How did the D.C. chicken cross the road? Veeeery slowly
Generous pedestrian crossings, suffragettes, and 13 other observations from our nation's capitol.
1. There's a new game I learned in Washington D.C. that I likely won't be able to play in any other city. It's called guess how many seconds you'll get at the crosswalk. Is it 58? 77? 99? For a city that's so full of cars and brisk walkers in suits, the crossing signals are exceedingly generous.
Perhaps the city planners thought long stop lights would keep traffic flowing more effectively? Maybe they anticipated more people would walk places? I don't have the answers, but maybe the folks leading the "Big tech and Capitalism” walking tours do? They must if they're going to put a poster on every signal controller box (the big metal things at stoplights) in the city.
2. The Washington Memorial is very tall and impressively smooth, and it's covered in wasps.
3. The cafe in the basement of the Dirksen Senate Office building plays ABC News on the TV. Is that a government endorsement? An official recognition of the station's neutrality and journalistic rigor? Or is that just the lady at the cash register's favorite channel?
4. The location of Senate hearing rooms - behind just-another-door doors deep in the Senate offices - is not in accordance with the grandeur of their construction. Perhaps that’s because the architects of the Capitol understood their true function? As my tour guide, an earnest and optimistic Senate staffer, told me, "This is where the Republicans say 'your budget stinks,' and the Democrats say 'tell us why the budget rules,' and then we all high five that the mics worked."
5. Speaking of architects of the Capitol, the uniform of every handyman, custodian, and gardener roaming the corridors and grounds bears the mark of "The Architect of the Capitol." It's about the coolest office name out there. The original AOC.
6. One thing the AOC might want to check out is the water pressure in the Library of Congress. It's impressive it exists at all given the ornate building was completed in 1897, but to drink from the water fountains you'd have to pretend you were drinking from a sippy cup.
7. The reading room at the Library feels like a metaphor for the Capitol just itching to be written down. The capital-G Gorgeous circular room is full of books and stacks and the silence of congressional staffers and soon-to-be law students at study. The circular space is also, every few minutes, emptied of and resupplied with a small batch of tourists from the Great Hall. I am one of them. It feels like sipping and refilling Coke from a water cup (sippy cup?), peering over the edge of the soda fountain as the extra noise of carbonization gives you away to the employee who's too busy to do anything about it. They’ve got a line waiting on them and a budget to pass.
8. There's a barbershop in the Senate basement, and apparently it's hit or miss. There's also a basketball court (they just added pickle ball too). Word has it Ted Cruz can hoop, and one time a new staffer hit a game-winner in his face and he demanded a rematch, missing a vote in the process.
9. Every state gets to put two statues in the Capitol complex. At first, seeing Barry Goldwater enshrined next to Thomas Edison and James Garfield (go Buckeyes), Rosa Parks and Amelia Earhart degrades the position a bit, but it also somehow makes the figures more real - the full heft of their flaws and their accomplishment embodied in the many-ton white rock and bronze.
10. The halls of the complex bear a similar weight. The giant-trod floors and mural-covered walls having been soiled by the dirty boots, mouths, and minds of January 6, 2021.
11. The transit stations in DC are like a 1960's sci-fi concept illustrator’s dream. They make you feel like you're in the superhero's-are-just-citizens-now montage from The Incredibles.
12. The suffragettes in the capitol dome are real life citizens-as superheroes. The roughly hewn rock at the back of the sculpture is a bust-in-waiting. Someday, hopefully soon, it will bear the face of our first female president.
Their work, like that of the fore-fathers, -mothers, -scientists, -tribal leaders, -explorers, -defenders, -historians, -artists...to whom we pay tribute in the Capitol, is still being done each day.
13. Reading the various historical pamphlets presented at the Capitol is difficult during with a peaceful protest happening nearby. On one other side of Alexander Calder's mountain-sized sculpture, Mountains and Clouds Cornel West, the then Green Party's presidential candidate, spoke to demonstrators about giving peace a chance. Ongoing work, indeed.
14. Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address covers the North Wall of his memorial. Don’t try to catch your breath after a long walk up the memorial’s stairs. Lincoln’s words will steal it back.
The speech refers to the “work” of ending the Civil War, but it just as aptly describes the ongoing endeavor of our enterprise as a people of many.
"With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Damn, Abe.