Day 1
This was an easy day, Chris drove me to the airport on his way to work, and being a Sunday, there was almost no traffic. Jet Blue has hourly flights and no worries checking in with my spiffy new luggage. When I arrived at the hotel it was early and my room wasn't ready so I went exploring and for those reading this who love Boston's Legal chowder there is a franchise down the block and the soup was great on a cold, windy day. I checked into my room read and napped. Hope also arrived from New Brunswick in time for dinner and orientation. There are 34 in the group, by far the largest I've been part of.
The flight path into the airport goes right down the Potomac River
a security nightmare for the pilots as well as homeland security
The day started with a talk on media and politics. The speaker was good enough but with the excitement of our election and later the news of Andrew Coyne's resignation the reality of media was more interesting than his theory. Our first trip was to the Jefferson Memorial, a beautiful circular columned dome, with profoundly prescient quotations carved into the marble.
This was followed by a tour of the Kennedy Centre. We are going to the Carol King musical Beautiful there on Thursday night. In real life she is receiving the Presidents Medal of Honour right there at Kennedy Centre next month. How cool is that? We had lunch there and took pictures from the huge wrap around deck with views around the whole city.
The Hall of Flags that reflect all the countries the US has diplomatic relationships with. Needless to say there are frequent additions and deletions
There is wonderful art from all over the world and an especially good African collection
The bus took us to the Saudi Arabian Embassy where we saw a short movie about life and development in Arabia and had a good discussion with staff who handled questions well. It was my favourite part of the day. I think people were surprised at the changes in the role of women and the 95% literacy rate of young people. Hope commented on what dramatic social, economic, and technological changes they have gone through from1930 to 2015.
Afterwards we stopped at the Iwa Jima and the Air Force Memorials in Arlington Cemetary. Arlington was started in Mrs. Lee's rose garden. General Lee owned the land and the government confiscated it during the civil war because Lee wouldn't cross enemy lines to pay his taxes in person. When Lincoln was asked where they could bury the 10,000 soldiers that died in the latest battle he replied 'in Mrs. Lee's rose garden'. By the time the war was over General Lee's land was full of dead soldiers and he never returned to his home again.
Iwa Jima
The Air Force Memorial
The Vietnam Memorial
First memorial for Women in War. Based on a true story of 3 nurses caring for
wounded and waiting for a helicopter that never arrived in time
We made it home for a short break and quick dinner before going to the White House. It was small! After years of watching The West Wing I was expecting something big enough to house all that energy and power, I'm glad it seemed almost modest. Across the street in Lafayatte Square there is a woman camped out for 35 years protesting for nuclear disarmament. She is so old now she has friends sleep there at night and when she dies she will have been the last of the protesters allowed to camp across from the White house. We got home just as the poles closed in Canada and an hour later I was so proud of being Canadian, and Albertan, and able to participate in two upset elections in one year.
The modest White House
Day 3
Today was an emotional day, sad and inspiring. We started at the Lincoln Memorial. The best part of which were the people from all over the world. The most interesting thing the guide told us was that Lincolns hands were placed in such a way that he signed A and L. Later in the day there was a group of deaf people outside the Newseum and I asked them about it and they said it was true as the sculpture, French had a deaf child and also did the sculpture at Gallaudet one of the first schools for the deaf in the U S.
The Lincoln Memorial
From there we went to memorials for the Vietnam and Korean wars. They were both very powerful in different ways. The Korean had the most visual impact as you can see from the pictures. The Vietnam memorial surprised me with how overwhelming it felt walking along the wall of names. One of the men told me that the names were organized by date but in reality they were usually grouped together with others who had died at the same time in their unit. I tried to tell him that was good because they were probably just fighting for each other by then anyway but I started crying. It is still sad.
The Viet Nam Memorial
The Korean War Memorial
I thought this was the strongest in capturing the feel of war. It was also the first way that the use of hand held communication devices were so prevalent as seen by the antennas.
A granite wall reflects the sculptures doubling the impact and creating a ghostly feel
Adding to the ghostly feel was the engraving of the support workers that were etched into the granite wall
To break the spell we skipped out of the National Gallery because the whole modern wing was closed for renovation and went first to the Canadian Embassy across the street to celebrate the election results on Canadian territory. There was a memorial to Kent Taylor and a condolence book. Just before us the Deputy Director of the CIA had been there and signed the book.
Our Canadian Embassy
It is the closest embassy to the Capital
Next door was the Newseum that provided a history of newspapers and new media. It was an architecturally stunning 7 story building open in the centre all the way to the top and a spectacular wrap around balcony part way up. They had copies of the front pages of newspapers from across the US and internationally as well. Each floor was filled with multimedia interactive displays and highlighted key world news stories. There was a memorial wall for the reporters and photographers who were killed on assignment between that and the Pulitzer Prize photo collection it was like being on an emotional roller coaster.
