"Don't you just love America?"

Sometimes I remember something just in the nick of time.

Photo by Andy He on Unsplash

Today’s post is a low power mode edition, and I remembered it just in the nick of time.

It’s largely about Washington, DC. I lived there in two stints: from 1998 to 2001, and then 2004 to 2012. Overall, I have good memories.

At just under 700,000 people, it’s a medium sized city, a bit smaller than Nashville or Boston. Compare that to 8.4 million in New York or 2.3 million in Houston.

But because it’s the seat of government, it punches far above its weight: universities, museums, restaurants, concerts, bars, sports, embassies.

People come and go constantly, from all over the world. Sure, many are obsessed with work, but it’s a beautiful place in its own way, and I have to say I was never bored.

Plus, as someone told me on my first weekend there in 1998: There’s always at least one February day in DC that’s warm enough to wear shorts.

That turned out to be prophetic and true.

Of my thousands of “Bill when he lived in DC” stories, I’d like to share a surreal vignette. It was brief and beautiful, and it took place almost 15 years ago: Sunday July 17, 2011, a little before 5 a.m.

I know the date because I posted about it on Facebook afterward.

At the time, I was living alone in Southwest DC. Recently divorced (no kids, long story, maybe we’ll get into that some other time).

I couldn’t sleep, so I got out of bed in the very early morning hours, grabbed some not-exactly-clean workout clothes from the hamper, and went for a run.

This will be relevant in a second: I was wearing a shirt leftover from my army days that that had “10th Mountain Division” and “USA” in big letters on the front.

Anyway, I did 6.6 miles on a whim before sunrise that day (I recorded it on MapMyRun): no big deal for me then, but a number that impresses the older version of me today.

Still, I remember that running in DC is amazing.

• I left my apartment in SW …

• Headed north to the Mall to the Washington Monument …

• Then nearly a mile west to the Lincoln Memorial.

• I ran up and down the steps of the Lincoln like I always did, turned past the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, back to the Washington, through the Ellipse, around the White House, and back home.

Something happened in the middle, at the Washington Monument. It’s a really beautiful place if you haven’t been there: a 554 foot tall white tower, surrounded by flags, halfway between the Capitol and the Lincoln.

I’ll quote myself, nearly a decade and a half ago:

Total insomnia so I went for a run at 4:45 a.m. (75F-perfect!) It’s amazing who’s out in DC at that time.

My favorite encounter was two girls apparently still wrapping up last night’s party. [We crossed paths] at the Washington Monument.

One of them pointed to my USA t-shirt and the 56 US flags surrounding the monument and exclaimed with apparent sincerity,

“Don’t you just... LOVE America?!!”

I remember these young women, especially the “LOVE America” one. (Actually more to the point, I don’t really remember them, but I remember writing about them, and I trust my memory then.)

They were both very pretty, Black, way more stylishly dressed and hip than I have ever remotely been in my entire life.

This was my kind of “Bill getting his confidence back after divorce” stage, and I felt pretty cool that they were even talking to me.

I thought a lot about the encounter for hours and days later—I mean, I wasn’t in the habit of posting about every run to Facebook and mapping it out, but I did.

Here I am, all this time later, thinking about it.

It’s just this small, hopeful memory that I hope I can hold onto forever. I suppose it could have been anywhere, but it’s poignant for me that it was there in DC — especially now, just a few days before the 250th birthday.

It’s the idea that you can bump into a stranger, middle of the night, strangest possible place—and you can choose to be positive, choose to focus on whatever small things you have in common, choose to make a connection.

For that matter, as hard as it might be sometimes, you can choose to profess your shared love for this messy, frustrating, beautiful country of ours—and hopefully commit to work hard, and get it on track to stay worthy.

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Other things worth knowing …

• NPR: The Supreme Court’s conservative majority took a sledgehammer to much of the federal government’s regulatory structure Monday, striking down almost all the limits that Congress—and the courts—had previously established to protect the independence of regulatory agencies that make up roughly a third of the federal government. The court’s decision reversed a 90-year-old precedent. In a Truth Social post, President Trump called the decision a “BIG WIN,” one of the most important rulings “ever given with respect to Presidential Powers.”

• AP: Roughly 146 people including 19 women and seven children who the U.S. deported to Venezuela last week are missing after the Caracas hotel in which they were staying was reduced to rubble after a series of earthquakes, setting off a scramble to find survivors and bodies.

• NYT, Daily Mail: The Court also declined a request by Trump to review a $5 million civil judgment against him after a jury found in 2023 that he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump launched into a furious tirade against Carroll afterward. Carroll also sued Trump in a separate 2019 defamation case that resulted in an $83.3 million jury verdict. That figure has since grown to over $100 million with accrued interest.

• AP, Fox News: New Gallup polling finds that 53% of U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” proud to be an American, the lowest reading in the trend dating back to 2001. A separate Fox News poll had more disappointing numbers, finding that fewer than half of U.S. voters say America has made meaningful progress on ideals as liberty, equality, and self-reliance.

• Bloomberg: Ford Motor Co. took an unusually human approach to fixing its stubborn quality problems: It brought back what it calls “gray beard” engineers to help train younger staff and to reprogram the artificial intelligence tools that weren’t getting the job done. Over the last three years, Ford says it has hired 350 veteran engineers, many of them former employees and others from suppliers, to help address seemingly intractable quality woes that have cost the automaker billions.

• USA Today: One more Supreme Court story: the Court ruled Mississippi can count late-arriving mail-in ballots, upholding a state law allowing ballots cast by Election Day to be counted if they’re received within five days. Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s three liberal justices in backing the law.

• AP: Joseph McGrail-Bateup, an Australian professional air conditioner cleaner and honorary town crier, has been recognized as the world’s loudest person. Guinness World Records acknowledged the 58-year-old Canberra resident recorded the loudest ever shout by an individual. He yelled “now” at 122.4 decibels. That broke the previous record of 121.7 dB set by Northern Ireland schoolteacher Annalisa Flanagan in 1994.

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Thanks for reading. See you in the comments.