Below is the text of my monthly “Editor’s Letter” in the new issue of Washingtonian.
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It’s easy to forget what a wealth of experiences we have here in our back yard.
When I visited friends in Paris this spring, they suggested we drop by the Louvre for an hour before brunch. That’s not a museum to treat lightly. The first time I visited Paris several years ago, I showed up the moment it opened and raced to the Mona Lisa before waves of German and Asian tourists descended. I treated it as a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so after seeing Leonardo’s masterpiece, I walked through the galleries for five more hours, trying to drink in as much as I could.
This year as I considered my friends’ seemingly crazy suggestion, I had a not particularly brilliant epiphany: If you live in Paris, the Louvre is in your back yard—it’s like Washingtonians visiting a Smithsonian museum or dropping by the National Zoo on a beautiful weekend morning.
So my friends and I spent an hour wandering through the Louvre’s exhibit on Giotto and then stopped into the gallery holding Poussin’s “The Four Seasons.” My friends’ two boys, used to such Sunday outings, played with their toys on the floor of the galleries as we browsed, oblivious to the priceless works around them. We saw a Renoir and some Monets, and as I stood before two Canaletto paintings, the artist’s brilliant light shining from the canvas across three centuries, I had another realization: In 2011, the National Gallery of Art hosted a huge Canaletto show—and when I went down to the Mall to see his scenes of Venice, I didn’t have to pay 11 euros.
After returning from Paris, I found myself on a lovely spring evening at the Marine Barracks on Capitol Hill as dusk fell, watching a military “tattoo” by His Majesty the King’s Guard band and drill team from Norway. The crowd of officials broke into laughter as the first drill was set to the James Bond theme, the plumed guards and their bayoneted M-1 rifles twirling in tight formations to the familiar jazzy tune.
Following the performance, we walked up Barracks Row—which is almost unrecognizable from the downtrodden neighborhood where I lived a decade ago—and stopped at Ambar, a new Balkan restaurant, for a dinner of cheese pie and grilled duck. (Food writer Jessica Voelker gave it a good review in our April issue, in case you missed it.) Not bad for a Thursday evening out.
This month we celebrate those special local experiences that are easy to overlook in the jumble of daily life. There’s a good argument that Washington is the most exciting it’s ever been—a fact reflected in how hot the real-estate market is right now. This is a city and a region where people want to live.
From innovative dining to new shopping to old favorites at our museums, Washington has a lot to celebrate this summer—beginning with the Fourth of July fireworks on the Mall. In keeping with that patriotic spirit, we feature a striking photo essay about the US Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps on page 68, taking us inside one of the most historic units of the military.
There’s also an important investigative report by contributing editor Alexandra Robbins (page 60) exposing a shocking shortage of vital nutrients for newborns. A daily drama of rationing and shortages is playing out in the neonatal intensive-care units of local hospitals—and the government is letting it continue even as children are dying. The shortages have been linked to more than a dozen deaths recently and are causing complications that doctors say they’re used to seeing only in the developing world.
It’s a story that will leave you wondering how this can be happening to our most vulnerable babies just miles from the White House—and all the other sights that make us so lucky to live here.
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