Women photographers 'shoot to kill' at the National Gallery of Art

Grete Stern (German-Argentine, 1904-1999), Sueño No. 1: "Articulos electricos para el hogar" (Dream No. 1: "Electrical Appliances for the Home"), 1949, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Does this remind you of the leg lamp in A Christmas Story? Total Wines sold out of the six-inch cocktail glass modeled after the leg lamp last Christmas. It and this photograph say to me: "Women are only objects, to turn off and on, at will. " What does it say to you?

It is hard to know where to begin to describe in a few words the outstanding picture show now at the National Gallery of Art which features works by 120 professional women photographers from around the globe spanning the 1920s to 1950s.

On these cold days, you can warm up fast with free admission (always) at the West Building and see what feminists from the last century were thinking.  They were more "advanced" and progressive than you might think.

One of my favorites photographs among the hundreds displayed is the "lamp lady" (above) made by Grete Stern, a Bauhaus student who emigrated to London in 1933 (or 1934, depending upon what you read) from Germany following the rise of Nazism. In London she stayed only two years before moving with her husband, Horacio Coppola, also a photographer, to his native Argentina. 

There, the couple's first show has been called "the first exhibition of modern photography in Argentina." Later, among her other achievements, Ms. Stern made 150 photomontages for a magazine column whose authors analyzed women's dreams. (I would like to see them!)

At the National Gallery of Art, October 26, 2021, framed by Tom's, 1974 by Alexander Calder (1898-1976), Calder Foundation/by Patricia Leslie

Ruth Orkin (American, 1921–1985), Ethel Waters, Carson McCullers, and Julie Harris at the Opening Night Party for "The Member of the Wedding," New York City, 1950, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ruth Orkin, the photographer who took the picture above, is, for some reason, missing from the catalog. (Copyright issues?) Her biography says she received her first camera at age 10, and at age 17, Ms. Orkin took a bicycle trip across the U.S., shooting pictures as she went.

In New York, she photographed celebrities and worked for major magazines. During worldwide travels, she met art student, Nina Lee Craig and together they published, "Don't Be Afraid to Travel Alone," about women traveling after World War II.

Ms. Orkin made two films with her husband and filmmaker, Morris Engel; one, Little Fugitive, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1953.

Lucy Ashjian (American, 1907? 1909? –1993), Savoy Dancers, 1935–1943, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Gregor Ashjian Preston.

The daughter of Armenian refugees, Ms. Ashjian, born in Indianapolis, joined the Communist Party in the 1930s and later graduated from the Clarence H. White School of Photography in New York City in 1937.  She was an elected officer and editor for several photographers' groups and was one of 10 photographers who helped produce the Harlem Project. For years one of her photographs was erroneously attributed to Aaron Siskind, according to the catalog.

McCarthyism forced her resignation from the Communist Party around 1949.

Hansel Mieth (German, 1909-1998), March of Dimes Dance, 1943, Collection of Ron Perisho.

Ms. Mieth moved to California in 1930 and worked with her husband, Otto Hagel, documenting societal effects of the Great Depression. A story they undertook for Life in 1943 about a Japanese internment camp in Wyoming was never published. The couple's leftist leanings and German background resulted in fewer assignments during World War II and the 1950s.

Germaine Krull (German, 1897-1985), André Malraux, 1930, National Gallery of Art, R.K. Mellon Family Foundation. "Sharing an interest in photography and leftist politics" the novelist and photographer became close friends who met in the late 1920s, according to label copy. 

The travels of Germaine Krull  included stops in Germany, Hungary, the Soviet Union, the Netherlands, Brazil, Bangkok, and Paris where she enjoyed success in fashion and advertising photography.  She was expelled from Munich because of her left-wing activism and imprisoned in Russia for her "counterrevolutionary support of the Free French cause against Hitler," says the Museum of Modern Art. Twenty-five books, portfolios, and albums were part of her legacy.  Nearing the end of her life, she moved to India where she took up residency with Tibetan monks.

