Thursday evening ramble and roundup

There's something about the terrace of the Kennedy Center, especially right before a show. People are sitting, standing, walking there, eating, talking, enjoying the view. I came out during intermission and caught the sliver of the moon that was lit. If you looked closely, you could see the outline of the entire orb, or maybe I imagined it because I knew it was there. But it looked real. Do you think John Glenn, when he catches sight of the moon, thinks, "I know that place; I've been there"?

The audience was well-behaved. I wonder whether symphony audiences are generally better behaved than theater and ballet audiences? They really were there to hear the music, not whisper or sleep. It was impressive.

After the show, I won the metro lottery, no thanks to standing lines of people on both escalators. It was the new escalators. At least all the escalator outages over the years were worth something. Anyway, I just barely caught the train, and found myself angry at myself for being angry at the standers. Really, I blame Metro.

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Don't make your kids eat when they're not hungry.

My mom has made several attempts lately to drag me into a conversation about Israel. Normally she rants and I ignore her, because, as with everything else, there's no point in responding. So to my surprise, she actually asked me why I wasn't saying anything. She also asked what I thought, did I agree? Did I agree with what? Did I agree that it was awful that people wanted to destroy the state of Israel. Yes, I agreed it was awful. And since it's mom we're talking about, I wasn't interested in adding a "but." I'm lazy; if I can't have an intelligent, or at least logical, conversation, I won't have a conversation. Like the writer of the above-linked article, I believe our parents had better get with reality.