about how I should drive more (update of a previous post)

The 7:45 morning bus always arrives early, the 8:05 late. Someone plays her phone audio out loud on the ride. I get off at King Street metro station and wait for the yellow line to Greenbelt. After Pentagon station, the train surges out of Virginia across the Potomac—my favorite part of the commute. Looking out to see dulled light glancing off hard bridges, rough, sectarian waters, and wildly uneven expectations. I see the mild winter morning sinking the bots in their cars moving from A to B. I think of how every day I take the subway to and from work, but each time I ride, I feel like it takes me farther and farther from home.

At Len'fant Plaza station I crowd off the yellow line to catch the next train west to Capitol South. And, there, young blood marches to Congress for another day of legislating and messaging. They moved from somewhere in the top of their class down into the tunnels beneath this pyramid where they scratch walls and people, where they keep tradition alive, where everyone else can lick heels.

something about "Potomac Landings" by Paul Wilstach

Paul Wilstach shares with us the life of the the lands pinning in the Potomac River. The encyclopedic Potomac Landings is written with care and traces of affection. Much of national importance in America is rooted in the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia area (also known as the DMV) along the river. Bits that I found particularly interesting include how many wealthy people settled the area, the plantations, the way children of rich men established estates near each other, and the way those estates became counties.

Covering little bits of everything, Wilstach gives us a book to leaf through. He occasionally indulges in details about, for example, oil lamps. But the bulk of the text traces plantation and estate operations, well-heeled families, social conventions, the landscape, agriculture, architecture, and legal developments.
 
I especially enjoyed stumbling upon brief passages in which the author reveals his talent for literary writing. For example:

So, in brief, civilization came to the Potomac, seated itself at the river's mouth, and began its slow sweep up the shores from point to point, and from creek to creek. It came upward like the tide whose ebb and flow had for ages been as the river's respiration and life. If however, the flow of this tide was slow as centuries, its ebb was eventually just as inevitable as the ebb that twice daily perpetually bares the sandy beaches and the landing piles along its way.

Notes:
-Potomac Landings was published in 1920. I read a 1937 edition.
-The book is somewhat Maryland-centric.