Galina Sanko (Russian, 1904-1981), Prisoners, Stalingrad, 1943, printed c. 1960s, Robert Koch Gallery

Ms. Sanko's career as a photojournalist began in the 1930s in Siberia, followed by stents as a nurse, a driver, and a mechanic before she became a war correspondent, according to the catalog.  Later, she was sent to the frontlines to shoot major Russian battles, including the siege of Leningrad in 1944. 

Her "Prisoners of Fascism" was used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials, and her works won international awards, including the title, "Honorary Citizen of the City of Gdov" for her pictures of the city's destruction in 1944 and its liberation from the Nazis.  Gdov lies about 150 miles southwest of St Petersburg.

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971), Flood Relief, Louisville, Kentucky, 1937, Keith De Lellis, NY, Margaret Bourke-White/The Life Picture Collection via Getty Images

Ms. Bourke-White's name is generally well-known and shares top female photographer's billing with Dorothea Lange (below).  

Henry Luce hired Ms. Bourke-White in 1929 to be the first staff photographer for Fortune.  In 1939 her picture of the Fort Peck Dam appeared on the cover of the first issue of Life where she was named its first female staff photographer, the only photographer there to have her own office, secretary, and lab assistant.  Assignments took her to the Soviet Union, Africa, and Germany for the liberation of concentration camp victims. Her second marriage to the writer, Erskine Caldwell, resulted in their joint book, You Have Seen Their Faces (1937) about sharecroppers in the American South.

It is likely that Ms Bourke-White's interest in industrial photography stemmed from visits with her father to his manufacturing plants and printing presses, starting when she was eight years old.

Flood Relief shows the dichotomy of the happy, make-believe people in the billboard art, contrasted with the standing souls, waiting for aid. 

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965), Drought refugees from Oklahoma camping by the roadside, Blythe, California, August 17, 1936, National Gallery of Art, Washington, gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser.

If members of the public could name a female photographer, Dorothea Lange would likely come to mind first or second (with Margaret Bourke-White). Ms. Lange worked for various World War II offices and the federal government, taking pictures of immigrants, union members, the homeless, and impoverished. The catalog says she "helped define social documentary photography." 

Note the face of anxiety on the young mother above and the man who exhibits hopelessness and weariness.  What do their faces say to you? What happened to them?

Esther Bubley (American, 1921–1998), Young woman in the doorway of her room at a boardinghouse, Washington, DC, 1943, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Kent and Marcia Minichiello

A photographer for Life and Ladies Home Journal who often was assigned to shoot celebrities, like Albert Einstein, Marianne Moore, and Charlie Parker, Esther Bubley better enjoyed capturing everyday people, like she did in the scene above. 

Genevieve Naylor (American, 1915–1989), São Januário Trolley, early 1940s,  National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund.

Before she became Eleanor Roosevelt's personal photographer, Genevieve Naylor worked for the Works Progress Administration and several media outlets. She joined Nelson Rockefeller's Office of Inter-American Affairs whose goals were to strengthen relationships between the U.S. and Latin America where she was based in Brazil, according to catalog copy. When she returned to the U.S., she became the first woman photographer to be honored with a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art which toured the U.S. 1943-44. A visitor who saw the show launched Ms. Naylor's career as a fashion photographer.

She was one of the first women photojournalists to be hired by an American wire service.

Dora Maar (French, 1907-1997) Sans titre (Garçon avec un chat) (Untitled [Boy with a cat]), 1934, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Dora Maar was a fashion photographer before she engaged with activist and anti-fascist groups in the 1930s. The catalog describes her fashion work as oneiric, and although some of her pictures were published in the surrealistic publication, Minotaure, and she exhibited works in major surrealistic shows, she was "never" a surrealist. (Huh?) 

Dora, Dora!  How could you fall for Pablo Picasso, the great womanizer?

