No, my siren is the daffodil.

On a rainy Wednesday evening at 21st and L streets NW, a small group of people has gathered — physically or via the Internet — at the offices of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

“He socialized not at all with politicians and business people in Washington,” remembers his grandson Knight Kiplinger.

Few people who met Patsy Thorpe — third and most difficult spouse of Jim Thorpe, that primordial American athlete — accused her of being pleasant, in particular Thorpe’s children from previous marriages.

— Swahili proverb

The mountain was just as I remembered it: high and stark, dusky black against the blue sky. Its name was Meru and, like its sister to the east — Kilimanjaro — it was the remnant of an extinct volcano. It had a steep grade on one side, which gave way to foothills and then to the city of Arusha. On the other was a long slope that rolled out into lakes and plains.

It was the mid-1990s, and Nathan was working as a copy editor at the Baltimore Sun, engaged to be married and “really miserable.”

It is 1993, and she is the 39-year-old only daughter of her parents’ long and loving marriage. Her mother has suffered a stroke, so Braitman has flown from California to New York to be with her. She finds her mom awake, but groggy, and hopped up on meds. After an embrace, her mother asks, “So, how’s your boyfriend?”

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]]> http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=d9325d1e9895e6115d4fdac1d8fb0d0d http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/what-makes-a-perfect-spy-tick/2012/01/09/gIQAXWvL1Q_story.html?wprss=rss_magazine http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/what-makes-a-perfect-spy-tick/2012/01/09/gIQAXWvL1Q_story.html?wprss=rss_magazine http://www.washingtonpost.com/Fragment/SysConfig/WebPortal/twpweb/rss/mobile/blog-entry.jpp?id=1000.3.2559172895 http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/what-makes-a-perfect-spy-tick/2012/01/09/gIQAXWvL1Q_story.html?wprss=rss_magazine http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/what-makes-a-perfect-spy-tick/2012/01/09/gIQAXWvL1Q_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/what-makes-a-perfect-spy-tick/2012/01/09/gIQAXWvL1Q_search.html 1000.3.2559172895 75674860-3ae9-11e1-af18-7ec0de5907e2 CIA Thu, 9 Feb 2012 09:45:26 EST Tue, 21 Feb 2012 01:37:54 EST 20120221063754 The Washington Post /2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/01/09/Magazine/Stories/spies0212.xml article_story magazine.dwp:content_well/magazine-front-hero-top.dwc:story EOM::CompoundStory The Washington Post His stepfather was laying into him that night something awful. Hurtful words. Head slaps. The usual. What made Frank King so mean? the boy had asked himself over the years. Now, Jamie King just wanted to watch the end of a great football game.

“We shall overcome Reagan”

It was the kind of year that made a person look back fondly on the gulf oil spill.

Granted, the oil spill was bad. But it did not result in a high-decibel, weeks-long national conversation about a bulge in a congressman’s underpants. Which is exactly what we had in the Festival of Sleaze that was 2011. Remember? There were days when you could not escape The Bulge. At dinnertime, parents of young children had to be constantly ready to hurl themselves in front of their TV screens, for fear that it would suddenly appear on the news in high definition. For a brief (Har!) period, The Bulge was more famous than Justin Bieber.

Elijah Byrd adored motorcycles, a hobby he had dabbled in as a young man. But he could never afford to own one until his son Shane gave him a Honda Shadow Spirit 750 for Father’s Day in 2004.

For more than three decades, the University of Maryland health professor taught courses on death education that drew hundreds of students every semester. One young woman came because of a near-death experience she’d had at age 10, when a wave washed over her in Atlantic City. Another was grieving from the loss of her father in a plane crash. More than a few students over the years were contemplating suicide.

And she was.

When her hair started turning gray in her 30s, long before it should have, she kept it. Didn’t dye it black to maintain the appearance of an elusive youth, but wore the gray like a crown — piled in silky curls, done in waves or covered by hats. She had an extensive collection of hats, so large that she once had a room dedicated to them. In her generation, a hat was a thing of pride. Proper ladies wore hats and gloves and often a string of pearls, so that when they presented themselves socially, they would appear “finished.”

Twenty-five years ago, Washington Post Magazine was launched. That doesn’t seem like many years, but life sure has changed.

In 1986, terrorism was someone else’s problem, AIDS had only just become a household name, and we’d never seen a serious tech rally, much less a bust. Heck, Whitney Houston even had two hits on Billboard’s year-end singles chart.

Instead of getting to rest before her show at the Louisiana Superdome, the R&B star has been booked for two speaking engagements. She’s holed up in her hotel suite, fuming. Outside, her assistants are waiting for her to open the door.

On a visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York three years ago, Dennis Hong was captivated not by the giant blue whale, or the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, but by the ankle bone of a timid prehistoric deer.

LaPides’s student assistant sets a timer for 10 minutes, and Pitch Dingman, a weekly speed-pitching session at the University of Maryland’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, begins.

In fact, he carries everything he needs to survive in his 22-pound backpack. As a “ridgerunner” employed by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club, he is in charge of hiking 112 miles of trail through Shenandoah National Park from May to September. While the park’s traditional rangers serve as law enforcement or nature “interpreters,” Augie actually lives in the backcountry woods for week-long stretches. He sleeps in a one-man tent, cooks dinner on the world’s tiniest camp stove and has a nodding acquaintance with the black bears he regularly passes as he hikes his rocky, winding path.

On this evening in late June, the 40-year-old is stepping out of a black SUV on Hollywood Boulevard for the premiere of “Larry Crowne,” her latest film. She has only a small part, but Tom Hanks asked her to do it, so now she’s shrink-wrapped into a knee-length tangerine Herve Leroux bandage dress — no bra, no back, plunging neckline.

