Nothing Is Easy

That was true in 1972, when a Jethro Tull album cover sat in a Chi Phi basement room and rocked hard, long before the Islamic Republic was a news item and before any of us imagined how strange the future would get. It’s still true now.

There was a time when our curious carnival of publishing fun was just getting organized, when morning meetings drew both Boomers and students in for general assignments, and the daily enterprise actually produced things of temporary value. It was fun living with the old timers and the new ones at the same time.

But these are historic-change days.

Willow was the place near the Socotra offices, though sometimes we drifted down Wilson Boulevard to Café Asia in Rosslyn. When it’s warm, there’s sidewalk seating out front. Not now. SnowCrete has us pinned in, and there’s no watching people trudge uphill this week.

Inside, it’s a post-modern glass room selling sushi and alcohol. The staff is all from Asia—some newly arrived, others second- or third-generation Americans—making it a very Arlington place with an Asian format. I practice my Thai, Japanese, and Korean, or at least the phrases I remember that make the ladies giggle.

We used to hang out there with a younger crowd from Health and Human Services downtown, back when we were still pretending to work. They were launching their Fridays just as we Boomers faded after a couple of drinks. They’d head off to dinner and clubs. They had the money, the energy, and they knew where all the little places were.

We’d go home to Big Pink and collapse in the bunkroom aft of the galley on the fourth floor. Two three-man bunks. Habitation could jump from zero to six without warning.

The drive took us up the bluff where the Civil War fort once stood, past the fire station and the strip mall where Ray’s Steakhouse arrived and where Pho 75 still serves the best Vietnamese soup in great steaming bowls. We used to go there from the Pentagon, back when the place was still a dump. We’d sit under the pressed-tin roof and talk about the war. These days you have to ask which one.

Pho still means hearty soup. 75 was the year the owner stopped being a finance minister and became a refugee. Naming things matters.

Wilson Boulevard thrives on changing circumstances—Metro, immigration, momentum. It sizzles. When I started at the Navy Annex in the 1980s, Arlington felt quiet, even worn down, at least to commuters who bought homes where we could afford them and where English dominated the schools.

Then came waves: Vietnamese first, then Ethiopians and Eritreans (don’t confuse them), Pakistanis, Salvadorans, Guatemalans. Lawn signs now ask us to vote for people named Khan and Pahlavi, and everyone here is fine with it. Proud of it.

The drumbeat for the midterms is already audible. The President’s people are fully awake, past the Big Beautiful phase, now moving across multiple regional conflicts at once. There’s a sober energy to it—less performance, more intent—especially in the familiar speech about crime and sending Mr. Homan up to Minneapolis. For some of us, that tone feels right for the moment.

Others, like our Governor, seem focused elsewhere. Yesterday she announced a new redistricting plan designed to ensure that none of the rednecks—implied if not spoken—can meaningfully vote against what used to be the weekday center of activity, a place that once shut tight every Friday night when commuters fled.

That world is gone.

We’re fifteen minutes from Old Arlington. The condo still hasn’t eaten the parking lot. The ice isn’t melting anytime soon. Iran is launching drones for Marine Growlers to shoot down near a very cool aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln.