fauxklore

Two metro trains collided tonight at rush hour on the Red Line near Takoma. At least four people were killed and over 70 injured.

What I find the most disturbing aspect of this is that the metro service disruption report says, "Disruption at Fort Totten. Trains are turning back at Rhode Island Ave & Silver Spring due to a train experiencing mechanical difficulties outside of Ft. Totten. Shuttle service has been established."

One train rear ending another, causing significant casualties, should not be described with the same term that they use for things like door malfunctions.

I am also irritated that the news report I saw, which mentioned that one of the people killed was the driver of the rear train, felt the need to report that the driver was female.

The title of this is apropos of nothing. It's just something amusing I overheard on the metro on the way home tonight. I hope it refers to the junk food selection at the Natural History Museum but one never knows.

I have again failed in my goal to get out less since I couldn't resist going to hear a lecture on "The Unknown Irving Berlin" at the Library of Congress tonight. The lecturer, Jeff Magee of the University of Illinois has been plowing through the documents (letters, manuscripts, etc.) in the library's Irving Berlin collection and focused on some of the distinctive trait's of Berlin's music. He talked about Berlin's development of the syncopated ballad, use of contradictory images (e.g. "I got lost, but look what I found"), reuse of his own musical themes, incorporation of topical themes, and frequent employment of counterpoint. What made the lecture particularly enjoyable was extensive illustration of the points by some of his students (three singers, one pianist). A particular highlight was a performance of "Torch Song" (which Magee discussed in the context of topical references). They also had an exhibit of Berlin manuscripts and sheet music covers in the foyer outside the auditorium. My only disappointment was the poor turn-out, possibly the sparsest attendance I've seen in the Campbell Auditorium. That may have been due to limited publicity, as I only found out about the talk yesterday from the music division's email list.

By the way, one question Magee was asked had to do with how Yiddish music influenced Berlin. Magee kind of talked around that, but did mention the song "Blue Skies." It's an interesting example to bring up around this time of year since the very first lecture I ever went to at the Library of Congress was Jack Gottlieb's on the Jewish roots of Tin Pan Alley about 5 years ago. And Gottlieb pointed out that the tune for "Dayenu" is buried in "Blue Skies!" (You have to play every other note, but it's a way cool bit of trivia.)

I'm not quite taking the "what I said I'd write about" in order. But here are some quick observations about New York vs. Washington:

1) When New Yorkers in Washington ask me where to go to get good deli food, my answer is, inevitably, "New York." Actually, the deli counter at Wegman's in Fairfax isn't bad. But only in New York can you get great pickles. I like half sours, but full sours are the pickles of the gods.

2) I did not, alas, have time to stop on the Lower East Side on the way back and pick up a bialy or twelve and/or an onion pletzel. But you can't get either down here. (You can sometimes get things that call themselves bialys, but not ones worth eating. Trust me on this - my mother's family is from Tykocin, just down the road from Bialystok.)

3) No buskers inside
the D.C. Metro system.
New York has music.

In particular, coming back to the hotel on Saturday night, there was a guy playing a kora on the platform. And on the way back to Penn Station, a mariachi band was playing on the A train. All three of them, including the bass player, moved down the car (and from one car to another - a major taboo in the eyes of the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority), which reminded me of the scene in Take the Money and Run in which Woody Allen plays the cello in a marching band.

4) New York has better pizza.

5) New York has a theatre district. Washington has theatres, but they are more scattered about. What that means is that Washingtonians have to do more planning.

6) Sadly, the tourist herds in both cities move just as annoying slowly.

I meant to write something here about walking around Brooklyn, but I don't have anything in D.C. to really contrast it with. Maybe I can find some similarity between the way that the monuments just mesh into the residential part of the Hill and the way you cross the street from Borough Hall in Brooklyn and you're right into a pleasant residential neighborhood. I think I'm trying to get at a broader statement about the Northeast since what I like about Boston (and Philiadelphia) is how people still live in the city. I'll have to ponder that more. At any rate, I was surprised by how much I liked the neighborhood around the hotel which had yuppie amenities (e.g. a Trader Joe's) and businesses that meet real needs (an actual hardware store!). I wish I'd had more time to browse the used bookstore on Atlantic or to shop at Sahadi's (a Middle Eastern grocery supplier).

I had a rather hellish commute this morning, so it's time for some metro haiku!

Two completely full
trains at Vienna, neither
moving - a bad sign.

Emergency track
maintenance is a code word
for a derailment.

Single tracking, sigh.
We sat at Clarendon for
thirty-five minutes.

Making announcements
would probably make riders
somewhat less stressed out.

Arithmetic on
metro - seven minus ten
equals five minutes.

The prose translation is that, apparently, a train had derailed at Courthouse early this morning, leading to track work, leading to single tracking on the Orange Line. Once I finally got to Rosslyn, I waited 15 minutes for the Blue Line, even though the passenger display had started out saying the train would come in 7 minutes. Overall, my commute took about an hour longer than normal.

The tortoise tourist herds are out in force for the inauguration. They stand on the left on Metro escalators and don't have the common decency to let people get off the train before they surge onto it.

