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Gary Tischler • September 13, 2012

The day after the first man to walk on the moon passed away at the age of 82, nothing much had changed at the Air and Space Museum on the National Mall. The Command Module Columbia, which carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon and back could easily be spotted among the flying machines, missiles, rockets and other modules that greet you as you enter the museum.

To the left and at the east end of the hall was a display which included an identical version of the Lunar Module Eagle which Armstrong calmly and expertly maneuvered to a safe landing after the original mapped landing spot had been overshot. Here, you can see an idea of the surface of the moon, two astronauts in white suits and visored, descending to the dusty lunar surface.

It was the end of summer, and sporadic storms and black clouds sped across the sky over the mall. The museum was busy—it contains, after all, everything you want to know about air and flight, wings and space and Apollo 11 and Sputnik and the space race. But there was on this quiet season-ending day in which people fussed and whispered about a hurricane heading for Tampa and the Republican National Convention, not much here to tell you that a unique man had passed from earthly life, except for the presence of Columbia and the moon landing exhibit which are here every day. No trumpets sounded, and no floral wreaths were laid.

People did hover around Columbia and peeked into the impossibly cramped quarters through the glass, and families gathered around the moon exhibit. Every now and then, groups of three or four, usually young men, or fathers and grandfathers, stood by, peering at an 11-minute movie on the flight of Apollo 11, a movie every bit as riveting as the much more expensive ones about the Transformer wars.

A docent offered up information on the moon flight. People came and went, stood and gawked, older persons explaining to younger one. “Did that thing go to Mars?” asked a five-year-old. “No, son, it went to the moon.”

Neil Armstrong went to the moon, and said words enshrined in schools, in national memory, although to his dying day, he did insist that he might have somehow misspoken or been misheard. “That’s one step for man, a giant leap for mankind” is what everyone thought they heard. Armstrong said he had intended to say “one step for a man,” but apparently he had not. The difference is, of course, how Armstrong saw himself in the scheme of things. That momentous step was the climax to an ambitious, inspired American push to space flight and to the moon, sparked by a Soviet Sputnik leapfrog ahead of the U.S.. The space race was one of the by-products of that early Russian success, which included putting men and a dog into space, but the result was entirely America at its best.

The quiet Sunday would have been appreciated by Armstrong, who was one of those men who hated the spotlight for its own sake. It is not that he was taciturn or had nothing to say: obviously he said just the right things in the right tone. He simply did not like the idea of being a hero, a hero figure and its present dilution, the celebrity. It’s fair to say that he could have entered politics and succeeded, as did fellow astronaut and Buckeye John Glenn, who did not get to the moon, but managed to become, late in life, the oldest man in space. Nor was he so quiet that he resembled President Calvin Coolidge. Armstrong had a smile that could brighten up dark spaces, as he showed from an in-flight photo and, in another, the exuberance he displayed with his family, the object of adulation and a ticker tape parade.

He was by profession an engineer who lived and loved to fly—he flew for the first time with the help of his father at the age of 16 near the farming town of Wapakoneta, Ohio, when he skipped school and went with his dad to go up in a Ford Trimotor prop lane. He had a pilot’s license at the age of 16; you could guess where his life might head.

Armstrong who flew combat jets in Korea, became the first civilian to become a part of the second group of men selected to be NASA astronauts for the U.S. space effort. He was a brilliant engineer and a cool customer at the control of space crafts. Listening to his voice on the tape of the landing—the module was running out of fuel (30 seconds left)—is as exciting as any contemporary thriller. The voice is steady, rolling off time and numbers, the presence of dust, and the simple “Houston, Tranquility base here.” “The Eagle has landed.” There was no way we could tell that his heart and pulse were running as fast as a rabbit, although his heart rate was recorded at 150.

Every bit of that flight was dangerous and its success a triumph of technology, stout hearts, talent and a nation’s willingness to put enormous resources into the effort. It happened on July, 20, 1969, a turbulent time of dissent and discontent in America with an unpopular war raging. Richard Nixon was president, as John F. Kennedy’s inspiration and dream for the moon flight became a reality.

Thereafter, Armstrong said he would not fly again. There was a biography, some rare interviews, but he entered into a successful, and for the most part, contented life, becoming a teacher and then a consultant or board member for various businesses, which had an engineering connection. As someone in some imagined future might say, “lived well and prospered.” Like all the astronauts—Sally Ride, the first woman to go into space who passed away recently comes to mind — Armstrong stayed in the mind and memory, and because his were the first, perfectly-fit human steps on the moon, the name lasted longer, even if it became hard to conjure up the image of his face.

He lived a life—early in his first marriage, he lost a two-year old daughter, and he had other children and many grandchildren and married twice.

Chris Cutrofello of Alexandria, Va., and his friend Cara Treglio of Greenbelt, Md., seemed to capture the feeling of those who remembered, even though neither was alive when Armstrong made such a history.

