questions from the audience. One of the amazing things we learned in this section was that Alana had managed to find footage from the protests (including the Nazi counter-protestors) in a musty collection of someone's collection of super-eight film reels. Not only that, but she also found an audio clip of someone being turned away from the park entrance for being Black that synced up with some video someone else was shooting at the time!
After the film, all of us (including Dina and family and Alana) went across the street to a restaurant called Bombay Street Food, where we order. The weather was nice, so ate out in front at a big cobbled-together table, with me on the end near Gilaud. He and I shared a curry that featured a lot of okra, one of the many plants Gretchen cannot stand. Unusually for a meal we eat with others, some at the table ordered dishes with cheese, and someone (either Alana or Dina's daughter) even ordered a dish with chicken.
The main conversation I had during this meal was with Gilaud, who mentioned something about only being able to do a certain kind of swimming stroke in one orientation, as his neck refuses to bend the other way should he try to do the mirror image of that same stroke. I said that perhaps with some stretches and other exercises, he could loosen up enough to do it both ways. I then told him the story of falling down the stairs at the cabin last summer and how, through physical therapy techniques I learned on YouTube, I eventually recovered all the range of motion the fall had taken from me.
At the end of the meal as we milled around for a long Jewish goodbye, there was some drama out on the street between a meter maid and a guy who didn't want a ticket. I think he ended up with two tickets after moving his car (in a huff) to a second illegal spot. Meanwhile Gretchen's father was having a minor meltdown because he couldn't find his car, but Gretchen managed to remember where it was.
Back at the Watergate, Gretchen and I put on our swimming clothes and went down to the Watergate's pool (two large circular ponds connected to form something of a peanut shape) to enjoy the water. Aside from some older man, we were the only ones in the pool. Access is restricted by a locking gate, and we also had to sign in with the on-duty lifeguard with the easiest job in the world. Nearby, a little Black kid was having a birthday party, and someone gave the lifeguard a slice of birthday cake. Strangely, nobody from the party went for a swim, even though the party was happening on the inside of the pool fence. After I'd had my fill of the water (mostly all I do is walk around in it, though occasionally I'll swim for a dozen feet, about all I can do before being exhausted) I climbed out and sunned myself on a chaise lounge next to Gretchen, who was in the shade. We're both unusually well-tanned this summer after lots of time spent on the Woodworth Lake.
Later this afternoon, Gretchen put the finishing touches on the birthday cake for Dina's father. Yesterday the upper part seemed to be unstable on its gooey layer of blueberry glurp, but spending the night in the refrigerator seemed to have fixed everything in place.
This evening, Gretchen's father drove the four of us up Rock Creek Parkway to Silver Spring so we could attend a shabbat dinner with Dina's family and friends at Dina's parents' house (which I have been to a number of times). As we arrived, Val, one of Gretchen's childhood friends, was also arriving, along with Val's mother, a much smaller woman who looked exactly like anyone's picture of a little old lady. (Gretchen later observed that Val's mother has always looked like a little old lady, even when she was in her 40s, so it's nice that she's finally gotten to an age where that look is appropriate.)
We weren't at the house long before Dina's father asked if I wanted something to drink, so I said sure, red wine. It took him about fifteen minutes, but I eventually had a glass in my hand. My first conversation was with Gretchen's father, talking mostly about the Holocaust. He said that, no matter what we might hope, eventually the Holocaust will be forgotten, or at least fall into the bucket with the many other major human atrocities like the Armenian genocide or the killing fields of Cambodia. I said something to the effect that it's now clear that the potential for atrocity lives on in every society. We might've thought American, after the lessons of slavery and Native American genocide, was a more enlightened society. But then along came Donald Trump, who did and things to normalize horrendous speech and policies, and, in so doing, opened the door for others to normalize even worse things.
Later I was talking to Val (who had recently been working as French-English translator for Haitian and African refugees) about life as an unemployed software developer. I told her that I was putting a lot of work into open source code these days, but before I could really nerd out on that, Dina and Gretchen arrived and the conversation went elsewhere.
By then the food had come out. Much of it was vegan and some of it looked very good. But all of it, at least the stuff I had, was surprisingly bad. Everything needed salt, and some of the flavors were exactly the kind I most dislike. Back when I was a kid, I remember the ordeal of forcing myself to consciously chew up and swallow food that I disliked so as not to get yelled at, and here I was doing that again. I might've thought I'd never have that experience again, but occasionally it still happens. Of particular note was a vegan lasagna that Dina had made from directions Gretchen provides on her personal website. But it was all wrong. The tofu had been left as large blocks, each the size of the size of a large Lego brick or bigger. The tofu is supposed to be crushed up so that it resembled ricotta cheese. The chunks of cauliflower were also many times too big. Such things might seem like minor issues, but they rendered the lasagna almost inedible. Gretchen's mother had also cooked some sort of lentil loaf covered with what I thought was yellow corn polenta. But when I ate it, I think the substance I thought was corn was actually sweet potato, one of the few foods that, to eat, I have to choke down like I'm eight years old again. I managed to clear the one plate I'd made myself, but then I didn't get seconds. Instead I refilled my wine glass. When the birthday cake came out, I actually had a thin slice of that (it was pretty good) along with a scoop of vegan icecream.
Later in the evening, I sat with Gretchen, Gilaud, and Gilaud's 14 year old son as Gilaud showed us various places in Copenhagen we should be sure to visit. I was particularly struck by Freetown Christiania, a lawless autonomous zone formed on land abandoned by the Danish military as part of a 1970s-era peace dividend.
The evening was far from over at that point, though for a long time, at least until Gretchen's mother decided I looked lonely and came over to chat, I mostly just sat by myself, sometimes discreetly looking at my phone. Sometimes I'd hear something interesting across the room, such as when Dina's seventeen year old daughter M started complaining about a computer programming class she'd been enrolled in, and I'd chime in. Apparently the language M had had to learn was C#, which she hadn't liked at all. I said that was a strange language to be learning given that the most useful (and accessible) language is probably Javascript. I could tell M didn't know all that much about Javascript, since she kept referring to it as "Java."
Meanwhile, Dina's time was being monopolized by a younger woman who had come with her husband and her three of her children (all pre-teens). Eventually she left, and Gretchen got some more quality Dina time in. It was after 11:00pm when we finally left. As I was leaving, I hugged Dina's mother goodbye. She usually doesn't make much sense due to her hearing difficulties, but she said to me, "I really like your Facebook posts!" Evidently she's a lurker, since I wasn't aware she'd ever seen them, as she never comments or reacts.
Gretchen handing out pieces of cake at Dina's parents' house. From left: one of the kids of that younger woman who monopolized Dina's time, Dina's seventeen year old daughter M, Gretchen, and Dina.
Click to enlarge.
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