Good morning, DMV! It’s Tuesday, Sept. 1.
Some friends invited me and my family for a picnic in their neighborhood park — Malcolm X/Meridian Hill. We went Sunday, as the beats of the drum circle — weekly since the Civil Rights movement — pulsed through the park. It felt wonderfully, wildly joyful and alive.
It felt to me like the 1990s in New York City’s Central Park, which is where I spent a fair amount of time during my college years.
Walking into the park, I was mesmerized by a group doing an amalgam of yoga and circus acrobatics. Acroyoga, my friend told me. One person, arms and legs spread straight out almost like a large letter X, was held aloft by the feet of a person lying on the ground. The person on the ground used their feet to maneuver the X-person, who spun in the air almost like a windmill making figure eights. (That sounds crazy, but I can’t think of how else to describe what I saw.)
Most memorable for my daughter was a person wielding a sword and slicing it through the air in a nearby stand of trees.
For my husband, it was the guys doing capoeira, which is what really reminded me of my years in Sheep Meadow in Central Park.
Words don’t do my afternoon in the park justice, and I neglected to take videos or photos. It was the drum circle — breathing, hypnotic, continuous — that set the tone. It was the perfect way to spend the last Sunday of summer.
Today, meteorological fall begins.
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📰 News around the DMV
Multi-day storm threat to open September, following active August (Capital Weather)
🎪 Things to do
24 things to do in the D.C. area this week and weekend (Washingtonian)
Where to eat Ethiopian food around the D.C. area right now (Washingtonian)
📷 Your joys
(Madi Scott)
Liz Scott, 47, of Kensington, Maryland, submitted this pic taken by her 13-year-old daughter, Madi, who spotted the butterfly on August 17 while shopping with friends in North Bethesda.
(Mike Finkelstein)
Mike Finkelstein, 64, captured this monarch butterfly on July 24 in his West Springfield neighborhood in Virginia.
(Pamela Bell)
Pam Bell captured this image on June 23 while walking her “country lane” in Gore, Virginia.
“The bright orange flowers of the butterfly weed attracted my attention. Then I noticed the beautiful butterfly on it. I softly approached the plant and shot the picture as the lepidopterist spread its wings,” Pam wrote in her submission.
Is it unwise to use so many photos from my stash of reader submissions? I have faith you all will help me replenish. Share your recent photos of life in the DMV here.
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