Treglio had placed a small, yellow flower on top of the information display block for the Columbia module. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wanted to bring a bouquet. I just thought we should come and show our respect for him today.” Cutrofello said, “I’m not sad. Usually, you know, when somebody dies, you’re sad for them, and for their families, but not in his case. I didn’t know him. I wasn’t alive then. But, hey, look at him. He made me think of what a hero should be. He was a hero for us and the rest of the world. And he had a wonderful life.”

“I mean, come on,” he continued. “The guy WALKED on the moon.” [gallery ids="100955,130687" nav="thumbs"]

Robert Devaney •

Workmen were seen at O and Potomac Streets pressing down the last stones for the O and P Street Rehabilitation Project which began two years ago this September. A closing ceremony is set for mid-September to celebrate the completion of the work, which inconvenienced residents of O and P Streets for a time. The project closed streets and sidewalks, caused dust and noise and took away parking spaces. All of this is nearly over.

O Street and P Street, west of Wisconsin Avenue to 35th Street, are the last spots in Washington when trolley tracks can be seen. This tracks and street stones have been refitted or replaced, along with street lamps and other curb work. The decision was made to preserve the streets as they were to maintain the historic look of Georgetown. Sett stones were used instead of the original cobble stones which had moved or drifted along the surface of the street, making driving difficult for some.

There is just a bit more to do. Here are questions and answers from the project’s website — FixingOandPStreets.com — about the remaining work:

What is the blue-gray dust left on the roadway? Does it serve a purpose?

The blue-gray dust material left on the roadway does indeed serve a purpose. This dust continues the process of filling the gaps between pavers, as the initial filling settles. In this final stage, the dust is repeatedly swept over the area, wet down and swept over again after it dries. This material will be swept off the roadway once it is determined that gaps have been adequately filled. This process also applies to the brick sidewalks.

How about the grout for pavers and the rails?

The area between the rail track and the granite pavers must be filled in with an elastomeric grout. (See rendering below.) This is needed due to how each of these very different materials behaves under various weather conditions and other physical processes. Temperature and moisture greatly impact how the grout pours and cures. Ideally, the temperature should be between 70 degrees and 80 degrees, with no rain for 12 to 24 hours. Areas of the project already open to traffic may experience temporary closures to allow for grouting when the weather allows for these conditions.

How about new street lights?

As part of the O&P Street Rehabilitation Project, street lights within the project zone are being updated or, in many cases, added. In response to public concern for safety, the finalized lighting plan increases current lighting by 40 percent while still preserving the historic feel of the area. You may notice a new light fixture or foundation for a new light fixture near an existing light. In many cases, the existing light will be removed at a later time. Many of the new foundations are covered with orange drums. These drums are in place for pedestrian safety and will be removed once the light poles are installed. Once the new light has been installed and is operational, should the brightness of the light interfere with your evening routine, please contact us. DDOT will send a team to evaluate the light and will be able to make recommendations on how to lessen the impact to your home. Different options could include a shade or adjusting the wattage. Please keep in mind that there could be unusual brightness the first night or two once the new lights are turned on. Per DDOT’s policy, any existing street lights designated for removal will stay turned on until we verify all of the new lights are fully operational. Once they are deemed as such, the existing lights designated for removal will be turned off.

Georgetowner • September 6, 2012

Celebrate Pattern with FLOR and Annie Elliott

August 30th, 2012 at 06:00 PM | Free | events@­flor.­com | Tel: (202) 944.5057 | Event Website

FLOR, creator of inspired modular floorcovering, has been busy opening stores in hip, design-oriented neighborhoods across the U.S. Now they’re hitting the streets, discovering the innovative work of independent designers and their unique interpretation of patterns. They uncovered a variety of perspectives and material and before long, started seeing pattern everywhere. Join FLOR in Georgetown to meet local interior designer, Annie Elliott and other members of her team at “bossy color”. Learn about their work and share some sips and sweets with other pattern design enthusiasts.

Address

1037 33rd St NW, Washington, DC

Bank of America’s Museums on Us

September 1st, 2012 at 11:00 AM | Event Website

Celebrate Labor Day weekend with Bank of America’s Museums on Us and enjoy free access to two Washington D.C. museums: National Museum of Women in the Arts and The Phillips Collection.

Museums on Us is a national program and includes more than 150 leading U.S. cultural institutions across 91 cities, benefiting Bank of America and Merrill Lynch customers from coast to coast. Photo ID and a valid Bank of America/Merrill Lynch credit or debit card must be presented. One free general admission limited to cardholder at participating institution, excluding fundraising events, special exhibitions and ticketed shows the first full weekend (Saturday and Sunday) of each month. Not to be combined with other offers.

Address

1600 21st St NW, Washington, DC 20009

DMV Dance Fitness Festival 2012

September 2nd, 2012 at 12:00 PM | Tel: 3013189379 | Event Website

Welcome to the first annual “DMV Dance Fitness Festival 2012” in the nation’s capital on Sunday, September 2, 2012 from noon to 5:00pm.

