Thrifting in DC and Baltimore

Washington DC is an expensive place to live! But I've discovered a very nice Goodwill within an easy drive of our apartment, and have been able to pick up a few useful things there for not much money.

PacSafe messenger bag and Lands End rubber shoes purchased from Goodwill.

Thrifting isn't super-easy here, and prices are a bit higher than in Iowa, but you can get some nice things!

Anyone who knows me knows that I love the treasure hunt excitement of going to thrift shops. In Cedar Rapids, we have an excellent network of Goodwill stores, part of Goodwill of the Heartland, the regional branch of Goodwill Industries that serves southeast Iowa and western Illinois. The stores are clean, well-organized, and have an ever-changing stock of used items, from clothing to housewares to electronics. And of course, it's all very inexpensive.

I started shopping at Goodwill when the boys were very young and money was tight. Today, I shop there more for the thrill of the hunt--it's so fun to find that cashmere sweater, tiny book, or lid to replace the one you broke. At the same time, I know I'm keeping stuff out of the landfill--my own donations, and other people's "trash" which might be my "treasure." And although I enjoy saving money, I'm not a fan of cheap clothes out in the world today--fast fashion--I don't like the look and I don't like the injustice.

As I often do when I visit new cities, I checked to see if there was good thrifting in DC, and it didn't look promising. Real estate in DC is so expensive that thrift shops can't really make it. There are few thrift shops in the District. Most of the Goodwills are on the edge of town, not particularly accessible by Metro. Of course, that's the way it is in Cedar Rapids, too.

But one is fairly close to where we live, and just a few minutes away from the Arboretum, which I've visited twice. So I decided to check it out.

The South Dakota Avenue Goodwill in D

One thing I noticed is that there are some pretty nice brands! Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, Lululemon, Chico. Those are pretty rare in Iowa (we aren't slaves to fashion ...) but pretty common on the Goodwill racks here. Everything is a bit more expensive than in Iowa; for example, shirts go for $4.99-5.99 except for the colors on half-price (half-price colors--that's similar to Iowa!)

There are a ton of shoes! I just like to walk around and look at all the varied shoe styles. There were lots of rain boots when I bought my rubber shoes.

Also very DC: a huge selection of women's suits! This is a suit-wearing culture.

Some of the size small suits.

The housewares selection isn't great. I was looking for a small casserole dish and didn't find one. On the other hand, there are tons of suitcases.

Besides Goodwill, I also discovered a crafting thrift shop--or, as the owner put it, a "creative re-use shop." It was in Baltimore, and I stopped by on my way up to a conference (and visit to my aunt and uncle) in Delaware. Called SCRAP B-more, it's a national chain.

It reminded me of Create Exchange in Cedar Rapids, my favorite place to go for crafting notions: knitting needles, measuring tapes, scissors, bits of fabric or ribbon, odds and ends. I found a few things I could use: circular knitting needles, some thread in different colors, Velcro. I think the total charge was $3.50. I wish it were closer!

The cheerful interior of SCRAP B-more.

And while they're not "thrift" shops, I have visited 3 used bookstores since we got here. The first is the famous Capitol Hill Bookshop--a messy, labyrinthine shop overflowing with books and slightly grumpy signs. Yes there are books in the bathroom (foreign languages). I didn't find anything here, but it's fairly amusing.

I also visited Baldwin's Book Barn with my Aunt Dee. It's in a somewhat rural area of Pennsylvania, near Wilmington DE. It's a barn . . . filled with books! Aunt Dee and I wandered through its 3 floors, amazed at all the books. There was a wood fire burning in a cast-iron stove--the day was drizzly--and just a few people browsing. If you want books about military history, or late 20th century cookbooks, or, heck, books about horse racing, dog breeding or yachting, there are plenty here.

My favorite used bookstore so far is Riverby Books, just a couple blocks from us on East Capitol Street.

Photo swiped from Yelp; leaves are not on the trees here yet.

I bought a tiny Danish-English dictionary there for my tiny book collection (yeah, I know: not very useful! But cute!)

and a book with "24 Walks in DC" for Bruce. Riverby books is friendly, close, and fairly tidy.

I'll check in later if I discover other great places to find treasures.

In solidarity with a protest

I was thinking about the high school students who've been protesting since the Parkland shooting, and feeling disappointed that I cannot participate in the DC protest march in March--I'll be presenting at a conference in New Jersey on March 24, the day of the national marches.

But I didn't miss my chance to stand with those kids. Students have already come to DC to make a statement for safer schools and stronger gun laws. They were here today.

I missed the big march--saw news of it online at lunchtime. It was such a beautiful day today (75! and sunny!) that I decided to walk over to the Capitol grounds to see if I could spot any remnants of the march on the mall.

I didn't expect to see anything.

