What's in Dave's Head

We got dressed for dinner and Ubered to Fiola, a prix-fixe restaurant on Pennsylvania about 10 blocks from the hotel. It’s a fancy restaurant with great food and incredible service. I think there were as many staff as diners, and the dining rooms were full. As we ordered drinks, I leaned over to Donna and said, “Bernie Sanders is here,” and glanced in his direction, over her left shoulder. Wilford Brimley, the Quaker Oats TV guy Now, I see celebrities all the time. At our church in tiny Clarksville, Maryland, for instance, I regularly see: Bill Gates Kevin Costner Joe Girardi      Granny, the cartoon owner of Sylvester the Cat and Tweetie Pie (I know she is the real Granny, because she sometimes gives the readings, and her voice, as well as her countenance, right up to the little white bun on the top of her head, is spot-on) Donna doesn’t share my keen eye for celebrities. At the restaurant, with her usual skepticism in such case...

Part I: A little history about the Willard Hotel Over the long Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, Donna and I celebrated our anniversary by visiting the nation’s capital. It’s a great gift to have common interests – learning about history and art, exploring, and walking around places either familiar or strange.   We have stayed in D.C. for our anniversary before, and the weather is always freezing cold with a biting wind that comes off the Potomac River. Despite the conditions, each day was, as Marge Gunderson, the police investigator in the movie Fargo would say, a beautiful day. We arrived on Saturday a little before noon and checked into the Willard Hotel, one of the great hotels in the city, and maybe of any city. Its history is rich and its location on Pennsylvania Avenue at 14 th Street, wedged next to the Treasury building, which itself sits next to the White House, is prime. Power exudes from these parts.   The Willard opened in the 1840s after a row o...