The Festival will feature a main stage with special presentation, music, artist performance (TBD) & more.
The event will be cover by different Medias, as UNIVISION, TELEFUTURA & local radio stations.

“DMV Dance Fitness Festival 2012” presents a unique opportunity for all small businesses and large corporations, as well as government agencies and non-profit groups to reach out to the community in the Washington metropolitan.

The Festival is FREE to the public and Family oriented.

Address

140 L St SE, Washington, DC 20003 (10 Water Street Southeast Washington, DC 20003)

Team In Training Sports Meeting

September 5th, 2012 at 07:00 PM | FREE | Tel: (703) 399-2942 | Event Website

Are you ready to make a difference in the fight against cancer? Then train with the best sports team in town; we’d love to have you! Our free information session is open to the public and is happening in Washington, DC! We will be at the Woolly Mammoth Theater Company on September 5th at 7:00pm to discuss our upcoming races, registration, and training tips. It’s guaranteed to be a great time. Interested yet? Go to our website or find us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/TNTNCA. See you there!

Address

641 D St NW, Washington, DC 20004 (Woolly Mammoth Theater Company)

Fashion’s Night Out- Georgetown

September 6th, 2012 at 06:00 PM | events@georgetowndc.com | Tel: 202.298.9222 | Event Website

FNO Georgetown will be DC’s most monumental fashion bash of the year, featuring exciting events at over 100 stores, restaurants and salons. FNO Georgetown is presented by the Georgetown Business Improvement District and made BizBasH’s 2011 list of Washington’s Top 100 Events. We’re proud to bring this exciting global event to DC!

Address

Georgetown, Washington DC 20007

Heels & Wheels

September 5th, 2012 at 05:30 PM | $20 for Members $35 for Non-members Event Website

A FUN event to educate and connect women and men, while learning about car safety, maintenance and purchasing. Please join Duke Street Speedy Lube for an automotive educational event. Enjoy BBQ from Mango Mike while visiting with our event sponsors for additional automotive information, games and fun activities, including a NASCAR simulator and racecar.

Address

4510-4580 Duke St, Alexandria, VA 22304

Gary Tischler •

It has come to pass in the information-internet-youtube-social network-instant info-your phone-is-the-world world —that the major networks have practically given up on covering the Republican and Democratic conventions in an election year.

These days, with the nominations in hand and the vice presidential candidates chosen, the networks figure that they can only yield about an hour in the 10 p.m.-to-11 p.m. time slot to the conventions. So, Mitt Romney had better keep it short tonight.

It’s true that conventions have become scripted to a fare-thee-well, but that doesn’t mean they’ve somehow become uninteresting. They may not make news per se, but they offer an actual look at a whole party — not just the competitors on the primary trial (Romney and the mediocrities he vanquished), the Tea Party demonstrators or Newt Gingrich’s ego writ large — which now consists primarily of tea party members who don’t like to demonstrate but think along very conservative lines.

And speeches are, if not like a “WWF Raw” smack-down, or the Olympics for that matter, still pretty entertaining tests for those who are giving the speech. If you want to learn what each party really stands for, just read the Party Platform, adopted by each party at its convention.

We also listened to speeches sticking to the prime time way of doing things, which includes talking heads talking right through most of former Secretary of State Condoleeca Rice’s compelling speech. We heard Ann Romney, the candidate’s wife, attempt to put a more human face on her husband, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie give the keynote address, and freshly picked vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the GOP’s and the GOP right’s conservative and ideas man make a name for himself in his first opportunity to make an impression with the kind of national audience provided, oddly enough, by the networks.

Here’s something the media really ought to quit doing: they ought to stop telling us what each speechifier must do and accomplish in his or her speech. Let’s refrain from saying that Mitt Romney is about to make the most important speech in his life, which it clearly isn’t. An example of a much more important one and much shorter one was his “Will you marry me?” to his wife-to-be. Such faux expectations are either left unfulfilled or are greatly exaggerated. I will simply cite Peggy Noonan’s bubbling enthusiasm for Sarah Palin when she debated Joe Biden in 200—or, for that matter, the gentlemanly raves received by the candidate’s wife after having to meet such a high standard in the first place.

Ann Romney did not manage to make her husband any more human than he has appeared so far. It may in the end be an impossible task, given that the presidential candidate himself has pretty much indicated he is not Mr. Personality. She praised her husband exuberantly for his constant support during her illnesses, and for being the man he was when he returned her home from their first date. “He made me laugh then, and he still makes me laugh,” she said. This may be new—so far, jokes have not been Mitt’s forte given the response to the birth certificate joke.

“It’s all about love,” she said. In this, her love for her husband came through like a giant torch as genuine as can be. Did she connect to the women voters out there, the regular folks? That’s a debatable question. I think recognizing the difficulties single mothers or struggling stay-at-home mothers have making ends meet is not the same thing as empathy and imagination, the kind that says: you get it because you did it.

