National Archives

One of the things I was rushing away from the White House to see was the National Archives.

That's the only photo I got because inside no photography is allowed at all.  There was a long line to get in and then more waiting in an antechamber tantalisingly close to my goal: the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.  My only disappointment was that the Magna Carta which is usually on display was away being restored.  But it was only a very slight disappointment.

These are housed in what they call the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom (yes, well, I'll let them off this time, they're obviously very proud of these documents) which is enormous and decorated a pair of murals of the signing of the declaration and the signing of the constitution.  Unfortunately the entire thing is lit so poorly that it's hard to see these as the artist intended, but they are still impressive.    You can see them online here probably better than I could in person.

The low light is due to the state of the documents which have had a tumultuous life and weren't always looked after that well.  Despite being restored recently it's very difficult to make out much of the original text.  But the larger stuff is still plain enough, like the "We the people" at the top of the Constitution and the "July 4 1776" on the Declaration. I saw John Hancock's flamboyant signature on the Declaration, from which we get the expression "John Hancock" for signature, though it wasn't quite as flamboyant as I was expecting.  And there were also recognisable signatures from other famous figures like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and the like.  I was also amused by the error in the Constitution, which one of the guards pointed out, where Pennsylvania is spelled wrong.

During busy times visitors are let into the rotunda in groups of about fifty, and you only have a few minutes to look around before the next group comes.  But it's all you really need.  Before you go in a guard gives you a little pep talk and tells people not to try to read every last jot and tittle, but that doesn't stop people from trying and eventually being moved on.  You really go for the experience of seeing these historic documents first hand (even if they are behind thick layers of bullet proof glass).  I'd heard so much about them, and there they were in front of me.

It was well worth the wait.

The White House

I didn't have time to take a tour of the White House while we were in Washington, but I definitely wasn't going to let the trip pass without at least walking past it, which I did on the morning of the last day.  It was quite close to our hotel, though it was a bit of a maze finding my way there (I assume this is intentional, to help thwart evildoers).  But I just headed in what I thought was roughly the right direction and eventually found myself on a thin path on the south side, about two metres wide, full of people.  As you can see there was a big iron fence which somewhat obstructed the view.

 The bars were wide enough to fit the camera through, though, to get some fence-free shots.  In some ways, then, the photos were better than actually being there.

It looked smaller than I expected, and far away.  Though there are other attached buildings hiding behind the trees on either side.

The tourists on the path were from all nations, and there was a cacophony of languages being spoken.  The one uniting thing, though, was that every so often out of the babbling brook of unfamiliar sounds I could hear the single word "Obama" spoken in a dozen different tongues.

Once I had my photos and had paused for a few minutes to admire the view, I moved on.  I had two more memorials to see and then three museums after that.  I'm sure I'll visit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue again sometime for a closer look, assuming that it isn't shaken to the ground or blown away in the meantime.  Somehow I doubt it - if it survived being burned by the British in 1814 I'm sure it will survive anything.

Here's the updated map.

After the storm

By the time Hurricane Irene reached us late Saturday night it had already weakened somewhat and, combined with the fact that we were on the periphery meant that we only got a good soaking rain and a little bit of wind.  Other parts of the region did not fare so well - North Carolina and Virginia, where she first came ashore, were battered quite badly and flooding caused problems right up the East Coast, even affecting places one or two counties away from us.

Mrs Walles and I followed along on the Weather Channel.  On Sunday morning, as the eye approached New York City, the presenters seemed to manifest a kind of macabre hope that Irene would retain her hurricane status all the way to Manhattan, which would make it the first direct hit from a hurricane there in over a hundred years.  In the end she was downgraded to a tropical storm just before she hit New York.  That didn't stop her leaving a path of flooding and blackouts all the way through New England into Canada.

Millions of people were without power (including some of the family of Mrs Walles on Long Island) and many still are.  At least ten people were killed.  And flooding is still creating havoc according to the news.

And so I have weathered my first hurricane, even if it was right at the edge and even if it was "only" category one.  I'm still chalking it up.  And, frankly, I'm not worried about getting closer to the centre or seeking out category fives, thanks very much.  Last week demonstrated that not even here, in Pennsylvania, are we completely immune to the more dramatic forces of nature.  There's no escape and, though I imagine the people of Virginia might disagree, I guess you just have to roll with the punches.

