Here is A History of MT. ZION UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, the oldest African American church in Washington, D.C.


By Pauline A. Gaskins Mitchell, a local historian




Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, presently located at 1334 29th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., has been for the past 180 years an integral and viable part of Georgetown and has served the religious, educational and social needs of a significant portion of the Washington community.

The roots of the church can be traced back further than the first group of organized black Methodists in Georgetown in 1816. For over a decade before, those who eventually composed the Mt. Zion congregation had been a part of the Montgomery Street Church founded in 1772 and known today as the Dumbarton Avenue United Methodist Church, located on Dumbarton Avenue near Wisconsin Avenue, N.W. in Georgetown.

In the early 1800's Georgetown was a major port for the slave and tobacco trade in the area and a center for mills and markets for the newly created city of Washington. Its population was one-third black - half freedmen and half slaves. Some of them attended the Montgomery Street Church. Between 1801 and 1810 their numbers fluctuated between 37 and 97. At times nearly 50% of the membership consisted of their "coloured brethren." After 1810 the number increased rapidly.

Dissatisfied because they were segregated within the white church, about 123 blacks attending the Montgomery Street Church met on June 3, 1814, to consider forming a separate congregation under the supervision of the parent church. Among the leaders were Lucy Neal, Polly Hill, William Crusor, William Trumwell, Shadrack Nugent, Thomas Mason and Tamar Green.

On October 1, 1816, the dissidents purchased a lot on Mill Street (now 27th) near West Street (now P Street) from Henry Foxall, a white foundry owner and officer of the Montgomery Street Church. There they built a church known as "The Meeting House and "The Little Ark." White ministers from the Montgomery Street Church served as its pastors for many years.

The following 64 years brought several major changes to the black congregation. On the suggestion of the Reverend Stephen G. Roszei, an outspoken anti-slavery leader and a pastor of the mother church, the name of the new church was changed in 1844 to Mt. Zion Methodist Episcopal Church. At that time there were 54 members. Dissension over the need for black leadership resulted in a split in the congregation in 1849 and the formation of three African Methodist Churches: Ebenezer, Union Wesley and John Wesley. Fifteen years later, Mt. Zion welcomed its black minister, the Reverend John H. Brice. Tragedy struck on July 13, 1880, when the church burned to the ground after which the congregation met temporarily in the Good Samaritan Hall, located in what is now the 1500 block of 26th Street, N.W.

Prior to the fire, the congregation had purchased for $2,581.00 on July 13, 1875, a lot from Alfred Pope, a black businessman of Georgetown and a trustee of the church. Construction of the new edifice was begun on the present site. Much of the workmanship was done by black artisans, including one of the pastors, the Reverend Alexander Dennis and his associate, the Reverend Edgar Murphy.

The cornerstone was laid July 13, 1876, and re-laid May 10, 1880. On October 31, 1880, the first service was held in the partially completed lecture room. The church was dedicated on July 8, 1884.

Some of the descendants of the building committee - John Grey, Henry Bowles, Barton Fisher, James Ferguson, Daniel Brown and Peter Vessels are the members of the church today.

Since no public funds were expended for the education of black people in the city of Washington until 1862, Mt. Zion became an educational center for the black population. Its first Sabbath School, organized in 1823, had a large enrollment, and its effect in promoting educational progress of the black citizens of Georgetown was considered invaluable. Adult members, as well as children, came to learn how to read. From 1840 through the Reconstruction Era, several schools sponsored by black men and the Pennsylvania Freedmen's Relief Association were housed in the church.

The records indicate that until slavery was abolished Mt. Zion served as one of the stations in the Underground Railroad, and the vault in the nearby Old Methodist Burying Ground was used as a hideout for runaway slaves until their passage North could be arranged.

Extension and improvement of the physical plant included the construction of a new parsonage at 2902 0 Street, N.W. (completed in 1897), the purchase in 1920 of the property next door used for many years as a community house, and several renovations of the church and parsonage.

