A Week in the Life of Carol and Steve in Washington, DC

Dateline: Washington D.C.
November 13-17, 2007

We have been very busy for the past few days and wanted to share with you all that we have been up to. After a day of R and R we began our Tuesday catching the Metro to Congressman Doolittle’s office for a 1:30 tour of the Capitol. There we met Josh, Charles and Caroline, the welcoming interns for Congressman Doolittle. We waited for the rest of the group to get there and began the tour.

Charles and Caroline were very helpful and had lots of information that you wouldn’t get on the regular tour, including a shuttle ride on the commuter rail that runs in underground tunnels between the Rayburn building and the Capitol. There is an entire city down there, including artwork from high school students from each state. The walls are lined with beautiful paintings, photos and various drawings from very talented students. In addition to the artwork, there is a post office, a sundries store, shoe shine stand (complete with red, white and blue bunting around it), and the shuttle train that takes legislative aides and members of the Legislature between the Capitol and their offices. We got our picture taken on the shuttle and are posting it to the blog. Check out the pictures at our Washington DC Capitol Album on Google.

I think one of the things that have really struck us is the pure opulence that pervades our government, the buildings, the statues and the people. We wonder what visitors from other countries must think about at the privileged circumstances that encompass our government and the constant show of power and wealth here. Everywhere one looks there are signs and placards that read “Members Only,” Secret Service guards, cops, and heavily armored SUV’s with radio antennae and lights all over them. We are truly amazed and we have both been exposed to the “powerful” side of government. Steve has also probably asked 1,000 times this past week, “what the Hell do all of these people do here?” The place is literally crawling with bureaucrats, aides, and other “assistant-type” people to the high and mighty. You have read or heard the comments about the “Beltway Mentality,” and how the people who work here have lost touch with the rest of us, and after being here and seeing this first-hand for only a week, one can sure see how “regular” folks get elected, come here, and get sucked in to all of this pomp and foo foo. However, the “regular” people who live here are friendly, easy to approach, helpful and have a good sense of humor – from the cops who guard the museums to the checker in the grocery store, we have not met ONE nasty person since we got here. People are just as small town and friendly here as they are in good ol’ Pollock Pines!

We have been using the Metro extensively and feel we are pretty well versed with the system. We had to use a taxi the other night and found out the hard way the rules of the taxi service in Washington, DC. They do not use a meter system; rather they use a zone system. What would have taken us one transfer and about 30 minutes cost us $12.00. For those of you who are planning to come to Washington, DC. Our “Not For tourists” book (our bible here) states the rules system for taxi’s here is known as the “Rosetta Stone” (read un-decipherable!!). Get a weekly metro pass for $22 each and learn the Metro system. You will never have to take a taxi. The streets are logically laid out for the most part, and our only complaint about the Metro is that (unlike BART) they do not label the streets in the stations underground, so when you come out of a dark whole (especially at night!) you have to take a minute to figure out where the heck you are. The other thing that amazes us is the architecture of the subway. Here is a picture of the inside of our train station. Wheaton Station has the deepest escalator in the Western Hemisphere at 230 feet. Steve has also been on the deepest one in Russia (Moscow), so he is in Metro Heaven!

We then made it to the Library of Congress for that tour. As most of you know, Steve and I are avid readers and researchers extraordinaire. The Library of Congress allows you to come in and research anything and everything that they have. We quickly signed up for a library card and plan to spend the rainy days in the Library of Congress reading old documents, researching our family genealogy and just being immersed in books. This is one of the reasons we came to Washington DC and we were not disappointed. The inside of the building (even though you cannot take pictures in the most-beautiful part of it) is truly spectacular, and the rows and rows of books even more so.

Wednesday we spent the day walking through the Capitol area after doing a quick overview of the National Archives and how to get signed up to do genealogy and other research there. Carol joined a demonstration with Greenpeace to let the Prime Minister of Japan (who was in town to visit Bush on Friday) know that killing whales is wrong! Here is a picture of Carol and the protesters.



After finding a Starbucks we also wandered around the Capitol and while Steve was taking pictures of the Secret Service guys and buildings, Carol found a couple of DC cops who were willing to get their pictures taken…as Steve always says…”A Cop in every City, that’s all Carol asks.” He also informed them that three of them were not going to be enough to keep her our of trouble, so one of them took off before we could get a photo snapped. We think Steve scared him off… all she did was tell the DC cops that the NYC cops aren’t supposed to have their picture taken…a little rivalry goes a long way. She also got planting tips from the Capitol’s landscaping guys who wanted to know where her southern accent was if she knew what collard greens were. Leave her alone for a few minutes and she will be talking to anyone and everyone!! We also walked down the Capitol Mall. Take a look at all of the monuments and sites at our Monument Album on Google Picasa. It is truly an awe-inspiring view. Remembering all of the speeches we have seen from this vantage point. We went to the Washington Monument and then walked over to the Lincoln Memorial. You really are reminded of what history is really all about. They have placed a stone where Martin Luther King spoke during the “I have a dream” speech. It gives you goose pimples when you stand there and look out and can see the Capitol in the distance.