Just when I thought it was safe to go outside...

It turns out that the earthquake the other day was just a distraction from the impending hurricane which has already caused more devastation than that little shake.

Hurricane Irene is shaping up to be the worst in decades.  It's already come ashore in the Carolinas and is heading through Virginia on its way to Philadelphia, New York City and Long Island, Boston and points north.  Normally, hundreds of miles inland as I am, even if a hurricane got that close it wouldn't be much of a problem.  But Irene is huge, hundreds of miles across, big enough that even now the very edges of it are making themselves felt where we are.  The forecast is for likely tropical storm conditions tonight where we are - meaning strong winds and lots and lots of rain.

So Mrs Walles and I are hunkering down.  She grew up on Long Island which, because it sticks out into the Atlantic, catches more hurricanes than much of the mainland.  So she knows what to do.  We've secured everything outside, stocked up on food and water, and in the (extremely unlikely) event that we need to retreat to the basement we've got that in a habitable state.

Realistically we're most worried about flooding and power cuts.  So if you don't hear from me, it's less likely that I've been blown away and more likely that the internet has been cut off.  Which doesn't sound good either - but is definitely the lesser of two evils!

Shake, rattle and roll

I really thought that when I moved to Pennsylvania that I had left earthquakes behind in New Zealand.  Which is why I didn't figure out what was going on the other day when the big one struck Virginia until it was almost over.


It really was hard to believe it was an earthquake, even while it was going on.  It's not an earthquake prone place.  This was the biggest earthquake on the East Coast since a 5.8 in New York in 1944.  This quake was felt by tens of millions of people who live up and down the coast and many of them have never felt an earthquake before.  I had more or less assumed that I wouldn't feel one as long as I lived here - let alone within months of moving.


Despite its relative weakness it was felt as far away as Chicago and Toronto.  Apparently the waves from earthquakes travel well on the East Coast of the US because it's all one big slab of old rock.  Buildings were evacuated in Washington and New York.  It was the only thing on CNN all afternoon.  There was little damage reported (although the Washington Monument, featured so much in these very pages, was damaged and has been closed indefinitely) but a lot of fear was inspired.


I got over it pretty quickly, but as with all earthquakes there are those few moments of concern about how long it's going to go on and how bad it will get.  Once the bottles stopped rattling, though, I knew I was okay and went off to find out what was up.   I toyed for a few seconds with the idea that a nuclear bomb had gone off somewhere, so unlikely did an earthquake seem.  Wouldn't it be just typical, too, nuclear winter arriving just as the tomatoes are coming in?  The reality soon became clear, though, and shortly after the earth stopped shaking, I did too.

Jefferson Memorial

Washington and Lincoln are all very well, but my man is Thomas Jefferson, and here is his memorial, across the Tidal Basin from the other two.

It's very much in the style of the Lincoln Memorial, though not as large.  Lincoln's is supposed to be a Greek temple, but this is more like the Pantheon in Rome.  It's more open on the inside, too, where we find the man himself.

My, he's even bigger than Lincoln - what did they eat back then?  But he was a larger than life character.  He founded the University of Virginia, wrote the Declaration of Independence and served as the third President of the United States.  During his presidency he made the Louisiana Purchase, buying pretty much all the land between the Mississippi and the Rockies from Napolean.  Napolean.  It would have been impressive if he had bought a bag of peanuts or a used button from Napolean - let alone over two million square kilometres of land.

Once he'd bought the land he sent Lewis and Clark to explore it.  He hoped they would find some living mammoths (that's how little was known about the interior).

He was a great man, though he hasn't always been recognised as such, and I'm glad he has a great building to remember him.

Fish in a dish

Today's post is only tangentially related to the Washington trip (you'll be relieved to hear if all the marble has been getting to you).
Instead it is concerned with something I had taken for granted in New Zealand but sadly cannot here - access to good fish.  Now the fish in America is very good, as long as you are in the right place.  Central Pennsylvania is not really the right place.  When I first arrived here, aware that the trip from New York takes about four hours on a good day, I realised that fish this far inland might be a bit sketchy.  And I was right, though perhaps not for the right reason.