As for Christie—well, Romney was a wise man in not picking him to be his running mate. Christie, charismatic and big of girth and ego, managed to give a rousing look-what-I-did-in-New Jersey speech without mentioning Mitt Romney until the speech was nearly over.

Romney, it appears, also made a wise pick in choosing Ryan to be his running mate. Ryan made an effective—if also accompanied by devil-in-the-details moments—critique of President Obama’s battles or lack of battles in solving the jobs crisis and righting the economy from a persistent level of stagnation.

He did something else: he managed to give a sharp illustration of how to give a GOP convention speech. The speech, delivered with sharp jabs but without malice, laid out Obama’s apparent failures on such matters as health care—”We’ll repeal it”—jobs, the middle class, small businesses, the stimulus and so forth. Ryan paused to deliver heart-felt, deeply personal and touching anecdotes about his own life—the death of his father, a grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease, working his way through college, the love and support of his wife. He peppered the speech with praise for the man who’s on top of the ticket, including noting their differences. Check out their playlists, he urged us, noting that he appears to be a heavy metal rock fan, while Romney plays “the kind of music you hear on elevators.”

He also managed to give a speech that were full of “mistakes” or outright falsehoods, including an anecdotal tale about an auto plant in his hometown of Janesville, Wisc., which he said Obama had promised to keep open. The factory, he said, closed within a year, suggesting that this was another, more poignant in a long line of broken promises on the part of the president. In fact, the factory closed in 2008 during the Bush Administration. There was the usual battle over who’s taking money away from Medicaid—it appears both might be, but not according to Ryan. He also blamed Obama for the lowering of the country’s S&P rate, for not supporting the findings of the super committee on the economic and debt crisis. Ryan did not support the findings, either.

The factory story is potentially telling, because here Ryan took an event and made it a tool to tell a tale that wasn’t true. It’s one thing to make “mistakes” or even “mis-speak,” my favorite parsing for the word, “lie.” It’s another to say something knowing it’s not true, or knowing it’s a half-lie, or knowing it’s wrong. It’s, at best, not being able to resist a temptation when it presented itself.

Gary Tischler • August 30, 2012

A hurricane is coming, and it’s heading straight toward Florida and Tampa — with the possibility of causing havoc with the Republican National Convention.

Well, isn’t that just swell. Here we are on the anniversary of last years’s East Coast earthquake plus hurricane weather, and we’re going to likely see what we’ve been missing all summer: a hurricane (or two) and its aftermath.

Haven’t we suffered enough?

It used to be that “The Long, Hot Summer” and “The Endless Summer” were the titles of movies, the one starring Paul Newman, the other about surfers. Now hear this: this has been “The Long, Hot Summer” and “The Endless Summer.”

Yeah, the Olympics were fun, but guess what hasn’t been fun. The 2012 election campaign. It may be, without any serious competition, the worst election campaign in U.S. history. It’s one of those curious things that combines an ability to lead in terms of the people and groups in charge of the campaign, with an ability to mislead when it comes to the rolling barrages of television ads coming from both campaigns and the various super PACs and surrogates.

Most of the ads play fast and loose with the truth—the way-out-of-line Bain ads from the Obama camp, the continued Romney ad flatly stating that President Obama had ripped out the work requirement from the welfare reform act which is still running in spite of fact checks that refute the claim—in a way that basically rolls with the idea that if could be true, or is even a little bit true, well, then, it is true.

Most of the campaign, whether in terms of the candidates themselves, or surrogates and super PACs, has been entirely negative. Both sides have whined about the attack ads, with spit and spitballs in their mouths. Romney has tried to focus on the economy and a portrait of Obama as a job destroyer. Obama has painted Romney as a member of the super-rich class who is out of touch with the middle class, let alone anyone below that.

Neither candidate has provided a valid plan or a suggestion that bi-partisanship was in order because there’s an economic crisis still going on. There are people out there running who have thrown in the towel on working with the other side and go on the attack instead.

Even the selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate hasn’t helped Romney as much as it might have. There’s some obvious differences between the two men’s approach to medicare, the budget, the deficit and the Ryan plan. The result—a little smudge of a move in the polls, and a strangely muted Ryan on the campaign trail. As somebody said to me recently, the selection rollout resembled one of those hot courtships that goes the way of “I love you, you’re perfect, now change.”

Depending on which poll you believe, or if you believe any polls, the election at this stage is essentially a dead heat with some polls showing Obama ahead and others have Romney ahead or gaining.

The conventions—if they’re not disrupted by hurricanes—will gain some standings in the polls for both camps but not much. It’s the stretch run that counts.

Just when the Republicans felt they were making some progress—along came Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican who was ahead in his bid for a Senate seat in Missouri. A Tea Party stalwart and devout Christian and anti-abortionist, Akin, asked about abortion in case of rape came up with the memorable phrase “legitimate rape” and the claim that women wouldn’t get pregnant in a rape because “the female body has ways to shut the whole thing down,” according to doctors.

