my splice column today is a slam of my hometown: washington, dc. really i'm not so concerned with vindicating the 'worst major city in the country' thing as with describing the particular weirdness of the place. some of this is a bit of a commonplace to people in the area: baltimore is better! etc. or philly. or even richmond.
anyway, like a lot of folks, i am proud of my problematic forebears, and i write in the piece about a peculiar subculture of dc newspaperpeople as it stood in my youth. i've posted these before, but here's my grandfather franklin sartwell, killing some poor schlub's copy at the washington herald. quite elegantly turned out, and with walking-stick in hand he wrote the nightclub column 'man about town.'
and here's his white house pass.
