Ask me how I spend my days in D.C. and I’d probably reply: I go to school, come home, drink a beer, watch MSNBC until I grow tired of Chris Matthews shouting at me, go to bed. Repeat the next day.
But as I look back on my phone’s photo roll, I find proof that I did occasionally deviate from this depressing routine. Perhaps some demon right outside my window drove me away?
Speaking of traitors to the United States of America, the original Robert E. Lee estate that’s now Arlington National Cemetery is quite close but the house and much of the cemetery landscape is under renovation and inaccessible to the public so I only made a quick stop to see some of the graves of kick ass Supreme Court Justices. Dunno why the Supreme Court was on my mind.
While now isn’t the best time to visit the cemetery, metro-ing into D.C. is easy and I luckily have friends and family who either live here or who visited and coaxed me out into the wider world.
Courtney and I checked out the
Newseum (awesome collection of original newspapers!) and when Marie visited we stopped by the
National Museum of Women in the Arts.
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I didn’t always need friends to lure me outside as a few of my classes included field trips. Not
just to the CIA, but also to State Department specific spots.
First, the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, kind of an odd duck among D.C. sights. You don’t enter through an imposing 18th or 19th century edifice. Instead you’re in the 1939 Harry S Truman Building, complete with a WPA mural. But go upstairs and you’ll find yourself in a place that looks (and, weirdly, smells?) like a post colonial mansion. As our tour guide explained, decorating these rooms began in the 1960s when folks got tired of how the U.S. was always upstaged by other countries with their fancy palaces and reception halls. So they raised private funding (hey!
Your tax dollars not at work) and created these rooms to showcase early Americana.
Part of a WPA Mural at the State Department
First Lady Louisa Adams
Thomas Jefferson signed the Treaty of Paris on this desk (probably).
Benjamin Franklin and the King of France Depicted in Porcelain
At the “no photos allowed” (boo!) National Archives, we were supposed to be on the lookout for State Department documents filed using the system
we learned in OMS class.
It also houses originals of The Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and The Bill of Rights. But I found something better: a signed receipt for Charles Ingalls’s payment on his Dakota Territory homestead!!!!! Curses be rained upon whoever decided on the ‘no pics’ policy.
Fortunately, there’s no such policy at the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress Lobby
Reading Room
The LOC is connected by underground tunnel to the Capitol. I did a tour there too but not the kind you arrange ahead with your congressperson to get into chambers. The one I took was very basic and very crowded, so while the guide was knowledgeable and I was happy to see the rotunda and and all the statues, I wouldn’t rush back unless I had a more comprehensive look-see.
Inside the dome
George Washington in a blankie
Three suffragists and a marble blob hovering over them that, I assume, represents the patricarchy
The hottest ticket in town? Two years after opening, it is still serious business to get into the
National Museum of African American History and Culture. When I first got here (July) they were taking reservations for December. However, they do some weekday walk-ins and limited same day tickets are released each morning at 6:30.
Some of the content is obviously very heavy (I saw more than one person in tears) but there is also a lot of celebration and a lot of history that wasn’t taught in my schools, including the economics of slavery and the frequency of revolts (more than Nat Turner!).
I also appreciated the museum as an answer to some of the feelings I’d been feeling after visiting the above-mentioned monuments to American greatness. Especially at the National Archives, where I stood in front of the founding documents, I got a little emotional thinking about promises vs. reality. The African American museum can’t solve those jarring inconsistencies, but it does confront them. “All men are created equal” is emblazoned on a wall in a large gallery. Underneath is a statue of Thomas Jefferson, positioned in front of a brick wall where you can read the names of many of the 609 people held in slavery by our third president over the course of his lifetime.
Union Soldiers
Amulet in the shape of shackles, used by the West African Lobi people to protect against enslavement.
Enough of the heavy stuff. Let’s be real about the sights I was most interested in. It’s all about the scandals!
I went to the pizzagate restaurant…
Pizzagate Featured at the Newseum
and to Le Diplomate, featured in WaPo’s list of top
abuses of power regarding former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt…
Gina and Colleen sending me off with champagne and seafood
and the parking garage where Deep Throat met with Woodward and Bernstein…
Deep Throat Parking Garage
This is the very spot
and to Watergate (fun fact: Shanna made the restaurant reservations and told us that the hold “music” consists of Nixon speeches).
But by far my most exciting discovery was courtesy of the
podcast Slow Burn, about events leading to Clinton’s impeachment. One Saturday afternoon while running errands near my ho-partment, I realized that the places being described to me through my earbuds were in the very neighborhood I was walking through!
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 1998 Garden of Gethsemane…the mall food court where Linda Tripp turned Monica Lewinksy over to the FBI.
Till next time D.C. I’m Kazakhstan bound!
I’ve now spent two months in Washington D.C. preparing to embark on my first assignment.
In Foreign Places 