You can get excellent fish here, you just have to know where to go.  After a few forays that ended badly (taste wise...I haven't eaten any properly bad fish here) I've come to realise that it's only worth ordering fish in restaurants if someone I trust has recommended it.  The other night Mrs Walles and I went out to a place where we had been advised the all-you-can-eat haddock and chips was good and it was excellent.  So good that I had two platefuls.  I've also had very good seafood at a Japanese hibachi place.  But then if you were looking for somewhere that was pretty much guaranteed to have fresh fish, a Japanese restaurant would surely be a good bet.

Though fish here is generally lacklustre I don't think this is because of our distance from the coast right now.  It seems more likely that in the time before fast transportation when the coast was even more remote people here just didn't have a lot of experience with cooking and eating fresh seafood.  I think you can see this in the way that a lot of restaurants serve fish - baked and smothered in cheese sauce, the kind of dish that's designed to stifle any flavour of the fish itself.  It's a conservative region and I can easily see this indifference to fish passing from one generation to the next even as access to good seafood improved.

I'm not sure if that's the explanation, but it's still a fact that it's hard to find good seafood around here, so I'm very grateful to the friend who gave us the tip the other night.  I don't have to wait until we visit a coastal area to get my seafood fix anymore (as I did in Washington).  The new place has me hook, line and sinker.

World War II Memorial

The National World War II Memorial is big, impressive and interesting, though for me the least moving of the three war memorials I saw in Washington.

This is America, of course, so the emphasis is on America (hardly surprising).  Yet the Vietnam Memorial is similarly focussed on the US but it immediately struck me with a whole swag of emotions.  Perhaps the difference is that, even though the WWII Memorial is dedicated to those who served in the war, those who fought are not really acknowledged in the architecture.  There was an installation at the back which Mrs Walles and I speculated was intended to convey the scale of losses - but there was nothing to confirm that was what it meant.

 

The memorial is big and round with a nice fountain in the centre.  Around the outer edges there are markers for each state and territory.  On either side there are tall monuments marked "Pacific" and "Atlantic".

There are some nice brasses.  Some had images, like these.

 

Others had little quotes, from President Truman and other figures of the time.

I suppose that for America the Second World War was a kind of coming of age.  It emerged the other side a global superpower, changed in many ways from before the war.  Perhaps this would explain the attitude the memorial seems to convey - not so much a sombre memorial of tragic losses, but more a celebration of a struggle won.  And it would also explain why this memorial has such a prime place on the Washington map, right between the Washington and Lincoln monuments, suggesting it commemorates an event on par with the Revolution and Civil War, two other key turning points in US history.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it isn't your run-of-the-mill war memorial.  Which isn't a bad thing.  It's still a good place to visit and reflect on the events of the war, but as an outsider I was far more moved by the Vietnam and Korean war memorials, of which there will be more in future posts.

And speaking of the Washington map, here's one with the position of the memorial marked.

Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial stands at the north end of the Mall.  Here's a view of it from afar, looking from the Washington Monument, past the World War II Memorial.

Now normally there would be a beautiful glassy body of water called the Reflecting Pool in the picture above, but unfortunately they've dug it up to fix its foundations so all we saw was a muddy streak with a few diggers working away. I guess I'll just have to go back at a later date to get the full effect as intended. 

Nevermind, the Greek temple affair that is the Lincoln Memorial was still fantastic and beautiful, as long as you didn't turn around.  Mrs Walles and I made our way there on our first night in D.C. which made for an especially pretty sight which my photography doesn't come close to capturing.

You can just spy the man himself peeking out between two columns.  I returned another day and got this view during daylight.

There are a lot of steps leading up to the building which are hidden by the perspective, though the tiny size of the people in front of the columns hints at the distance from the camera to the top step. Everything about it is oversize and combined with the Greek architecture you feel that this must be a very old building, yet it was only built at the beginning of the twentieth century.  The names of all the states are engraved around the top on the outside.