But there, on the west lawn of the Capitol, I spotted a large group of students, lying on the ground.

Capitol Police hovered protectively nearby. A few tourists were taking photos, and there were a couple of young people with big cameras. They told me they were with "a local college newspaper"; I later saw they had GWU bags.

I took a couple photos, then stood with the kids in solidarity.

After a while, someone yelled out: "OK, that's 17 minutes." The kids got up. The protests are 17 minutes in memory of the 17 people who died.

I couldn't help wanting to go over and ask questions--I wished I had my interview notebook! I decided to go talk to the kids, not as a journalist, but as a citizen.

"Thanks for what you did here today," I said to three young women near me who looked to be about 14.

"We wanted to do it," one said. "We feel like we need to take things into our own hands."

They were from a high school and middle school in Arlington, VA called H-B Woodlawn, an "alternative secondary program" where students gain more and more "unsupervised time" to choose their own educational goals and projects as they get older.

The three girls I talked to said that some of their teachers were with them. "Some of our friends from 6th grade are here, too!" one said.

The protest I saw was the end of a day of protests for the H-B Woodlawn group. The girls told me they'd been part of a group that marched to the White House. Their group marched through Georgetown, which they said was exciting. "There were so many other people," one of the girls said. "They all had signs."

Protesting at the White House was just the beginning. The group's organizers wanted them to make the walk over to the Capitol grounds "because this is where they make the laws," one of the girls explained to me.

"And it's funny," another girls said. "Tomorrow, we're going to be back here for National Model Congress!"

If I'd had my wits about me (and my interviewing notebook), I would have asked whether the girls saw any connections or contrasts between today's protest and their participation in the Model Congress.

As I left the west lawn, I saw a couple other kids, a bit older, being interviewed by one of the GWU journalists. She was asking them what kinds of legislation they wanted to see.

"First, we want better background checks, especially at gun shows," one young man was saying. "And then, we'd like a ban on automatic weapons. No one needs those for hunting or self-defense."

"Yeah, who needs to shoot up a deer with bullets?" said a young woman, next to him.

I agree: who needs an AK-15 for anything other than the thrill of shooting it? We need to stop selling them. It's going to be a while before those go out of circulation (especially black market) after a ban so we need to start now. We had a ban on them before; we need to bring that back. And we need to strengthen background checks; the shooter at the last massacre at least should never have gotten a gun in the first place.

I'm so glad I saw those kids and their protest. My heart has been with all those young people, so full of energy, courage, and determination. As my friend Paul pointed out, (via my friend, his wife Anne, who emailed me his insights) these teens are the perfect people to protest the lack of sensible gun legislation:  gun activists can't demonize kids without looking bad themselves.

Let's hope they inspire us adults to do more--and to put our money and votes where our hearts lie. The kids can't do that--yet--but we can help them there.

#ENOUGH

DC: it's the South

It's mid-February, but here in DC, it feels like mid-March

Or maybe even mid-April--not sure kind of blooming tree this is, but I saw it today, when it was 60 degrees--on February 15! I spent a couple hours in the morning biking around the mall. In February!

Before we left Iowa,  I looked up average temperatures in DC during the months we'd be here. DC seems to be about a month ahead of Cedar Rapids in terms of warming up for spring. 

This is because DC is in The South, I said to Bruce.

Why else would there be these gigantic Southern Magnolias on the Capitol grounds?

And holly--holly TREES, for heaven's sake! They're everywhere here. Holly doesn't grow in Iowa--the winters are too cold.

I am really enjoying having missed a lot of the worst of a Midwestern winter by coming to DC. It's nice being in The South this time of year--even the coldest days here are much warmer than February in Cedar Rapids, and it's always nice enough to walk (unless it's pouring down rain of course).

On one of those rainy days, I was sitting in our apartment reading. Right around the corner from our apartment, there's a historical plaque marking a home where Frederick Douglass lived for 6 years.

After I saw that, I decided to read Douglass's autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: a riveting read (and in the public domain, so you can get it free for your Kindle or iPhone).  As I read that afternoon, I discovered that Douglass was born and was enslaved on a plantation in Maryland!

Not Georgia or North Carolina or even Virginia! Maryland! The plantation, Wye House, was just across the Chesapeake Bay from where I was sitting and reading.

My brain doesn't hold onto history very well. I told Bruce about Douglass's birthplace and asked him how that could possibly be--wasn't Maryland a "northern" state? He told me that Maryland was a slave state. It didn't secede like the more southern states (and Virginia, also just a few miles of where we were sitting), but it allowed slavery.

There were plantations in Maryland.  Africans were enslaved in Maryland and forced to work without pay or freedom. They were separated from their families. They were whipped and raped in Maryland, not far from the nation's capitol.

