Still Life with Robin: A Festivus Story

by Peggy Robin

The Cleveland Park Listserv gets its share of complaints about city services. That’s one of its reasons to exist, to give people a chance to air their grievances. (I’m writing this close to the Seinfeldian holiday of Festivus, December 23rd,  dedicated to the Airing of Grievances, so it’s the appropriate time of year for this subject.)

Here’s my complaint, complete with surprise ending (wait for it). About a week ago I noticed that the deadline for the city to vacuum up the leaves on our block had come and gone. Piles of leaves that the residents (or their paid helpers) had dutifully raked to the treebox strip were still there. DPW leaf crews had been spotted sweeping up very similar piles all along Newark and Ordway Streets, just a block away in each direction, but somehow they had skipped over our block. I decided to report the omission and request the return of the leaf truck.

It should be a simple matter, I thought, to fill out a service request form at DC.gov, but it was a bit trickier than I thought. On the pull-down menu of problems to report, there was no choice for “uncollected leaf piles.” The closest thing I could find was “uncollected yard waste.” I selected that, but in the free-form comments box I made clear that the leaf truck needed to return to vacuum up the large piles of leaves on the corner; I was not asking for our regular sanitation crew to pick up bagged leaves. I completed all the parts of the online form, submitted it, and in return received a tracking number.

Compliments, Not Complaints, for Helpful Strangers

My very first column for "All Life Is Local" generated some interesting reader feedback. One of the first reactions came from a reader who said she's sick of hearing complaints, even comedic complaints put to music and sung by a choir. She writes: "I think we should be more positive and focus on the beautiful things in life... I'm tired of the complaining." Point taken: So I thought with this second column, I should heed her call --um, her complaint, actually--and present some anecdotes about people who have been helpful to strangers. Fortunately, two other responses I received to the column fit the bill nicely.

First, from Lois on Woodley Road: During the height (depths) of the snow, I watched my husband try to dig his car out with our flat-edged, dented, aluminum shovel. Fitfully slow. So I found my pointed garden shovel out back. I was handing it to him when I noticed a young woman across the street trying to dig out her car with a tool as pitiful as my husband's, only plastic. Before giving my shovel to said husband, I punched my way around the ice near the woman's tires, hoping for a quick liberation. It took just a few minutes, and her huge smile and thank you's flooded the street. Soon, too, my stubby garden shovel had freed my husband's car. I then handed the woman my shovel for her to try a few more whacks at the ice, for good measure. More profound thanks followed, in fact, way too much for my small gesture. A few days later I found a lovely, hand-made valentine in my mailbox, along with a bag of Lindt chocolate truffles from the young woman. Now that's appreciation!

And next, from Charlotte on 38th Street: When we rescheduled our tickets to The Rivalry at Fords Theatre, after the snows, the theatre didn't have two seats together, so I was sitting by myself. Behind me, I heard someone say to his companion, "Once at Ford's Theatre we heard, oh, what was his name, he was a cabinet secretary in the Eisenhower administration and then president of U. of Oregon?" Amazingly, since I attended U. of Oregon, I knew the answer! Despite my reluctance to interrupt, I turned around. The three of us, all from greater Cleveland Park, talked avidly about 1960s Oregon. How unlikely is that? One benefit of the snows: more willingness to connect. Oh, the answer: Arthur Fleming, secretary of HEW under Eisenhower.