 

The memorial isn't lit by day but in this photo you can just see the statue of Lincoln staring down towards me (well, actually towards the Washington Monument and Capitol, but it's hard to tell at this distance!).  Here's the man himself, from inside.

He's a big fellow.  I knew Abraham Lincoln was tall, but this is ridiculous!  There is more decoration on the inside.  There are murals up the top of the walls, almost too high to see.  And important speeches are engraved on either side wall.  To his right is the Gettysburg Address.

It's a good thing he kept it short.

I was under the impression (largely from The Simpsons) that people come to the Lincoln Memorial to ask Honest Abe for advice, but all I saw were tourists and Mrs Walles has never heard of such a thing, so it's probably apocryphal.  He looks like he's taking a well-deserved rest (which I think is the intention) so he's probably not keen to dispense advice anyway.  He certainly didn't have an opportunity to rest on his laurels after leading the north to victory in the Civil War.  The poor fellow was assassinated in this very town while the last fighting was still going on further south.

So two presidential memorials down, two to go. Here's the Lincoln Memorial on the map.

The District

How can you be in the United States and yet not in the United States?  Well one way is to visit the capital.  The D.C. in Washington D.C. refers to the District of Columbia, which is the federal territory in which the city lies.  It was originally a square of land ten miles on a side which was ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia and cut in two by the Potomac River which forms their border.  Eventually the bit on the Virginia side returned to Virginia, so the official capital is all on the Maryland side, but it still isn't part of Maryland or any other state.

One bizarre side effect of this is that those who live in the district have no representation in the federal government.  The district isn't a state, so it isn't allowed senators, and they have only a non-voting delegate in the lower house.  The locals are understandably annoyed by this.  I saw one number plate that played on a well known revolutionary slogan and read "Washington D.C.: Taxation without Representation".

Since relatively few people live in the district (and they aren't represented) there has been little attempt to rectify this anomaly.  I imagine it's a knotty problem and any resolution would require tinkering with the core of the constitution which is not something they do lightly here.  And, to be honest, it seems things could be worse - all you have to do is move over the border to one of the dinkum states and suddenly you are enfranchised again.

Anyway it seems to be a benevolent tyranny to which the city is subject.  It has certainly allowed a pleasant city to spring up in what was once just a swamp.

The relatively small size of the capital also means it is easy to get around.  I was on foot, so pretty much everything I saw was within walking distance of the Washington Monument, which was near the hotel.  That was fine, though, because there is so much right there.  Here's a map I drew which shows nothing to scale but gives you a rough idea of how things are laid out (click for a larger version).

I've heard you can get maps elsewhere on the internet, but who needs precision and good looks when you've got me with a free drawing program?  Each of the little boxes up there represents something of interest that I'll be talking about, and I'll label them as I go along.  We've already had the Washington Monument, which is pretty much in the middle of the long, thin park called the National Mall.  There was a good view of that in yesterday's post.  It's about two miles long.  The Tidal Basin lies on one side of the Mall and beyond that the Potomac River proper with Virginia facing you across the river.  On the other side of the Mall is the majority of the city and, eventually, Maryland.

There is a lot of masonry to get through, but today I thought I would post a nice green shot of Constitution Gardens in the Mall.

Granted it does include the Washington Monument, but that's hard to avoid, and anyway it looks rather good framed by the trees and water.  Just think of it as the world's largest piece of garden art.

Washington Monument

If I had to choose one word to describe Washington D.C. it would be monumental, no part more so than the aptly named Washington Monument.

It is a lot bigger than I thought it would be.  It's an iconic structure, and the tallest in Washington (by law, I believe).  It's almost 170 metres tall, which makes it very visible from around the city.   From the Lincoln Memorial, over a kilometre away...with the Capitol  in the distance...

From across the water at the Jefferson Memorial...

From the opposite side of the inlet of the Potomac River they call the Tidal Basin...

And from the Capitol...

It makes it easy to find for tourists - just look for the tallest thing you can see and head that way.