In 1936 she met him, the sexist who discouraged her interest in photography, "a medium he did not take seriously." (Get lost, Picasso!) She followed his advice, turning to painting which she exhibited in New York and London until the 1990s. 

Like many of Picasso's lovers, she was often his subject who frequently painted her crying, but this is not about him, but about her. (Nevertheless, read more about them at the Frist link below.  He only caused Ms. Maar's nervous breakdown.  What a guy!)

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Portrait of Dora Maar, 1937,  Musée Picasso/Wikipedia. A different portrait of her by Picasso was featured at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville last year. 

Madame Yevonde (b. Yevonde Cumbers, English, 1893-1975), Lady Bridget Poulett, 1935, National Portrait Gallery, London. Above, the photographer has turned her subject into Arethusa, "a mythical nymph who was transformed into a spring," according to the catalog.  The portrait, part of Ms. Yevonde's series, The Goddesses, included a hand-drawn border of playful fish while streams of aquatic cultures flow from the woman's hair.  This apparel reminds me of the Rodarte exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2019.

When she was only 17, Madame Yevonde became a suffragette.  In her career, she photographed notables, believing that women were better suited to make portraits, owing to feminine empathy and patience. She was an early practitioner of color photography which brought her fame and fortune.

Marta Astfalck-Vietz (German, 1901-1994), Untitled, 1927, Berlinische Galerie - Landesmuseum fur Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur.  This is a self-portrait which, according to the label, "reveals her exploration of masquerade and the increased personal and sexual freedom experienced by growing numbers of women during the 1920s."

At the National Gallery of Art, October 26, 2021/by Patricia Leslie

I must stop researching and writing about the show and its photographers or I'll still be writing long after the pictures come down (which is January 30!).

The more I learn about the photographers, the more I want to learn and return to see their works and read their biographies and find out more about their enticing, engrossing lives and shout:  "Right on, sisters!"

It was 100 years ago when this period of photographs began, when the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed, granting women the right to vote in the U.S. (about 25 years after the UK extended the right, and almost 200 years following Sweden's right to vote which was granted female property owners). 

"Right on, sisters!" 

Look at the independence, the strength, the drive in these pictures, some of my favorites which I have included here. The images are stunning and you will remember some long after you have left the show.  

They are not happy pictures: They are telling, historical; they portray the times, presenting society of the era and place, realistic, stark in many cases, representing hundreds of observances of world events, of everyday lives.  

The portraits excel about the time when the "new woman" was emerging to assume independence and rights, values we still strive to reach today. 

Almost 50 lenders, including Sir Elton John and the California African-American Museum, loaned pictures.

An excellent catalog includes almost 300 pages of mostly black and white pictures, some spread over two facing pages, with enlightening brief biographies of most of the photographers.

Thank you, National Gallery of Art and sponsors, the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation, Trellis Fund, Exhibition Circle of the National Gallery of Art and the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation for another spectacular show which gives me confidence to walk another mile.  "That's what art can do!"

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and curated by Andrea Nelson, associate curator in the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art. 

Also, upcoming this week is a free two-day virtual symposium, "Global Perspectives on The New Woman Behind the Camera," Jan. 19-20, 2022, featuring talks by historians, curators, and artists, made possible by the James D. and Kathryn K. Steele Fund for Photography.  Register here.  

What: The New Woman Behind the Camera

When:  Now through Jan. 30, 2022, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., every day

Where: Ground floor of the West Building, National Gallery of Art, Washington

How much:  Admission is always free at the National Gallery of Art.

Masks:  Required of all visitors, ages 2 and above, despite vaccinations. 

Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information: (202) 737-4215

Accessibility information: (202) 842-6905

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One more weekend to see 'David Driskell' at the Phillips

David Driskell (1931-2020), Young Pines Growing (detail), 1959, Clark Atlanta University Art Museum.  Driskell entered this work in the 18th Atlanta University Annual juried competition where it won the John Hope Purchase Award for best landscape.  Driskell was then teaching at Talladega College in Alabama.

