The Mahatma on a cold November afternoon standing tall across from the Indian embassy. At least you know that you-know-who, even as he upends more than just a few things in D.C., cannot touch this noble monument.

Mysteries of the District of Columbia. Under Connecticut Avenue; or, How Do You Get Up There From Down Here?

Such a sumptuous fall season in this District of Columbia that maybe I’ll just have to call it Autumn.

These folks are surely ante- and anti-diluvian.

Yesterday I toured “Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam, 1600-1750,” a great show at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. My favorite piece was this hand-colored engraving of a rather abstract pineapple by Maria Sibylla Merian, who visited Surinam in 1699.

At least the monuments are still there — but are they? The only solid thing remaining is the sky.

Afternoon walk in the forest of symbols.

American architecture right here in D.C.: far truer, far lovelier, than the White House folks could ever even fathom.

No Kings in America

Not sure what to make of this imperfect colorization, but it makes me happy to know that once upon a time — circa 1940, actually, in Santiago de Cuba — my mother wore a very red hat.

Sorry, America, but you just can’t go from simplicity to megalomania and still expect to be considered a serious country.

Para las y los que todavía no se enteran, Cristóbal Colón no descubrió ninguna América y el llamado Día de la Hispanidad no es sino un trasnochado delirio transatlántico.

Glad to see we’re united against the “compact.” For one, I love USC’s cosmopolitanism. I’m proud to have directed dissertations by students from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the U.S., and every term I love having awesome students from China, India, and many other places. Fight on!

The National Gallery of Art was open only until yesterday at 5:00 p.m. Stopped by to say goodbye to these lofty spaces that will remain out of bounds for the duration of the shutdown.

“I intentionally layered different kinds of architectural references […] — materials that mirror the Washington Monument, a facade motif that draws from Black ironworkers of the American South, a form derived from Yoruban art — to show how African influences are fundamental to America.”

What can I say?

Ok, I only learned this word recently, but it does exist.

A novel about an umbrella born at the Rose Cafe, Venice, c. 1995. She was so big that she never traveled, but at times she sheltered her owner around L.A. She now lives in Washington, D.C., but things are so awful she’s decided not to leave the Alvar Aalto stand where she has been placed. It’s home.

It rained a lot the other day, so now the babbling brook in my local woods is growing. Nature, the gentlest mother.

Got a little lost in Soapstone Valley Park — the woods right across from my building — but found a trail that ended right by the Ann and Donald Brown House, Neutra’s sole design in D.C. If California were its own republic (sigh!), this would be its ambassador’s residence.

Pleased to say that I have now posted 5000 images on Instagram. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done: an autobiography of sorts but also a record, I hope, of what Julio Cortázar called “la maravillosa riqueza planetaria” — the wonderful things our world contains.

What?! The New York Times has definitely lost its good word list.

Saw five or six National Guardsmen sitting on a step by the sidewalk on Constitution Avenue by the National Gallery’s West Building. They looked bored. Inside, as cool as always, Desiderio da Settignano’s Christ Child does not approve of the President’s dismissive approach to, er, our Constitution.

At the Peet’s on Montana and 14th in Santa Monica, enjoying (truly) a concoction termed Havana Cappuccino, defined as containing “sweet condensed milk and a cinnamon kick.” How does Havana, an impoverished city if there ever was one, remain alluring to capitalist imaginings after all these years?

My husband and I would visit art museums all the time. He found it funny that I’d always ask him what his favorite work in a room was. I loved the fact that he’d always buy postcards of the works he loved. This Woman with Green Hat — so lovely, so lonely — is for you, my Jim, wherever you may be.

I knew there were trees across from my new building in D.C., but this feels a little like the forest primeval.

My husband, Jim, who died almost a year and a half ago, thought babies and dogs were uniquely funny. I have no doubt he would’ve found this canvas (and easel) by William Leavitt at MOCA simply hilarious. I can’t go to a museum without seeing things through Jim’s eyes, or without thinking I do.

In awe of Zumthor’s new building for LACMA. Reminded me of the Therme Vals for its solid gray playfulness and sense of gravity. Can’t wait to see the museum’s richly cosmopolitan collections displayed in these lovely rooms.

D.C. Friends, the Félix González-Torres show at the National Portrait Gallery ends Sunday. I was there yesterday and found it deeply moving: the lights that can’t be turned off, the candy you can eat, the piece titled Passport whose white papers you can roll up and take with you, the blue mirror…

Ten years ago same-sex marriage became the law of the land in the United States, but *twelve* years ago the Supreme Court “dismissed an appeal related to California's Prop 8, effectively overturning the ban on same-sex marriage in that state and allowing marriages to resume.” Jim, my partner … 1/2

Zumthor's LACMA building opens next year, but Christopher Hawthorne has already toured it and published the first review, noting "the remarkable sensation that Zumthor has succeeded in producing an all-encompassing architecture, a concrete cocoon that shuts out the chaos of the surrounding city."

Libros | Books.

Wordle 1,451 1/6 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Super-quick visit to Washington, D.C. Walking around all you hear is “Elon Musk,” “Epstein” — and online, as you know, it’s all about those lofty Republican tropes: accusations of ingratitude; threats of incarceration and deportation. Good thing there’s always this little Thai place in Foggy Bottom.

Final destination | Van Ness – UDC.

A Green Umbrella concert for the ages at Disney Hall. Yie-Eun Chun’s violin concerto was awesome, especially the passacaglia. And so was Unsuk Chin’s “Gougalōn – Scenes from a street theatre,” plus conductor Soo-Yeoul Choi was magnificent.

My fiftieth Queen Bee, as golden as honey.

Good energy.

This is a garden in Washington, D.C., but this morning it felt a little like the steppes of Asia. It’s Embassy Day in the city, and I stopped by the super friendly Embassy of Kazakhstan.

City of origins and final destination, maybe.

The Cubans are coming to ... the Kennedy Center!

Many years ago, my mother wrote down her memories of our departure from Cuba in 1963. I’m happy to report it’s all about me. Here she tells of the stopover in Gander, Newfoundland, as we flew from Havana to Madrid. I was crying because I wanted my penniless parents to buy me a red toy car.

A total surprise that I found all twenty-three words; these were the letters from hell.

Mario Vargas Llosa en Machu Picchu. Enorme escritor latinoamericano. Descanse en paz.

Bernie is right. All senators should be saying this all the time.

Visions in Los Angeles. Nine years ago, on a cloudy afternoon, I saw these monks on the old Gold Line train from Little Tokyo to Union Station. I wonder where they are now and whether I can just join them wherever that might be.

Is there a time machine to take me back to this motorcycle race near Havana, far away and long ago?

Jim adored Handel: elegant, lofty, deep — just gorgeous. Last week I saw “Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno” at Disney Hall. Yes, time may pass, all may end in disillusion, but that night I had the loftiest seat in the house: the last row in the orchestra section that seems to float like a boat.

Spring break in Washington, D.C. What a fine city our nation’s capital is, no matter what the powers-that-be may think.

This is my grandmother in Cuba in the mid-1960s. Waiting for years to get permission to leave, she listened nightly to Voice of America, her sole link to the outside world. That VOA should have been suspended just weeks after a Cuban American became Secretary of State is disorienting and painful.