Reporting from Washington. You hear that at least once every evening on the nightly
news. That’s because DC is, as Reggie
Jackson once said of himself, “the straw that stirs the drink.” Or is that Wall Street?
DC isn't a Budweiser or a white wine town; it’s a
Scotch rocks town.
DC oozes power. It
radiates from the buildings, flows down the Potomac, and jostles it’s way along
the busy sidewalks. You feel it in the
streets, in restaurants and in bars. There
seems to be more business than tourism in the marble lobby of The Willard Hotel
(known to locals as “The W”). Folks in
business suits greet each other with firm handshakes and then retire to a
corner to discuss - what? A peace
initiative? An appropriations bill? What legislator to lobby (read: buy off)? Possibly an obfuscation strategy, or for those old enough to remember, the old Ralph Kramden "Hamana hamana, hamana."
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| The Willard Hotel's Marble Lobby |
We’d planned an al fresco dinner at Bobby Van’s Grill and
before leaving I mulled over the jeans I was wearing. C'mon, a pair of jeans is the everyday ensemble
in California. I glanced down at my jeans
and running shoes; nah; shit’s not gonna work.
Went to slacks and loafers. Good
move; I’d have stuck out like Old MacDonald – or Surfer Joe. Either way it would've been a bad look. You don’t see baggy shorts, jeans and a
t-shirt in a DC restaurant - not unless the wearer is from California.
Strolling near The White House you know what you see;
uniformed Secret Service, Park Police, DC cops, bomb sniffing German Shepherds
and those fellows in gray suits and shades.
You also don’t know what you don’t see.
A tour bus operator pointed to a sniper at the top of a nearby
building. Chilling.
If you come to DC you need to visit The Newseum; no you
really NEED to visit it. Dedicated to
the fourth estate and the ideals of the First Amendment it sits on Pennsylvania
Avenue, ironically between two infamous manure factories; The Capitol Building
and The White House. The Newseum is a
big building of steel and glass, making it highly transparent, unlike the government buildings that flank it. Why do you NEED
to visit it? Because the press has
become a popular whipping boy; it’s biased, its left wing, its right wing, it’s
a corporate tool, it’s this, it’s that, but whatever it is it can’t be any good. Right? Everyone seems to have his own bias about the press, whether it came honestly or it came from Limbaugh, but the fact is that very often the press is the only check when the so called checks and balances of our
government become unchecked and out of balance.
Lest we forget Watergate, Iran-Contra, and countless investigative
reports that have uncovered government, waste, abuse, excess of power and
assorted skullduggery.
Why do you NEED to see the Newseum? Because in a powerful section about the
former East Germany you see what happens when we don’t have a free press or a
first amendment or we the citizens fall asleep at the switch and buy the
government line, or the corporate line. You see in the East Germans the lengths to which people
will go, when they yearn for basic freedoms; you know, kinda like that 1776
thing. But what the hell, a lot of us
are already asleep; night-night democracy.
There is also a
film presentation that relives the press coverage of 9/11 through the words of
the reporters that were there. Just
outside of the theater is a well used satin metal tissue holder.
At The Newseum there is a display of the 9/11 press coverage.
There is also a permanent tissue dispenser
As we strolled Pennsylvania Avenue, I noticed a building that houses, figuratively at least, a butt load of my hard earned money; IRS headquarters. Sigh.
There might be better ways to sight see than going for a
run in the early hours but I can’t think of one right now. Forget that health stuff, the lighting is
spectacular and if you aren't alone with the sights you’re about as close to
alone as you’re going to be. Two early
morning runs through the National Mall and past the monuments yielded
breathtaking sights in the dramatic light of sunrise. What I missed out on were Homer and Marge in
Bermuda shorts and all the other gazillion touristas.
I was told by someone who claimed to be in the know that
DC is empty now. “Huh?” I asked.
“Seems awfully full to me.” She
pointed out that a lot of folks leave town this time of year because Congress
isn't in session. I suppose that the
dearth of crowds is the only thing that would tip you off that the blackguards
have skipped town. When they're on recess nothing gets done. And when they're in town? Nothing from nothing is nothing.
