TRAVEL UPDATE. I got through the tests, we'll see about results. I also did a little day-tripping while in DC. The Mall is presently overrun by school trip teens and their minders: fleets of tour buses, harried adults holding up colored signs or folders, mobs of gangly yout's in copy-heavy t-shirts and shorts. The National Museum of Natural History, which I visited, seems made for them: the exhibits and signage are simple and bold, designed for durability and easy cleaning. I took in shows about the Sikhs ("Willy Wonka!" cried one yout), early life on Earth, and Lewis & Clark, in which the signage contained many prompts for an audio tour no one seemed to be taking. I'd never thought much about Lewis & Clark before, but it's a hell of a story, right down to Lewis' pathetic and mysterious suicide. It's almost enough to make me read Thomas Pynchon, were life not so brief.

On recommendations from readers, I also took in the Phillips Collection. It was terrific, and there was hardly anyone there. After a few Target Free Nights at MOMA I had forgotten what a pleasure that can be. I sat and looked at Luncheon of the Boating Party for twenty minutes and two people got in my way, briefly. Even the newer paintings -- including a great, untitled Jake Berthot that looks like a bridge in a mist of smudges, and Howard Hodgkin's ebullient Torso, spilling over onto its frame -- pleased grumpy old me. I was compelled to attend artists who had never interested me before, like Dufy and Braque. The artists I already liked, I had all the time in the world for. Even at full fare this felt like an enormous gift.

Also on recommendation, I dined at Dukem in Adams Morgan. The Doro Wot was fine; still, I'd complain about the price (come on, it's stew poured over weird, grey bread, and six bucks is a lot for a bottle of St. George) were it not for the music. It was my first experience of eskista, so I couldn't tell you if it was good eskista or bad eskista, but I loved the sound: guy beating on a drum with sticks, guy sawing on something that looked like a zither, guy plucking at another zither-thing with a cigar-box soundboard attached, and a girl sitting calmly up front and singing in a high, plangent voice. The rhythm was a little unusual to my culturally insensitive ears (I could count the fours, couldn't quite make out the pulse), but the dance team that came out at the end got into it pretty good.

In other world news, I had the TV on while packing for home and watched the reports on Zarqawi. Much talk about a "turning point" in the War, repeated footage of the Iraqi press corps cheering. And, on the other idiot box, the Perfesser accused the press of "spinning war news to make things look worse than they are, and to hurt Bush." I haven't plowed through the blogs to see if anyone was really sad that the guy who sawed the head off Nick Berg (among many others) got what was coming to him, but it's a big wide wonderful world of opinion, so who knows. Maybe after I clicked off, George Stephanopoulos called for a moment of silence.

Well, I got politics in, now I can take a nap.