They say it’s eerily calm inside the eye. Even while winds and rain are tearing things apart a few miles away, you get this patch of calm, even sunshine, and some barometric sense of stillness and quiet. And of course foreboding, because you know that calm spot is going somewhere else, and you can’t run fast enough to stay inside. 

So it seems to me this week in our nation’s capital. Of course I see what I want/expect to see, and I wouldn’t presume to elevate my anecdotes even to the level of alternative facts. But still… that’s a picture inside the DuPont Circle Starbucks at 7:30 AM on a workday. In my 15 or so years of coming here, I never remember it being empty like this. As they say wherever they say things like this: Sumpin’ ain’t right.