vendredi 12 juin 2009

Washington D.C. – June 2009

















Here for a series of management meetings of the international organizations we are part of, and to participate to the World Copyright Summit, a sort of jamboree for music (amongst other cultural formats) copyright owners and their collective societies. Organized by CISAC, this is the second one in 2 years – the last one in Brussels (undertook to do a story on the Summit for our magazine; should be published in the fall edition).

Air Canada managed to lose my suitcase between Calgary and Toronto – you wonder how! But this is the first time, that I recall, and considering the amount of travelling I do with them, it was bound to happen, at least once (but no more, please)!

Staying at the Willard Hotel, managed by the Intercontinental. Historic place: the site of a hostelry since 1816, I learn. A block or so away from the White House, which prompted the best anecdote, for the hotel is where President Ulysses S. Grant would come for a drink and a cigar in the lobby after “a hard day at the (Oval) office”. When the “power-brokers” of the day found out, they would also come around and bother him with some request or issue; Grant called them “lobbyists”, thus coining the term! The Willard was restored in the 80’s and seems to be back as a central stage in the social and political life of “D.C.”

Meetings and Summit taking place in the huge International Trade / Ronald Reagan Centre, sitting kiddie corner with the Willard. Hadn’t been in Washington since my days in Government – last I was here was to call on some generals at the Pentagon, in my days as “death merchant” (just kidding) at the CCC! The place has not changed much – the Canadian Embassy in its new impressive building along Pennsylvania Avenue, between the Capitol and the White House, was already there. Monumental city; great walks, but hot and humid like hell! Spent a few free hours at the nearby National Gallery of Art – great collection of European paintings and plenty of early American ones – landscapes and Indian portraits, among others.

Then tragedy stuck at the Holocaust Museum, a block away, with this old Neo-Nazi barging in with a shotgun, killing a guard. Pandemonium with police and TV crews hovering about from then on...

Restaurants of note: “Fogo de Chao” (pronounce “shoun”) http://www.fogodechao.com/, Brazilian, all-the-meat-you-can-eat type, all the Canadian Delegation to the Summit treated by the Australians – very kind of them. Café Milano, for lunch in Georgetown, with our American colleagues (http://www.cafemilano.net/index.htm.)

On the way back to Reagan airport, drove by Arlington Cemetery, which brought me back to my first visit to Washington, as a summer travelling schoolboy, going to pay my respects on John Kennedy’s tomb (adorned with an ever-burning flame) in 1964...

June 11, 2009