Falling Trees

 On the morning of Friday, August 20, the car in front of me made an oblique right turn onto New Hampshire Avenue NW from the left lane of 16th St. southbound. I followed him, for as he turned, I could see that a tree was down across 16th about half a block south of U St. Judging from what the cleanup crews left, its roots had simply given up, and it had fallen:

 On the evening of Thursday, August 26, I was merging onto 16th St. NW from 15th St., when I saw buses turning off on to Irving. This suggested that something was wrong up ahead, and I detoured to 14th. When I came back west on Upshur, I could see what was wrong: a tree was down across the northbound lanes, so northbound traffic was diverted through one of the southbound lanes. This tree did not pull up from the roots:

 I can't imagine what splintered it so.

Then on Saturday a tree was down across Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park between West Beach Drive and Wise Road. A fellow on a bicycle supposed that it had fallen about two hours before, say 10:30 in the morning. I did not look for how it had fallen, just stepped through branches and went on my way. A friend lost power for several hours when a tree fell across Dale Drive near Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring.

Found on the Carts

 About forty years ago, I lent to a friend my copy of The Geography of the Imagination, by Guy Davenport. Shortly thereafter, her household began a renovation. The last thing I heard of the book was that they believed they knew in which octant of the house it was. We lost touch, and I forgot about it. Some years later I saw the book listed in a catalogue, and bought another copy.

Last week, I was at Second Story Books to pick up a couple of books purchased through the store's website. My preferred way to the store leads up 20th St. NW, past the outdoor $4 book carts, and as usual I dawdled to look. There I found a copy of The Geography of the Imagination in its original North Point Press edition. Of course I bought it, for there is bound to be someone I know who could use a copy.

Now Second Story Books is not far from the house where my old copy went missing. Did I buy that copy for the second time? I think not: another book bought about then shows that forty years ago I was still writing my name and address inside front covers, and this copy is not so marked. Even it were, I would not blame the friend for selling it, if she did. Certainly I have books on my shelves given or lent to me, with their provenance forgotten, and probably I have handed some of them off to Goodwill or Carpe Librum.

Does Your Parking Garage Have One?

 On the way to retrieve my car this evening, I noticed this:

It may well have been there in the morning, and escaped my notice because I hurried past it to the ramp, a bit distracted by the rainy morning.

Over the last fifteen years, I have seldom driven to work. Since our offices reopened in July, I have usually walked in. But today the rain was coming down hard, I was urged to drive, I drove. I imagine that the buses were much delayed, for there was a tree down across 16th St. NW between U and T. Cars wishing to continue south on 16th from U turned on to New Hampshire Avenue, and returned to 16th south of the tree, but at least the first couple of turns would have been tight for a bus. This afternoon, there was nothing left of the tree but a neatly sawn-off trunk on the west side of the street, about 20 degrees from the horizontal: I suppose the roots just gave up.

 Maybe next week, if I remember, I'll ask the parking garage attendant why there is or was a piano on the second level.

Robert Kagan, RIP

 The historian Donald Kagan died on August 6. The newspapers I read have not run obituaries in print, though Politico had one on-line. Yale, where he taught for many years, did publish a thorough obituary on-line.

Of his work, I have read only Thucydides: The Reinvention of History, which is concise, closely argued, and very well written. His sometime student John R. Hale credited Kagan with the inspiration and title of Hale's Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and Birth of Democracy. I suppose the proper tribute to the man's memory would be to locate and read more of his writings.

La Pléiade Is 90

 The bookstore Albertine in New York, a project of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, emails to say that La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade is turning 90 years old this year. The books La  Pléiade produces seem to me admirable physically: compact for the number of pages, generally of a size to slip into a coat pocket, bound so that they don't shut on one. And I don't doubt that the editing is superb--the notes in the two volumes I have are full and informative--though I'm in no position to judge it.

Albertine is offering a deal whereby the purchase of two or more Pléiade volumes gets one a "magnificent Flaubert La Pléiade album". I have no idea what this album might be. However, it occurred to me that a Pléiade volume of Descartes might be a good thing to have. I checked, and found that Oeuvres et lettres cost $71, more than I had it in mind to spend. There are certainly other volumes published by the Pléiade that I wouldn't mind having. But if they are comparably priced--and a volume of Flaubert was $86--I think I'll hold off for now.

Graduate School USA

Perhaps three years ago, I considered taking Spanish-language courses at what I thought of as the USDA Graduate School. My recollection is that the offerings looked good, the prices were reasonable, and that I couldn't quite make the schedule work: the classes were offered near L'Enfant Plaza, a bit too far from work. I thought of the USDA Graduate School when someone asked about Spanish-language courses today.

The USDA Graduate School is now Graduate School USA, a renaming that I must have noticed and forgotten. The list of courses is much shorter, the areas of study much more focused on programs suited to the world of the federal government and its contractors, fourteen areas of study in all. To judge by the Information Technology courses listed, the courses are narrowly focused: in this case on Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft Word. The Microsoft Office programs are ubiquitous and powerful; but they make up a fairly small part of the information technology one might be called on to use.

Perhaps the old system was unprofitable, though I doubt the instructors made much more than would cover their commuting. Still, I think it a shame to see an old, ambitious catalogue with courses ranging from Arabic to Zoology so paired down. On the other hand, I wasn't keeping it in business, was I?

Reading to Sleep

When I have time, I like to run, and I like to read. The former, what with changing in and out of running gear, cleaning up, and so on, requires larger stretches of time, which tend to be most available on weekends. Reading I can fit into bus rides or comparably short periods, but again, the time for serious reading is more available on weekends.

 Running leaves me for a while a bit tired for reading. This was the case forty years ago, when the distances and speeds were greater, it is the case now. A slumped posture, as on a couch, brings sleep on quickly. Reading at a table, with better posture, may or may not defer it. The matter read makes little difference: history, philosophy, poetry can all make me drowse.

 Robert Lowell wrote the poem Falling Asleep over the Aeneid, not as of an experience of his own, but in the voice of an old man in Concord, Massachusetts. My copy of The Mills of the Kavanaughs is misplaced, probably lost, but the Poetry Foundation kindly makes the poem available. Probably I have fallen asleep over the Aeneid, but certainly my dreams would not have been so colorful or learned.

Disk Space

 My wife needs a new laptop. The old one is slow, which I attribute largely to its having a hard drive rather than a solid-state disk (SSD); Microsoft must know that we don't all have SSDs, but its software does not reflect that knowledge. The old one is also getting to be flaky, shutting itself down now and then at random, and reporting a low battery when plugged into the wall.

So the new laptop will have an SSD, but of what size? The most economical laptops seem to have 64 GB SSDs. On the one hand, that seems stingy, for the laptops issued at work have 238 GB SSDs. On the other hand, what would one install that takes up 64 GB? She's not going to download movies, install Visual Studio, etc.

This morning, while watching a patch not quite install, I had a look at the drive of the laptop I use, and found that it had 111 GB used out of 234 usable. In less than the two hours required for the patch installation to timeout, I was able to bring this down to 84 GB used. The largest files removed tended to be either installation programs, for programs now installed on the laptop or for packages on Linux servers, or else large database exports--I'm not sure why I used the laptop as the intermediary in moving database, but I did.

The 27 GB removed went easily, but I don't know that the 111 GB remaining could be easily pared down. I've used the laptop since March 2020. I have been reasonably prudent in what I installed: communications programs, emacs, Python, Oracle clients, GIMP, Git, and Go. Is 128 GB the minimum that one needs? Probably so, for her laptop has over 100 GB used also.