Mt. Zion realized that it needed a burying ground for its members. "For a sum of one dollar in hand." the church leased for 99 years the unoccupied east end of the Dumbarton Church Cemetery located on Mill Road (behind the 2600 block of Q Street, N. W.) in 1879. On this site were buried a Part of Dumbarton's congregation, slaves of other Washington areas. The west end was purchased by the Female Union Band Society, organized in 1842, for the burial of free blacks. Through the years, the two cemeteries have been considered jointly as the Mt. Zion Cemetery. In 1950, interments ceased.

An exhaustive historical study of the Mt. Zion section of the cemetery and the burials there was done by the Afro-American Bicentennial Corporation. In 1975, the cemetery became an Historical Landmark of the National Capital and on August 6, 1975, was placed on the national Register of Historical Places.

The restoration of the cemetery as a fitting memorial to black presence in Georgetown is underway. Dumbarton Church as the owner and Mt. Zion as the primary user have been joined in support by the Society for the Preservation of Historic Georgetown. Community churches, also, are cooperating in this effort.

The Mount Zion United Community House, erected 1811 and believed to be the only remaining English style cottage in the District of Columbia, was restored and returned to community use in 1985 to help recapture the history and presence of the Black community in the Historic District of Georgetown.

The Community House was restored with private funds, grants from the United Methodist Church, and a historic preservation matching grant from the District of Columbia. Bryant and Bryant AIA, Architects and Planners, conducted the architectural studies, and Georgetown Building Company was the general contractor. Because it has contributed significantly to the visual beauty and cultural heritage of the District of Columbia, Mt. Zion United Methodist Church was designated in June 1974, in Category II of the Inventory of Historical! Landmarks of the District of Columbia. It was also placed on the National Register of Historical Places on July 21, 1975.

Mt. Zion is a church of families, many of which date back to its inception. Only a few still reside in Georgetown; most scattered throughout the city and suburbs. They are proud of and grateful to their ancestors for founding and sustaining the church, and they have a strong desire to maintain the continuity of the black Methodist Church in the District of Columbia and the oldest congregation in this city.

by Pauline A. Gaskins Mitchell,
Historian



more info on Mt. Zion at: http://www.culturaltourismdc.org/info-url_nocat2536/info-url_nocat_show.htm?doc_id=44050&area=2541


for information on Mt. Zion/Female Union Band Cemetery:
http://www.nps.gov/history/NR/travel/wash/dc10.htm

It broke my heart to call up and tell them to stop sending the paper. I remember answering the door and paying the paper boy -- who became an adult -- who became someone we never saw anymore. The young woman asked me why we were discontinuing and I told her more than she had asked to know. She was very polite. I told her my parents had paid for and received and occasionally called up to say it had not come and, in fact, had been proud and had enjoyed home delivery of the Washington Post for over fifty years. This was truly a regrettable change. I wouldn't have done it if not for security. The paper on the porch is like the water being on, the lights being available at a flick, the stove working and the plumbing alive. My parents never dropped the ball in all the years I can remember. Times must sometimes have been tough for them. But they paid the bills, drove the car, had home delivery of the newspaper. It is part of the smooth running of the home - of their lives -- the morning paper. Sorry -- changed circumstance. So now the paper has to be discontinued because my father has moved and we do not want the world to know the house is without him. This is a bow to the feeling that this neighborhood is more predatory than it used to be. When we grew up there was home delivery of three newspapers, then two then just the Post. My parents proudly subscribed to all of them and read them. My mother was keenly interested in crossword puzzles -- had done them from childhood. My mother wrote letters to the editor and had one published once. She would have been pleased with her obit in the Post. The home delivery of the papers was a part of our middle class status. You were stable, you were solid, you had a phone number and home delivered newspapers. You wanted the best for your children so you got the newspapers so that the world at large was always at hand. Very seldom did papers have to be taken in from the porch by neighbors because my parents rarely went away from home. But the neighbors gladly performed this lookout function because my folks were so steady, reliable, neighborly. It is now too much to ask. Discontinuing home delivery of the Washington Post at my father's home address was a sad decision. It might seem a small thing to be upset about after the big, at times gut-wrenching, decisions and adjustments that have been made in the last eight weeks as my 96 year old father's health changed. His world has altered dramatically and he is no longer living at the old home my sisters and I grew up in. My father held it together remarkably in that familiar neighborhood and, with the help of neighbors of fifty plus years, he maintained an independent, family -centered lifestyle. The Washington Post -- notably the sports section -- was part of it. In fact, the newspaper delivery was a mainstay and a tell. If the paper sat on his porch until mid-morning, then alerts went up and his next door neighbor went to knock on his door and see what was happening. One morning he had uncharacteristically forgotten to go get it -- had gone to the basement to do laundry -- and she went over to knock.

