31 May 2015
Jack and I have been together since 1986. When he was in grad school, Jack started traveling to conferences and to various cities for library research that would stretch to weeks at a time. When he was staying somewhere interesting, I'd follow along, or show up towards the end of his longer trips.
Last year, he decided to apply for research fellowships. Figuring he might get one or two, he applied for nine. He got seven of them. Three were traveling fellowships; all told, he'd be away from home close to five months in the space of about a year.
The first stint was for four weeks at Harvard's library; he spent two weeks there last August, and I joined him at the end. Next was his semester in Oxford, where I visited for two weeks in November. Last week began his month in Washington, DC. I decided that enough is enough, and made plans to visit on weekends.
It's faster to take Amtrak than to drive, and, when timed the right way, relatively cheap.
I arrived at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday evening. We walked from Union Station to the house that the Folger Shakespeare Library is putting him up in. Comparisons with his room in Oxford are inevitable, down to the bathroom across the hall, the odd arrangement of stairs, the shared kitchen at the other end of a common room, and the grand facade of the building. Markedly different is the weather. It's merely warm and sticky out; I can handle that better than day after day of chilly rain.
Here's the neighborhood that Jack is staying in, a few blocks from the Capitol Building, around the corner from the Shakespeare library and the Library of Congress buildings:
We walked to the Eastern Market, which is an indoor farmer's market with outdoor crafts and crops on weekends . I bought coffee beans, because of course I did. Here's a used bookstore in the area. The foreign language books are in the bathroom:
The outdoor part of the Eastern Market:
I think Jack looks cute in his bucket hat.
We hopped the Metro to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. We were looking for moose, of course.
Jack with his cousin, Moose.
Creepy-crawly beetle sex, live!
In search of more moose relatives:
Mouse deer (not moose deer):
Mouse mouse:
Pocket mouse, because you never know when you'll need one:
Carved aquamarine:
We paid an exorbitant price for lunch in the cafeteria, which would have pissed me off but for the fact that the museum is free. We attempted to plan where to go next, only to find that half of the museums we wanted to see are closed for renovations.
We decided on the very politically incorrectly named National Museum of the American Indian. To get there, we had to detour away from one of the gardens we wanted to see because a huge chunk of the mall is under construction:
If I'd been on a bike... (No, not really; this picture was taken between the gaps of a chain-link fence.)
The Capitol Building is under scaffolding:
I shall refrain from the obvious metaphors.
In front of the American Indian museum:
Something disturbed us about this place from the minute we walked in. We were bombarded by the image of the noble savage.
The museum is four floors. We started from the top. It wasn't until somewhere on the next level down that there was even a mention of the reason we need to preserve Native American culture in the first place. I'm sure I didn't even see the word "smallpox." That these cultures were nearly massacred to extinction was glossed over. That these people fought amongst themselves, as every group of humans has since we climbed down from the trees, was not touched upon at all. Instead, one could buy any number of hand-made trinkets in the gift shop.
We headed for home, walking through part of the U.S. Botanical Garden as a shortcut.
We exited at the bottom of Capitol Hill and walked up (maybe with more elevation gain than on Tom's ride yesterday). Tomorrow's rainy weather was moving in:
The Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress:
The sinister Madison Building of the Library of Congress:
Threatening books for the doorway:
Down here, Goose Island is a brewery. Back home, it's a goose- and island-free Hunterdon County road.
In the evening, we walked again, past where the Eastern Market was, to a Turkish restaurant, where diners and staff alike were smoking from hookahs.
On the way back to the house, we saw a few fireflies and giant magnolia flowers.
A train at 8:10 a.m. tomorrow will return me to the real world, but I plan to be back here next weekend.
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