Three Days in the Capital
Three Days in the Capital
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Ron finally shows up around 10 AM after his red-ey flight from San Diego. Stephanie, I'm sorry but I have to report another key incident. Last night when I arrived, the motorcycle key dropped on the floor and got kicked under the bed. I tore all my cases apart looking for it. By the time I was in the room and had the bike parked, the room looked like my luggage had blown up. I'm glad Ron gets in midmorning so I have time to tidy up and make the place presentable. We decide to head over to the Air and Space Museum. The weather is excellent -- sunny and warm -- and the walk is excellent.
Washington DC is a beautiful city. For good reason it is reminiscent of Paris. Buildings are limited to 13 stories -- the high of the Capital Building. Broad avenues are lined with trees. Diagonal boulevards cross the grid pattern beginning and ending at traffic circles or landscaped squares.
I
am surprised by how small and fragile the The White House looks.
Later I find out this is the most visited museum in the Smithsonian's
empire of museums. The Air and Space is being renovated (yes it is
not very old). Apparently there were problems with the skylights and
window walls. Several galleries are closed. Despite that, it is a
great collection and a great complement to the Kenney Space Center
visit a few weeks ago.
We enter through the gallery that is hung with many notable commercial planes. There is a Boeing 247 -- important as it is considered the first modern air transport. It looks really small by today's standards. There is also a DC-3 -- a plane notable for its contribution to World War II and the advent of widespread commercial air transport. I talk to a British tourist. He's a little older than me but shares my fascination with the space program.
There is the cockpit and forward cabin of a DC-7 that you can walk through. The forward door is tiny. The kids behind me get all excited: Mommy, this is the kid's way in! The cockpit is really tight -- I can hardly imagine working in that space on a long flight. You would need to enjoy the smell of your coworkers. The passenger cabin is much more accommodating.
There is a great exhibit on aerial and spy photography. The size of the cameras used in the U-2 amazes me. The film stock is huge and there are large spools to support the long flights of this plane. This is a plane that is really amazing due to the very short developmental time and the length of time that it has remained in service. It really demonstrates the value of a small team focused on a very narrow, defined task.
Another exhibit highlights the contribution of the aerospace industry to industry at large. At the door there is a very tall (10-12 feet) clear plastic tube that holds one million transistors. In the center is a single microchip with the same switch capacity. It really highlights the remarkable progress of miniaturization. In the same room there is a memory cluster from the early 50s / late 40s that could hold 4,096 words of data. It is significantly larger than a washing machine. My laptop's memory and hard disk storage would require a warehouse full of these boxes to achieve the same capacity. The mind reels at the amount of power that would be required to both operate the boxes and chill the room.
After
Air and Space, we walked around the Mall for a bit. Then we decided
to explore Washington's Metro system. By late afternoon, Ron needed a
nap having had so little sleep on the trip out. Dinner is an
excellent Indian meal at Bombay Club near the White House. Apparently
this was a favorite of the Clintons. The food is excellent and the
service even more impeccable. Despite having dressed up (a little), I
feel shabby by comparison to my fellow diners.
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Sunday is another beautiful day, cooler but not cold. Clear and sunny. This morning we are going to the United States Holocaust Memorial. This memorial is our country's testimony to the Nazi's program to remove Jews, gypsies, gays and lesbians and the handicapped from Europe during World War II. As a student of modern history, this is a story I know very well but I'm very interested in seeing this museum / memorial. It has received nearly universal rave reviews since opening about ten years ago. (Note: if you go, get your ticket well before you travel. Access to the permanent collection is strictly limited.) The narrative here (words, pictures, sounds, objects) is not heavy handed. This is a story of such scope and horror that there is no need to hammer the message. And so the story is told explaining the crippling economic crises of the Weimar Republic, the cultural vividness of Berlin, the increasing intolerance of German society, the decreasing effectiveness of the German central government and the general state of Jewish communities across Europe. The rise of the Nazi party is traced. The rise of public intolerance against Jews in particular as civil rights are withdrawn and finally Kristallnacht. Once military action begins, the rise and fall of the German Reich is traced on maps. The first tentative experiments in mass killing are revealed. The construction of ghettos and later the concentration camps and the experiences of internees is explored. |
When I was growing up, I was told that the United States didn't know what was going on. But that theory is thoroughly debunked in the exhibit. The discussion of whether to send a US team to the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin is revealed. Favorable reports about the Nazi regime from US citizens returning from the games is said to have influenced Roosevelt to take no action. The ultimate decision to participate is shown as a propaganda coup for Hitler's regime. American newspapers clearly showing front page stories about increasing atrocities in Germany against Jews in particular are shown.
But of course, America's ability to act was compromised. Our economic conditions were dire. I recently read a book about teenagers on the move during the Depression. The author's contention is that with such high unemployment in the US, many people thought that a revolution was either eminent and / or beneficial. I think we also need to face the fact that our country then and now has not really come to turns with our own ethnic and racial diversity. My visit to the Martin Luther King Historic Site reminded me that for nearly thirty years after Allied troops liberated concentration camps in Germany, our own institutions would fight to maintain racial divisions. We have to remember that during World War II, we had our own Japanese internment centers. Of course, we didn't build opens or mass graves. But is that such a high standard? And finally, we have yet to fully reconcile our treatment of native Americans as Europeans settled the continent.