In Washington, D.C. -- at 14th and Park Road N.W. Target has accomplished something that few would have thought possible. One of the most intractable commercial strips in the city since the riots of 1968 has finally yielded to Target and Best Buy and Appleby's and Starbucks.They have brought a racially, economically and linguistically diverse shopping experience to an area considered blighted for forty years. These blocks had been a bustling strip of commerce serving the African American community before the riots that followed MLK's death. What you need to know in case you are moaning that big box retailers are driving out local charm and creating a tasteless, homogenous urban streetscape is that these big boxes are welcome. I'm no pollster, but everybody I spoke to on the street was happy to see stores return to 14th & Park Road. And mature African Americans like me who remember the old 14th & Park Road corridor as a shopping mecca are particularly joyful.

When I grew up in the town in the early sixties, the strip at 14th & Park included Woolworth's, G.C. Murphy's, Peoples' Drugs, shoe stores and Hot Shoppes. There was a very busy newsstand that posted the daily "figures" near the cash register. Oldtimers will know what this is and others can guess. There was promenading in Halloween costumes for youngsters. Salvation Army folks stood with their kettles in front of the stores at Christmas time. Hats, dresses, dusters, patent leather shoes, cotton gloves, patent leather purses and embroidered handkerchiefs were selected from the stores at Easter time. Men bought carnations there on the Saturday before Mother's Day because it was traditional to celebrate your Mother with a colored carnation buttoniere.

I don't have nostalgia about lost mom and pop stores at this corridor bcause it was never that kind of strip. This was the avenue of tulip sundaes and hot fudge brownie cake and Blue Nile perfume and boxed perfume for youngsters to buy for birthday presents. Do you remember wooden paddles with rubber balls attached by a rubber string? "Bat 'n' balls we called them.

When I left DC and transplanted to New York City, I comforted my homesickness at a Woolworth's lunch counter like the one that had been at 14th & Park Road. I equipped my first hobbies from Woolworth's and its lesser cousin, G.C. Murphy's -- yarn, needles, thread, baby turtles, construction paper, crayons, scissors, glue, and modeling clay and pop beads and glass beads and paint by number sets.

Now at 14th & Park Road you can get your personal pan pizza and a burger or a hot dog and your pricey coffee and your diet coke right along with every other Joan and Joe America. Since everybody is more than happy to get everything they want at a few mega stores, the big boxers have replaced countless regionally identified retailers. Things change.

In the older days there was a distinction between shopping downtown and shopping in the neighborhoods. African Americans had had to wrest the privilege to shop in downtown department stores like Garfinkels, Woodard and Lothrup, Kahn's and Hecht's. Even after desegregation there was an idea that there was closer scrutiny downtown. We kids liked the 5&10 cent stores better.

The only artifact from the previous era is the Tivoli Theater's old sign -- seemingly rusted, but still attached to a building that has undergone a sea change since it was built in 1924. The Tivoli was on our family's circuit of neighborhod movie theaters. It was one of those elegant, old lovely places that people went to for the movie experience.

Target and its big box buddies know the power of bright lights and wide aisles and achingly bright red color on everything and food courts and restrooms and someplace to go and sit in public. This is what sells in every neighborhood. I'm glad they have lit up and energized a commercial strip that burned down forty years ago.