The people were the Nacotchtank Indians. They or their ancestors lived alongside the waterway for 10,000 years.

He putt-putts in a pontoon south from Bladensburg Waterfront Park, where the Anacostia begins its eight-mile run to the Potomac River at Hains Point.

The other end is wound around a plastic water bottle, which whirs like any sportsman’s reel as it rapidly unspools on the dusty ground. The sinker and two hooks baited with chicken splash about 40 feet out.

“You’re supposed to be a fair God,” he railed. This — untimely and almost certain death at the age of 18 — wasn’t fair.

“Still wrong,” he says as he stands, arms folded, watching Clint Broadus, a beefy 12-year-old and one of his best players, field one groundball after another without first getting in front of it.

But on this night, as she walks up to a group of young men sitting outside the Columbia Heights Metro station, Langelan looks more like a librarian than a martial arts expert. Her hair is swept into a loose updo, and her outfit is smartly layered in shades of blue. The young men, in the baggy mismatched clothes of a different generation, don’t notice her until she hands them a sheet of paper. The heading, in bold-face type, reads: “International Anti-Street-Harassment Campaign.”

Winter sunlight streams through the glass roof onto rows of long, white troughs filled with algae and seawater. A little water wheel in each trough turns to keep the liquid circulating and the growing cells evenly exposed to light and to carbon dioxide-enriched air. Computers maintain a constant temperature. Giant transparent bags of algae varieties waiting to be tested hang from metal beams.

Here’s how Salman Khan thinks schools should work: Students should learn lessons online and do homework and projects in class.

This “flipping” of the traditional classroom is the operating system espoused by Khan and his Khan Academy, a Web site whose popularity is exploding as millions tune into its free videos, practice exercises and assessment tools.

Carefully plan your first-semester schedule.

Registering for classes as a freshman can feel impossible, as there’s a litany of required introductory courses and upperclassmen have usually booked the best times. Still, make sure you take a moderate load of courses totalling no more than 12 to 18 credit hours. Spread your classes across the week and avoid times when you would be most tempted to skip, such as early mornings or Thursday evenings.

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“There just wasn’t any spark.”

Spark, chemistry, x-factor, zing — curse you, whatever you are. For five years, the editors of Date Lab have been sending single Washingtonians out on blind dates and recounting the highs (and lows) for our readers. And after wining and dining 250 couples — 20-somethings, senior citizens, straight, gay, rich, not-so-rich, and nearly every race on the Census form — the one thing we know is this: No matter how perfect a pair seems on paper, no matter how sure we are that the spark will ignite, there’s no predicting when that indefinable romantic catalyst will show itself.

Like millions of Americans, I grew up in the age of spaceflight. My father, a senior technical specialist for Canon U.S.A., has been photographing rockets at Kennedy Space Center since his dad took him to the launch of Apollo 10, the second time astronauts orbited the moon, in 1969.

She waited in a chair, petite and poised in a plum-colored dress, hidden from the crowd by a curtain of red cloth. Her fans circulated among the tables as Civil War-era music filled the air.

A new wardrobe.

A flotilla of transport ships in the harbor was crammed with comforts for the more than 62,000 weary men: tens of thousands of sturdy boots and shoes, fresh shirts, socks, underwear and trousers. There were greatcoats and blankets, camp kettles and pans, axes and spades, and even needles and thread.

To visualize a space, Erin Pitts likes to pull all the elements of her design concept together on a framed pinboard. The following are the retail items included in this room scheme, which Pitts calls “Surf.”

Pitts, 39, is an expert in seaside style. She designs many coastal retreats, and she and her husband, Gregory, built a house near the water themselves, on Gibson Island, a private enclave in Anne Arundel County. The New England shingle-style home, which the couple shares with their three small children, has views of the Magothy River.

He fidgets in the makeup artist’s chair, and while she carefully brushes and dabs his face, he repeatedly smudges her work with his fingers.

The Post Hunt is a wild, sprawling three-hour contest that plays out on the streets of D.C. To compete, you’ll spend an afternoon trying to solve big, bizarre puzzles strewn around the heart of monumental Washington. You could win valuable prizes.

Sculpted deltoids, carved biceps and a stomach chiseled into a glorious six-pack that rises and falls into magnificent little hills and valleys.

It is the first thing you notice when you see Ernestine Shepherd in the front of the class, teaching body sculpting at a gym north of Baltimore.

Until recently, I hadn’t been to the venerable Meskerem in Adams Morgan for a decade, the white-tablecloth Foti’s in Culpeper since the recession hit and The Black Olive in Baltimore since shortly after becoming this newspaper’s paid palate in 2000. The siren call of what’s new — and there’s a lot in the Washington landscape — kept me away.

There is no hustle like that found during the morning rush hour. There is no flood of eager riders pushing to get a seat, to get to work early, to get a raise, to get ahead. Instead, there is an air of exhausted congeniality. It is harder to hold on to stress when your body is tired. Passengers pick up novels, take naps, nurse beers or — it actually happens on this run — chat with the stranger in the nearby seat. Riding on this last MARC train reminds riders why we love city life — all these people! Aboard it, the day-to-day dramas of the District’s toiling masses slowly unfold.

Take this simple test to find out!

1. Did Benjamin Harrison ever light a goldfish on fire?

2. If Hannah is sitting at a round table next to the librarian’s husband, and the librarian is sitting between Duane and the person who launders Hannah’s underpants, how many people were at little Robbie’s bris?