Day 3 in DC or Panda Porn

On my 24th birthday, Grayson and I went to the Saigon Zoo. The experience scarred me. I haven’t wanted to see a zoo since, and I’ve been pretty successful at avoiding them. However, when I asked Mitja what he thought I should see in DC, he said: “I really like the Pandas. You should go to the zoo.”
“Is this because you’re a new dad?” I teased.
“No, I liked the Pandas even before Citrus was born.”
Meanwhile, my mother’s best friend from college, Dorothea, announced to my sister that she was coming to see the Pandas on Thursday. (I imagined that she had arranged to come bc she knew I was here, but it turned out to be a coincidence.)

We saw clouded leopards, red pandas, elephants, a tiger, a female lion who growled, and, yes, the Giant Pandas. We saw the father panda first; he was napping on a rock. The mother and baby panda napped too, but shortly after we found them, the mother started wandering around and eating bamboo shoots. (They have to eat bamboo something like 16 hours a day to stay alive!) Their little faces are so cute. The father has been rather depressed lately bc he needs to be separated from the mother while she’s lactating, which will last up to 1.5 years. It’ll be better for him when they can be together.

China can take the baby back once he’s 2 years old, but they might not. The pandas they have there have been prolific lately; so, they might not have the space for another one. On the other hand, they need to be aware of inbreeding, and this mother’s genes are unique, making the baby more valuable for future breeding. You can imagine that a lot of inbreeding goes on when there are only a few pandas breeding in captivity.

Male pandas raised in captivity, it turns out, don’t know how to mate instinctively. In the wild, they see it, but since breeding in captivity is unusual, they don’t get that example there. So… the zoo keepers show the adolescent male pandas Panda Porn for them to learn.

My other favorite animal was the hippo. He stayed there in the water, otherwise huge, with his little eyes and ears a nose just above. I felt a bit blasé about the elephants, and then I thought that was weird.

Ilana lives a short walk from the zoo, and after we’d seen the animals, we walked over to her place for tea. On our way there, Dorothea’s friend Gail said that she’d read about this neighborhood – that there were a lot of muggings here.
I said: “what’s the name of the neighborhood?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” And then she pointed out the bars on some of the windows.
I think living in a city is good for democracy. There was all that talk a few years ago about talking to people about politics especially when we know their views are different from ours as a form of public education (both ways!) and outreach, to help us all care about and understand politics. You’re supposed to follow your intuition about your own safety, but I was surprised that she would be afraid of such a beautiful neighborhood (old brownstones, trees lining the roadway) just because (it seemed) it’s a city. I’ve talked about this a lot, but I believe that Fear drives us to do all kinds of destructive things. And the more we know about each other, and by extension, ourselves, the more we can make decisions based on more positive emotions, intuitions, than fear.

Dorothea brought us some etchings she’d done (www.cdlimited.com/doba.html), and I showed her mine as well (tho I wasn’t able to give her one). Then, we went for lunch at a nearby Peruvian chicken place where we ordered way too much food for about $1. After lunch, we walked Dorothea and Gail too the Metro.

I had forgotten how much I love Dorothea and she loves me, I told Ilana on our way home.
“That’s because you never see each other,” was her explanation.
But I don’t think that’s right. I think that if you love someone, and they love you, you’d better have a pretty good reason for not keeping in touch. Anything else is superficial. Love is the only real thing in this world. Now that I’m reminded, I hope to be better about that. I even got her email. 

In the evening, we met Ilana’s friend Jeff at a bar a short bike ride away. At some point in the evening, I asserted that everyone should get therapy just like everyone should see a dentist. Ilana thought that people should get therapy during times of crisis in their lives. Jeff and Ilana seemed to agree that some people shouldn’t ever get therapy bc it makes them even more self-absorbed than they were at first. (At one point in the conversation, I said to Jeff: “maybe you don’t know enough crazy people.” Now this was pretty funny since he works with the homeless – that’s his job!)

Anyway, what I think I meant to say is that people’s mental and emotional health should get just as much attention as other kinds of health. We should get check ups. But not every mental health program works for every person. For example, some people might get more from prayer and going to church while others might get more from a shrink. Some might be best treated with medication while others exercise. But I think regular checkups and treatment program adjustments should be built into our system like teeth cleanings.

Now, here’s a question: do even smart people get stupid when drunk? There was this guy at the bar who tried to hit on us. He saw my bike helmet and asked if I’d been for a ride. Then, he could not understand that I had ridden the bicycle _For Transportation_. Despite the potential political ramifications of him gaining that understanding, I gave up after a few exchanges. He wouldn’t have remembered anyway.

I’m on the Amtrak to Durham right now, and of course the train is already an hour late. A friend of Sara’s warned us that we should expect to be between one and three hours late on this line, much like the one I’ve ridden in CA. What’s wrong with Amtrak?

Speaking of transportation, I thought DC’s signal timing system particularly pedestrian-friendly. For one thing, the lights count down from when they first turn green (not once the red hand begins to flash like in SF). People are always happier with more complete information. The lights count down from like 96 sometimes. You can nearly always make it across without risking death even after the light has changed against you. I didn’t notice a long all-red time, but I did notice that the drivers appear to be willing to wait a few seconds after their light turns green before going. This must be cultural. Mitja said that the DC drivers are the worst – the upshot being that they make stupid maneuvers despite there being plenty of room on the roadway.

The Metro, too, seemed to work. Each line has a color. Each platform displays where the train is going and where you can transfer. How many minutes until the next train comes is constantly shown on a screen, and the numbers are usually small. The lights flash when the train is coming (this is probably an ADA thing). My only complaint is that I would have liked to have seen more system maps on the platforms. If I have a general idea, I would rather figure out the details while I wait for a train to come. I also haven’t decided yet if I think that fare system was unnecessarily complicated. I bought a $10 ticket (which I didn’t use up.), but each time I rode the train, they deducted a different amount. It wasn’t a problem, I just never knew what to expect. Does that matter?

Now the winter trees and frozen lakes wiz past the train windows. I remember that it snowed, just briefly, last night before we went to the bar. The flakes were barely noticeable tiny angels floating through the air. Nothing stuck.