The Newseum with the first satellite and the first helicopter used for news
I caught up with the group in time to go to the World War II memorial, which was fine for what it was but lacked the impact of those we saw earlier. Given the style of it the most interesting part of it was the 'kilroy was here' symbol the artist engraved in an inconspicuous corner without permission. No one has ordered it erased.
So ended an emotional, bitter sweet day.
Men were polishing up the stars. Each star represented 100 deaths and there are 4,048
This seemed to harken back to an earlier time
Day 4
A great day I am exhausted. We went to the Capital building where the Senate and House of Representatives are literally joined under the dome, which is crumbling and under reconstruction, probably from all the bad karma from the craziness going on underneath it. As we walked down the hall I saw the sign over John Banner's door and a few minutes later he came out with his entourage. Everyone was hoping they had resolved the Speaker of the House problem. But no luck.
Even the the inside of the dome is in need of repairs
From there we went to the Jefferson Library, a spectacular building the came from the ashes of the War of 1812 when the British (Canada) attacked and burned Washington. They used the books in the National Library to keep the fires going. What an embarrassing and ugly piece of history that is when I judge ISIS for their destruction of historical treasures. At any rate Jefferson sold them his whole library for a good price and it provided not just the foundation for a new library but also a framework for adding future content of the library which was much broader and richer than a traditional library would have been.
The Jefferson Library of Congress
We finished off the morning at the Bob Hope Comedy gallery in the basement. Apparently Bob donated all of his political comedy and a sizeable endowment to add other political humour because after all his years of entertaining the troops and knowing what went on at Capital Hill he thought they needed some levity. Stephen Colbert does an introductory video and there are a lot of work from other comedians being shown as well.
We had lunch in the Capital cafeteria and walked over to the Supreme Court. The security everywhere was very high. We had a talk on how the Court worked. They accept only a maximum of 80 of 8000 proposed cases a year. For each case the attorney's only have one hour to make their argument and they are interrupted constantly by the justices who have read in detail the information from earlier trials and want clarification and answers to specific questions. The justices do much of their own research and write their arguments which are often up toe 1500 pages. The guide did not really do a great job discussing the broader role of the court, and was better at telling us about the basketball court that is above the chambers and can only be used after hours because the bouncing balls make too much noise.
No photo's allowed at the Supreme Court this sculpture
and the stairwell is as good as it gets
We walked down from the hill, a beautiful hot day and decided to skip the Smithsonian Space Museum in favour of taking the subway up to Dupont Circle and walking to the Phillips Art Gallery. It was a lovely neighbourhood and the gallery was worth the trip. We took the subway back to the Smithsonian district and did a photo shoot through a series of small gardens that linked the different museums together. They were so beautiful in the late afternoon light. Some of the Datura were the size of trees and spread their scent all along the paths. We found the Hershorn sculpture garden with wonderful pieces accessible even in the evening. After almost 18,000 steps I was tired, took a cab to Legal for a super seafood dinner, and hobbled back to the hotel.
The Phillips Museum
The Hershorn Gallery and Sculpture Garden
Rhodan's Burgers of Calais
And Balzac
It was a much more positive and inspiring day today. We had a reporter for a newspaper chain talk about what we really wanted to here about how the Supreme Court worked. He said he thought he had the best gig in town being able to spend time covering really smart people, who worked hard together, respected each other and were addressing really important issues. He said being around them rubbed off on himself and the rest of the full time press corp. He felt it raised the level of reporting and the depth of discussion among them as they strove to understand the implications decisions competed with each other to do the best analysis. It was so refreshing to hear that after some of the other stories we have had this week.
The inspiring tone carried on at our first stop to the Martin Luther King memorial where our tour guide had lots of personal stories of being at the rallies and speeches King made. We then moved onto the Franklin and Elanor Rosevelt memorial, the only one that includes a President's wife. It is big and comprised of several out door 'rooms' that highlight the social, economic and wartime challenges he had to face. There was a sculpture of men in a bread line and school kids kept lining up in between the figures. I hoped they wouldn't be facing the same situation in the future.
The Martin Luther King Memorial
The Roosavelts His finger and his dogs ears have become
golden from people touching them
This breadline was so popular with the students I couldn't get one without them and I
wondered whether they would live through such hard times
The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
The Hirshorn Gallery and Sculpture Garden close up
The Capital under construction
In the evening we went to the Carol King musical Beautiful. It was the highlight of the week. The ensemble cast was great and the whole evening a big nostalgia trip for most of us. We had perfect seats and it was wonderful being in the Kennedy Centre. Great way to end the trip.
