Two Hours at the Hirschhorn

We're off to the Senate. So I'm posting this without much comment. It's up to you to match the works with the artists - listed below.  This was yesterday afternoon at the Hirshhorn.

The gift shop lots of interesting books and other things.

Brian Jungen at National Museum of the American Indian

This was one of the museums that has opened since we were last here and wanted to see.  The Outside is impressive.  Inside. . . I wasn't impressed.  You are directed to a movie on the first floor as the starting point.  Now, six hours later, I'm having trouble even remembering images, and I'm not sure of the point.  I do remember that we sat in a circle something that, on our side anyway, had a blanket that served as a screen for the movie.  The domed ceiling also had images on it as did some shiny object below.  I did like the coordination between the three moving images, but there was nothing about the film that prepared me for the rest of the museum.  

I suspect it was difficult trying to curate an exhibit representing so many different cultures.  Two floors had large dark rooms divided up into maze like exhibits of different cultures.

One of the objectives seemed to be the message that Indians are people who often blend into society and you wouldn't know they are Indians - they don't fit people's stereotypes.  While all the pictures and art objects and depictions of daily life are nice,  I think the real dividing line between Native and Non-Native Americans is the special status Native peoples have in relationship to the federal government.  Due to treaties and Supreme Court decisions - Native Americans belong to tribes that have a unique sovereignty and Indian nations have a special sovereign to sovereign relationship with the federal government.  While some of this got mentioned, I didn't see any serious attempts to explain this relationship, its history, and why it isn't 'special treatment' or any other form of favoritism that a lot of non-Natives, in their ignorance of the law and the history, believe.  Maybe it was there and we missed it.

But I did particularly like Brian Jungen's recycled sculpture.

These totem poles are made up of old golf carts.

And this whale sculpture is from white plastic garden chairs.

This section on maintaining cultural identity in the modern world was also good.  

Here's a beaded tennis shoe.  And the exhibit juxtaposes it with 

how foot coverings were traditionally beaded.

The architecture is stunning.  The content is pretty, but didn't do a lot for me. 

Random DC Shots

Our son's welcome to DC kit included two Metro tickets with plenty of rides on them.  So we walked to DuPont Circle and rode to the mall where we checked out the National Museum of the American Indian and the Hirshhorn.  I'll do each of those separately, but here are some non-museum shots.


The license plates in DC don't have some bland platitude.  Instead they are lobbying for meaningful representation in Congress.  I just read it may happen - at least a member of the House, but only in exchange for giving up gun control laws.

With the U.S. House of Representatives scheduled to vote as early as Wednesday, opposition is building locally to a proposal that would grant the District its first voting member in Congress but would repeal most of the city's gun-control laws.

There are embassies everywhere we walk.  Here's the Sierra Leone embassy.  Can you find Sierra Leone on a map?  Do you know the capital? 

Here we are riding the escalator down into the DuPont Circle Metro Station.

This is looking back up as we're still headed down.

Toward the end of the outing - actually, we didn't get out until the afternoon anyway - we headed up 6th for a roundabout trip to Union Station to meet J and his Singapore classmate at Union Station.  You can see the Newseum on the right behind the trees. 

J1 had told us he wasn't impressed with the Newseum, but it did have the front page of a newspaper from every state, so I got to see the faces of two Alaska legislators there on the streets of DC.

Arlington National Cemetery to Visit Uncle Kermit

We decided to visit J's Uncle Kermit at Arlington National Cemetery Sunday afternoon.  The weather had warmed up a bit and the sun was playing hide and seek in the clouds.  The lighting was spectacular. 

This is a very somber place.  It is full of the graves of military men and women.  Some died in battle, some, like Uncle Kermit, came back and lived well past their service.  But one also can't help to notice that even in death, there is a separation of rank.  The picture above is mostly generals and admirals. 

Wives, and in this case a son of a military man, are also buried here.

All this green space attracts lots of birds.  This mockingbird rests close enough to capture.  There were lots of robins and some blue birds - a special treat for us westerners who don't generally see them. 

While this is mainly a resting place for the dead, it is also a park for the living.

This large amphitheater is connected to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Here's the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  This is an example of tradition winning out over modern efficiency.  The guards have a very ritualistic routine.  This website has some FAQ's about the Guard at the Tomb.  But keep reading into the comments, some of which challenge the information in the beginning.  Another, seemingly more official site is Tombguard.orghttp://www.tombguard.org/site.html which has similar FAQ's plus lots more history. 

Below is a brief video I took of the introduction to the changing of the guard.  My battery light started blinking so I stopped at this point.  Here's a longer video of the guard.



Here's a CBS news report that goes a bit behind the scenes of guard duty.  It does have a commercial at the beginning.

There's a lot of history here:  The Space Shuttle Columbia.  

The Space Shuttle Challenger.

The Iran Hostage Rescue attempt.

The USS Maine.

We finally made it to J's Uncle's grave.  J went to the funeral in 1989.  The last time we were at Arlington together, Uncle Kermit was our tour guide. 

Gen. Channault and Gen. Stilwell were rivals.  J1 (our son) had read Channault's autobiography and I had read Stillwell and the American Experience in China.  When we visited Kunming, China - where both had served and rivaled - we had very different perspectives on which one was the good guy and which not. 

Off in the distance you can see the Washington Monument and the Capitol across the Potomac. 

Here's John F. Kennedy's grave site.  Nearby is Robert Kennedy's, a simple stone and a white cross.  Someone had left a red rose. 

And here lies Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

J1 read that there were over 300,000 people buried in Arlington - more than live in Anchorage.  It is important to honor our dead, but one must be careful to do so without glorifying war.  Fighting to protect one's country is clearly an honorable activity, but war itself is not, and using honor to induce men to unnecessary wars is despicable.

I'm not a Statue

I was taking pictures in the farmers' market at DuPont Circle in DC and I was looking at the street musician through my camera when he let me know he wasn't happy.  I'm generally pretty easy going about photos.  The people are far more important than the photo.

So we talked a while and so I suggested he get his advice to photographers on video so here it is.




Just out of curiousity, let's see how the YouTube video compares to the Viddler.