There are many great people living in Washington, D.C., although we can’t seem to agree on who they are. There are also quite a few “grate” people living there, and it is obvious who they are.

This observation was made by my dad, Bobby D. Barnett, during his time working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the nation’s capital in the early days of the Reagan administration.

The grate people, Dad says, are “the scruffy men who spend the winter on the grates that cover the ventilation shafts leading from the subterranean portions of the city.”

Few places, I suppose, have such an excess supply of hot air as to be able to vent it in such a seemingly wasteful

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