It’s gotten better, but you need to do some research to find the good places.
The DC area doesn’t have great Mexican food, but really good Salvadoran food is very easy to find. It’s similar to Mexican, but different enough to be worth seeking out.
23:00 Eastern Washington Day16 nasal.craft.planet
Well there we go folks, via an oblique, indirect route and 4,500 miles later we have traversed from west coast to east coast without incurring the wrath or even inquiry of a law enforcement officer nor raising the angst of any local driver.
Another interesting day at the wheel principally due to getting of the interstates.
Well Kate doesn’t require much encouragement to take Rog down the well-beaten path and so she called for a left turn off the I-20 onto Troublesome Creek Road and meandered our way to Monticello. A couple of times we were on unsealed sections before we found ourselves back on Thomas Jefferson Parkway. Lots of flashbacks to place names from memories of Ken Burn’s magnum opus “The Civil War”.
The grandeur of Monticello is self-evident. It is remarkable on many levels on each of it’s levels. The number of people who were living in it was considerable and a surprise to me. But it’s a show piece house and to my mind lacks a lot of practicality for those residents other than Jefferson himself.
A curiosity: The house is three stories high (though the exterior is designed to look like there is only one) on the top of a substantial hill and yet there is no running water in the house and the roof material and coatings mean the rainwater collected is unpotable. So, somebody was carrying a lot of water from the river at the bottom of the hill.
The fact that he didn’t educate his daughters shows he was a man of his times rather than wholey enlightened. Despite being a certifiable Francophile and his period in France as US ambassador was formative to his tastes, but still clung on to the institution of slavery. A polymath of the highest order, he really struggled with the notion of finance. Also the snippet that he refused to get one of his daughters a free standing bed for over a decade struck me as petty. Obviously he was a man who didn’t suffer fools lightly and freely judged those he considered fools.
Question: The guide throughout the 90min tour was scrupulously consistent about always referring to “enslaved people” rather than “slaves”. Is there some sort of distinction or usage in play here?
On the way out we seemed to cross a fair proportion of the bridges of Madison County and followed the “tour of hallowed ground”. I knew that just how close 1st Manassas is to the city.
Paused before the final push to send a message to guardian angel @Mama_Zappa
90 mins later I am checked into my hotel room.
It’s a code red air quality day so the city has a eerily foggy look to at atm. Not sure of the outlook for the rest of the week.
BTW, at dinner tonight tried a Caesar salad again and IMHO, at the recipe’s current rate of development it will be classic vegan dish within the next decade.
After dinner at the hotels wandered the streets for a couple of hours, even making it to the large white building you can see way back behind the fence at the end of Pennsylvania Ave.
So we have a Washington day tour tomorrow, a Dopefest tomorrow night and I have a seat to see the Nationals play the Reds on Monday. Still plenty of time on Sat/Sun to fill.
Cool - glad you saw Monticello! And that explains why you messaged me from Centreville - you managed to avoid the hell that is I-95 entirely, if you came in that way.
When I first suggested it, for some reason I typed “Montpelier” instead - which I think was the name of another Founding Father’s estate (as well as the capital of Vermont - a pretty enough town, but I’m pretty sure you are not going there.
Jefferson was brilliant in some ways, not so much in others (he died in debt to the tune of 100,000 dollars, back when that was real money), and he didn’t even free his OWN CHILDREN.
As far as time Sat / Sun: while they will likely be crowded, the Smithsonian museums are truly worth a visit - you could spend weeks visiting them. I have not been to the African-American museum; I have been to the Native American museum and the Holocaust museum… which was filled with large crowds of very, very somber people. Any of those may require timed tickets for a very small fee - I forget the logistics. But other than that, all are free. And of course the other well-known ones (Air and Space, Natural History) are loads of fun; the Udvar-Hazy center is part of A&S but is about 25 miles west, and charges a small fortune for parking. Not to mention all the various art museums.
If the weather is tolerable (I think the air is supposed to improve tomorrow), simply walking around the various monuments is enjoyable.
“Enslaved people” describes their condition, whereas “slaves” is reductive and implies that that is all that they are. I’m not sure if I agree with that usage or not, since the people who “owned” them certainly thought of them reductively as only slaves first and foremost, even if they recognized their other characteristics on a case by case basis.