As a lifelong resident of the District of Columbia, James S. Clarke has not been able to attain full voting rights and representation. But he has voted in every election that he has been eligible for --- each Presidential election since 1964. This year he is a proud Obama supporter. He has cast an early, absentee ballot by mail. James S. Clarke served in the army in WWII and worked for thirty-three years for the National Bureau of Standards. He and his wife, Edna Higgins Payne Clarke raised four daughters and one son. With courage and charm he has met every challenge from the racially discriminatory society in which he lived. Happily, he has lived to see change!

Perhaps we now have the opportunity to shrug off racially divisive stereotypes and vote for a man who can create change – much needed – in our national arena. It is a leap of faith for African Americans of a certain mature age to trust that our white neighbors and colleagues will put aside racist manipulation and vote their true consciences on election day. We doubt because we’ve seen past elections use ugly racist “scare” tactics to sway people. In their hearts -- in the sanctity of the voting booth - what are they going to do? Are they going to vote against Barack Obama simply because he is a Black Man? I’m a boomer. Yes, we African Americans boomed, too. My father came home from WWII and he and my mother had kids. We grew up during the Civil Rights Movement. We marched with King figuratively, but we marched to protest Kent State, too. We had the summer of love, the Dupont Circle, the Haight-Ashbury as well as the NAACP and the Black Panthers. We know something about white people. We were college dorm mates and companions for civil rights and workers’ rights and women’s rights and we were friends and lovers. We’ve worked together at community meetings and finally in every type of workplace in the private sector and in the government service. And even if we don’t live next door to each other in some parts, we do shop in the same malls and groceries and gas stations. We know each other. We have different histories – are tributaries leading in various directions. But we come together and flow together like our big rivers do. Our interests are similar. Don’t let anyone say differently. Please do not let some somebody who is harkening back to the days of Jim Crow and the Edmund Pettus Bridge derail this election! You know you know better than that. Don’t let the election descend into some kind of bald-faced appeal to racist feelings. I am hopeful this time. I believe in you though you still don’t quite believe in me. You still have the decades of racist iconography to overcome. “We Shall Overcome!” Remember that? Of course you do. We had the sixties and the seventies together – sort of. It was our parents we railed against then not each other. We had the chance to change this country then but we let it slip. We let the old folks run the world while we lived it up. November 4, 2008 is our big chance because we’re the old people now. We boomers need to rise up and go down in those voting booths and carry our kids and grandkids with us. Tell them you want to finish what you started. Tell them you want us all to change things!

At a book discussion for STAND THE STORM this past weekend a woman praised my characters and asked me if I hear the voices of my characters. She wanted to know if these voices give me the dialogue for the novel. I was immediately defensive and wanted to insist that I do not hear any voices dictating dialogue. I told her that all and every idea for dialogue comes from me -- from what I have created inside myself. I wanted her and everybody to know that I consider myself to be in the dirver's seat when I write my novels. But my process does include back seat drivers. The voices that I do hear are these -- these ones that are nudging, prodding and outright exhorting. I hear from a whole head pantheon -- absent angels( my son, my mother, my aunt, my grandfather, my grandmother), political visionaries and thinkers(too numerous to list), former pets, friends and lovers and the unknown individuals who leave their stuff in second hand stores. These "voices" direct my gaze. I see physical attributes again and again and am convinced that certain things will never disappear. They lead my inquiries down pathways I hadn't planned for and they show me things like cruelty toward the vulnerable that I'd look away from if not goaded by my claque. Yeah -- I got voices. But they leave the final expression to me. They are cheer leaders. They say "You go look at that, girl! You go listen to that, girl! You go tell them about that, girl!"