An exhibition of works by David Driskell, one of the world's leading experts on African-American art, will close this weekend at the Phillips Collection. 

The Driskill exhibition, titled Icons of Nature and History, is presented in conjunction with a show on Alma W. Thomas, both presentations which engender such enthusiasm that one of my friends is leading a return to the museum to see them again. (Ms. Thomas closes Jan. 23, 2022.) 

The Phillips says its exhibition is the first comprehensive showing of Driskell's art spanning the 1950s to 2000 and includes more than 50 of his works, colorful, modern, uplifting, amazing, to use adjectives mildly. 

David Driskell (1931-2020), Pine and Moon, 1971, Portland (ME) Museum of Art

Driskill was a distinguished emeritus professor at the University of Maryland and taught there from 1976-1998. In 2001 the school established the David C. Driskell Center  for the Study of Visual Arts and Culture of African-Americans.

With degrees from Howard University (1955), and Catholic University (1962), Driskell was awarded nine honorary doctorates. In 2000 President Bill Clinton presented him and 11 others with a Presidential Medal as one of 12 recipients of the National Humanities Medal. 

David Driskell (1931-2020), Self-Portrait, 1953, Estate of David C. Driskell, Maryland

This is one of many "psychological self-portraits" Driskell painted, this one when he was a student at Howard University.  Compare it to the one below when he was three years older.

David Driskell (1931-2020), Self-Portrait, 1956, Estate of David C. Driskell, Maryland

David Driskell (1931-2020), Upward Bound, 1980, High Museum of Art. Driskell wanted to emulate his mother's quilting but she told him boys didn't quilt so "I slipped behind her back and made quilts. Now I am making them with my canvases." (1997)

In 2005, the High Museum in Atlanta established the David C. Driskell Prize to honor and celebrate contributions to the field of African American art and art history.

While mentoring and teaching hundreds of students over his lifetime, Driskell promoted, researched and wrote about African-American art.

David Driskell (1931-2020), City Quartet, 1953, David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland. The label copy says this work shows influences of his mentors, Jack Levine and Lois Mailou Jones. The man on the left may be Driskell who painted this when he was 23.

David Driskell (1931-2020), Black Ghetto, 1968-70, Fisk University (oil and mixed media on canvas). The label copy quotes from a 1999 statement by the artist:  "The composition is an autobiographical reflection on my own childhood, one in which I look out into the larger world from beyond my narrowly confined abode.  Black Ghetto also addresses the issue of having to confront life in America along lines of color and race."

David Driskell (1931-2020), Memories of a Distant Past, 1975, private collection. According to the High Museum:  "This painting repurposes material published in the January 7, 1969, edition of Look—a special issue: The Blacks and the Whites. Driskell used pictorial imagery from the essay titled 'Black America’s African Heritage.'" He often employed collage art in the 1960s and 1970s; Look magazine was a favorite source.

David Driskell (1931-2020), Let the Church Roll On, 1995–96, Bowdoin College Museum of Art.  The label copy says the church's hovering angel is a reminder of Driskell's heritage including that of his father who drew angels and the enduring black church which was an important part of his life.

He curated more than 35 exhibition which featured Jabob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, and others. He advised Oprah Winfrey on her collection and guided the Clintons to the first art work by a black artist to hang at the White House (Henry Ossawa Tanner's Sand Dunes at Sunset: Atlantic City, 1885). 

 

Driskell was born in Eatonton, GA in 1931, lived for many years in North Carolina and Maine, and died from covid-19 complications in Washington, D.C. in 2020.  

Washington's winter weather should lift this weekend for Driskell's final show at the Phillips, "America's first museum of modern art."

 

What: David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History

When: Through Sunday, January 9, 2022, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Where: The Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St., N.W. at Q St., Washington, D.C. 20009

Admission: $16, adults; $12 for those over 62; $10, students and educators (with ID); free for members and for children 18 and under. Timed tickets are required, but members may walk in at any time. Visitors 12 and over must show proof of vaccination or a same-day negative COVID-19 test upon entry, along with a government-issued photo ID for visitors 16 and over. 