I think the idea is to distinguish how we think of the people who were enslaved from the way the enslavers thought of them.
If you’re saying that you might disagree with the usage if in a historical representation as it wouldn’t have been used at the time, that makes sense. But I don’t think the people giving the tours are supposed to be acting as if they were the residents at the time; though I haven’t taken those tours and am not sure. I don’t know how that would work, though – seems to have way too many possibilities for things to go nastily wrong if the tourgivers are supposed to act entirely in-period.
The Holocaust Museum and African American History and Culture Museum both require timed passes, which are free. I went to the latter in 2017 when it was new and had to wake up at 6 AM when tickets were released to nab one, but now it looks like there’s same day availability.
Plan Your Visit | National Museum of African American History and Culture
Admission and Tickets — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org)
This is one of my favorite Smithsonian museums, The National Museum of the American Indian: National Museum of the American Indian
(it was Native Americans themselves who chose the name “American Indian” for it. The website used to give the rationale, but I can’t find it)
From the National Parks website, their explanation of the rationale for using “enslaved person”:
Enslaved Person
This term is used in place of slave. It more accurately describes someone who was forced to perform labor or services against their will under threat of physical mistreatment, separation from family or loved ones, or death. . . .Enslaved person emphasizes the humanity of an individual within a slaveholding society over their condition of involuntary servitude. While slavery was a defining aspect of this individual’s life experience, this term, in which enslaved describes but person is central, clarifies that humanity was at the center of identity while also recognizing that this person was forcibly placed into the condition of slavery by another person or group. Language of Slavery - Underground Railroad (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
Though not cheap, the cafeteria at the National Museum of the American Indian is good and in a sense, part of the exhibits, with native food from the different regions of the now-US. From https://www.si.edu/dining:
Mitsitam Espresso Bar
Pastries and casual fare from the cafe’s repertoire, plus Tribal Grounds Coffee—organic, fair-trade coffee grown by indigenous farmers and imported, roasted, and provided to the museum by the Eastern Band of Cherokee.
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.Mitsitam Café
“Mitsitam” means “Let’s Eat!” in the Native language of the Delaware and Piscataway peoples. The café enhances the museum experience by offering Native-inspired cuisines from five regions of the Western Hemisphere, including the Northern Woodlands, South America, the Northwest Coast, Meso America and the Great Plains.Tamales, roasted turkey, grilled salmon, homemade seasonal soups, buffalo burgers, Indian fry bread, a seasonal variety of aqua fresca and desserts.
The landscaping around the museum is all indigenous plants.
Jefferson calculated an average compounding rate of 4% per year, for the breeding and selling of slaves.
I’m sure that he was strong on finance. Either he was running on a deficit (Amazon.com and most expanding businesses run on a deficit) or, regardless of his ability to do the math, he had cravings and needs that overrode rationality.
That’s an actuarial skill. An actuary can calculate based a multiplicity of factors the time it will take for you to go bankrupt. They can’t advise what to do to reverse the trend.
We have stayed at a motel on Watauga Lake many times. Unfortunately, the restaurant building that contained the office burned to the ground recently. Good to see you tonight; I wish you safe travels for the remainder of you voyage.
23:00 Eastern Washington Day17 nasal.craft.planet
A second day in Washington.
Took a tour bus trip around the main Washington sites. Took 6 hours inc a lunchbreak. Covered all the usual suspects … White House, The Capital, OEOB, the memorials for Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR, MLK, Vietnam, Korea, WWI & WWII and some incidentals including a boat cruise on the Potomac from Georgetown. Will likely revisit some over the weekend but 1st priority is seeing a couple of the Smithsonians.
I think my favourite, because I wasn’t aware of it is FDR. Lincoln is simply awesome but I’ve known of it and seen images for decades. However the most remarkable aspect was our tour guide Deon. At home we’d describe Deon as somebody who could talk under wet cement. He kept an incessant patter of facts, dates and anecdotes without dropping speed, volume or enthusiasm for almost 6 hours. I told him that when he passes on he needs to donate his tonsils to the Smithsonian.
