Politics

Happy New Year, and welcome to The Washington Connection’s first edition of 2024. What did you do for New Year’s Eve? Times Square in New York? Georgetown in D.C.? Broadway in Nashville?

Although I opted to travel down a more sentimental route this year, I’ve been known to tuck a few gag gifts under the tree. Over the years these have included funny t-shirts, prank gift boxes, and odd tasting candy…I mean, you haven’t lived until you’ve tried a hot dog flavored candy cane…am I right?

A confession…My name is Jamie, and I’m a last minute Christmas shopper. I’ve never participated in Black Friday or Cyber Monday. It is because of this that my son never did get that Hot Wheels Carwash Santa promised him, and that both my kids often had to wait into the New Year before getting the newest gaming platform and/or hottest video game.

This week, I was fortunate enough to travel to Little Rock, Arkansas. The immediate attractions were to attend a Conference Board briefing at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, participate in several programs at the Clinton School of Public Service, and, let’s be honest, possibly spend some quality time with the 42nd president of the United States.

There are two types of people who emerge every year in late fall—you’ve got your Thanksgiving people, and you’ve got your Christmas people. You know Thanksgiving people. They complain about Christmas displays going up in grocery stores the day after Halloween, they sprain their ankles during backyard Turkey Bowl games, and they know which breed won the National Dog Show (the Sealyham terrier). And you know your Christmas people. They put reindeer antlers on their cars, collect nutcrackers, and throw ugly sweater parties.

I was out of town last week for a Veteran’s Day event. Because people know I live in the nation’s capital and work around politics, they typically single me out for a good deal of venting. I hear frustrations from the left and right about the way Washington works…or doesn’t work.

I have a bad back; it’s the product of 20th century golf swing mechanics and the hundreds of practice range balls I used to beat daily as a competitive golfer in my teens and twenties. It first flared up just a few days before the Yale University Collegiate Invitational, a major Division I college golf tournament, during my sophomore year. While the pain can be debilitating, then, I could seek treatment in our team room from university trainers; today, its strain seems to come up at the worst times, and I’m told that improving my core strength is the only real treatment.

I was raised Catholic, went to CCD, took first communion, was confirmed, and attended St. Patrick’s Church in Rockville, MD, with my Italian grandparents nearly every Sunday. My wife is Jewish, attended Hebrew day school, became a Bat Mitzvah, and even lived briefly on a kibbutz in Israel. Neither of us would be described as religiously devout today. We celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah, Yom Kippur and Easter.

One of the most captivating things about traveling across Italy is that ancient history is never further than a few steps away. Florence is home to the oldest stone bridge in Europe, and the same streets Dante, da Vinci, Michelangelo, and the Medici family strolled. In Siena, the Palio dates back to 1482, and is still run today; this year’s victors were the Goose and the Rhino. The Etruscans grew vines and made wine in Tuscany as far back as the ninth century BCE. And in Rome the Colosseum, Pantheon, and Forum all date back to the time of Caesar.

My grandparents immigrated to the United States from Italy as Benito Mussolini’s brand of fascism swept across the country in the first half of the 20th century. It was their journey to America that offered me the privilege of growing up with Italian grandparents in the house; we were the only family on my street who had multi-generations living under the same roof. Having emigrated from small towns in the Abruzzi region, my grandparents didn’t speak much English.