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Washington DC
Scrolling through a life I barely recognized from a hotel room
If you have been reading these slideshows, you may have already noticed that certain destinations are repeated time and time and time again. Places like New York (it’s pretty damn close after all) but also places like Chicago, Los Angeles and London, and this place, Washington DC. For years, I held a tradition of going there every December on an Amtrak one day trip, ostensibly to shop for holiday gifts at places like the National Building Museum and the Smithsonian, although at no time during this decade plus long tradition did I actually ever buy someone anything there. Even though that tradition was finally killed by cold hard logic (and, to be honest, the pandemic), I still find myself in Washington DC, and this year I was there three different times in the span of two months, for a reason that (if you don’t already know it) is pretty damn remarkable. More on that later. But for now, let’s enjoy this map/model (or possibly this model/map) of DC and the Capitol Building, with some helpful guidance by my congressional tour guide.
I have been to DC (conservatively) about thirty or forty times in my life, possibly more. It gets to a point that counting it is more of a forensics exercise than it is worth, I mean who really cares if I was there 32 or 41 or 50 times, after a point I certainly don’t. Still, in all of those thirty or forty (or 32 or 41 or 50) times, I have only visited the inside of the United States Capitol Building a handful of times (with about three constituting a handful in this case), and this was the first time I had a really good tour there. Prior to one of the DC trips this Spring, I contacted the office of my local congresswoman from New Jersey’s 11th District - Mikie Sherill - and checked every box I could on her office’s tour page. This included a terrific, private Capitol Building tour from a member of her staff, who did a terrific job explaining the building and moving us through and past all of the crowds. If you are headed to DC (and have a congresswoman or, I guess, a congressman or congressperson), I highly, highly recommend contacting their office before you go.
Not only did Mikie Sherrill’s office provide us with tickets to the United States Capitol Building for a private tour, we also received tickets to the United States Supreme Court Building, which in all of those thirty or forty previous trips to Washington DC, I somehow managed to miss. The building’s lower floor features some interesting and well thought through exhibits about the history of the court, and the building was just as big and grand inside and out as you would expect from a building with the word supreme in its title.
The Supreme Court tickets aren’t required- anyone can just walk up anytime, wait in line, pass through security and walk right on in, but they were helpful when it came to actually seeing the actual courtroom. The court offers “lectures” inside the courtroom, a quick explainer of the architecture and the operations of the court, and our tickets put us in a special VIP line that led us to great seats inside. Thanks again Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill.
And if you have visited the Supreme Court, you already know that they are not at all about transparency and even forbid all pictures from tourists inside an empty courtroom. If you haven’t already noticed it or figured it out, this is a miniature model of the courtroom on display on the lower level. Some clues to this might be the flagpoles, which look dangerously angled if actual size, the angle of the photo (how could I have taken this photo without a non existent balcony, big ass ladder or certainly prohibited interior drone) and, of course, the reflection of my big giant head in the center upper frieze of the model.
On one of those DC Amtrak one day holiday trips, I developed a routine after a point. I’d take an Acela that usually arrived at Union Station at 11am, then I’d take a Red Line train to Judiciary Square and the National Building Museum (it’s not that long of a walk from Union Station but it’s kind of depressing and certainly not my favorite DC walk), then head south to the Hirshhorn (my favorite DC art museum by far), sometimes stopping at the East Wing of the National Gallery (my favorite DC art museum building by far) or the Renwick (small but always fun), or just walking around the mall if it’s a nice day, before heading back to Union Station and a 6pm-ish regional train back on north,
These three trips, I generally tried to do some things I haven’t done in a while, and that included the non-East Wing portions of the National Gallery, where we did a deep dive, hours long, every single gallery tour of the museum, something I never ever quite did before, despite being there so many times in the past.
In keeping with the theme of museums and things I’ve never done before, I also visited the National Museum of Asian Art and the National Museum of African Art, two connected Smithsonian museums located behind the castle on the mall. For whatever reason, I had never been here before, and was kind of shocked not as to how nice the collections were (it’s the Smithsonian after all) but as to how extensive and interesting the underground galleries are. The National Museum of Asian Art includes an above ground portion, but also a massive, multi level underground museum, with an incredibly complex design that makes you feel that you’re not as deep underground as you really are. I stood there in the museum, looking up to daylight from three or four levels down, on my phone researching who the architect was- Jean-Paul Carthian of Sheply, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbott, in case you were wondering.
One of the reasons that the National Museum of Asian Art was even on my radar was because of a temporary exhibit there that jumped out at me when looking at the Smithsonian’s site. Ay-Ō's Happy Rainbow Hell had a name that appealed to me at every possible level and the exhibit, while kind of small and hard to find in an otherwise intuitive museum, certainly lived up to its name, I even went against my better instincts and put my hand inside the box. which fortunately was nothing like that pain box in Dune and, also fortunately, did rip my hand right off my arm. I did use my left hand though (I am right handed), just to be safe.
If you remember back to the start of this page, you’ll note that I hinted at some mysterious reason for my visit (or, more accurately, three visits) to Washington DC this spring, and, despite what you might think, this isn’t it. Sure, we were there during peak bloom of the cherry blossoms, but it was really more of a happy coincidence than carefully planned. Not to say that some initial though didn’t go into the timing of these trips so that they coincided with peak bloom, but more to say that it was a secondary timing thing and certainly not the real, far better reason for the trips. More on that later.
A benefit of visiting Washington DC on a perfect weekend day during cherry blossom peak bloom is that there are a lot of interesting things going on. A non benefit (detriment?) to visiting that day is that you’re not the only person with the idea. The Metro was standing room only, the mall was packed, and overhead, trying to distract you from all those peak bloom cherry blossoms was a well attended kite festival. Everywhere you looked were kites, so many in fact that if you watched them for any amount of time, you would quickly see them become entangled with each other or erratically think of diving straight at you. An entertaining event, one that pictures only hint at, and also not the reason for this trip to DC. More on that later.
