Hey Anonymous! I'm NOT a Slacker!

For those of you who have been wondering (mom, dad, anonymous, cousin It), nothing has actually happened to aportablesnack. I’ve been off in the Provinces for business, spending much of July in the other Washington, specifically Spokane and Seattle, where it was even hotter than DC, jsut as Al Gore said.

I’ve also been busy writing other things, churning out intriguing new drink recipes that involve grain alcohol, letters denying parking tickets, and manifestos railing against DC’s street cleaning conspiracy. Such epicurean and epistolary activities, which in themselves consume a good amount of time for those of us who pride themselves on workmanship, lead almost inevitably to other time-burgling activities, such as temporary blindness, traffic court, and the designing of a contraption utilizing a system of pulleys and levers to de-boot ones booted car. (I never got past the design stage, although I did see a discarded boot with tell-tale pry marks next to the curb outside of Pollys.)

I’ve missed out on lots of hot topics over the past month or so: LNS, hot weather, public school Czars, pre-presidential cleavage, the usual blogger stuff. I’ve got nothing to add, which leads me to believe that perhaps I never did. And after so long a blogging lay-off, I wonder how I ever came up with even one idea for a posting. And now I know: I never did.

Street Cleaning Holiday

This month, DC announced that they were suspending street cleaning for the winter.
Which, of course, begs the question, DC cleans the streets? I’ve seen the signs announcing “street cleaning day”, but I always assumed “street cleaning day” was a vestigial holiday with mythological roots, whose origin is lost to the mists of time, a meaningless day that no one pays much attention to. Kind of like Ground Hog Day. Or Election Day.

I’ve never seen anyone in DC livery cleaning the streets in our neighborhood. But, like most ancient traditions, certain rituals are carried on, even after they have lost any connection with reality; in this case, DC still writes tickets for parking on the wrong side of the street on “street cleaning day,” and they still announce when they suspend and resume street cleaning.

Some day, these rituals will die out, too, just like the day-long massacre of ground hogs on Ground Hog Day. And hopefully, someday, “street cleaning day” will be tossed on the ash-heap of history, like the ancient Hanseatic “Baby Eating Festival” of yore, that no one hears much about any more.