Metro Station: Dupont Circle (Q Street exit. Turn left and walk one block.)

For more information: 202-387-2151  


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'Belfast' is an arty film

 

That Belfast been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture in Drama demonstrates the lack of competitive film choices available now.  (The other titles are relatively unknowns because that's what's on the screens now:  unknowns. Some of the actors and the director Kenneth Branagh have been nominated, too, to make Belfast the recipient of the most Golden Globe nominations [7].)

Throughout the movie, viewers agonize, wondering, hoping none of the stars of the show will be killed or injured in Northern Ireland in its turmoil of the 1960s amidst the time of "Troubles." That's when and where Mr. Branagh was growing up, and compelled, at last by covid to do something, he has made an autobiographical film of the conflict and its social and domestic effects.

Belfast is told from the perspective of a lad (Jude Hill; nominated) who delivers a remarkable performance in the story where the continuing violent conflict plays a secondary, backdrop role to the reality of family circumstances and change.  

Should the family go or stay?

Belfast has long pauses and great music (by Van Morrison), but an action film, it is not. Those who are Spiderman or James Bond fans will not cotton well to this.  

The inclusion of Dame Judith Dench as the almost unrecognizable grandma (who was not nominated) is a redeeming social plus. But, the housewife's role (played by Caitríona Balfe; nominated for supporting role) in her June Cleaver dress and personality is off by ten years and undermines a mother's and wife's importance.

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Film review: National Geographic's 'Rescue,' highly recommended.

You know the ending, but do you know how they got there?

It's a chilling and scary story, told in an excellent National Geographic documentary, The Rescue, about the 2018 saga of 12 boys and their assistant soccer coach who scurried inside a Northern Thailand cave which flooded, trapping them for more than two weeks.

Cave divers from around the world joined members of the Royal Thai Navy Seals and the U.S. Air Force Special Tactics in attempts to save the team.

Manmade forces juggled with Mother Nature and certain forecast monsoon rains in the breathtaking rescue race.

Experts on the ground doubted the know-how of two "old men" in flip flops and shorts, skilled underwater astronauts, who began to doubt their own abilities to rescue the team.

Forced by persistence and beliefs of the Thai people who believed the boys could be saved, 10,000 persons ultimately aided in the recovery efforts. 

The rescuers contacted a doctor friend in Australia to request that he consider administering sedatives to the boys to get them out, but the doctor resisted. He couldn't do it; the possibility was crazy.

But like the Thai people who would not give up believing in miracles, the cave divers would not give up asking the doctor until he agreed and journeyed to Thailand.

Cave divers Rick Stanton and John Volanthen from The Rescue/National Geographic

Splices of tape show the 24/7 actions underwater which become a horror show, ultimately ending in death.

Each of the star rescuers is interviewed at length; they describe their backgrounds growing up, when some were bullied, and many were loners, like the nerds at my high school who became the biggest achievers.

What is missing in this tale is why and how the boys went into the cave, why they went so far and why their coach led them.

Since Netflix retained rights to the boys' stories, no first-person accounts by any of them are included in the National Geographic film, an unnoticed absence, save the reasons for their entering the cave in the first place.

That the boys and their coach survived underground for up to 17 days is astonishing and shows what can happen if you "believe" and do not give up.

The film fulfills National Geographic's goals: To "support a diverse, international community of changemakers ...who use the power of science, exploration, education, and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world."

Take a hanky (or more than one). I figured I'd cry in the show. I did.

Husband and wife team, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, directed and produced the film with producers John Battsek, PJ van Sandwijk, Bob Eisenhardt (also, editor).

Daniel Pemberton's music is out of this world.

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Film review: 'Las Siameses,' one of the year's best

At the movie's end, the man behind me said, "I feel like I've been to the dentist and had all my teeth pulled."