That leads me to my own little story about a helpful word from a stranger, similar to Charlotte's. I was waiting in a long, slow-moving line with my daughter, and to pass the time, we were discussing her upcoming test in US history, which would cover the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. I remarked to my daughter that when I was in high school during the Johnson Administration, all students had to take a course in Civics, which required us to memorize the names of all members of LBJ's cabinet, and all 9 justices of the US Supreme Court, along with the top positions of both parties in the House and Senate. I aced that test, and I still remember most of them to this day. My daughter pooh-poohed this sort of course, saying any teenager or adult living in Washington who is the least bit interested in current events could name the people in these positions without having to study. Go, I challenged her, name all 9 justices of the current court. She rattled off the first five without hesitation. With some thought she came up with a sixth name. After a bit more pondering, she named a seventh. Then she was stumped and could not come up with another name. I was able to think of one more. But for some reason neither one of us could summon up the last name to complete the court. We were about to give up in frustration (since neither of us had a smartphone with us to allow us just to Google the answer), when a white-haired gentleman in front of us in the line turned around and quietly said one word: Stevens. Thank you, Mr. Random Retired Washington Lawyer Waiting In Line! Only in DC!

And finally, the most helpful responses I received to my column came from readers who alerted me to the existence of Voices of Washington, which is organizing a Complaints Choir of Washington. So far there's just a very spare web site, http://www.voicesofwashington.org/contact.php , with little more than a name, phone number and email address on the "contact" page. But if you'd like to get involved in this effort, that's clearly the place to start. I'm sure the main contact person would welcome any and all helpful strangers willing to come together to make this happen for our city. (My thanks to Susanna Beiser for being the first to pass along this information.)

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Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv on March 5, 2010.

All Life Is Local, debut column: A Chorus of Complaints

This is the premiere of a new feature on the Cleveland Park Listerv (www.cleveland-park.com), a column called All Life Is Local. It will appear every Friday and will be a sort of grab-bag of a column, with stories from the neighborhood, odd little quirks and anecdotes that people send in, and musings about this and that, not necessarily all neighborhood connected but all in some way adding a bit of flavor to the stew that is our local life. The inspiration comes from former House Speaker Tip O'Neill's observation that "All politics is local," but that's just a jumping-off point, as the column won't be limited to politics or even just to this particular local area. Today's column, for example, is more about Chicago than DC, but the subject is universal: Complaints. Of which there is no shortage here in Cleveland Park.


A Chorus of Complaints

Ever since Snowmageddon, I've been hearing a loud chorus of complaints: about snow, about cabin fever, and shoveling, and people who don't shovel, and people who save parking spaces with lawn chairs, and from those who put those lawn chairs in their shoveled-out spaces moaning that space-takers don't respect the amount of work it took to shovel out that spot. We've had complaints about city snow plows that never arrived, followed by complaints about the city snow plow that did arrive but left a giant snow barrier in its wake. You've read all these things and more on the listserv. (You haven't? Just visit Cleveland-Park and click on the "join this group" link at the top of your screen.) Add to that all the other complaints of everyday life, snow or no snow (late night noise, early morning noise, misdelivered mail, people with too many items in the 15-or-less line, signs that say "15 or less" when they should say "15 or fewer," -- the list goes on and on until life itself seems like one unending chorus of complaint. What if somebody were to put all those complaints to music? Make them sound nice by turning our whines into an actual song? Well, someone already has. And not just one somebody with one song but a whole lot of somebodies, enough to make up a choir. And not just one choir either, but a network of them from all over the world. Where and how? On the Internet, of course. (Isn't everything on the Internet?) Take Chicago's Complaints Choir, for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvWVxHEaWDU

Want more? Pick your city or region from the main site of Complaints Choirs:

http://www.complaintschoir.org/choirs.html

I like Philadelphia's Complaints Choir, and the one from the "As It Happens" Radio Show of Canada. But some of the videos on the ComplaintsChoir.org site don't work – that's my complaint!

How can we get a complaints choir of DC? I'd organize one but I don't have a single one of the skills needed to assemble a choir, write and arrange the song, videotape the result and upload it to Complaintschoir.org. But somebody ought to do it! Isn't that the nature of complaints? That you always want somebody to do something? Until that happens, I hope these other choirs of complaint fill the void.

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First published on the Cleveland Park Listserv, www.cleveland-park.com, on Feb. 26, 2010.



Send me your comments, complaints, compliments, funny stories, yada-yada: AllLifeIsLocal at fastmail dot net