If we are to bear effective witness, we must be honest with ourselves. The value of this memorial is not just in remembering the more than six million deaths of World War II but also to deal with our own unresolved issues.
We left the memorial silenced by the emotion of the experience. Another museum was just not in the cards at the moment, so we headed over to the DuPont Circle area of Washington. We take the Metro to DuPont Circle. I had heard of some massive escalators in the Metro system but this station has one that is just amazing. It takes you from the train platform to the surface. But it is really really long. You almost feel like you are rising from earth to heaven on this ride. When you look down from the top to the bottom, the escalators disappear into the darkness -- almost like Dante's descent into hell. The down escalator is not functioning -- all over Washington the escalators are being repaired or replaced. Near the top, a woman is walking down the stopped steps. Her mantra "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" highlights how steep and how long this ride is.
Dinner tonight is at a restaurant called Butterfield 9. Ron had seen this restaurant in Travel and Leisure and wanted to give it a try. Very good food but nothing unusual. Beautifully prepared and presented, it was a nice way to spend Mother's Day. After dinner, we walk over to Hard Rock Cafe to get a pin and a shirt -- part of the collection.
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For our final day, I convince Ron that we should use the Old Town Trolley that runs between several dozen sites. You can get on and get off for one complete loop through Washington. It turns out to be a good deal. We ride it from 9:30 to 4:00. Our tour bus operator and guide is Pablito! One of the first stops is the National Cathedral. Its a beautiful building used by all religions. It occupies the highest point of land in Washington. It is constructed in the gothic style of limestone. It looks like it would be at home in England. One of the stained glass windows includes a piece of moon rock -- definitely unique in the world. Down the hill, the bus drives along Massachusetts Avenue -- the so called Embassy Row of Washington. Washington hosts something like 170 foreign missions, 70% of them located on this street. Pablito does his best to dodge traffic and reel off Holy See on the right, Ivory Coast on the left, Benin on the left, Ireland and Saudi Arabia on the right, and so on. A quick turn and a few minutes are we stuck in traffic in Georgetown. This is the oldest part of Washington -- preexisting the formation of the federal district and the smart residential address at the time of George Washington. The entire area is a nationally registered historic place and thus can not be changed in any way. It is a highly desirable address with the smartest restaurants and shops. The traffic is at a dead stop. Our first stop to get off the trolley is Arlington National Cemetery. We are here to visit the Kennedy grave site both of us having been children when he was shot in Dallas. To me Kennedy is still an exciting leader. His words are carved into the wall that faces Washington. With your back to his grave, you can read his vision. Some years ago, we were in Dallas and we went to the museum at the Texas Schoolbook Repository Building. I highly recommend a visit to that museum -- it doesn't aggrandize Kennedy -- it deals just with the event and the aftermath. That was a deeply emotional visit. As we walk down from the Kennedy grave, I'm struck by the number of graves here. A burial is underway within earshot. The navy band is playing a series of marches. The music, familiar and usually rousing, is strange counterpoint to the solemnity of this place. Back on the trolley, we head across the Potomac to the Viet Nam War memorial, the Korean War Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. First we climb the steps to pay homage to Abraham Lincoln, preserver of the Republic and freer of the slaves. The view down the mall towards the capital and Washington monument is beautiful. I mentally replay, "Thank God Almighty, I'm Free at Last." My goodness, what a significant spot. Next stop is the Viet Nam memorial. I'm happy that this has been built. The 55,000+ men and woman that gave their lives deserve our recognition. But I remain conflicted by my country's role in that conflict. To me it was the end of Empires -- and why were we fighting to maintain the empire? Did we ever really believe the Domino Theory? And in this memorial, as in every war memorial, why is there no mention of the men and women that served and survived. I think of how my family was affected by my father's two tours in Viet Nam and the politics of the era. How many men and women served in Viet Nam? How many are scarred emotionally and physically today? How do we honor them? The memorial is a very good thing but it is not yet complete. Finally, we walk to the other side of the Mall to the Korean War Memorial. This memorial features about twenty combat figures on patrol. It is vivid testimony to what we ask soldiers to do when we send them to unfamiliar lands. It honors without trivializing. A local also visiting the site, tells me that it is particularly striking at night. Back onto the trolley for a ride past the many museum of the Smithsonian. Then up Capital Hill to the Library of Congress. We walk from the Library of Congress past the Supreme Court -- thank God for this institution despite its current conservative bias to Union Station. Union Station is the southern terminus of the very busy Northeast Corridor rail service between Boston and Washington. Amtrak has recently inaugurated high speed service under the name Acela. Of course, if this was France it would be low speed service, but who cares! Union Station has been renovated into a combination train station, shopping mall and restaurant venue. We decide to go for some down home Southern cooking. We both start with a special appetizer of molded avocado, corn relish and crab meat served on a bed of greens. This was so phenomenal, I plan on trying to recreate it once I get home. Unfortunately, the crab here near the Chesapeake Bay that I know my attempt at home will be second rate by comparison. Our entrees are just another appetizer; I have red beans and rice, Ron has fried green tomatoes. We get back on the trolley to ride back to the hotel. It has been a full day and I feel like I really appreciate Washington. There are so many things that we didn't make time for or didn't have time to do that I know we will have to return. I look forward to it. Dinner tonight is in Chinatown. Desert at the Hard Rock so Ron can exchange shirts. Continue Reading: Washington to Newtown, PA |