I felt like I had seen a masterpiece.

I nominate Las Siamesas for "Best International Feature Film" and Rita Cortese for "Best Performance by an Actress in an International Feature Film." She plays the mother, and Valeria Lois is the daughter who does a pretty good job herself in the movie about a mother/daughter relationship.

The Siamese Bond made its DC debut last weekend at Gala Hispanic Theatre where the Gala Film Fest presented six movies by female filmmakers in this "Latin American Innovation."

Las Siamesas is a black comedy which produces audience guffaws with hard-hitting lines the mom and daughter exchange while on a bus trip to the shore to see apartments which the daughter has inherited from her father.

The bus ride takes a back seat to the relationship, but its momentum heightens expectations.

Daylight gradually wanes, travelers disembark from the bus, and all that remains are the two women, two drivers and the audience, a voyeuristic passenger on an existential journey leading (surprise!) to a breakdown.

The ride darkens.

And where there is darkness, loneliness, and consenting adults, there is fire.

The sex scene is the best I can recall, one directed from a woman's perspective without male directors' obligatory exposed breasts. Thank you, Director Paula Hernandez.

The first kiss, the hidden skin, shadows, movements, the passion. Leaving much to the imagination which is as it should be and makes for a better experience.

Listen to the hum of the bus and the magnificent score. That cello! To perfectly match the mood and emphasize the turmoils the daughter and the mother endure.

What appears to be a simple set intensifies the script.

It's bleak, it's funny, it's sad, and arouses emotions, all the moving parts necessary for a successful film. Okay, so maybe the pauses could have been shortened, but otherwise, what to improve?

Las Siamesas has been nominated for several international awards with a victory claimed by Director Hernandez who wrote the script with Leonel D'Agostino.

On another night at the Festival, I saw Ya Me Voy (I'm Leaving Now) by Lindsey Cordero and Armando Croda filmed over two years in Brooklyn, about an undocumented immigrant who wrestles with going home or staying in New York where he can continue his relationships and his collections. It's highly recommended, too, but it was Las Siamesas which drove my fingers to the keyboard.

All films are in Spanish with English subtitles. Carlos Gutierrez curated.

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Book review: 'The Columnist' by Donald A. Ritchie, highly recommended for journalism scholars

Who's the Drew Pearson now? I can think of no one who fits the bill.

Drew Pearson (1897-1969) was a muckraking journalist who helped send four members of the U. S. Congress to prison, had two U.S. senators censured and was not timid when it came to writing and broadcasting scandals, making a few mistakes along the way, but, hey! Who's perfect?

The Columnist: Leaks, Lies, and Libel in Drew Pearson's Washington is a must for journalism students and 20th century American history buffs who need or want another revealing look inside what makes Washington tick.

Mr. Pearson was a man who dug deep, who persisted, who was hated by most of the presidents he covered, including
President Harry S. Truman who threatened to shoot Mr. Pearson because of the columnist's criticism of Truman's daughter and wife. (Pearson predicted a Thomas Dewey win.)

Pearson was unafraid of lawsuits and was sued many times, losing only once.

The infamous Joseph McCarthy, feared by most, bore the wrath of Mr. Pearson's writings and broadcasts.
Pearson stood firm in his denunciation of McCarthy but Pearson had advantages most did not: He had a bully pulpit with his column, radio and TV broadcasts, comparing McCarthy's tactics to Salem's witch-burnings.

At Washington's fancy Sulgrave Club, the demagogic McCarthy physically attacked Pearson at a dinner party until stopped by none other than U.S. Senator Richard M. Nixon.

Some of Pearson's sponsors were intimidated by his attacks on McCarthy and dropped his radio broadcasts. His anti-McCarthy crusade
cost Pearson his friendship with the columnist Walter Winchell whom Pearson labeled a "McCarthy cheerleader."