Well, all Limbaugh broke loose. Akin backed off from his claims and even apologized to some extent, but by this time Romney and company suggested that he give up his candidacy. This will not sit well with the Tea Party wing of the party and has created a firestorm within the ranks on the eve of the convention. Akin has refused to quit, saying he’s in the race to stay. And Republicans convention platform includes a plank that calls for making abortion illegal even in the case of rape, as if they needed to say that.

Well, that’s a boon for Bill Maher, no question, and should be a big boon for President Barack Obama. But it’s been then kind of year: just when either candidate manages a smile on his face, something wipes it off.

Just this week, the Congressional Budget Office issues a strong warning that the country will head into a recession if a series of automatic budget cuts and tax increases are not avoided in January. Then, a Colorado-based poll based on several economic factors which has predicted the last seven election results correctly said that Romney will win the election handily, sweeping the battleground states.

Moreover, Newsweek, in one of those Tina Brown shock covers which have been the trademark of the magazine of late, ran a cover story that said Obama did not deserve to be re-elected: “Hit the Road, Barack.”

And Obama’s dog is overweight.

It’s been that kind of year for everybody, not just politicians. The summer has been marked by yet another in a series of mass shootings, one at a Sikh temple, another at a mall movie theater in Aurora, Colo., for a midnight screening of the new “Batman” movie. All sorts of things were written and said, but the wonder is that the outcry about guns was ever so muted, again showing the political power of the National Rifle Association.

And Mother Nature gave us pause, as we dismissed the Mayans’ so-called prediction of the end of the world. Record forest fires raged, with deaths, and unprecedented destruction of property and natural assets all over the West. Record 90- and 100-degrees-plus temperatures were the norm everywhere. Drought has ruined a large part of the country’s corn crop, and threatened the livelihood of already strapped farmers, and storms wreaked havoc across the nation, amidst reports of melting in the Arctic and habitat loss and the dwindling numbers of animal species. It was enough to make even the most die-hard doubter of climate change worry a little. But only a little.

Robert Devaney •

New undergraduates will begin arriving at Georgetown University’s main campus over the weekend. Students can register Aug. 27 or 28, and classes will begin Aug. 29. Among the freshman class will be Prince Hussein bin Abdullah of Jordan, according to the news blog, Vox Populi, of the student-run Georgetown Voice. It reported: “According to a confidential source from the university, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan was here to discuss her son, the prince of Jordan, and his future at Georgetown as an incoming freshman.” Queen Rania and university president John DeGioia were seen meeting at Healy Circle on the main campus Aug. 20. (Jordan’s current ruler, King Abdullah II, attended the university’s School of Foreign Service during the 1980s.)

Meanwhile, Georgetown University got some top grades from the Princeton Review. It got the number-one ranking in the category, “College City Gets High Marks.” (No mention in the town-gown relations category, however.) It came in second under the category, “Most Politically Active Students,” just behind American University up the road and ahead of number-three George Washington University, which had held that number-one rank last year. Georgetown pulled a number-ten ranking in “Most Popular Study Abroad Program.” These rankings and other details can be found in the Princeton Review’s “The Best 377 Colleges, 2013 Edition.” The schools received grades in 62 categories, based on surveys of 122,000 students.

Last week, the university mourned the passing of one of its retired presidents, who last performed his pastoral duties at Holy Trinity Church. Rev. Gerard Campbell, S.J., president of Georgetown University in the 1960s, died Aug. 9 at the university’s Jesuit Community at the age of 92.

Campbell, the 44th president of Georgetown and one of its youngest, led the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit institution of higher learning from 1964 to 1968–difficult years for America, which saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sen. Robert Kennedy, urban riots and student protests against the Vietnam War.

The university recognized Campbell’s encouragement of “student service to residents in Washington, D.C.” and noted that he reconstituted the board of directors to include its first lay members. He also created the first university senate comprising faculty and administrators. Born in 1919, Campbell received degrees from Loyola University, Chicago, Woodstock College, Fordham and Princeton University. Entering the Society of Jesus in 1939, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1951. After Georgetown and other colleges, Campbell served as director of the Woodstock Theological Center from 1979 to 1983. Until his retirement in 2004, he was the founding director of the Jesuit spirituality center based at Holy Trinity Catholic Church on 36th and N Streets, where

Robert Devaney • August 29, 2012

A female jogger was sexually assaulted along the Capital Crescent Trail July 25 around 9:15 p.m. U.S. Park Police responded (including EMTs and a helicopter) to the crime and are still investigating.

According to Park Police, “The victim in this case was jogging on the trail and the suspect approached the victim from behind, and then placed the victim in a choke hold. The victim lost consciousness and awoke with her pants down and the suspect fondling her. The victim screamed and the suspect then fled on foot toward Fletcher’s Boat House.” The attack took place on the trail close to the 9.5 mile marker — “north of Three Sisters [Islands] in the area of Water Street, NW,” police reported.