Congress says to African-Americans: My bad! My first reaction to news of House Resolution 194 -  the apology for the enslavement and racial segregation of African Americans is that it was too small a measure. The transgression begs for some greater expression of remorse. Reparation is not mentioned. And money is definitely the point because the institution of slavery was at the heart of the American economic system. The years of Jim Crow after emancipation were motivated by economics, too. Limiting the public presence of Blacks prevented economic and social mobility and guaranteed a desperate and dependent work force. So, it is all about  the Benjamins. And it is about the Jeffersons and the Washingtons and the Madisons and others who reaped the profits of the slave system.  Men and women DID profit by the system of bondage that trapped 10-11 million African people.  The other "N" word then is niggardly.  Be careful to get it right --  the word means stingy, miserly, chintzy. That is what I think of the House resolution to apologize for slavery. Is it too little too late? No. It is never too late to say that this was an egregious wrong and that people suffered and that other people profited. We have to know about the history and we have to consider the cost. The apology is a beginning. When will we simply "get over" it?  Welll . . . when it is over. It is not over yet. We are still living with the legacy of our slave past. I wrote this before Lehman Brothers, who began as cotton traders, crashed and burned. We are each other’s business We are each other’s magnitude and bond. Gwendolyn Brooks Oh yes, we are still living out the legacy of this “institution.” It affects our discourse on education, politics, commerce and healthcare.  And now the Dutch people are coming back to celebrate the settlement at New Amsterdam. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/nyregion/28dutch.html Twenty males and thirty female slaves were brought to the west side of the Hudson River to what is now called New Jersey at Pavonia, a patroonship awarded by the Dutch West India Company. These people became the first African residents of the area. The settlement and plantation were destroyed in colnflicts with indgenous people. There isn’t a lot of information about these people -- not enough for me. I want to know more -- facts and circumstance. I have read that they were likely Atlantic Creoles captured from a Spanish ship. I’d like to know about them and, for me, the demand for facts and cricumstances is what motivates me to keep dragging the wide pool of knowledge for bits and pieces of the history of African people in the Americas. “From the earliest years, blacks were core laborers in the struggling colony.” ---- Root & Branch: African Americans in New York & East Jersey, 1613 - 1863 by Graham Russell Hodges In all the celebrating of Henry Hudson and the Dutch traders and settlers, don’t forget the “others.” that they brought to the fest involuntarily. The next step away from our country’s slavery legacy is the opportunity to vote for Barack Obama for President. It is our duty -- People of all colors - to reject all these hundreds of years of racist iconography and denigrating imagery and see an individual who will lead us to the future. There will be no room in front of me on election day. You’ll have to FOLLOW ME TO THE POLLS!

Once again- as always - same old same old -- the opinions of Black women are reckoned as less meaningful in public discourse. Sarah Palin and others of her ilk are constructing a self-serving, loony picture of womanhood that does not include most African-Americans. BTW -- according to my informal census of friends and acquaintances, white women don't feel like she's their spokesperson either. The Republicans are trying to serve up this passive/aggressive, pop-culture, quirky Alaska "melodramaqueen" up in the public sphere as representing womanhood -- true womanhood. Hah! Not so fast! I've got my hopes pinned on a couple of other women in this race -- of this race. I have my hopes pinned on Michelle Obama and her daughters. I'm not reluctant to say that I want Barack and Michelle in the White House.

. . . and the Obama daughters, Malia and Natasha. These women are my standard bearers because they're the ones for whom their parents and I and all other responsible, compassionate citizens must decide the world we bring to them. As their parents do, I want for them what Martin Luther King wanted for his own children and for all of the American children: equal opportunity for all/equal access for all/participation(economically and politically) for all - . . .
freedom and justice for all.



I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.



This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.


My sisters -- one older, one younger -- were a couple of years older than the Obama girls when Martin Luther King gave his great "I Have A Dream" speech. Details of the day are still brilliantly clear to me. My parents went to the march and took my sister - who was sixteen. There had been talk that violence might break out. Black people feared that mobs of whites might descend on the mall. That was back in the days when there was a pervasive "fear of crackers" in our town and surely in the towns more geographically southern than ours. We had seen plenty of that on TV and elsewhere -- snarling, clubbing, water hoses, rock throwing. This is why I sometimes chuckle to hear whites speak of fear in black neighborhoods. It is not that fear is funny, but that the perception of fear is mutable.

