I’m doing two Photo Friday’s this week, to show a different side of Washington, DC, than I showed in the first one (See: Photo Friday: What a difference 5 miles makes in the health choices people can make | Ted Eytan, MD), and they are related.
Tip of the RSS/Twitter feed to Jay Parkinson, MD ( Jay Parkinson + MD + MPH = a doctor in NYC (Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30?)) who highlighted this article ( Why Is It Hard to Make Friends Over 30? – NYTimes.com ) :
As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other
To me this explains why Washington, DC is the United States’ most social city (see my blog posts about this) :
- It’s the most walkable city in the United States.
- It’s compact.
- The challenges we face together (large disparities in health, the right to vote), plus the innovations we lead in (marriage equality, patient activism) create a lowering of the guard and ability to reach others that I experience here every day.
I walked and talked with a complete stranger down a long corridor in Union Station the other day, as we fought off the heat and humidity. She said,”How do we get through this?” and I said,”We keep talking to each other.”
The photograph above is from the Bastille Day celebration in Dupont Circle – these events really do happen all the time here, and this is the spirit we bring to them, which is that we believe that everything is possible, because it is. That includes the elimination of health disparities in our own city.
More photos below, including a few of Milo.