Park Police described the suspect as a black male with medium complexion, 5 feet 8 inches to 11 inches in height, “approximately 180 to 200 pounds; muscular/fit build; dreadlocks, three to four inches long; light scruffy beard; wearing a white shirt, possibly a tank top or cut off sleeves, and wearing long jersey type black shorts; no weapons used.”

The police seek the public’s assistance: “If you come in contact with any individuals that match the above descriptions, please take the appropriate action, document the contact thoroughly, and notify Detective Glenn Luppino, 202-610-8750; reference case #12-36735. U.S. Park Police Tip Line: 202-610-8737.”

The Capital Crescent Trail — which begins in Silver Spring, Md., and follows the abandoned right-of-way of the Georgetown Branch rail line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad — parallels the C&O Canal towpath as it bends into D.C. and ends at Rock Creek and Thompson Boat Center.

Gary Tischler •

If Stacy Keach and Michael Kahn were cowboys, they might have been Larry McMurtry’s beloved Texas Rangers Gus McRae and Woodrow McCall from “Lonesome Dove,” sitting on a porch, whittling, telling stories of chasing Comanches and stealing horses from Mexican vaqueros.

They’re not cowboys, of course. Keach is an actor of considerable renown, familiar to theater-goers as well as television and film audiences, who has actually played Western anti-heroes like Frank James, brother of Jesse and Doc Holliday in the movies, while Kahn, the artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company, has, to the best of my knowledge, never directed a Western.

On the stage at Harman Hall in the continuation of Kahn’s Classic Conversations as part of the company’s 25th anniversary (Patrick Stewart, Kevin Kline and James Earl Jones were previous participants), the two men, in a free-rambling, loose and informal evening of theater talk, were nothing less than veteran, wise men of the theater—old friends who know each other well and had worked together—talking theater tales.

Being who they are, men of the stage and of Shakespeare, first and foremost, their stories were not about cowboys, Indians and cattle drives, but about the hazards of the “Scottish play,” taking on the monstrously challenging part of “King Lear” after you’ve had a stroke, the nuances inserted by Kahn in Keach’s Richard III walk at the Folger Elizabethan Theatre, playing Nixon and Mike Hammer, although not at the same time, it’s stories about inspirations, admiration, being a young man on Broadway. For Washington audiences, Keach is a familiar figure, having performed in Arthur Kopit’s “Indians” at Arena Stage in the late 1960s, at the Kennedy Center, and under the direction of Kahn as “Richard III” when the company was still at the Folger’s Elizabethan Theatre, where he also did “The Scottish play,” aka “Macbeth,” a play so fraught with potential calamity that actors sometimes dare not mention its name, as legend would have it.

More recently, Keach has appeared in a touring company of “Frost/Nixon,” playing Nixon and in the Goodman Theatre/Shakespeare Theatre Company production of “King Lear.” That’s not to mention a memorable film and television career that include a starring role as a boxer in John Huston’s “Fat City,” a cult classic seen by few but admired by many; a Doc Holliday role opposite Faye Dunaway in “Doc”; Frank James to his brother James Keach’s Jesse in the classic western “The Long Riders”; playing Hemingway in a television mini-series (“I was too young for the part at the time,” he said); and the insouciant, dashing, mustachioed with a cool hat private eye “Mike Hammer” on television; Sergeant Stadanko, nemesis of Cheech and Chong; plus a role in the upcoming “The Bourne Legacy.”

More importantly, he played “Hamlet” three times, played “Macbird,” a biting satire on Lyndon Johnson by way of the Scottish play, and Buffalo Bill in Arthur Kopit’s “Indians,” on Broadway and at Arena Stage. His stage and especially Shakespeare bona fides are impeccable and, if you’ve had the luck to see him, memorable.

“I love Washington. I love coming back here. It’s such a great place,” Keach said. “Is that pillar still at the Folger?” Kahn replied in the affirmative, and both recalled working together in “Richard III” with affection, laughs and forgotten insights. “With Richard, it’s the affliction and what you do with it,” Kahn said. “Remember, as the play goes on, I had you limping at first, and then as he gains more power, he limps less and less until he gets the crown and is walking normally and confidently.”

If you saw Keach, you remember Richard’s self-awareness, his slyness and ability to terrify, a performance every bit as powerful as Laurence Olivier’s film version.

“Those men were my idols, Olivier, Gielgud, Redgrave,” said Keach, remembering himself as a young actor. “That was the standard, until Brando came along and did Marc Anthony and startled the whole world. And I think you could see that there were two distinct styles: the classic British way, letter perfect every time out, and the American way, full of emotion and more spontaneous.”

“It’s something I learned early on and still believe,” Keach said. “You have to find a way every time to go out there and say the lines as if it’s the first time you said them. It’s not always pretty. It’s not always good, but it’s always new and fresh.”