One of those morning runs and I happen on to the Vietnam
Memorial. I’m the only one there and the
rising sun is shining on that long bright ebony wall. The lawn and trees and the Washington
Monument are all reflected as clearly as if that black surface were a mirror. The reflection makes the thousands of names blend with the idyll of that park; the trees, the emerald
lawn and Washington’s monument looking down on it all. I get emotional at that monument. It brings on a palpable wave of sorrow.
Some yards from the wall is a statue of three grunts. You stand in
front of them and you look at them but they don't look at you. They look over and past you as if you’re not there; as if you weren't there. To me they seem to know that I wasn't there. They're dismissive of me as they should be. Unquestionably those who were there see those men differently; more intimately. To me the one on the left, with the machine gun
appears bitter, the one in the middle, resolute, and the one on the right, just sad and weary. All three wear a look of
resignation. They wear the emotions that
pulled on each other, on each of us and on the nation as a whole during those
years. If you didn't serve you can't get it. I didn't serve and I don’t think I
even know anyone who perished in that swamp.
The memory of those times still brings tears. As I look up at those young men I want to ask their forgiveness for not helping with all the heavy lifting that a misguided government heaped
on their young shoulders.
Served or not, if you didn't live through that era, you can't get it either. To say that the country was divided is an understatement. Americans squared off in nose to nose confrontations at demonstrations, in the office, at school and in the home. If you believed in the war you saw your local recruiter. If you had the financial horsepower or enough grease and you didn't believe; or even if you did but lacked the testicular fortitude to enlist then you got a deferment. If you were just a plebian you might just head for Canada. Failing that you counted on lady luck in the draft lottery and if you lost; well as Country Joe put it, "Put down your books and pick up your gun, we're gonna have a whole lot of fun." And add to that the racial unrest, and you had a cauldron of unrest and a big fucking mess.
Some will never get it; they’ll never get anything. Like the fool that mocked the nurses portrayed in the
Vietnam Women’s Memorial. He had a jolly good time and his female companion laughed like a braying
mule. I wanted to call out to him to
shut the fuck up but for some there’s just no remedy. You can’t shame someone who has no shame.
And yes that Women’s Memorial is as moving as the Vietnam
Memorial – maybe more so. A nurse with
an expression of sorrow cradles a fallen soldier while one behind her
hopefully, desperately scans the skies for that dust off.
If you’re visiting DC, the National Mall is where it’s
at. Monuments and museums so numerous
you would need more than a week to see them all. The museums are enormous and you can’t dally
at any single display in a museum and hope to get through it all. You breeze along the displays and soak in what you can. At the Smithsonian Museum of American History
the wife got so engrossed in a display about the original flag that flew over
Fort McHenry that it took her nearly a half hour to finish. I finally had to drag her out, “You do
realize that we only have two more days in DC.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “I mean at the rate you’re going we’re
going to spend both days here in this museum.” I really hated to rush her along. You couldn't pay that woman enough to
actually read a history book but plop her into a museum or a historical site and
she’s riveted.
Constitution Avenue runs the length of the mall and along
much of that boulevard a cottage industry has sprouted. Trailers line the curbside hawking food and
trashy souvenirs. As you walk along the
line you pass a food vendor and then a souvenir vendor and then another food
vendor identical to the first food vendor and then a souvenir vendor identical
to the first souvenir vendor. Every
shopkeeper in every trailer looks to be Southeast Asian. And so you walk along Constitution Avenue with
the green grass of the mall on one side and a line of cloned schlock traders on
the other.
Food and provisions on Constitution Ave.
The original impetus to take this trip was, believe it or
not; baseball. The plan was originally
to go to Yellowstone but when I looked on the San Francisco Giants website way back in January, I
saw that they were offering a vacation to DC with lodging and tickets to three
games. Given the choice the little woman
jumped on DC. We took in two night games
and bagged the third; a day game on Sunday.
I like baseball as much as the next guy but this is Washington DC. And so as it turned out we went for three baseball games, took in two and then decided to drive through Virginia for a week.
We've left DC now.
I’m writing this sitting in a cottage tucked in Virginia’s Piedmont, in the shade of the Blue Ridge
Mountains. There’s no traffic, no
commotion, no horns; no impatience that business demands and none of the
pressure and urgency that embraces that most powerful city on Earth. Out here the night sky is full of the stars
that are made invisible by the lights of DC.
The city sounds have been replaced by a million crickets. It’s almost as if we’d never been to DC. Hell, almost as if it doesn't exist.
