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Serious protest is called for after a local cycleway is threatened.
Last weekend, on a beautiful latesummer afternoon, I joined my first protest since moving here more than a year ago. I know, what took me so long, right?
The protest was to try to save the local cycle trail, which is one of the hidden gems of our suburb of Bethesda, which lies just over the Washington DC boundary in Maryland. The Georgetown Branch Trail runs near our house and links us to a wonderful cycle-trail network that follows the Potomac River down to the city. Our part of the cycleway runs along an old railway line and has been reserved for the proposed Purple Line, which will be part of the Metro rail system that serves DC and its suburbs here in Maryland and across the river in Virginia.
Sorry about the geography lesson, but one day in a pub quiz, you might be grateful to know that many people who work in Washington DC and feel as if they live there actually live over the state lines in either Maryland or Virginia.
Maryland is a bit of a nanny state. We cannot buy liquor at the supermarket, for example, and we’re not allowed to have guns, but that’s a trade-off I’m happy to live with.
Last week, it was suddenly announced that the Georgetown Branch Trail, which has been there since the 1970s, was to close this week. I use the trail a lot – walking, not cycling – so joined the protest walk at a local park.
While waiting for the protest walk to get going – along the trail, of course – I was approached by a Channel Five reporter and cameraman for comment. Politeness made me refrain from saying I had never heard of their channel; I have a rather singular TV diet of politics and baseball. Because I was a reporter myself for a hundred years, I generally try to be helpful to other reporters, though here in the US I don’t imagine it is hard to persuade people to talk on camera. Most Americans seem articulate
– it’s as though as babies they had a bottle in one hand and a microphone in the other.
Anyway, I said I was a New Zealander and that we always took overseas visitors along the trail because it was a fantastic local asset. Which is true. I tried not to be too critical, because I know that in New Zealand I found it grating when anyone with a foreign accent told us what to do. Will the protest have done any good? Maybe not. But it made me realise I’m turning native.
Plenty of online newspaper column centimetres have been devoted to one of the pressing topics to emerge from the Hurricane Harvey disaster in Houston, namely First Lady Melania Trump’s stilettos. For her two visits to Houston with the President, she wore towering heels to the helicopter and plane that took them on their respective trips, although both times she had changed into sneakers by the time they landed. The general view was that this indicated how lacking in empathy the Trumps are, that Melania sees every media opportunity in terms of a fashion statement and that symbolically she would be looking down on the flood victims’ problems.
I reckon if she likes wearing high heels, she should be able to do so without criticism. Being married to Donald Trump is enough punishment for anyone’s lifetime.
Maryland is a bit of a nanny state. We cannot buy liquor at the supermarket or have guns.