Just got in the door from DC. What a trip. I’m trying to get a post out tonight because I’ll probably be down-scope for the rest of the week. We (hopefully) move tomorrow and that means that aside from intermittent e-mail checks from my work laptop, our computers will be down and I don’t know how long before BellSouth will have the DSL up at the new house.
I’ll start with the latest on the house. We had a few hiccups in the process and about fifty phone calls while we were on the road. The closing almost had to be put off again but we are still on schedule for Monday. With everything that has happened, I am afraid to believe it until they hand me the keys. The closing is in Mandarin, we have to drop off the rental at the airport, then get a U-Haul and load up the old house. We’re going to be ALL over the city tomorrow. I figure we’ll make a couple of trips and get what we can, set up the essentials and drop the rest in the garage. Then I’ll do my best to get the rest of the stuff on Tuesday.
On Friday we got up and went to the bank to make a deposit and to see if we could get Becca’s Visa card replaced. I was really frustrated at the time and I imagined writing it all up in great detail but I am totally blown out right now so let’s just leave it at, the woman behind the information desk at the bank is there for a reason; she’s too stupid to be a bank teller. We finally got out of there at 11:30. Only four hours later than I expected to be on the road.
At one of the gas stations there was a D.A.R.E. booth set up and when the girls went inside and I started the gas pump the guy runs over to me and asks, “Hey there, I’m with the DARE program and we try to eliminate drug abuse. Do you mind if I tell you a little about our program while you fill up your tank?” The bastard had me cornered. I was a captive audience and had to listen to his spiel. I tell him I’ll listen but that I am actually “pro drug abuse”. He does a double-take and asks me what I mean. I tell him that I think that if someone is gong to be a druggie, they should go balls out and really push the limit. The more drugs they do, the more likely they will OD and decrease the surplus population, therefore strengthening our species. (Yeah I know I ripped off Dickens but hey I was speaking on the fly, no time to think…) He just looked at me, blinked and then moved on to his next victim. I just smiled and filled up the tank in blissful silence.
We dropped off Becca’s new Visa card and she was bouncy and happy. Not the same kid who has been crying on the phone every evening. I think she was happy knowing that we were only a few miles away. Teresa and I got to our hotel around 10pm. The valet took our bags so fast that I almost felt like we were being robbed. We checked in and the porter brought our bags to the room and showed us how everything worked. High tech shit like a television and a light switch. With the valet I didn’t have my money ready so it took me a while to get his tip to him. I played the “country mouse” card and acted like this was my first time in the big city. I tipped the ported and wondered who was next to have his hands in my wallet just to show me how to turn on the bathroom sink… But, it was a nice hotel and it was worth every penny. We had a room on the top floor and Teresa was surprised that you had to use your room card to access the top floor. It really IS her first time in the big city. The room was beautiful but smaller than I expected. It was about the size of a normal hotel room but as a top floor suite I thought it would be palatial. The reality is that this is an old building that has been renovated into a hotel and they want to fit as many people in there as they can. But the room size was nothing to complain about, especially when we looked out the window. The city street is always something beautiful to me and I loved the sounds of the city when we opened our window. We had an excellent view of a park and the building across the way. Just beyond that was the White House and in the background was the Washington Monument. Every time I rolled over in bed I looked up and saw the monument and thought, “How freaking cool is this!?”
Before we went to bed Teresa and I went down to the bar and had a couple of drinks. Her drinks were too strong for her and I think someone pulled a switch on me because I got some shitty house scotch instead. Teresa ordered a cheese platter and I was taken by surprise at how much she enjoyed the strange new foods. Stinky cheese is not something I figured she’d ever eat. She liked all of them except the one that looked and smelled like bleu cheese. A total surprise.
So we went upstairs and fell asleep to the sounds of horns, buses and people on the streets below. (I like those sounds)
We were up early the next morning as Jerry and Liz called at 6:30am to let us know they were ten minutes away. No sleep for the weary. We had a nice day checking out everything we could. At 7am you pretty much have the place to yourself. We got to the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorials without any hassle at all. The cherry blossoms are in bloom and the place looks amazing. We checked out the WWII, Vietnam and Korea Memorials. Jerry had never been inside DC, just around DC so it was really interesting to see him taking in the war memorials, especially the Vietnam wall. He tried to play it down but you could tell it touched him.
