Tuesday, April 15, 2008- “Saw a dinosaur and a space module too…”

 “…But even here there’s nothing as original as you.”

So, we drove into Washington DC today, and spent the day exploring the Smithsonians. We arrived from the Arlington side and crossed the Potomac by the Lincoln Memorial. Julie “kissed” one of the guard rail fences in the underground garage, which left some red “lipstick” on the front of the van. But we were out and exploring the Mall area shortly after 10:00.

We were near the “Castle” of the Smithsonian, and Emma saw red signs with dragons on them. She correctly said that they were Chinese, and wanted to go in there, so we went into the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of Asian Art. The neatest thing that we saw there was the sculpture called “Monkeys Reaching for the Moon”, that hangs down for four floors from the ceiling in the stairwell. Each “monkey” was made of the letters that spell the word “monkey” in 21 different languages. We made our way to the gallery for Chinese art, and among other things, noticed a set of bronze bells that looked very much like a smaller version of the bells that we saw in the Hubei museum in China. Unfortunately, Julie tried to peek up inside the bells and set off an alarm in the building. A guard came to investigate, but we were already hurrying out of the place.

After getting some brochures at the Smithsonian Castle, we went to the National Museum of Natural History. A docent there told us that the live butterfly exhibit was free, but we had to get tickets to it. We did, and the tickets were for 1:30, about 2 hours later. So we spent some time exploring the museum, seeing the insect exhibits, taking a break for lunch, and of course, seeing the dinosaurs. Anna had a ball taking pictures of just about everything she saw. Probably not many of them came out, but if even a few do, she’ll have something to show from the day. She was very diligent about turning off her flash after Daddy showed her how and explained that most museums want it that way. Mom and Anna then went through the butterfly exhibit. Even though it’s featured on the cover of the Smithsonian’s main brochure, they judged it to be not as good as the one at the Strong Museum in Rochester, and much smaller than the conservatory in Niagara Falls.

We started off to the Air & Space Museum, but on the way, we noticed a rally in front of the Capitol. Our curiosity was piqued, so we strolled down to see what was going on. It turned out to be a rally for Ron Paul for President. He wasn’t there, but Julie thought that his followers were an odd bunch. Emma was still sleeping. She had slept through the dinosaurs, the butterflies, and Ron Paul. Julie tried to make a political joke linking those three things together, but Scott stopped her before she was able to. (Perhaps it should be noted that Scott voted for Ron Paul in the primaries on Super Tuesday in February. Julie did not. The Pennsylvania primary is coming up next week, so we hear a lot about Hillary and Obama in the news here.)

We went to the Air & Space Museum then, with Anna snapping as many pictures as she could. If the only thing a person got to see in the Air & Space museum was the Milestones in Flight gallery, it would still be an amazing place-- the Wright Brothers plane has been moved and is not currently on display, but the Spirit of St. Louis, the Glamorous Glennis (Chuck Yeager’s), the Friendship 7 capsule, and the Apollo 11 capsule are all still there. Anna got to touch the moon rock. The side galleries are interesting places too and we strolled through most of those.

Our last stop for the day was the National Museum of the Native American, which has only been open since 2004. It is a beautiful building, without any straight lines or right angles, which is supposed to make it look like wind swept rock. Unfortunately, we had to rush through many of the exhibits with only about 45 minutes before it was to close. Scott was most impressed with a statue of from the Oneida Indians of New York that represented many of the things that he teaches 7th graders about the Iroquois Confederacy.

You never visit Washington without feeling like you’ve crammed an enormous amount into a day, but you still realize that you’ve only seen the tip of the ice berg, and there is so much more that you could do. We left Washington then, though it was still before 6:00. We are tempted to go back again on Wednesday, but probably won’t because the pope is going to be in town, and the traffic is supposed to be a problem. That’s probably all we’ll see of Washington for now. We’ll have to try to see a Senator at the Zoo some other time.