Probably you all, dear readers, remember this from your U.S. history classes, but it stunned me upon being reminded about it. Remembering how close slavery was/is to my current physical location is like a looming shadow just at the edges of my vision whenever I look around here. All the wonderful historic neighborhoods and buildings and monuments that we are so excited to see--they might have been around when, just a few miles away, people were enslaved. Maybe they were built by slave labor. Certainly they were affected by the economy of slave labor--everything was.

It's easy to ignore America's history of slavery when you're living in Iowa. Iowa had terrible discrimination, including an act preventing African-American settlement in the mid-1800s. But it had no legal slavery. But here in DC, a tiny district surrounded by states that were once slave states, we're surrounded not only by beautiful Southern Magnolia trees but by that shameful history. It will be an interesting experience to hold both this region's beauty and its history in my mind this spring.

Seeing the sights in DC 1: learning from lectures

Most people who've been to DC can tell you that there's a LOT to do here, and so much of it is free! Many museums are free, there are free concerts and lectures . . . and there's just all the beautiful buildings and monuments.

As you found out from my last post, I don't (yet) have a part-time job here, and any research/writing I do while here isn't mandatory--I'm on unpaid leave, so I can do what I want (as long as I'm ready to jump back into my job when I return)! I'm already working on a few research projects, and am still looking for some kind of part-time work, paid or unpaid, that will get me connected to the community, but I'm also enjoying the freedom we have to just get out and see things.

I don't want this blog to become a brag blog, filled with lists and descriptions of all the fun things I'm doing while away from Cedar Rapids. I don't find that kind of writing enjoyable to read--or enjoyable to write. There's not enough opportunity for depth and reflection in a simple recounting of a vacation, little opportunity to grapple with important issues. I'll put "vacation photos" of visits to fun places on Facebook, but probably won't write too much more about them here.*

But maybe I'll occasionally share some posts here of things we've done and seen in the couple weeks we've been here, things that I found especially satisfying or intriguing or worth thinking about. Today, I'll tell you about a couple of lectures I attended this past week.

On Friday, I attended a free lecture at the Folger Shakespeare Library's Theatre. It was called "Flowers, Fashion, and the 18th Century dining room." I learned all about how British interest in plants from around the world showed up not only in what was served at meals, but also in fabric design. The lecture included lots of wonderful slides of beautiful silk with botanical patterns designed by a woman designer, Anna Maria Garthwaite, women designers being unusual in the 18th century. Garthwaite combined a deep scientific interest in botany with her professional skills of silk designing and created beautiful silks that allowed other women to show their interest in botany as well.

This dress (photo from Museum of London site) has hops and barley on it! It was worn at a ball the Mayor of London put on to promote local brewers. . . 

This Garthwaite silk design almost looks like a scientific botanical print--you can even see some roots. Women were discouraged from most scientific pursuits, but botany was one area thought appropriate for women to study. 

The next day, I attended another lecture, this one at the National Arboretum. It was pouring down rain that day, so I didn't get to walk around the Arboretum, and I was glad I had the car so I could drive there. This lecture was called "Reordering the Landscape: Science, Nature, and Spirituality at Wye House." I couldn't resist that title!

It turns out that Wye House Plantation is the place where Frederick Douglass was born and grew up--how timely as I'd just finished reading his (first) autobiography!

The archaeologist who gave this talk discussed the work of finding traces of the enslaved people on this plantation and learning how they "reordered" their landscape through planting (their own plants, not the slaveowners') and through spiritual practices of burying objects around buildings for spiritual protection.

Again, this lecture had excellent slides, and I loved the archaeologist's passion for both archaeology and racial justice. A big part of the project was talking with people who lived in the area who were descendants of the enslaved people who lived on the plantation. The project started with questions those descendants had about their ancestors, like how did they live? what was their religious practice? The results of the dig were shared with them in travelling exhibits that came to local churches and community centers.

Enslaved people buried these circular items under a house as spiritual protection

Upcoming lectures/learning events: a bird walk at the Arboretum on Saturday, a concert/lecture at the National Gallery on Sunday, another lecture at the Folger in a week or so.

* I'm also keeping a list of places I/we visit here (including restaurants) so contact me if for some reason you want a more comprehensive list!

Sabbatical or not?

The street where we live in DC, 5th St. NE.

Why are we in DC anyway?

One of the perks of being an academic is that every five years, (at Coe at least), tenured faculty can apply for a sabbatical leave, a paid semester with no teaching, committee, or advising responsibilities. The ideas is that faculty use this time to do their own research and writing--and of course get a break from the high-burn-out work of intensive teaching. To apply, faculty need to submit a plan of what they'll work on during the leave, and they need to submit a report afterwards. Happily, most sabbatical leaves get approved at Coe.