“Your father was an actor, wasn’t he?” Kahn asked. “My dad—he was a Stacy, too—was in radio, you know, doing the old parts like ‘Tales of the Texas Rangers,’ and it was wonderful, the sound effects, the voice, creating a whole world in the electric air.” Even if the theater had been dark, you’d recognize Keach’s voice, too. It’s distinctive and raspy. His voice has got some age on it now—he’s 71 now—but it’s full of tough flavor, chewy and distinct.

Names and tales emerged between the two—the woman who got an Oscar nomination for “Fat City,” singer Judy Collins (You two were quite a romantic item in the ’60s, weren’t you?” Kahn mentioned), working with Joe Papp, playing Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet,” remembering Eastern Market while doing Richard, wanting to play Teddy Roosevelt.

And Lear. “Tell us about the stroke,” Kahn asked. “Well, I wasn’t a major heart attack or anything, but it was serious, sure, and everybody worried, including myself,” Keach replied. He wanted to do Lear here. His Polish-born wife Magliosa Tomassi did not. “She worried about me,” Keach said. “We had all these doctors around, most of them advising against. But one, I think, said, ‘Oh come on, let the guy do it, he really wants to do it.’ ”

So, we got to see Keach at the Harman, howling on the moor, in a blood-drenched, gutted Serbian landscape, going mad, and it was: Utterly unforgettable.

Gary Tischler •

I want to say thank you to Gore Vidal on the occasion of his death.

I haven’t laughed so hard and for so long in a long time.

I don’t mean to suggest that Vidal’s death is a cause for laughter—far from it. His death, in fact, is a great loss to civilization, certainly the kind that Vidal himself celebrated, a literary, well-read, cultured, multi-, if not, metro-sexual, well-educated and curious society which made a fetish as well as a virtue of being tolerant of what others might call vice. He was a Renaissance man, a literati, a writer, novelist and artist, a wit and wag, irascible and often venomous. He was a man who would have been entirely comfortable among the Classical Greeks, the Epicureans and Stoics, the Romans, the Borgias, the Augustans of both 18th-century England and Ancient Rome.

Ultimately, he was a through-and-through American of a particular, individualistic kind, a one-of-a-kind. Ironically or not, he spend his boyhood here in Washington, D.C., where his grandfather was a U.S. senator, and he attended St. Albans School. (Years ago, Vidal purchased a grave site with a tombstone engraved with his name and year of birth in Rock Creek Cemetery.)

He was, lest we forget, a very funny guy.

You could do worse as a stand-up comic than to just pout and shout out some of Vidal’s more punchy quips, which showed his hostility for politicians—shared by millions these days—democracy as it has come to be, ignorance, and the culture of celebration and celebrity. As in his own self-appraisal: “always a godfather, never a god.”

“A narcissist is someone who is better looking than you are,” or “The four most beautiful words in the English language are ‘I told you so.’ ”

But let’s be serious: Vidal, an avowed bisexual talked and wrote about the subject of sex frequently (“Myra Breckenridge” comes to mind as a novel and to the mindless as a movie). But his legacy, besides his enormous ego and wit, will be his historical novels, which pretty much everyone: gay, straight, elitist or general public, read and pretty much liked. I know I did and learned a lot and marveled how his erudition and encyclopedic knowledge managed to be stuffed into novels that were readable and moved at the speed of gazelles.

He wrote two historical novels about the ancient world: “Julian,” about the Roman emperor called the Apostate, who made an ill-fated (and much admired by Vidal) effort to roll back the tide of Christianity in the Roman Empire and “Creation,”, a book with an all-star cast of emperors, warriors and philosophers in the struggle between the Greek/Macedonian world and the Persian world and their world views. In this book, the effete, artistic, polytheistic Persians are the good guys in their war against the not-much-for-bathing, war-like Greeks.

But his major achievement—besides the huge collection of his essays, “United States,” which won a National Book Award in 1993—were his series of novels about American history and politics, notably the first salvo called “Burr” about the wildly adventuresome, brilliant and erratic Aaron Burr, who managed to mortally wound Alexander Hamilton in a duel and be the focus of a treasonous plot. In Vidal’s novel, Burr is also the father of President Martin Van Buren. The books—they included “1876,” “Empire,” “Hollywood” and “Lincoln” as well as two novels set in more contemporary Washington—were dense, revisionistic (some of the founding fathers are found to be wanting, including Jefferson and Washington), eye-popping and probing. Only Lincoln manages to escape Vidal’s caustic bouts of insight. The 16th president remains, as he has to historians, enigmatic and deeply human.

In addition, you could catch the venal, power-hungry grift and drift of American politics in “The Best Man,” the 1960 play by Vidal, revived on Broadway through Sept. 9.