On that august day my younger sister and I stayed at home with my great aunt Hannah. Aunt Hannah rarely cooked, but that day it was decided we would make a blackberry cobbler while the others were at the march. I can only imagine she was nervous and thought we needed an occupation for the day. The TV was on. The march coverage was on and we walked back and forth from the kitchen to the living room to see. I think the cobbler was in the oven when came time for MLK to speak. His speech was what we were waiting for. Aunt Hannah sat on her accustomed corner of the sofa/couch. Her posture was reverential. She never went to church, but the way she leaned forward toward her own knees and toward the TV appeared like kneeling at a pew. Well he spoke. We have all heard him again and again -- at least once a year since. That day I remember being suffused with the feeling that change would come the very next day. I wasn't stupid -- just young and hopeful. I couldn't imagine a circumstance that people listening to those words would not want to drop all hostility and prejudice and discriminatory feelings and join MLK to build this new, wonderful America. It all seemed so simple.

A lot of water under the bridge since that day and still we have to long for -- dream of the day. But I saw the beautiful, hopeful demeanor of the Obama girls, Malia and Natasha when their father accepted the Democratic nomination for president and we all invoked MLK and the dream. My chest felt on fire with that naive hope that our country can get better -- more just -- so that these young girls can live out MLK's sweet dream for us and them. THESE ARE THE WOMEN I WILL PIN MY HOPES TO.

I intend to vote and take as many folks with me as I can to carry Barack and Michelle Obama and their daughters into the White House!

Some may never see these young women as the embodiment of hope as I do -- as their parents do. I was an embodiment for my parents -- a vessel -- a place to put their aspirations for the future. My sisters and I were some of the children MLK spoke about and to on that day. My sisters and I did go through doors that had been closed to my parents directly in consequence of the courage of Martin Luther King and Fannie Lou Hamer and Bayard Rustin and John Lewis and Ella Baker and oh so many others. I remember hope palpable following MLK's speech though years hence I learned that many people who came to Washington to march -- arriving on buses and trains -- returned to segregated towns in the south and no longer had jobs or homes. Dreams also went sour that day. I also remember the horror of the fate of four young girls: Carole Denise McNair, 11 yrs, old, Addie Mae Collins, 14yrs., Cynthia Wesley, 14 yrs., and Carole Robertson, 14 yrs. old. Hopes were pinned to these carefully raised, baptized and educated young girls who were blown to bits in the basement of a church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. What has always sickened me is that this bombing happened after MLK's speech. Persons of possibilities we will never know about were lost that day -- in that church basement. Who would have dreamed such a terrible event!
On the shoulders of the Obama daughters I am pinning my current hopes. These women are the ones I identify with. These are my standard bearers. These daughters will carry me to the polls. I have a stubborn, tenacious responsibility to live out MLK's dream because he spoke for me and to me 45 years ago.   

