Good morning, DMV*! It’s February 17.
Late last week — about a week after the Washington Post fired me and more than 300 other journalists — I asked my former colleagues if I could send a farewell note to readers of Post Local, the newsletter I had written and edited.
On Friday evening, I was told the company gave the green light for my note. So I had to sprint through a basic to-do list.
You see, I feel like I’ve invited you to a party at a house that I’m just starting to build, brick by brick. In my mind, you’ve come over and are hanging out, sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor of my new home, while I lay bricks around us … breaking now and then to share tea and sympathy.
Many of you have asked how to support me and pay for my work, so I cranked through the weekend to figure that out. Then yesterday, I was given a tutorial to create this nifty button:
The Washington Post delivered my farewell note yesterday. It included a link for the landing page of this newsletter. To all of you who have just found me again after my abrupt disappearance from Post Local: Great to see you, and thank you for inviting me into your inbox in my new iteration as Alisa’s Daily Dose.
Please give me grace as I carry on with the construction work. Let me know if anything seems broken or amiss. And stick around as I keep laying bricks — because doing almost anything is better with friends.
🚀 About that rocket launch
So, to close the loop from last week: My husband and I did indeed wake up before dawn last Friday for the 5:15 a.m. rocket launch that was visible across the East Coast. (We let my daughter sleep through this one.)
He put on his coat. I got into my sleeping bag that’s good for sub-freezing temperatures; I unzipped the bottom of it, so I could stick my legs out and walk. We went out to the front yard and looked east. Then he decided to go to the back yard, but I stayed put.
The next thing I knew, he was hollering my name, all excited. I ran through the house in my slippers and out the back door, then stepped carefully up our hill covered in ice-encrusted snow. He had spotted the rocket. He showed me where to look, but it was too late. I missed it.
It had launched at 5:15 a.m. from Cape Canaveral in Florida. It was visible from our home in the D.C. region about 10 minutes later. TEN MINUTES!
Thanks to the Capital Weather Gang for retweeting the X post above and this one below, which has an amazing videos.
📷 Your joy
(Carol Rose)
Carol Rose, a 78-year-old resident of Rockville, Maryland, shared this photo she took during a Feb. 6 outing at Glenstone museum in Potomac, Maryland. She said she shared it with me in part to help me quiet my monkey mind.
“It was very cold and started snowing as I arrived. I walked the up the long trail around the perimeter while the snow continued, carrying a thermos of hot ginger tea in my messenger bag,” she wrote.
“After being there about an hour walking the grounds, a tiny amount of snow began to accumulate on the dried winter weeds. Hardly anyone was there. For the first time in a while I felt peace and calm.
“Glenstone is one of my happy places because I get to spend time in nature and also observe great contemporary art.”
* For those of you wondering: The DMV is how residents here call the D.C. region, which includes Maryland and Virginia. I’d get emails from people asking about this every few weeks. Now you know. 😉
