Leaving's Looking Good

Long delay for a 45 minute flight in DC.  Things not well organized,  but we made it into JFK in New York just before a storm hit.  It began raining on the tarmac.  We were in a CRJ 900 which didn't connect to the terminal.  Then they said they had closed the airport terminals until the thunderstorm ended, so we sat longer. 

We walked along this makeshift terminal until we finally got to a back door of the real terminal. 

We wandered around until we found our gate passing the various shops, including this duty free shop.

Planes are leaving for all over from here.

And I'm posting this courtesy of Healthy Gourmet which has free wifi in the Delta terminal near gate 14.  

Maybe We're Going Tomorrow, Maybe Not

We had a lazy day doing things like laundry.  I got a run in.  It rained somewhat.  And Delta said most flights made it in and out of Berlin today.  We've got boarding passes, so we're assuming we're on.  We change planes in NYC. 

Don't have much more to say.  I have noticed that Louisiana Gov. Jindal's mocking of money on volcano monitoring has been remembered by some this week.

And Ropi put up an EU profiler which is of interest to me on our (fingers crossed) way there.  It let's you see what parties you might be aligned with in various countries.  Just the questions are interesting to read. 

B said tonight that this has been a really bad pollen season in DC, which might explain why my eyes have been red and itchy.  Not something that usually bothers me. 

If I don't post anything for a day or two, just go find an old post you haven't read.  You could check out April 2007 when I only did 27 short posts.

Or check out the Story of Stuff post  and then the follow up post on Victor Lebow which by far has the most comments of any post. 

Or better yet, you could go outside and take a walk. 

US Senate Floor Has One Senator as Begich Presides

We took the Metro to Union Station today, then walked to the Russell Senate Building.
(#1 on the map below.)

We passed through lovely, tree filled park, for the three or four blocks from the station.

Security at the Russell Senate Office Building was like at the Federal Building in Anchorage.  Bothersome, but not that big a deal.  And then we were free to roam the halls of the building.

Senator Begich's office was where all those people were.  We were there to get tickets to get into the Senate Chambers.  It turned out we needed someone to take us there and that person turned out to be an intern from the University of Alaska Fairbanks named Adrian.   And they suggested we get him to take us on a tour, that he was the best guide.  So we did.

This the outer office in Senator Begich's office with some other Alaskans there talking to the staff.

Here's Adrian on the train from the Senate Office Building to the Senate itself.  I'd read already that you had to check in your cameras before going into the Senate Gallery.  We also had go through security again.  We'd seen on a C-Span screen that Sen. Begich was presiding in the Senate.  It turns out this was not despite his low rank in the Senate, but because of it.

There was only one Senator on the floor - Sen Sessions of Alabama - giving a speech about a new Judge candidate who he accused of taking her liberal agenda to the bench and making decisions based on politics not the law.  Sen. Begich checked his blackberry and read documents while Sen. Sessions talked to an empty chamber - except for those of us in the Gallery.  Then Sen. Sessions departed and Sen. Dodd of Connecticut began a similar speech about the Republicans forcing all 41 of their members to block a vote on the upcoming financial reform bill.  During this speech, another young Senator came to replace Sen. Begich on the podium.

I'd heard that this went on, but watching it brought home the absurdity of it all. People get to stand up and give their speeches to the C-Span audiences (which aren't shown the empty chambers) and get their words into the Congressional Record. On the bright side, not all the other Senators have to waste their time listening. For the record, I did not see this happen in Juneau. Since I couldn't take pictures in the Senate chambers, here's a picture of the OLD Senate Chambers we saw later.


Adrian and the other interns were meeting with Sen. Murkowski, but he had two other people to show around an hour later, so we went to lunch and rejoined them later on for the rest of the tour.

There were lots of domed ceilings and chandeliers.  I'm not sure what this one was.

Here's a bit of floor tile.

This is Albert Caswell, the Poet of the Senate.  You can read about him in this  Politico post.

Here's a brief excerpt from a poem posted in the Congressional Record April 27, 2009:

He cries .....
As half his face is gone, has died .....
In this face of courage we see .....
The true definition of beauty .....
Countless operations, courage's full measure .....
All in faith's affirmation .....
Both Beauty and The Beast .....
As his shot is heard around the world .....
As his courage is unfurled ..... beyond belief .....
A Beautiful Man .....
With every step, reloading .....
With the Height of Courage exploding .....
He takes command!

I'll let you make your own assessment of his poetry. 

This is the Senate Capitol Rotunda dome.

Our group in the Rotunda.

High on the Rotunda wall is a frieze depicting the history of the US from Columbus to the Forty Niners digging for gold in California.  

When we rode the underground train back to the Russell Senate Building, we shared the ride with Sen. McCain.

Then we got our Metro ride back to J1's place, walked Kona, then went out for dinner at Bombay Bistro in Rockville with an old friend and his family.  It's late so that's it.

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.