2-28-10 More American History

We hopped the Metro down to the American History Museum, our second foray into that area. We did some more of the first floor - our standard 2.5 hours worth before we get overloaded. What's interesting about this trip is what we saw in the part of the Man and machines section, about trains. Here was a story about the effort to connect Santa Cruz to the big train lines in Watsonville in the mid 1800s. Imagine that, featured in the American History Museum. Here's a picture of the narrow gauge railroad engine that did the job.

And right next to that, was a big feature on Watsonville and how its produce was shipped around the country. Also how the growers there imported different nationalities to pick the crops until the Federal government made that nationality's immigration illegal and the growers moved on to the next group. So they went from Japanese, to Filipinos, to Mexicans. And there was a picture of a lettuce field crew from the sixties - I worked in the lettuce fields and I think that might just be me in the third row on the right! :)

2-27-10 Baltimore Inner Harbor

We drove to Baltimore today to see the Inner Harbor area. Our goal was to see first the Aquarium and then do whatever we had time left for. We got to the Aquarium at a little after 10. Not much of a crowd - it was sunny but cold. We stayed in side until about 2pm. We really enjoyed the exhibits which are not just fish, but include birds, amphibians, reptiles and some movie features. It's very interesting and well done. The Australian exhibit was an indoor aviary - very neat. I'm attaching a few pictures. Of course, I had to capture the lighthouse boat in front of the museum - all part of the lighthouse obsession.

One special moment occurred when we were sitting down in front of the dolphin tank, watching the underwater scene. The dolphins were getting ready for their show. There were 3 or 4 toddlers in front of the glass and the arrangement was such that their feet were at a level just below the lip of the glass. So two kids were babbling at the dolphins and a big older one clearly spots them and starts to swim over to the glass. The kids, with parental encouragement, keep talking and waving at the dolphin, and he swims up to glass, looks at them carefully, goes vertical with his tail up, and rises to the surface while he slowly spins around. Amazing - clearly a show meant for the kiddies. Very neat.

We got some lunch and then walked up to the Baltimore Catholic Basilica, the first Basilica in America. A very lovely church, just renovated. The stained glass had been removed and replaced with clear glass to make the church look like it did back in the 1800s. Very simple and done in pastel colors - I include some pics also. This church, for those Cat-lickers among the readers, is the source of the Baltimore Cathecism.

We walked back to the inner harbor and got the car. No time for Ft. McHenry or the neat neighborhoods around the area - We will be back.

2-21-10 The Bolshoi

Oh yeah, the Bolshoi. Sue and I got dressed up, drove to Hunington and took the Metro to Foggy Bottom, caught the bus to Kennedy Center. Pretty good seats. We enjoyed the ballet very much. The male dancing was very powerful, the female dancers very gracefull and beautifull, the story could be followed. In all, a very good experience. And now we can say, We've been to the Bolshoi!

2-21-10 The Udvar-Hazy Natl. Air and Space trip

2-20-10

We took Mike up to see Deb and Brian Sharkey. Deb is Mike's cousin and Sue's neice. Deb and Brian live near Columbia Maryland. See the photo. Brian will stay with them and then come back to Alexandria, before he leaves for Wisconsin on Monday evening.

Sue and I drove off through the Maryland countryside - it was rural in places. We headed down to the Udvar-Hazy Air branch of the Air and Space Museum right by Dulles. Got there about noon.

The museum is free, the parking is NOT. We took in the IMAX on adventures on the Moon, had lunch, and walked the hanger. Lots and lots of stuff to read about. But I found something of particular interest to me - a scale model of the exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) that was going to be the US's defense against incoming re-entry vehicles - remember Missle Defense before it got dumbed down. I used to do high-performance modeling and simulation of this little dude hitting RVs, to see what it would do. And here was the model. How 'bout that!

2-20-10 We're going to the Bolshoi!

We have tickets to the Bolshoi ballet tonihgt - Spartacus - not your typical frufru ballet we read. This made possible courtesy of Sal and Amandas's christmas gift of a gift certificate to the Kennedy Center. We've been in the big theater once during an open house day - Whatever shall I wear? ...

After dropping Mike atDeb's we plan to visit the Air&Space museum branch out by Dulles. That should occupy the rest of the day.

2-19-10 Our Visitor

We have a visitor. Sue's nephew Mike McElwee is here for a few days. Mike came in on Wed. morning and Sue picked him up at DCA. He has seen a lot in his time here. Mike takes off in the morning and comes back in the evening, when we visit and watch a movie maybe. Tonight we watched the Red Violin - good flick. Mike toured the White House and Congress today. We will take him to Brian and Deb Sharkey's house tomorrow, Saturday.

Today I went to a class at the Library of Congress on how to use Thomas, the online access tool for legislation and Congressional activities. Wow! Complicated! And not so much the tool as the process of making the sausage. Hope I can start using the tool to track appropriations activities.

2-15-09 Hajj Movie

We went down to the Natural History Museum this morning to see the IMAX movie about the 14th century explorer Ibn Battuta's pilgrimage from Morroco to Mecca for the Hajj. We took a bus and a train and got there at opening time, 10am. The movie was pretty good, mixing scenes from Ibn's time (acted) with modern scenes from the Hajj. Ibn went off exploring the world after his pilgrimage and traveled three times as far as Marco Polo.
After that, we went to the display on American Sisters in the Ripley Center. It's a good show also, talking about all the contributions that sisters have made in this country. We headed home after that, stopping at Cosi for lunch.
Rest of the day at home . It started to snow lightly at about 3pm. Ugh. Supposed to be light.

2-14-09 Visit to the Corcoran

Today we went to the Corcoran Museum. It was a sunny day and not too cold - still an ear-muff day however. We got there at about 1:30. We went to see the Turner to Cezanne exhibit that just opened. We both like Impressionist art and the price of admission was worth just being able to see Renior's La Parisienne. We went to the Sunday Brunch buffet - lots of very good food - dinner and lunch for us. After brunch we looked at some more art and then walked to the National Natural History Museum. We needed the walk and it was a nice day but huge piles of snow at every intersection. Lots of trees down along Constitution Ave - at least lots of stumps and sawdust along the street. We went to the Museum store to get something for the grandboys and then up to take a quick peek at the new diamond rock on view next to the Hope Diamond. Then over to the bug and insect section and the exhibition on Forensics at Jamestown to see what happened there based on the buried bodies. Saw the skeleton of a scientist who had donated his body to the Smithsonian in 2002 - looking at his bones, I wonder what mine look like - well, I didn't wonder for long - too depressing.
Back to the Metro - took us a long time to get back to Hunington. The tracks through Braddock were closed on one side so trains could only go through one at a time. It was 7:30 before we got home. Then the challenge was to park the Rav in front of the house - there is so much snow piled up on the median between our parking street and the regular street (at least 7 feet high) that the parking street lane is very narrow and it is very hard to parallel park on the parking street. But with Sue driving and me helping watch the edges of the car, we got it done.