However, this morning (which actually featured a relatively uncrowded commute), I encountered the dumbest of them all. As I was walking along the sidewalk of the Vienna Metro station, a woman called out to me from the parking lot. "Where's the Metrorail?" she asked. "I don't see any rail."

I had to explain that she was driving in the parking lot of the Metrorail station and that she needed to park her car and walk into the station.

By the way, the line for people purchasing fare cards was all the way backed up from inside the station to the Cue bus shelters at four this afternoon. The only events I know of tonight are a few balls. None of the people I saw in line looked remotely as if they were dressed for a ball.

I'm glad I can work from home tomorrow. I printed out several things to read. I also need to finish writing a research proposal (which has been lurking around for a few years but, thanks to management changes, looks like it will actually get submitted this time) and maybe work on a presentation proposal for an upcoming workshop.

Ballston station closed?
Was it a power outage
or was there a fire?

Shuttle buses have
been requested. When will we
get to East Falls Church?

I was going to post a review of Grey Gardens tonight, but it took me ages to get home for a number of reasons. The first is that walking down 14th Street feels a bit dubious at night, so I went to the Dupont Circle metro instead of McPherson Square, which meant waiting 8 minutes for the Red Line and then transferring to the Orange Line. And the trains are inevitably timed so that one just misses a train and has to wait 20 minutes for the next one. While waiting, they announced that Ballston was closed due to "heavy smoke." A little later they said there was a fire. Trains were terminating at Virginia Square and shuttles had been requested to get passengers to East Falls Church.

On the train itself, they claimed there was just a power outage at Ballston and said nothing about a fire. When we got to Virginia Square, we were surprised that there actually was a shuttle bus. But that was one shuttle bus, which doesn't come close to enough capacity to deal with even a late night train. It was about a 20 minute wait, during which the wind kicked up quite a bit. We didn't have long to wait for a train at East Falls Church but then we sat on the platform for at least 15 minutes waiting for another shuttle bus. Net result is that it took me a bit over 2 hours to get home for what is normally just about an hour.

I need sleep. Theatre review (and probably other things) tomorrow.

... means a new Metro haiku!

Random bag searches
will not make us more secure.
Bad move by Metro.

And just to prove that the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority is not my only muse, I have been known to entertain myself thusly during meetings at work.

If you can't define
technology readiness,
you can't assess it.

Operational
environment is hard to
define for software.

There is no limit
to the sheer mind-numbingness
of this discussion.

(The context was somebody trying to persuade us that just because we've been doing something for 20+ years doesn't mean the technology is mature.)

Jotted down in my planner during yesterday's commute ...

Three consecutive
Blue line trains, but no Orange.
I will be home late.

Man eating on train.
They need more and bigger signs
explaining the rules.

On Vienna train
woman counts on her fingers
writing these haiku.

Rather than a bunch of spotty little entries, I put all of these together.

1) There was an earthquake in Northern Virginia yesterday. Epicenter was Annandale. Since it was a whopping 1.8 on the Richter scale, I doubt anybody not right there noticed it. I didn't really need 3 emails from our security and safety folks about this.

2) Everyone comments on how the seats right behind home plate at the Nationals' ballpark are always empty and how bad it looks on TV. I explained to someone that the problem is that those seats cost $325. And they asked why lobbyists aren't giving them away. It turns out that the law was changed after the 2005 season and it's illegal. Before that, they used to give away tickets to staffers all the time.

3) At staff meeting today, one of my colleagues referred to an organization objecting to something by saying, "they claim that if we don't do this, dogs and cats will sleep together."

Our boss replied, "What's wrong with that? They can't breed."

4) Not that you care, but the Whole Foods in Vienna, Virginia may have the least efficient checkout clerks in the known universe. Uh, if something doesn't scan, why do you insist on waiting until you have rung up everything else before asking for a price check?

5) Speaking of annoyances, if you are riding the metro and don't get a seat, you get one hand to hold onto the pole. If the ride is really jerky (as tends to happen on 8 car trains), I will grant you the use of a second hand. However, there are no circumstances under which it is remotely acceptable to lean your entire back against the pole, crushing the hands of other people who are trying to hold on.

6) I am continually amazed that there are able-bodied people who work in my building who will wait for an elevator to go down one floor. It's bad enough that people wait to go up one floor. At least have the decency to affect a limp or complain about your knees or something so we'll think you're not just the laziest creature on the planet.

7) As I was walking out of the metro, I overheard the best cell phone conversation I have ever overheard. This woman was snarling into her phone, "You're a cockroach. You're worse than a cockroach." Obviously, Gregor Samsa's girlfriend takes the Orange Line, too.

My, I've ridden a lot of different metro systems. No wonder I couldn't resist buying Transit Maps of the World (a beautiful and addictive book).



There may be more. I think I just walked around Sydney, but can't remember. I know I took trams in Amsterdam, but I might have also used their metro. And, in some cases, I wasn't sure about all of the multiple systems within one city. For example, I think the trains I took in Yokohama were either part of the Tokyo system or Japan Rail ones, but I'm not sure.