04-JUL-A-2

 

SPIT AND POLISH FULL-DRESS MARINES,

THE GATHERING OF THE DR/HAITI GROUP

 AND SUPPLIES FOR THE MEDICAL MISSION

OF THE JUL-B-SERIES, AND THE FOURTH OF JULY,

 ALL ROLLED INTO INTERFERENCE ON THE LARGE ELDP WRITING ASSIGNMENT FOR EARLY JULY

 

July 1-5, 2004

 

            I went to the Eastern Market section of the Southeast DC to rendezvous with the students who are seeking to accompany me to the DR/Haiti, and we got acquainted in Ellington’s on Eighth Street, a fundraiser for the Haiti mission’s MAP packs.  I passed a number of snappy US Marines in full dress uniforms on the streets of the inner city around eighth street which turns out to be the Barracks of the US Marines selected by Thomas Jefferson and begun in 1801.  They have a very formal full dress Evening Parade on the parade grounds with all the trimmings, including a salute to the official mascot “Chesty” and the firing of artillery salutes, and the posting of the colors, and their retiring, etc, with two Marine bands—a jolly good show, and one that makes me ever so glad that I do not live in or participate in any such regimented community that must go through exquisitely precise drills for the sake of doing just that.  The silent precision drill team that juggles fixed bayonets on M-1 Garand rifles is always a crowd pleaser.   It is highly impressive, and like much of the drill, entirely obsolete.   I had sneaked out after I learned that from seven o’clock to nine is a waiting period for sunset, so during that time I met with and talked with the students at the Ellington’s and went back after the marine drill was over with canon fire.  I will go the next time in my Marine Corps Marathon shirt.

 

            I made my morning run with Joe on July 4th, as is our holiday habit.  I had helped him getting some of the funds for the family to accompany him to Athens, and he and I went for an eight mile run—the longest he has gone for a while since he is concentrating on sprinting for the events in Athens.  I also filled out his medical forms for the competition.  I came home and waited through another heavy rain that threatened to dampen quite a few of the fireworks displays.  I then had a chance to meet Mark’s mother Julie.  Ben had come in on Friday, and Mark and Ben have been doing the Washington scene.  Ben is a tall handsome fellow and a bit more outgoing than Mark, and is working as a law clerk in Phoenix, in the firm he wishes to join next year.  So, his clerkship is one long interview process for a dozen weeks.  The brothers have not been together for some time, so Been expressed much gratitude and they had planned, despite a very tight schedule to come by with their mother Julie, despite a rigid time table between Brunch on Sunday and the meting with Mark’s girlfriend Kate’s parents with whom they were going to watch the fireworks.  I was planning on going to Trappe MD and also had a possible return for the Aukward family fireworks accompaniment, but we were damped out on the latter.

 

            Julie was very gracious and was effusively grateful for my having Mark living here, without which, she said, he could never have done this Congressional unpaid internship.  She was eager to see where Mark lived, and so they had the very high speed Derwood house tour, guided by Mark.  Julie made references to “Virginia’s kitchen,” and after the Game Room was especially intrigued with the “Hunt Room” theme of the Den and Powder Rooms since she is a rider fox-hunter herself.  She has likewise been hosting a house guest, I believe, which is Virginia, but she has surely talked with her since I have, and I made no such references to Julie.  Ebullient, even in a spray of fresh rain, they packed up and out to see the parts of DC that they would review with Kate’s’ parents, so her DC Derwood visit is as compact as I would imagine many of the others have been, but a good one.

 

            I drove to the Eastern Shore, and after visiting with Craig and Carol and catching up on a very unusual relaxing weekend for them, (the following day he did a half dozen cases, most major and one a Whipple), we did very little.  We went to Salisbury where a fourth of July party was held at the home of the friend whom I had last visited on my last trip out—for a fortieth birthday party at that time.  We went on to Chester and Carol Jones’ passing about fifty deer coming out to browse the bean fields at twilight.  We were going to go to check on the possibility of collecting some long distance venison on crop damage permits.  As we drove out to the ten minutes we had behind the Jones’ farm, we saw a deer at five hundred yards.  At that moment Russ Elwell called.  He was coincidentally at the fourth anniversary of a meeting in Chautauqua, which I reminded him, and for which I had written a rather careful letter, later dismissed.  As we were trying to line up on the deer, I was talking to Russ.  Craig shot, but the single shot .308 jammed the brass which could not eject, so we were over for the night.  WE went to visit Chester and Carol, and then went home.

 

            On Monday the holiday the fifth of July, I ran along the fields of Trappe, seeing box turtles and the usual wildlife of the run.  We also saw the dam which had been washed away just before Craig moved in and for which he bought cement bags to get the reconstruction started, dropping them into the breach.  That stirred up the neighbors who had been promising to get to that reconstruction, and so they had a bulldozer CAT 9 go into the mire and clay, and promptly get stuck.  AT the time I left, they were attempting to get a second bulldozer to pull out the first.  If they secure the dam, the backup pond can re-fill behind the Schaefers’ house.

 

            It was a lazy day, as I labeled photo albums to catch up—from being four albums behind, I am now back up to date—and then grilled chicken, before  another brief shower.  I had listened to a book on disc, which was on their satellite TV station, so I watched a bit of TV—not something I do more than an hour a month—and fretted over not getting started on my research paper, due July 29, when I will have been in the DR and Haiti for two weeks.  So, I will try to get back to real work, while still putting in a fair amount of time running the DC Mall and other running routes. I have watched a bit of the Haiti theme in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Mall as I ran through it.  

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