By then it was 10:30 or so and the people were coming in and really pushing and shoving. We decided to take a drive, get Jerry and Liz checked into their hotel and get some lunch. After lunch we drove back in to the city and Liz insisted on seeing the Holocaust museum. As we passed by there was a picket line outside the entrance and I couldn’t wait to see what the fuss was about. By the time we parked and walked up there were two people left and they were harmless. They were just pointing out that Israel is killing Palestinians. Bummer, I really wanted to get involved in the fray on one side or the other but I had no dog in this fight. I had zero interest in actually going inside because I thought I knew what to expect. We went in and I was right. I was hoping for a museum. All I got was a building full of propaganda. I felt there should have been more facts and less emotion. The truth is enough to instill the proper feelings in someone but the manipulation I experienced made me angry and took the meaning out of the entire exhibit. They dedicated and entire exhibit to prove that the book, “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” (a common book among ethnic pride groups) is a fraud. Their proof; because a British court said it was a fraud back in 1935. I own a copy of this book and I have read it. It is full of shit. But not because some court said so, because I took it in my hands, read the ideas and concluded for myself. They want this book to be banned and to disappear. Not a reasonable goal with the invention of the internet (thanks a LOT Al Gore…) If they could succeed in making the book vanish, did they actually win anything or did they just suppress an opposing point of view? If they could make it vanish, how will you read it for yourself and make your own conclusions? Let’s start with banning books that we don’t like and then we’ll move on to making all of the holy texts only available to the clergy so the common people can’t read and decide for themselves. Instead, if they had explored and exposed the ideas in the book, the exhibit would have made some sense. But I felt this exhibit was a waste anyway. Their conclusions were correct but how they got there was all wrong. When you teach a child that 2+2=4 and he counts out five sticks but mimics the answer of four, is he still correct?
I wanted to see artifacts. Hard evidence and cold facts that should have moved me to tears. Instead I got poorly reconstructed displays full of anachronisms. They simulated a child’s diary (not Anne Frank) and what he would have written throughout the years. In an entry dated 1939, he makes a reference to “World War One”. Nope. It would still be known as “The Great War” for a couple more years. Another thing that ticked me off was a glass display case (as if it were authentic) that showed his jacket and the yellow star he was forced to wear. It said “Jew” instead of “Jude”. Why would it be in English? To make us feel instead of making us think. I found the entire building to be an insult to the true horrors that happened. A shallow misrepresentation that is there only to sway opinion and not to document history. Had they displayed actual items like someone’s real jacket with their real yellow star, or a real piece of the concentration camp fence or even a pair of reading glasses taken from a prisoner… anything authentic under glass cases like you would find in say, a MUSEUM, I would have walked out of there in a solemn mood. Instead I felt like I couldn’t wait to get out of there and I feel ripped off. I just spent $20 to park and an hour of my time to basically watch a History Channel documentary.
We walked on down the National Mall and made a quick dash into the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. We walked around the “primitive life” exhibit and a glance at a couple of others before we made our escape. Too many school children… We also hit a couple of art galleries and made it to the Air and Space museum just in time to realize it was closing in six minutes. All of this walking was getting to some of us so we made it back to the car and drove over to the Arlington cemetery. We made it to the Kennedy graves and were well on our way to the Tomb of the Unknowns when they decided to call it a day and limp back to the car. I think we saw quite a bit in the single day we had for sight-seeing. You could spend a week in each of the Smithsonian buildings and I’m sure you could spend a month looking around and not see everything you want to.
I got to thinking, Washington DC is a dead city. Monuments to long dead people that most of us today don’t know or much less care about. There’s no skyline to speak of and in an effort to preserve the ancient trees along the National Mall, we are treated to rot and decay. We walked along the reflecting pool and up into the Lincoln Memorial. I was filled with awe and wonder as I looked up into the giant face of a man who accomplished so much. I was thinking about the doubt and inspiration Jimmy Stewart showed in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and the kids around me looked bored or played with their iPods. Is DC dead or is the idea of America dead? Is the idea of America really what we see in the history books? Is it really what we see on TV? Is it still alive or is it an empty battle cry for a long dead ideal, buried under beurocrasy, manipulation and complacency? Do we even know our own history?