Upon Pearson's death, Jack Anderson (1922-2005), a Pearson protégé and Pulitzer Prize winner, took over the column and renamed it, "Washington Merry-Go-Round. Although Wikipedia claims it's the longest-running column in American history, the most recent column I could find is dated July 15, 2021.

The book has a striking cover, is well researched, and its 367 pages include 90 of index, an extensive bibliography, and notes. The author, Donald A. Ritchie, is historian emeritus of the U.S. Senate.



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Adventure on the 14th Street bus

A 14th Street bus/photo by Patricia Leslie

I told myself repeatedly over the few days before I rode public transportation to GALA Theatre that Friday night, I would not be intimidated by fear or a number.

I will ride and I will not drive, I said firmly.

And so I did.

The getting there was the easy part, on Metro from Tysons and then up 14th Street on Bus #52 from the McPherson Square station.

At GALA I saw a wonderful flamenco performance, and wanted to stay for the Spanish Embassy reception afterwards, but the back of my mind rumbled with the gnawing realization that public transportation awaited me at 10:30 at night in the edgy neighborhood.

I skipped the reception at the end of the show and left the theatre and crossed 14th to wait on a bus. Nearby, lights on a police car blinked.

I was happy to see the police car and thankful for the upcoming DC mayoral election, for, with the uptick in crime, Mayor Bowser just might have instructed the police to have “all hands on deck.” I hoped so.

At the corner only seconds passed before I was joined by another rider, a woman ranting and raving about Taco Bell: “I didn’t get fired!” she exclaimed. “I quit!” Over and over. She walked back and forth in front of me like a caged beast.

OK, I said to myself silently; I understand. But, where is the bus? 

There it was, ambling down the street at last, although only a few moments had passed since I had begun my wait.

We boarded, and I took a seat opposite the rear exit in case a sudden escape became necessary. The woman sat at the front and continued her loud rants.

Another passenger sat across the aisle from her and pulled out a liquor bottle from his jacket pocket and offered her a drink.

“I don’t need that!” she bellowed.

We passed the Taco Bell a few seconds later, and she pointed to it and screeched: “It’s gonna kill someone!”

I tried to look ahead and out the windows, to avoid "engagement" and locking eyes with anyone.

When you ride a bus at night, you expect these outbursts. They are common.

The last three times I went to Mosaic Theater on H Street (pre-covid) the police were always involved in some form or fashion with activities on the free trolley car.

But that was then, and this was now.

14th seemed loaded with police cars every few blocks with red lights blinking on their car tops. I was grateful. Who wants to "defund the police"?

The bus continued its ramble down the street, stopping and starting to let passengers off and on, while the man and the woman continued their exchange which escalated quickly, and he pulled out a cigarette.

Was he going to light up on the bus? What would the driver do? But, behind his hard plastic window and from all I could see, the driver was oblivious to the action behind him, likely used to it all.

When the man called the woman the “n” word (he was black, too), the woman became enraged. Their conversation grew louder, more heated and indignant until she challenged the man to a fight.

On the bus?

They stood in the aisleway, apart, weaving back and forth in time with the bus’s motions and, began to dance the fighter's dance, yelling their words of conflict and hate.

This performance was more than the flamenco, and it was free!

But, at the flamenco, I wasn't afraid, like I was on the bus, sensing danger since I was within arm’s reach of the two fighters who moved in a semi-circle gnarling at each other, like they were in a boxing ring.

Where was McPherson Square?

I decided to get off at the next bus stop wherever it might be, and the woman got off with me, shouting: “This is not my stop!”

In my haste to cross the street and get away, I was too alarmed to look back to see if she re-boarded. Several blocks remained until the Metro station.

I hurried and descended to Metro's catacombs, happy to be safe.

Safe on the Metro?

The train was practically empty when it arrived and Yeeks! I was the only person to board the car.

I will not be afraid or intimidated, I said to myself. I will not; I cannot. But, I was. And still, I cannot stop; I will not.



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