Jetlagged in DC, We Go for a Walk

We woke up about 4am, but J went back to sleep.  Eventually we went off walking to Georgetown to pick up a bike part for J2.  We found our way down through Rock Creek Park which is a piece of fairly untamed looking water winding its way through the nation's capital.

There was even a heron sitting on a very unnatural looking log in the creek.

After we got what J2 needed we wandered vaguely toward 

the mall and ran into the C&O canal path.

They were even filling one of the locks for us.  

Then on past the Watergate.  

And I couldn't help but notice that this huge building situated between the State Department and the Mall was owned by the American Pharmacists Association.  The cynic in me can't help but think about the huge lobbying force pharmaceutical companies have and start wondering about the linkages between the pharmaceutical companies and the pharmacists.  OpenSecrets.org says the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) spent $6.3  million just in the last three months of 2009. (This doesn't include what individual drug companies spent.)

Here it is from the front on Constitution Avenue looking out onto the national mall and the Lincoln Memorial.  The APhA website offers some history:

Located between the Lincoln Memorial and the U.S. Department of State and adjacent to the National Academy of Sciences, the site for APhA headquarters was authorized by an act of Congress in 1932 and is the only privately owned building on the National Mall.

The original structure has become known as the Pope building, after the architect John Russell Pope, whose work includes some of the most famous structures in Washington, DC. Pope was the architect for the Jefferson Memorial, National Archives, National Gallery of Art, and Constitution Hall.

The dedication of APhA headquarters was held on May 9, 1934. Twenty-five years later, in 1959, APhA broke ground for an annex to the original structure. The annex was completed within a year and dedicated during the 1960 APhA Annual Meeting. More than 40 years later, plans were unveiled at the 2001 APhA Annual Meeting to purchase the land behind APhA headquarters and replace the annex with a new structure. On January 26, 2007, APhA broke ground on a project that would add more than 300,000 square feet of space and enhance the historic Pope building.

The renovation and expansion of APhA headquarters augments the vision of Henry A.B. Dunning, Chair of the APhA All-Pharmacy Headquarters Building Campaign, who predicted in the 1934 dedication that "immediately in the rear of this building, there will begin the erection of another building" that will provide a venue for pharmacists from all related associations to gather to explore new opportunities, foster partnerships, and demonstrate the importance of the profession to the public, media, and policy makers.

Wikipedia has a link to the original forms that officially nominated  this building to the National Historic Register.  (Beauchamp, Tanya. "National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination: The American Institute of Pharmacy Building". National Park Service. http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/77001497.pdf.)  I couldn't find the date of the document, but the form says it is under an Act passed in 1966.  It gives lots of details about this building. 

Across the street is a building under construction.   The sign at the lower left says United States Institute of Peace.  The cynic pops up again, with George Orwell in mind, and wonders whether this is a weapons industry organization.   Their website suggests otherwise.  

The United States Institute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan institution established and funded by Congress to increase the nation's capacity to manage international conflict without violence. Having passed our 25th anniversary milestone, we are now moving into our next period of growth.The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) is transforming approaches to international conflict. USIP draws on a variety of resources in fulfilling its congressional mandate: staff, grantees, fellows, research, education, training, innovation, outreach, publications, and national and international partnerships.

USIP’s Strategic Goals

• To help prevent, manage, and resolve violent international conflict both within and between states
• To promote post-conflict stability and development
• To increase peacebuilding capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide
• To build and shape the field of international conflict prevention and management and to professionalize its practice
• To build knowledge and create innovative tools for peacebuilding
• To bridge research and practice in preventing, managing and resolving violent conflicts
• To teach, train, inform policymakers, practitioners, students and the public about the challenges of conflict prevention, management and resolution and how to respond to those challenges

It also says we missed a conference on how conflict affects gender today.  It's a good thing that there is an Institute of Peace since so many of the monuments are war related. 

Would this monument be here if not for his role in the Civil War?  

And just to the north east of Lincoln's temple is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.  There's the stunning black monument designed by Maia Lin that caused such a controversy when it won the design contest.  It's a powerful memorial for most people, but I would guess it particularly plays to those of us who think abstractly. 

The 50,000 names etched into the black marble between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument is truly a memorial to those who died in this war.

It doesn't exalt war, it doesn't glorify the dead.  It simply and elegantly remembers each one in the US military who died in Vietnam.  The Wall offers a lot of information on the memorial including seventeen pages of names on the wall who had birthdays yesterday when we were there beginning with

ROWLAND JOSEPH ADAMOLI

Marine Corps - CPL - E4

Age:	25
Race:	Caucasian
Sex:	Male
Date of Birth	May 18, 1940
From:	PHILADELPHIA, PA
Religion:	ROMAN CATHOLIC
Marital Status:	Married

who died of hostile small arms file, and ending with

AKIRA YAMASHITA

Army - SP5 - E5

Age:	38
Race:	Mongolian
Sex:	Male
Date of Birth	May 18, 1928
From:	SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Religion:	BUDDHISM
Marital Status:	Married

who died in a non-combat vehicle accident after a year in country.

But I learned as a teacher that students fall somewhere on a continuum between those who are mainly abstract thinkers and those who are mainly concrete thinkers.  For those at the concrete end of the continuum, a black slab just didn't do it and they wanted something more representational of soldiers.   So eventually this statue was added:

Or maybe it was people who wanted to glorify the soldiers as these super-real, super-buff figures seem to do.  These are John Wayne soldiers.  There's nothing left here for the viewer to imagine (except maybe how could these guys die and how could the US abandon Saigon in defeat?), while the wall leaves the viewer with lots and lots to think about. 

And finally, as we were almost back at J2's apartment, we passed this sign for a rather specialized museum, also war related.