The only place we never got was the only place I really wanted to hit (other than the Exorcist stairs over in Georgetown). We never got to the Jefferson Memorial. We have some nice pictures of it from across the tidal basin but I wanted to walk inside and I specifically wanted to see the inscriptions. One in particular inscription has bothered me for years and I wanted to see it for myself. They have a quote that says, “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free”. People point to this and say he was talking about the slaves. And they would be right, he was talking about the slaves. But read this quote in context and you’ll see a much different story. He (and many others of the day) believed that the slaves should be free and then immediately repatriated to their homelands. That’s right, deportation. So next February when it is time for another Black History Month, make sure you get the full story before you give your 15 second snippets on TV. Do a little reading on Abraham Lincoln (specifically the Lincoln-Douglas debates) and decide if he really should be the image of equality between the races. If you already know the truth, then good for you, you are at least semi-literate and moderately educated.
Unfortunately most of us take what we are told in school and on TV as the be-all-end-all of facts. Question what you are taught and investigate for yourselves. Do not be indoctrinated, do not let them brainwash you. Do not let our history be washed from the books just because it’s not pretty or because it’s not what we want to hear. If you accept the facts unopposed then you are getting half the story. If they tell you 2+2=4, check it out, count out your own sticks! You can’t investigate every fact but after questioning enough of them you’ll figure out which ones sound solid enough and which ones smell like five day old fish. Everything is not as perfect as they would have you believe. We are dirty, we are mean and we are bitter but we are human. We are far from perfect but hiding our past will only allow us to continue along our rapidly decaying path. Expunge those skeletons from those closets and hang them out for all to see. Learn from our history before it is painted over and re-written in a nice, soft, pleasing beige. I don’t mean to impugn the ideals of either of these two legendary men, just point out that we accept the quips and snippets because we are too lazy to investigate for ourselves and in doing so, we allow the whitewashers to erode a little more of who we are. If you tell the same lies over and over again, eventually you will mistake them for truth.
Oh man, I hate it when I get like this. Sorry, I’ll stop thinking now and go back to sleep… But really, we all had a good time walking around and having fun.
When we got back to the hotel we decided to have dinner before going up to the room. We knew if we hit that bed we’d never move. Normally I’d want to go out and try something new but we were so worn out that we just stayed in. I’m glad we decided to “wimp out” and eat in the hotel restaurant because the food was great. Teresa had the NY Strip and I had the Filet. Mine was just a dollar more but tasted SO much better than Teresa’s steak. Her steak was great but my filet was incredible. And when you’re paying $30 for an entre, what’s a dollar more? I keep trying to tell her that when we go to a steakhouse or get the grill at our favorite Japanese place. If they don’t charge much of a difference between the steak and the filet, go with the filet. It is so much better… I had a few glasses of wine with my dinner and we went upstairs to the room to relax. Around midnight I got up to close the window because the sounds of the city were nice and all but at midnight on a Saturday night, you aren’t sleeping much with all the traffic and sirens.
This morning we woke up early again and picked up Becca. We drove over to Jerry and Liz’s hotel and had breakfast and then drove home. It always seems to take just a little longer going south than it does going north. I don’t know why. You would figure that driving south would be like going downhill so it should take LESS time… We made it home safely and in decent time. The gas mileage improved as soon as I realized that the gear shift had two settings at the 4-D spot. It had P, R, N, 4-D, 3, 2-L. I pulled it into 4-D and the dashboard said “4″ but it drove around quite nicely. I shifted it into 2-L and it didn’t shift so I guess 4-D was drive. Strange little car (Toyota Rav4) but I guess it’s like an all wheel drive or something and “4″ is the regular drive mode? Well just about halfway through Virginia I bumped the gear shift and it moved slightly to the right. Now the dashboard said “D” instead of “4″. Well how was I supposed to know!? So I drove about 650 miles on I-95 in 4-wheel-drive. The gas mileage improved dramatically after I figured out how the gear shift worked. I almost had to drive the entire trip without tunes because they “aux” jack is hidden inside the center console tray. The only thing worse than not finding that would have been finding it after we left (without the cord…) So the trip was fun and the drive was uneventful. What more could you ask?
Teresa took some amazing pictures and I’ll post a couple of them next time around. For now I’d better get some sleep. I have a house to buy in a few hours. If anything changes I’ll probably have time to post but otherwise, assume we close tomorrow, I didn’t have a heart-attack/stroke while trying to move the entire contents of the house and that I finally made it out to festival. See you peeps in a week or three…
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