At the Arlington laundromat

and other assorted observations

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In the CVS at the end of our block (are there any blocks without a CVS?) they sell bite cream off the shelf which has so much steroid in it you would have to visit a doctor to get hold of it in the UK. We are using it with no qualms.

Watching daytime television here, you see adverts for mid-life medical products, insurance, and food—the food adverts just never end.

The homeless people are much more visible than in London, and they have much more stuff.

When we visited the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, a group of National Guard soldiers on the Mall gave our children army stickers. They were polite and amiable and joked with the kids.

Even the plain crackers are made with honey. Lettuce is sold in boxes. Californian fruit is superb. The median quality of most things is higher than in England.

Although Arlington is very built up, and in some parts almost treeless, it has many nooks and crannies of prettiness, many leafy areas, and a lot of parks and playing fields. The children’s parks make much better use of the space and include wooden armchairs for the parents, something often lacking in England. My wife and daughter described an insect so large and rattling I have only seen things like that in animated movies.

Although rent is high and has been rising, especially since Covid, for a comparable amount of money you get something much bigger than in London, usually in nicer condition, and with a washer-dryer, air-conditioning, and cheaper utilities.

The airplanes make little or no disturbance because they fly in along the river.

Americanism are creeping into our speech (on the weekend) just as we immediately became used to their filter coffee, which we prefer to the Americano you get in England.

I thought I needed a Social Security Number before I started work, but in fact I cannot register for one until the first day of my job. This is perhaps the only administrative problem I have faced. Everything is easier here. Uber seems cheaper.

Capitol Hill Books provided me with: The Wealth of Nations, Of a Fire on the Moon, a Library of America edition of Robert Frost’s poems with letters and lectures (this simply had to be purchased at my earliest opportunity), a John Dickson Carr mystery, and the Hibbert biography of Samuel Johnson. It was just as good a shop as I remembered and I need to live as far away from it as possible.

At the laundromat, I saw far more men than women. By the time I left, it was about even. The young men looked at their phones while the older men stood like supervisory fathers watching their machines. I was one of two or three white people out of a group of twenty or thirty. Very little English was spoken, apart from by a man who seemed only to speak to himself. I did my laundry, including drying, for about $5. About two-thirds of the machines were in use at 10am on a Saturday. Many people brought their own little bottles of detergent, decanted at home. One man kept refilling his bottle at the sink and pouring the water into the machine. The two children who were there did all their chores willingly and pleasantly. Everyone there worked fast and according to habit, so it was easy for me to learn what to do by observing them. I asked two people for help: one seemed unable to reply, one was very friendly and showed me where to add the detergent. The Lutheran church across the road is enormous. Next door is a pawn shop advertising “CASH FOR GOLD”.