![]() ![]() It was an exciting time to be in Washington, but it was the kind of excitement that sent a chill down your spine. There seemed to be new cranes, and a new, massive, reflected-glass office complex every time I drove out to Dulles, like northern Virginia was aspiring to be a little suburban Dubai. The transition was in the monolithic condos going up in Columbia Heights, and the brownstone conversions on the edges of Capitol Hill, but mostly it was in the vast, impenetrable glass towers that were rising in northern Virginia and housed aerospace and defense and logistics corporations-the contractors building the infrastructure for the war on terror. ![]() You could see the imperial capital bursting through the old provincial trappings everywhere you looked. The city was midway through a transformation that has been a half century in the making, from a half-stuffy, half-scruffy provincial city whose music scene, which everyone praised, took place at approximately two venues, to one of the wealthiest cities in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. I moved to Washington as a young reporter during the George W. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |