Love's her job: How Sophia Nash Wrote Romance into her Life
When Sophia Nash writes a riveting love scene, she doesn’t dim the lights and pour herself a glass of red wine. Instead, the 56-year-old Bethesda resident descends into her home’s “lower salon,” as she calls it, sits at a desk before a large window overlooking her backyard, and fires up her MacBook Air.
The only requirement?
“It has to be night,” says Nash, a trim, blue-eyed woman whose platinum hair falls just below her shoulders. Though Nash writes throughout the day, she waits until her teenage son has gone to bed before tackling passages that might make some readers blush:
He pulled her ever closer to the warmth of his powerful hard frame and she could not stop the small sound which escaped from her throat. He was all heat and restrained strength. His striated muscles rolling under the fine layer of shirt linen made her feel faint with pleasure…
Nash calls her fiction “Jane Austen-esque” tales that go “beyond the bedroom door.” And over the last decade, she has steadily made a name for herself writing romance novels set during England’s Regency era (1811-1820; imagine horse carriages and ballroom gowns). Read more (Bethesda Magazine, July/Aug. 2014)
The only requirement?
“It has to be night,” says Nash, a trim, blue-eyed woman whose platinum hair falls just below her shoulders. Though Nash writes throughout the day, she waits until her teenage son has gone to bed before tackling passages that might make some readers blush:
He pulled her ever closer to the warmth of his powerful hard frame and she could not stop the small sound which escaped from her throat. He was all heat and restrained strength. His striated muscles rolling under the fine layer of shirt linen made her feel faint with pleasure…
Nash calls her fiction “Jane Austen-esque” tales that go “beyond the bedroom door.” And over the last decade, she has steadily made a name for herself writing romance novels set during England’s Regency era (1811-1820; imagine horse carriages and ballroom gowns). Read more (Bethesda Magazine, July/Aug. 2014)
Street Smart: What to do in D.C.’s Trinidad
The historic Northeast neighborhood Trinidad is largely residential, with leafy trees and quiet rowhouse-lined streets. In recent years, however, the trapezoidal community has welcomed the arrival of a playful park, and the streets that make up its boundaries are beginning to percolate with an artistic and innovative spirit.
Bardo
1200 Bladensburg Rd. NE
When it comes to describing his bar, "everyone's got an opinion," says co-owner Bill Stewart, 55. " 'It's like Austin.' 'Oh, it's like Portland.' " The vibe here is undoubtedly laid-back. The 15,000-square-foot outdoor space is speckled with picnic tables, corn hole stations and a screen hung on a boxcar that plays movies nightly. Bar Dawg, a tail-wagging Australian cattle dog with his own Twitter handle (@BardawgDC), freely roams.
Gearin' Up Bicycles
1200 Bladensburg Rd. NE
A stroll around stacked boxcars at Bardo leads to this used-bike shop that began renting a small outdoor spot from the bar in April. It has more than a dozen used bikes for sale, as well as bike supplies and tuneup services, but the real focus of the nonprofit group is to empower people through cycling. "We're definitely a friendly community of cyclists who care," says 29-year-old co-founder Mychael Mims. For starters, the shop offers an earn-a-bike program in which participants learn the ins and outs of building a bike that they keep at the session's end.
Read more (Washington Post Magazine, June 29, 2014)
Bardo
1200 Bladensburg Rd. NE
When it comes to describing his bar, "everyone's got an opinion," says co-owner Bill Stewart, 55. " 'It's like Austin.' 'Oh, it's like Portland.' " The vibe here is undoubtedly laid-back. The 15,000-square-foot outdoor space is speckled with picnic tables, corn hole stations and a screen hung on a boxcar that plays movies nightly. Bar Dawg, a tail-wagging Australian cattle dog with his own Twitter handle (@BardawgDC), freely roams.
Gearin' Up Bicycles
1200 Bladensburg Rd. NE
A stroll around stacked boxcars at Bardo leads to this used-bike shop that began renting a small outdoor spot from the bar in April. It has more than a dozen used bikes for sale, as well as bike supplies and tuneup services, but the real focus of the nonprofit group is to empower people through cycling. "We're definitely a friendly community of cyclists who care," says 29-year-old co-founder Mychael Mims. For starters, the shop offers an earn-a-bike program in which participants learn the ins and outs of building a bike that they keep at the session's end.
Read more (Washington Post Magazine, June 29, 2014)
A Long Career Any Way You Cut it: D.C. Barber Aaron C. Whitaker
Walk into the D.C. Barber Center (3817 14th St. NW; 202-722-9621), and it’s impossible not to feel that time has been rewound. The walls of the Petworth barbershop are nearly covered in decades old ephemera, including a framed black and white photo of Sugar Ray Robinson and a
poster advertising the Million Man March in 1995.
The setting is a backdrop for the mementos and tools that owner Aaron E. Whitaker has accumulated since he opened the barbershop in 1969. While the neighborhood has changed and business has slowed in recent years, the 83-year-old isn’t hanging up his scissors and shears just yet. “As long as I’m healthy, I’ll keep working,” he says.
Read more (Washington Post Magazine, June 15, 2014)
poster advertising the Million Man March in 1995.
The setting is a backdrop for the mementos and tools that owner Aaron E. Whitaker has accumulated since he opened the barbershop in 1969. While the neighborhood has changed and business has slowed in recent years, the 83-year-old isn’t hanging up his scissors and shears just yet. “As long as I’m healthy, I’ll keep working,” he says.
Read more (Washington Post Magazine, June 15, 2014)
His Offbeat Sound Machines: Musician Layne Garrett
It started with a few wind chimes Layne Garrett built for friends in 2003. “Those were the first small-scale stuff I built,” says the 37-year-old experimental musician. Pretty soon, however, Garrett was developing instruments from found objects and household items. “As I started playing around more and more with less conventional sounds and less conventional ways of producing sound,” he says, “I started to want to be able to produce sounds that the instruments I had could not produce.”
More than a decade later, the Takoma Park resident estimates he has made 20 pieces …and counting. “I have endless projects’ worth of raw materials,” he says with a smile. Here, Garrett showcases a handful of his one-of-a-kind creations. Read more (Washington Post Magazine, June 1, 2014) Faith, Etched in Stone: Sackler's Cosmic Buddha in fine detail
In a room brimming with ancient art, the headless and armless limestone statue is easy to overlook. Nevertheless, Keith Wilson, curator of ancient Chinese art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, suggests visitors linger in front of Vairochana, the Cosmic Buddha, a little longer. “As you can see it’s super complicated and very, very dense,” he says of the intricately carved 6th-century piece on the main floor of Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery (1200 Independence Ave SW; 202-633-1000). “It has never been fully analyzed, though it’s been here at the museum for 90 years.”
That is quickly changing though: In November 2013, the Smithsonian Institution unveiled Smithsonian X 3D. The site, which features three-dimensional scans of the Cosmic Buddha and other objects, allows researchers and the public to examine the objects in fine detail. Read more (Washington Post Magazine, Feb. 16, 2014) |
‘Last American Indian’ finds challenges in performance art
On a gray October morning, the Lincoln Memorial is teeming with tourists. Many are so intent on jockeying for a good spot to take a photo of the presidential statue, they seem to miss the 6-foot-4 man wearing a feathered headdress.
With a black handprint painted across his unsmiling face, he looks like a Native American caricature: black wool leggings bordered with fringe and a matching loincloth hanging from a belted loop. At times, he holds cardboard signs saying: “My Spirit Animal Is White Guilt” and “This Used to Be Indian Land But Everything Went to Crap.” Read more (Washington Post Magazine, Feb. 16, 2014) School Ties: At Sumner Museum, a link to D.C. History
Standing in what used to be a classroom, Kimberly Springle gestures to the dozens of everyday objects surrounding her at the Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives. “That’s what we’re here for,” says the director of the museum, which is dedicated to the District’s
public school past. “To protect that history, to make sure that it’s preserved and memories are not lost.” Created in 1986, the museum holds items such as yearbooks, newspapers, sports equipment and vinyl records, and is housed in the Charles Sumner School (1201 17th St. NW, 202-730-0478), formerly an elementary and high school for African Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries. The D.C. school system, which integrated in 1954, has a history that is constantly evolving, Springle says. Read more (Washington Post Magazine, Jan. 26, 2014) |
