No sooner did we get back to our unfurloughed offices when the Great Sickness of Winter 2019 bestruck a large swath of our smallish workforce. For me, this meant having to forego a long weekend trip to New York City which would surely have yielded a much more interesting blog or two. I spent several days languishing in bed coughing and binge watching instead.

Since last writing, however, we did do a couple of interesting things. One was a visit to Frederick, MD and the Civil War Medicine Museum. This may seem a gruesome way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and some of it was pretty horrid (severed limbs, anyone?) but also very illuminating. And well done. We learned, among other things, that anesthesia actually did exist back then, and getting your leg sawed off was highly preferable to dying of gangrene. Frederick has a nice small downtown, and a canal walk which featured decorated boats created by local businesses and not for profits.

We also discovered some interesting Arlington history on another recent occasion. Upon taking a walk in a neighborhood off Wilson Boulevard, not far from our favorite Vietnamese food haunt, the Eden Center, we noticed a large property set off from the road. This consisted of a semi-crumbling mansion and a set of even more dilapidated outbuildings surrounded by a large tract of land.

Upon some internet research, we discovered that this was the former home of real estate magnate/horse racing enthusiast/man about town Randolph Rouse. There was more history to this property, which of course I read and then promptly forgot and did not bookmark, so if I find that again maybe I will write more about it.

Winter is still here, despite the warm respite this week, and hopefully the sickness and furloughs are a thing of the past. Here’s to further adventures and insights soon!