Actually, Vidal’s major achievement may have been himself. As much as he abhorred the idea of the writer as celebrity, that’s what he became, a public figure, thus making himself vulnerable to hot debates, attacks, scurrilous comments of the kind he used himself, minus the wit. He wrote screenplays that certainly ran the gamut —“Ben Hur” but also “Caligula,” a triple-X film about Ancient Rome, starring the likes of Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud and Malcolm McDowell, that included Penthouse Pets doing what Penthouse Pets do if let loose at a Roman orgy.

Vidal was uncommonly blunt and honest about the foibles of others but also his own. And he—like Ronald Reagan—thrived on television, and he ran for office several times (U.S. Senate and House). Such ambition he shared with his friend and nemesis, the garrulous, hyper-Hemingway male totem Norman Mailer. Mailer was often quarrelsome, always brilliant and full of b-s and wrote as much as Vidal. They got in a fight on television once and at a party, and Mailer—whose only other victorious brawl occurred against an ex-wife—knocked Vidal down but not for the count. Vidal quickly rebounded: “As always, words fail Norman Mailer.”

Words never failed Vidal even near the end.

Talk show host Charlie Rose asked Vidal on his program, when Vidal, resembling a model of an ancient—in both senses of the word—Roman senator, what the first words of his obituary might be.

Vidal furrowed his amazingly vibrant brows, thought a minute and looking straight at the camera said: “It came to pass ….”

Well . . . It came to pass that Gore Vidal passed out of this worldly life July 31 at age 86, into some unknown place, which if it exists, might surprise him but also please him. He should remember that those of us who have read his books will miss him, knowing there will be no more of them and no more of him on this earth.

Gary Tischler • August 27, 2012

On the face of things, you can’t think of two persons who are more different in their outlook on life, in the impact of their lives, than Helen Gurley Brown and Nellie Gray. Love them or not, agree or disagree, approve or disapprove, both women had a huge impact on their times, and how women thought of such matters as sex, success, family, conception, and abortion and life itself.

Both women died this past week—Gray, the founder of the uncompromisingly anti-abortion, pro-life movement at age 88, Brown, the author of “Sex and the Single Girl” and the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, at 90. It’s hard to imagine them in the same room, or at the same gathering together, and yet, their shadows, if not their own lives, mingled and touched at certain nexuses of American life, especially for women.

In terms of seriousness and immediate and ongoing historical significance, it’s fair to say that Gray’s legacy is profoundly important, whatever side of the abortion issue you stand on. In 1973, Gray, a devout Catholic with a good government job, responded to the news of the Supreme Court’s Rowe vs. Wade decision by spearheading a March for Life in protest the following year, and the march, complete with arrays of white crosses to signify unborn babies, the marchers wearing red roses, continues to this day. The attendance of those marches, often met with pro-choice counter-demonstrators, have varied but have been counted to be as high as 70,000. It’s also fair to say that the marches and the pro-life movement in general have influenced the national consciousness and been a major part of the pro-life and anti-abortion movement, which has steadfastly opposed and fought—often with violence on its fringes—abortion and abortion rights for women. In today’s culture, Rowe v. Wade remains under attack with the ascendancy of the conservative and so-called social issues of the Christian right.

You suspect sometimes that the anti-abortion activists in choosing to call the march a “March for Life,” projected a positive image, and managing to stick a “pro-abortion” tag on the choice side, when in fact, the issue is one of choice and civil rights, per the court’s decision. It’s doubtful there’s a soul to be found that celebrates the procedure of abortion.

There’s no question, however, about Gray’s sincerity or her principles—she saw abortion as the killing of an innocent human being, as she put it—and that was that, leaving no room for exceptions let alone nuance, or bothering with the consequences of such a stand, which were often violent.

Brown’s legacy isn’t so obvious, if you discount the pages and content and cover of Cosmopolitan, which are all about thin, fashion, sex, keeping fit and young, and being free to make choices, which includes sex without marriage. Brown, who came from a tough, hard-scrabble upbringing in Arkansas, came to be a quintessential kind of New York chic urban woman, and with her book, “Sex and the Single Girl,” which basically suggested that sex and sexuality might be part of a purse package for success, along with brains, ambition and drive, and the right hair and makeup.

Her book—like Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique”—influenced a whole generation of young women, although in a somewhat different way. And those women came to take sides in the battle over abortion rights, and many chose against the Life forces as espoused by Gray. Free-wheeling sexuality, along with the pill, revolutionized American culture, and it, too, had its consequences, which converged on the battleground over abortion.

It is easy to be a little snide about Brown and Cosmo, and it is easier still to put her more in with her male counterpart, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who proposed that men could have their cake and read his magazine as well as the centerfold. The Cosmo girl, in a way, could become the mates and partners in the same dance where you could find playboys who read Playboy.

Both Brown and Gray are connected, like two activists pulling on the same rope from opposite ends. Both have living legacies: Cosmo, which Brown had long ago stopped editing, remains on newsstands and much the same, and the battle over abortion still rages, having outlived the founder of the March For Life.