Not Dead Yet

I didn't realize there were any socialists left. Very 20th century!

A Book Report by Eli

The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis.

This book is about a family of blacks living in a segregated world. They live in Flint, and go to Birmingham. In Birmingham a bomb goes off in a church.

My favorite part was when Byron got Mexican style hair.

I liked this book because it was funny. For instance Byron got all of his hair cut off.

note: This is the book Eli was reading in the picture at Busboys and Poets. The bomb he is talking about is the one that blew up the 16th street church in Birmingham, Alabama. He really enjoyed this book and read it in about two days.

Our Monumental Walk

Our first real view of the Washington Monument came on Tuesday when we stepped out onto the vast lawn of The Mall between the large buildings that make up the Smithsonian Institution.

Later that night we went to my aunt and uncle's house for dinner. Dougal and Robin told us how incredibly beautiful the downtown DC area was at night when all of the monuments are lit up. We decided that we would definitely make an evening of walking around DC and taking in some of the monuments we were excited to visit.

Our opportunity to follow through on our plan arose the next evening when we had finished with the Air and Space Museum, but were all still keen for adventure. We decided we would take our little crew all the way to the Lincoln memorial, then see the Vietnam War memorial on our way to get dinner just east of the White House. We all liked the plan, especially the part where we got to see Lincoln, so we headed out Air and Space directly west.

By the end of day two of museums Eli has become very good at reading posted signs to gather information. This was an explanation of the new grass system they are putting in. It should be not only green, but Greener.

We never really got closer to the Capitol than this.

Hannah would lag behind and then catch up at a run throughout the walk.

When we started the journey it was pretty warm outside. I was hopeful but a little worried that we wouldn't make it all the way there.

We realized we would have to find a bathroom about the time we reached the Castle and it was closed already. We finally did find one in front of the Washington Monument. I held my breath for a little while and hoped no one had an emergency.

The shadowed side of the monument, as we left the restrooms, did not prepare us for what we would see on the other side from the effects of the setting sun.

The monument has been closed since the earth quake a couple years ago. But it is still very impressive close up. All of the flags were at half mast on that day. I guessed that it was a combination of 9/11 which had been the day before, and the recent killings in Tripoli.

The kids really enjoyed the freedom of the expansive lawns all around the monument.

They can be a little like puppies sometimes.

It was time to march on towards the reflecting pool.

We got a little split up at the World War II Memorial, but we managed to escape past it. Izzy asked me why they call it a reflecting pool, so I showed him.

The sun was starting to set directly into our eyes.

Hannah and Izzy experimented with walking backwards.

Izzy started to get impatient with how slow it took, but Hannah used that opportunity to entrench on an opinion. Her current favorite thing to do.

She finally agreed to turn around when it turned out that everyone else had gone ahead. She had taken her shoes off in the grass and only the smooth cement at the edge of the pool felt good on her feet.

We were getting close enough to the Lincoln Memorial to see its reflection in the pool as well. The sun was now behind the monument which made it easier to see.

At the far end of the pool the twin reflection of the Washington Monument is perfect.

I had been slow getting to the steps because I was taking pictures. My monkeys were waiting for me when I got there.

They were literally making monkey noises.

Silly monkeys!

We finally reached Lincoln and he was awe inspiring.

The diversity of the crowd and the level of joy amongst them was also awe inspiring. I don't think I've seen such a frenzy of joy in that many places. People really love Lincoln.

After traveling the southern half of the United States in an election year these words struck me intensely. The work was never completed, though he seemingly intended it to be. I do hope someday it will approximate completion, and the Civil War conflict, which was set up as an issue in the drafting of the Constitution, will finally be ended.

Izzy wanted to take a picture of me in front of the statue the way everyone else was doing it.

But the thing that brought real tears to my eyes was stumbling across these words carved into the stone while I was climbing the steps. The realization that this was where King had stood to give his Dream speech was so incredible. I caught my breath. Somehow the two men King and Lincoln are now permanently fused in my emotional brain.

The bridge to Arlington Cemetery runs from behind the Lincoln Memorial. Later that week we would get stuck at the round about on the other side and be forced to drive over that bridge several times before finally escaping. We had been buying shoes for the kids at the Pentagon City Mall. Did you know that the Pentagon has its own mall? Somehow I found that a correct symbol of our materialist military complex.

The sun setting on the memorial was beautiful. All that white stone really does have the monumental effect its credited with.

The sun was setting and it was time to go see the Vietnam Memorial and then go get dinner. I knew that the memorial would be emotional, but you are never prepared for how a structure is going to actually make you feel.

The setting sun provided an extra poignancy and amazing lighting.

The juxtaposition of the Washington Monument, a symbol of the might and power of this city, to the dark wall of names was very moving. It didn't hurt that from almost the moment we arrived at the memorial sirens started blaring in the distant night, and they kept up through the entire experience.

At this point in the evening the sun had set and all of Downtown DC was starting to light up. We had walked a very long way and we were all hungry, but our spirits were pretty high from having gotten to see some of the famous monuments some of us had only ever seen in pictures. We had a destination for dinner and we set out to get fed and then take the metro back to our car outside of town in Maryland.

Hannah asked for the camera so that she could take pictures of us as we walked in the night.

It turned out that we were walking right past the White House. This is Hannah's picture of it.

And this is my picture.

Hannah also took pictures of the small crowd of people also taking pictures of the White House.

It was at this time that we were informed by a White House Police Woman that the entire neighborhood east of the White House had been closed off, and we couldn't go that way. Hannah took a picture of her as well.

This was a very unpleasant bit of information as the cordoned off area was where we were planning to get food and get back on the metro. We had to walk back across a park and up into a whole other part of town, finally finding food at a mediocre pizza place that the kids did not like. We then had to walk even farther to get to the metro station closest to the restaurant. When we did get to the metro we had to change lines a few stations up from where we were. We got there and found our platform, only to discover that the line was being worked on, and the train was running both directions on the opposite platform. We discovered this when our train pulled in to the other side, and people started running over the walkway as fast as they could to catch the train. we grabbed our kids and ran, but the escalator was going up not down, and in the amount of time it took for a woman to show me how to find the emergency off button the train had departed. We had to wait another 20 minutes with now severely tired children, in a crowd full of grumpy adults who had all missed there train. Nobody could hear the announcements being muffled over the loud speaker and nobody was certain if they were on the correct side. We finally got on our train around 10:30 p.m.. Two of the kids fell asleep before we reached our destination point.

The kids learned a lot about public transportation riding the metro in DC

They even learned how to ride standing up.

The monuments were well worth the journey, and the lessons learned in strange urban bureaucracy will definitely stick with the kids for a while to come.

The next day we decided to learn about parking lots so that we could have a little more autonomy when we were done at the museum. With the price of metro tickets for our rather large family it turned out that parking actually saved us money, even with the high fees. Later we would spend the money we had saved driving from DC to New York on Toll roads.