We made the rally !!!!!

We did the rally!

How fabulous.

We got there just in time to get a small patch of grass in front if a tv screen.
People from all over. 150,000???? As far as your eye could see.... Sane reasonable
funny people!

Yeah!

Washington DC day before the rally.

In DC now....after a sleepy ready train ride from NYC.....checked out the Sanity Rally site and happy to see such a cross section of people here....gray haired retired folks....young folks and those of us in between.

Deciding right now our plans for tomorrow. I don't think we have any chance of getting near the stage unless we get off at dawn...which we won't.

Happy to be here.....happy to feel the energy of so many people....happy to feel there is a choice.

Checking out the Rally Site in DC

One way Not to start a day

Fire. Fire. Leave your room immediately.

The bright strobe light starting flashing in our room and the fire
alarm wailed.

Let's go hon .....I actually thought my hub my sleep through this.

I put my long coat on.... Grabbed my purse and phone....my wild
Hawaiian leggings sticking out.

Opened the door and saw other confused folks. Shit we were on the
top floor of the hotel.

The lights were on so it was easy to find the stairs. There were lots
of foreign visitors and it was obvious one family didn't know what to
do.

Come come. I waves to them and they followed

Half way down they announced an all clear. We turned around and
climbed up 4 flights of stairs. We took along folks who looked
confused v y the message.

So at 230am.....with heart hammering ......I got back in bed.

Fat chance I could fall back asleep.

The alarm sounded a few hours later and I just pulled on clothes and
headed out with hub to catch a train to Nyc.

Sent from my iPhone

Salute

Tonight....a splurge....a wonderful dinner in the hotel.

Champagne....wine....and pure joy.....conversations to ease drop on!

The table next to us....old blue bloods....and a source of two hours worth of entertainment ....all Georgetown graduates....in their late 70's.....they sold their house in the Hamptons (and made a killing).....their son in his penthouse apartment in Trebeca is having a decorator "freshen" the place......oh that quick jaunt to Switzerland was so lovely this fall....and how tragic some of their friends are winding down in the party circuit...can you imagine....Doris has to schedule her fetes around her kidney dialysis appointments...Mon Dieu!

The couple to the left of us were French and stoic.....and a very spoiled little girl and her father.....two tables away..... made quite a scene because the girl demanded toast....not bread from the basket in front of her...but toast....and daddy decided to make a quite a scene because somehow the hotel had not anticipated his little darling's need for toast at 8 pm. So they made some toast and when the waiter brought the cherry-flavored sprite...she changed her mind and wanted apple juice.

Towards the end of our meal....the gentleman starting playing the piano softly.....and I was grateful....for a full and happy tummy.....a hot flush from excellent wine and champagne and the wonderful chef who sent a delicate plate of fine chocolates out as a apres dessert.

Tomorrow morning .....bright and early......down to Union Station to catch a train for NYC.

I found the giraffes!!

I found the giraffes......it was a small thing but somehow made me very happy.

When I was in Africa a few years ago.....in the middle of Niger in a place where there are only a few outcroppings of rock in a sea of desert.....we came upon the largest rock art carving in the world...the giraffes of Niger. They were beautiful but made you feel unsettled.....because the artists carved what they knew and lived with...meaning these creatures had walked here....when the desert was a savannah....lush with some trees and grass. How surreal to stand in a desolate section of the desert and see the remnants of a lush land that vanished.

People fear for the giraffes of Niger...they fear vandalism....theft....political destruction....so the National Geographic ordered three exact casts made of the rock art to preserve them. They keep one of the cast in their outdoor garden.

At first I couldn't find them....but then just when I was about to return to the indoor museum....I saw them. Tooo far away to touch....the replicas seem ghostly compared to the real rock of the desert.....but they were here....a bit of Africa and a bit of my history.....in a windy cold courtyard in Washington D.C

The cast in Washington DC

What I saw in the desert

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