The “family vacation” is over and I’m exhausted. We went to Washington, DC this year. It was Princess’ idea; she wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial. We finally made it there on our last evening in DC. Yes, I drove, but once I had a parking space, I did not want to give it up, so we took the Metro everywhere. Between this trip and the New York trip, I’ve figured out why city folks are so much skinnier than suburbanites and country folks. Subways don’t go everywhere! No matter where you take the train, you’ll have to walk quite a ways more. When you have two children who don’t eat right (see yesterday’s post), you end up resting a lot, and sometimes even resorting to a taxi.

Princess also wanted to see the Hope Diamond and all the other geology exhibits at the Natural History Museum. Gothgrrl was happy anywhere she could use an interactive computer screen, which was everywhere. I also insisted on the Air and Space Museum and the American History Museum, (all part of the Smithsonian Institute) as well as the National Zoo. Princess got to see the pandas, and Gothgrrl got to see the elephants, so they were happy despite the heat. I had to go check out Butterstick, since I’m part of his posse! Butterstick is also known as Tai Shan (peaceful mountain). He was peaceful, alright. Sound asleep next to his mama the whole time we were there. I can’t blame him, it was 1000 degrees in the shade. I was warned about the DC heat, but had no choice since school starts in a couple of weeks. The pandarazzi was there, including some people I recognized from the internet.

I got to see the Vietnam War Memorial, The Korean War Memorial, and the World War II Memorial for the first time. The WWII Memorial was about what you’d expect if you have read about it... designed by committee. They obviously took every suggestion they received and ran with it. Busy, busy, busy. Its close to the elegant Washington Monument, so it suffers from comparison. This photo of the Lincoln Memorial looks like it was taken during a snowstorm, but the “lights” are the gnats reflecting the flash! Best to keep your mouth shut around the reflecting pool. And watch for the duck droppings!

Washington DC is not in a state, its in the Distict of Columbia, which some would argue, is not part of the United States at all!

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE CALL CENTER

The Smithsonian Museum's telephone support team usually get questions like "How do you get there?" "When are you open?" etc. More detailed questions get passed along to departments such as Anthropology. But every so often, you get funny ones. Here are some calls that Cordelia Benedict of the Smithsonian's telephone information services and Marilyn London of the anthropology outreach and public information office have gotten over the years:

# Where do you keep the flying saucers you've captured?

# Can a small plane land on the Mall? The caller was sure it could since "all those planes in the Air and Space Museum had to get there somehow."

# There's a mastodon in my back yard. Can you send some scientists to dig it up? "There was literally a mastodon buried on her ranch," Benedict says. "She was right! We referred her to the vertebrate department, I think."

# Do you have the Original Bible? You know, 10 Commands, tablets, Moses, etc.?

# Is Fawn Hall's underwear on display? This from "two men in a Texas bar who obviously had a lot to drink," says Benedict.

# What's the name of the guy who invented the wheel? ("How do you know it was a man?" London quipped.)

# Where is the Ark of the Covenant? (Try the Indiana Jones movies.)

# Is the Smithsonian interested in buying the carcass of Bigfoot?

# Will the Smithsonian sell the starship Enterprise, used for the popular "Star Trek" television show? "She only wanted it if the transporter was in working condition," Benedict says. (The only life-size Enterprise at the Smithsonian is the space shuttle of the same name).

# How do you say "I'm thinking of you" in Apache?

# How about the coin George Washington tossed across the Delaware River?

# Can the Smithsonian set up a caller with a hula teacher? "Actually, I tracked one down for her," remembers London. "We have a curator involved in South Pacific and Hawaiian culture, so she knew one."

# Can you send "all the information you have on human evolution, even the secret stuff?"

# Could the Smithsonian take a "petrified whale" off my hands? He was referred to paleontology. "I told him `petrified' means `very old biology,' and he said, `good because this is a very old whale,'" Benedict recalls.

# Does the Smithsonian display Civil War planes?

and last but not least...

# Here's one of Benedict's favorites: an offer to donate a collection of potato chips resembling "famous people and animals."

Washington is our nation’s capitol, and therefore reflects what we are as a nation. We had a fine Mexican dinner the first night, Chinese the second night, Irish the third night, and Indian the final night. The best deals on meals were in Chinatown, which boasted Indian, Mexican, Pakistani, Japanese, Tex-Mex, and Chinese restaurants. BBQ, too. I had to take a shot of this sign, in order to find out somewhere how they write “Irish” in Chinese. I have a sneaking suspicion the characters are not much related to the English words... I recognize the first character as “love”.

Washington, outside of pandas and monuments, is all about politics. I found a bunch of political quizzes in case you’re at all interested. I took the Democratic loyalty quiz.

Your score is 10 on a scale of 1 to 10. You are a pure, unabashed, die-hard Democratic loyalist. You are appalled by the way Republicans are turning America into a theocratic, corpo-fascist police state, and you'd gladly walk through a furnace in a gasoline suit to elect a Democratic president. In your view, there is no higher form of patriotism than defending America against the Republican Party and every intolerant, puritanical, imperialistic, greed-mongering, Constitution-shredding ideal for which it stands.

This post will be continued tomorrow, since there's a lot more to be said about Washington under a different subject heading.

Thought for today: It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but it might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent Intentions. -Charles Dickens

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