Iconic and Historic — A Moment in History
I am sitting in the gracious Lafayette dining room having breakfast in the iconic Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington DC., two weeks to the day of the 2024 presidential election. Looking out the window toward the White House, I’m feeling the power of our country. What a moment in time and it gives me chills as I feel the strength of our institutions.
While chatting with the beautiful black hostess and commenting as we so often do on the amazing Indian Summer weather, my eye went to a window beyond her. Combined with the shades of her lovely skin was the color of a tree’s leaves, that indefinable salmon with sunlight sprinkling throughout. It reminded me of the same mixture of colors that Gauguin used in his paintings while loving and living in Tahiti.
The day before, niece Elizabeth and her husband Paul with Bill and I, spent hours at the National Gallery of Art, soaking up the Impressionist 1874 exhibit, and also revisiting their permanent collection. The exhibit spoke to the rebellion of the impressionist artists toward the rigorous rules of painting that had been expressed through political and cultural subjects up to that era. These challenging eyes and hands changed history through paintings: of habits and scenes that spoke of new thoughts and recognition of the beauty and reality of everyday life.
This exhibit is an amazing piece of world history. The United States 2024’s historic election is repeating this same theme in 14 days. This desire to challenge and change is a wish for more emphasis on better daily living, what we might call democracy. Our resiliency has been tested time and time again throughout my lifetime. And because of that, (even though it seems so hard right now), we will be made better from the challenges and rebellion we see today — and will assuredly see again. I can’t help but wonder what will occur in today’s inexorable future and what mediums will help that new order.
Living on today’s precipice of timely movements of thought reminds me of our recent weeks on the island of Maui. As I swam there the feeling of the ebb and flow of the tides reminded me of how our humanity subtly changes but always guarantees change.
As I write about the District, (it seems you’re “in” when you say that instead of DC — and I like that), Bertha our housekeeper comes to tidy our room. We speak of her life here after coming to the district from Cameroon, Africa. Her theory of how to live life is, “You have to like where you live to have a happy life.” I like that too.
I’m honored to be here, to feel it all. My mantra is to remember what those in history have taught me and to keep it all in balance. The colors of art, nature, and skin have a purpose: the lightness of learning and massive movements will continue to happen over time.
The rarity of this change now that I’m 90 is more rapid than when I was young. We are at another consequential moment. I am literally looking out the window, across Lafayette Park, through the black wrought iron fence where history will be made, once again.