There is a lift inside that you can take up to an observation deck but unfortunately we couldn't get tickets.  Still we were able to walk right around it, touch it and bask in its magnificence.  There is a line some way up where you can see one kind of stone was used below and another above, invisible from a distance but quite clear close up.  This is because the thing was only half built then abandoned for about twenty years before being finished with slightly different marble.  It is surprising, today, that a monument dedicated to George Washington could be treated with such indifference (it wasn't the first time, either, more on that another day), but all such hesitation is gone and it is now one of the most popular attractions in the country.

The night we visited it was buzzing with tourists, and children were playing sports in the grass all around which gave it a very wholesome festival atmosphere.  As we departed to see what other monumental masonry we could find the Marine Corps Jazz Band started up (who knew there was such a thing - I guess their mission is to put the enemy off their marching pace) and that just added to the holiday feeling.  It wasn't buzzing quite so much when I passed it on other days.  Purely by chance we had visited it at probably the best time possible.

It is very impressive and all the more so because there is nothing around to rival it.  In New York everything is huge, and so you can't appreciate just how huge everything is.  In Washington there are huge buildings but they are laid out sparsely and everything feels much grander.

And the Washington Monument is the grandest of them all.

Philadelphia station

It was planes, trains and automobiles for Mrs Walles and I as we made our way to Washington D.C.  We dragged ourselves out of bed at 4:30am and as soon as it was light drove to the airport at Harrisburg, parked the car in long term parking and then took a ten minute cab ride to the train station down town.  Later we would pass the car again on the train, as the railroad runs right past the airport, within spitting distance of where we parked the car.  Ah, well, such is life.

Intercity passenger rail in the US was consolidated about 40 years ago into one government-owned corporation known as Amtrak (communism!), which runs just a few services around the country.  We're very lucky really to be able to take the train as we did - some states aren't served at all.

Anyway, our train trip was in two parts, one to Philadelphia on a very sparsely populated train and then on to D.C. on a very full one.  From Harrisburg the train runs through pleasant farmland and relatively small towns (the exception being Lancaster) until it hits the outlying suburbs of Philadelphia.  Then the view deteriorates as you get closer to the inner city, but that doesn't matter so much because once you reach the station your breath is taken away.

This is Philadelphia's 30th St station.  If it looks familiar that's because it crops up on screen sometimes.  It is the station featured in the opening scenes of the film Witness where the heroine sees the murder take place.  It's also a junction for Amtrak, and according to Wikipedia the third busiest station in their system.  We had to wait a while here so we got some lunch and I looked around and took some pictures.

Opened in the thirties, it is an enormous cathedral of transportation.  The scale is hard to capture with a camera.  The pictures above are just part of the main hall of the station.  In the bottom right of the second one you can make out a tall, dark statue.  It's a memorial to railroad workers lost in combat and it looks tiny in that picture, but here's a closer view showing it towering over waiting passengers.

It's a grand piece of architecture, with a lot of neoclassical influence.  In an adjacent hall one of the walls is covered with an enormous sculpted panel entitled The Spirit of Transportation.

 

Pretty heroic stuff.  But, impressive as it was, even it paled by comparison with what I saw once we arrived in Washington.  But that's a story for another day.

Trouble 't Hill

So the congress has agreed to raise the US government's debt ceiling, and everyone here can stop holding their breath.  That's good news for me.  Mrs Walles and I are off to Washington, DC on Thursday, and had this crisis dragged on I'm sure Obama would have been calling on me for advice.  As it is I can relax and take a look at some of the excellent museums while Mrs Walles attends her conference.  If you need me though, Barack, I'll be down the street.

Since we'll be staying at a hotel there should be internet access and so I hope to be able to write some blogs from there.

It's going to be an action-packed few days, though.  We're taking the train, which I like, and it's practical in the circumstances, but it does mean driving to the airport to park the car then getting a cab to the train station, so it will be an early start on Thursday.  Mrs Walles wants to show me around the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial and more, which we'll be fitting into the evenings.  During the day we'll go our separate ways and I want to see as much as I can: particularly the Smithsonian but also the National Archives (where the constitution and declaration of independence are on display), the White House, the Capitol, and some independent museums if I can.

As I say, I'll try to blog as I go along.  If I don't post much in the next couple of days its because of preparations, if I don't post much after that it's because I'm taking in the sights.