applied to one's fitness routine. It is often difficult to get to the pool -- to allow the time that it takes to get there and swim and get away after a shower, etc. The past days have been very full and I have been loath to give up the juicy mid-morning hours. I have kept up with Qi Gong and have felt and seen the benefit of it. My back has become very much more developed. I hadn't concerned myself with back conditions except the dreaded muffin top or as I call it, "fat back." But as I have practiced Qi Gong I have seen the muscles in my lower and mid-back become more active and noticeably more taut. I can feel the difference in my posture which is more upright and aligned much better than previously. Again -- surprise -- I didn't realize what the best alignment for me felt like. Now that I have a sense of it I can achieve it and feel more natural doing it. Of course, my legs are far more active and productive in the water -- and in jogging on land -- because they have help from the back.
"
I do a few personally modified Qi Gong moves and add a few personal moves and stretches each morning before going out with the dog -- for her constitutional. I often feel warmth and excitement radiating from my lower back muscles after I've warmed them up. I feel zippy and energetic and can match the dog's enthusiasm for movement. We have a mutually beneficial exercise session. Often we jog and power walk. We also work leash training by draping the six foot leash across my chest and over my shoulder and practice her walking close to me and keeping stride and not letting the leash fall. I must keep a perfectly relaxed though upright form also or the leash will fall. It is a good exercise for both of us. This reinforces my achieving a relaxed, upright posture and stride when I walk. For the dog, it reinforces her understanding of proper walking/leash form: head up (no trolling for garbage), close to the knee (no pulling ahead or lagging behind), matching the proper pace. She feels no tug from my hand though I can easily and quickly correct and control by bringing my hands into my chest. Rather than hand and arm control -- my proactive/aggressive/correcting and very necessary physical authority -- we are cultivating a sensitivity to our bodily movements and it bonds us as a pair who are most happy and secure when we are in sync and moving and reacting together. After years of walking with dogs I have learned a few things. A walk "abroad" with a dog can be such a delightful experience that I wish more people paid attention. Cell phones on dog walks! Arrgh! A promenade with Bonzo, or Max or Bonzilla or PomPom can be the most meditative and mind-cleansing time of day if you pay attention to the dog and what the dog notices: disgusting bits of trash (difficult, but sometimes necessary because it benefits to know what people are doing in your public park) bird activity ( often I see blue jays, male and female cardinals, robins, geese and sea gulls daily fly diagonally over head of us heading approximately north by north east up the Hudson or out to sea), squirrel activity (disgusting and too numerous and big-time diners on garbage), tree activity(seasonal harbingers/storytellers -- giving you the 411 on the ecology and helping you mitigate the effects of the sun and the rain and adding a lot of oxygen especially noticeable in the morning. Every dog I've ever known has loved to stand beside a tree and smell the ground and the air and take in the whole range of aroma and they seem to turn their faces on us and wonder why we are not as excited as they are and I always answer my dog that I am busy "looking" at things to get my 411 and she seems to respond by perking her ears and indicating that she is "hearing" for the both of us and is taking care of security and I acknowledge this with a nod and assure her that I am "watching out" -- am paying attention rather than yaking on the phone. So, non verbal signals are vital on a dog walk and they are excellent exercise for the mind and the attention span. Twenty minutes or so of vermin and birds and air and trees and ants and dog crapatola which you picked up and disposed of (decide on the number and size of your canine pet based on the size of crap-burgers you are willing to pick up and dispose of - if you can't pick up for a Rottweiller don't get a Rottweiller) and squirrels and squirrely people is a proper constitutional -- especially if you will spend the rest of the day "plugged in."
a previously unknown to me flower -- Torenia Purple Moon - with what seems like a wishbone at its center. It is a hearty, pretty small plant with abundant dark purple blooms and a nice find for my garden this year.
if you doubt that bees play a serious pollenating role you should have seen a lusty looking, very round bee I saw going deep inside one of my Torenia blooms and then backing out and flying away and I hoped he(is it both genders that perform this function? -- is the female doing other bee stuff?) was going nearby to spread some Torenia pollen around because they are cute little flowers. Maybe they will take up around the neighborhood.

I was struck in the middle of the afternoon on a day that was not a "swimming" day by an unbelievable urge to be in the water. The feeling came over me while day dreaming. I could feel all of the delightful aspets of plunging in and straightening fully horizontal and appreciating the blissful, relaxing movements. My anticipation of a pool day is keen. The ultimate luxury would be a pool in the basement. Would I become so used to a pool in the basement that I would become blase about swimming? I don't think so. In that respect swimming is like sex. It never loses its ability to excite because the physcial movements are, by themselves, provocative of excitement.trust not to drown -- trust that the body will right itself and come to the surface -- trust that the breath will last. know that a relaxed inhale and exhale will calm and control panic and save the breath and use it effectively. the lesson that my body is teaching itself -- is that I am capable of breathing deeply and effectively and that I can keep it even and move evenly and rythmically. On land the panic sets in as a feeling of fatigue and a sort of alarm bell sounds within that calls out for me to pull up and recover a pace that doesn't challenge my breathing. I am working to interpret the alarm bell differently. I am trying to respond by deepening and slowing my respiration. I am working to fill myself with the healthy wind that I pull into my lungs -- expanding them throughout my abdominal and chest and back cavities. I feel the exhileration of sailing farther and faster on a big, windy exhale -- I lift and my legs eat up the ground or propel me through the water.