Bruce was up for a sabbatical this year, and for many years we'd discussed going away for one of his sabbatical leaves. Washington DC seemed like a good possibility. Bruce is the advisor for Coe's DC Term called Capitol Hill Internship Program (CHIP), a program shared with 8 other colleges, and the director of CHIP offered Bruce the opportunity to teach one class during the term, which made it financially a bit easier to live in DC.

I'm not on a sabbatical. I'm just on unpaid leave.

As lovely as sabbaticals sound, the opportunity to apply for one is only offered to tenure-track faculty who've been awarded tenure after a grueling 7-year process of becoming a top-notch classroom teacher while also doing research, publishing, and serving the campus on committees, etc.--and undergoing yearly reviews.

Like about two-thirds of college faculty in the U.S., though, I don't hold a tenure-track position. I'm not going to get into the explanation about that now, but suffice it to say, I wasn't eligible for a sabbatical. The best I could manage was a semester leave without pay.

On the other hand, I didn't have to submit a plan for sabbatical, and I don't have to turn in a sabbatical report when I return. No one has any expectations about what I should be doing this term!

The idea of spending a semester in DC visiting museums and eating bonbons has its appeal . . .

Bruce at the National Gallery

. . . but I actually feel happier when engaged in some kind of meaningful, ongoing work, especially work that's collaborative, or at least in the company of others. Especially here, where I'm far from friends and my community, I was hoping to find satisfying work and a ready-made set of acquaintances.

I did have a lead on an opportunity to work very part-time as a writing center consultant at American University here in DC, but the day I went up to meet with the director there, she had just been told that her request to hire me was turned down. We're still planning to collaborate on a project, but I won't have paid writing center work in an actual writing center, in the company of colleagues.

Of course, there's plenty of non-paid, solitary work I'm already doing: scholarly reading (keeping up with scholarship in the world of writing centers and composition pedagogy), research (my ongoing project doing research on the Dieman-Bennett Dance Studio and, more generally, dance education in the mid-twentieth century) and writing (this blog, freelancing, etc.).

I'm also sizing up some volunteering options. I enjoyed doing volunteer transcription for the Smithsonian--but I did that here in the apartment. Maybe I could go somewhere to volunteer, too . . .  should I volunteer at the Folger Shakespeare Library?

the local public library? (I already have a library card and have been there twice.)

The National Botanic Garden?

All of those are within a short walk of our place. . . no pay except the chance to work with others and the opportunity to be part of something larger than myself.

Making a home away from home

Welcome to our little home on the Hill.

This is where we're staying during our sabbatical/leave in DC, on a quiet street in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. We are renting this pied-à-terre (a.k.a. garden apartment  a.k.a. basement apartment) in a rowhouse,.

We found it on SabbaticalHomes.com which is kind of like airbnb but for longer-term rentals like faculty on sabbatical: all the furniture, bedding, and kitchen stuff are included, as are the utilities. The landlords are a family that owns the building; they live upstairs. It's cozy, with large windows that let in lots of natural light.

This apartment is our home here. I love travel, and the kind I especially enjoy is the kind of travel where you have a place to put your toothbrush. Like when I taught at TASIS England for two summers back in the mid 80s: I lived on the campus of a boarding school, in a little cottage.

Or when Bruce and I rented a flat for the week we spent in London with the boys in 2006: we were able to take the boys out during the day to see sights like The Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, and then come "home" for a cozy dinner of soup and toasted cheese and a quiet evening reviewing our day.

Some of the first things I did here in DC were to make this place truly our home. Of course I unpacked everything and found places for the important things: laptop on the dining table (across from where I sit to eat), crosswords on the dresser by the bed, knitting under the end table by the couch.

Little by little, I'm making this apartment our home: while we listened to the State of the Union address (a hazard of Bruce's profession) the first night I was here, I crocheted two coasters for us to use at our little dining table. The next day, I rearranged the kitchen (why are there champagne flutes on this shelf? Let's put plain old wine glasses in their place) and threw out some mismatched plastic containers. Yesterday, I bought some cut daffodils at Trader Joe's for the table. We have only eaten out once--we've been cooking our meals here, in the tiny galley kitchen.

Oh dear. I've bored you, dear reader. You were hoping I'd be sharing tales of the amazing things I'm doing in DC--all the cool museums I've visited and famous politicians I've seen. Sorry. This blog will share some of that later, maybe.

Here's a photo of the Capitol building, visible from the street just a few blocks over from our apartment, to tide you over.

But maybe you will understand: a cozy home can be a great base from which to have adventures, a place to rest and regroup, to reflect on what we're doing, to write, to read. Venturing out is more exciting when there's someplace to come back to--someplace that's not just a warehouses for travelers, but a home for residents. We're not here as tourists for four months: we're living in DC--in our little DC home.