This has been a hard summer to love, but Washington found a way.
The season’s horrors — climatic, geologic, political, economic, military — are easier to catalogue than its subtle redeeming qualities. The word many people use to sum up the summer of 2011, often after a long pause and a slightly crazy grin:
“Intense.”
There hasn’t been a singular outrage, rather, a relentless pounding. AAA credit downgrade? Oh. Earthquake? Wow. Hurricane? Okaaaay.
Take the weather. Three daily heat records — 100 degrees or higher — were set at Reagan National Airport. But the bigger problem was that the heat refused to go away, ever, even at night, said Carrie Suffern, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The average temperature of 81.1 degrees for June through August was the second-highest since people started counting in 1872. There were unprecedented streaks of several July nights when the low was 80 degrees or higher.
Not to mention “the daily water torture drip-drip-drip of the debt-ceiling debate” in Congress, said the Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, dean of Washington National Cathedral. “That was a major psychic burden. Combine that with the intense heat wearing on everybody, and our economic woes. . . . We kept saying, ‘We don’t know whether plagues are coming next, or frogs, or boils.’
“And yet, there is an amazing human capacity for resilience and grace in the most difficult times.”
Trust a man of the cloth to find a hint of salvation in suffering. With spires decapitated by the trembling earth Aug. 23, the cathedral is a symbolic ground zero for Washington’s relatively minor quake damage. Last week, the edifice was closed behind fences as crews in construction hats worked in the sanctuary.
In the quake’s aftermath, hundreds of offers of empathy and aid poured into the cathedral community, Lloyd said. The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the Washington Hebrew Congregation made space available for services.
Such are the “grace notes” that Lloyd says will go down in the cathedral’s history of this difficult summer.
That’s how Washington survived. Helping out, making do. Searching for meaning, maybe a bright side. Grace notes, even though it was a summer of second-bests — scaling back vacations because of the economy, staying inside because of the heat.
Extravagance was downgraded to luxury, luxury to comfort, comfort to “but it’s free.” A trip to New York with one Broadway show instead of four. A day at a free public beach instead of a pricey amusement park. “Enjoying my kids” became an all-purpose answer to, “How are you spending your summer?”
“This is the first of the month, and look at these chairs,” Terry Nelson said Thursday, shaking her head over the empty seats in her Jasmine’s Hair Gallery on Martin Luther King Avenue SE in Anacostia.
Not a single customer at lunchtime on the day of the month when her regulars typically come in to get their hair and nails done.
“People are being very selective about how they spend their money,” said Nelson, a hearty woman with yellow hair smartly cut short. “The weather adds to it. You think about Armageddon.”
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