We also got to visit the Korean War Memorial, the World War II Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial. It is so sobering and when you look at all of the young men who have died defending this country it really makes you think about what it must be like for the troops who are in Iraq. It also makes you question how our leaders can look at themselves in the mirror every day while our young men and women are over there dying. We can’t imagine anyone being able to support a war in Iraq if they were to walk through these war monuments.

Steve found his friend John Mariani on the Wall and we took this picture. If any of you would like us to look for someone special who might be on the Wall, just send us a note and we will go back. You can never be reminded too often that war kills our young. The fall colors are still just beautiful here because of the mild summer and fall. We have only had one real cold and rainy day since we got here, and it blew off after about a half-day.


Speaking of sobering things, we also had the opportunity to go to the Kennedy Center and have a behind the scenes tour. It is a wonderful place and there are so many performances each day. In keeping with the family’s desire to provide culture to everyone, the Kennedy Center offers free performances every evening and they are online at http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/millennium/archive.html. We have found two or three events that we are going to go to as well as a couple of shows we want to see. The story of the Kennedy Center is a fascinating story. Two months after President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, Congress designated the National Cultural Center as a "living memorial" to Kennedy, and authorized $23 million to help build what was now known as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Fundraising continued at a swift pace--with much help coming from the Friends of the Kennedy Center volunteers, who fanned out across the nation to attract private funds, what is amazing is that over $300 million was donated by nations around the world who began donating funds, building materials, and artworks to assist in the project's completion. In December 1965, President Lyndon Johnson turned the first shovelful of earth at the Center's construction site, using the same gold-plated spade that had been used in the groundbreaking ceremonies for both the Lincoln Memorial in 1914 and the Jefferson Memorial in 1938. Unlike in many other countries, we have learned that many of the memorials in Washington have NOT been funded by the national government, but by people and private foundations.

Thursday, Friday and Saturday we spent the day going to the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of Natural History and the National Archives Museum. Take a look at the pictures on our album of Museums on our Google Picasa Photo Album. Of course, they are just CRAWLING with screaming and boisterous little kids from schools all over the country, so we have spent part of our tour research trying to figure out where they will NOT be at any point during the day. The American Indian Museum provided both of us an opportunity to learn more about the indigenous people of America, their customs, histories, religions and clothing styles. Many of the early tribes were moved to Oklahoma and Texas as the Western movement happened and this information as well as the research center in the Museum has given Carol an opportunity to hone her genealogy skills. She is still looking for Chief Eagle Plume (tribe and Nation still unknown) on her father’s side of the family. We then made our way to the National Museum of Natural History and were greeted by about a thousand little kids. It seems (rightly so) that all of the schools use the Smithsonian Museums as learning tools. The dinosaurs were the big attraction at this museum and we were not alone as we looked through this museum. We are not kidding; you could spend four or five days at each of these museums. We are so happy we have the time. We spent four or five hours in the exhibit on the beginning of world civilization and the peoples of Africa. We had the opportunity to see “the Iceman” who is over 5,300 years old; we watched the beginning of the world through to modern times, and for those of you who know how much we love geology (Dan, Erin and Shawna!) we spent two hours looking at rocks!!! We also had the opportunity to see the Hope Diamond, Tiffany jewels and every other precious stone you could think of… simply breath-taking. We also had the opportunity to go through the mammal exhibit and took TONS of pictures of animals for the grandkids. This museum has something for everyone and it was evident when we went back on Saturday and finished the museum. Washington DC had a walk to help the homeless on the Capitol Mall and we think that most of the families that walked in the walk decided to spend the day at the museums. When the grandchildren get older, we will definitely bring them back to Washington DC to see these museums. To see all of the things that you read about in books brought to life is simply a dream come true for these students!

As our apartment is situated in a very diverse and “active” neighborhood, the last couple of nights we have had the police helicopters over head and every night someone’s car alarm goes off. We have found our favorite car alarm is the one that has about six different sounds incorporated in one. It gets set off not less than four-to-five nights each night. We think it is a game between the people in the apartment building behind us and the neighbors in this building. Thank goodness we don’t have a car. We can’t see why anyone would need a car but they are all over. Steve has found two or three stores that he goes to for groceries and the newspaper each day and I’m pretty sure they think he is the new guy in the neighborhood. He always comes back with colorful stories of the characters he meets in the ‘hood! However, every one is friendly and easy to approach, and we have seen few signs of outward violence (although the Post is a lot like the Sacramento Bee each morning). In the morning the car alarms are set off by the garbage collectors who pick up the giant trash bins and shake them in order to get all of the garbage out and then drops them back on the ground. Sometimes they shake the building! Yesterday as he was dumping the trash down in the basement, Steve met one of DC’s finest who was doing surveillance on the building behind us and wanted to know if there were any other exits to this building… Steve told him and went on about his business. Needless to say we aren’t in Kansas any more, Toto!! However, urban life is different than country life and we have had a great deal of fun learning the ins-and-outs of living in a large and busy American city. It is going to be a great comparison point for living in an Australian city for a month or so next year.

We are having a wonderful time and we apologize for such a long blog but we have decided to incorporate a week’s worth of activities into one blog. There is just so much to see and do, by the time we get home from our adventures we are both too tired to think and there is just so much to say, we have decided to put it all together in a weekly blog. Hope you enjoy the new format. Keep in touch and let us know how you are doing!

Somewhere in DC we remain…Steve and Carol