And as is the way of the world, on the bus I was seated to a Boston visiting professor of ethics who hales from Australia.
Then back to the digs to freshen up before a Dopefest in Washington Chinatowm with @Mama_Zappa, @Typo_Knig and @P-man and a couple of family members. Not being the convenor I’ll leave the prerogative for a detailed description of events.
A good nights sleep is anticipated.
The cafeteria used to be excellent and one of my favorite places to eat in DC! But I was there a year ago and was disappointed to see far fewer selections than there used to be 5 or 10 years ago. I hope that it’s on its way back to normal.
You get housekeeping for stays of one night but not for stays of a week? That doesn’t make much sense.
If you stay for one night housekeeping is directed to clean your room right away for the next guest. Often at 10:30 or 11:00 am, most people check out before then but some stay until noon or get a late checkout for whatever reason. If they know that you have already checked out (i.e. see you leaving with your bags) they may be there at 9:00 am. It can be difficult to know just when someone checks out since most people just leave without telling the front desk.
I apologize if I wasn’t clear. If you stay for one night, your room gets housekeeping after that night, because they’re cleaning it for the next guest – I didn’t mean to imply that you’d get a housekeeping visit during a one-night stay.
If you stay multiple nights, depending on the hotel, you may not get an automatic housekeeping visit at all, or you may only get one after X number of nights; in either case, you can usually have housekeeping tend to your room when they would not normally do so (or at least change out towels, bring more TP, etc.) if you specifically ask.
I get you now. Thanks.
23:00 Eastern Washington Day18 nasal.craft.planet
A veg-out day in Washington.
After the visit to Little Oak I picked up a few scratches on arms and legs, might have been insect bites, more likely plant stings/grazes. Nothing major, just a bit itchy and so I thought I’d get some ointment to soothe them. So I’m looking for what we’d call a chemist, or a pharmacy. There was a CVS situated a block from the hotel. Should do the job nicely. Apparently they are about as common as Starbucks. In Australia chemists are usually entrepreneurial and in addition to selling medications, they also stock cosmetics, maybe some photography supplies and giftware. Here, well they have all that plus banks of refrigerators selling soft drinks, confectionary, snack foods, dry groceries, pet medications etc. etc, more like a convenience store with a patent medicine license. Got what I needed. Seems to be working.
When I got back to the hotel after the morning walk I found my room key didn’t function. These things happen. Got it recut at the front desk but this proved to be without success. This is more of a concern. Third time the hotel maintenance were called in and they changed the lock battery.
The singular remaining technical problem with the tour to my thinking is parking in New York. The two options boil down to leaving it with Hertz at Newark,or getting parking on Staten Island. Arguments both ways but with assistance of the concierge found a couple of lots on Staten and went to book a spot and then things started to fray.
One of the issues with banking and using credit cards here is that many websites require your ZIP code. Naturally I don’t have one. Further Australian post codes are 4 digits and this isn’t valid in the US where 5 is the standard. As a workaround I sometimes can add a 0 prefix. This is Humarock Massachusetts. Often is accepted. Didn’t work this time. So we tried several variations without success. Then my bank stepped in and declined the transaction. Then they blocked the credit card. Which would be a calamity. So in the one day I’ve been locked out of my room and locked out of my bank. I think the matter has been resolved but with a 11 hour time differential it’s problematic.
Was planning to walk down to the Washington Hotel which apparently offers the best panoramic views of the city, especially at night but got about halfway and it started to rain. We’ll put that off as a maybe for tomorrow. Had dinner at a Japanese restaurant which was more than serviceable and then back for a TV game of MLB (Mariners v Tampa Bay) and NFL pre-season (Vikings v Colts) and in a sport I care about, Australia look like they are in a very strong position vs England in The Ashes.
Other than that, we seem to have nailed down a Finger Lake Dopefest on July 10th.
Schedule forward is to Gettysburg for the 4-5th and NYC for 6-10th.
Seeing Hamilton on the 8th and Yankees v Cubs on 9th.
I have a Swiss credit card, so no ZIP code. I’ve been told to use 5 zeros (“00000”) at gas pumps, and I’ve had some luck. But, I just did a bit of googling, and that doesn’t seem to be fail-safe. Hope it’s solved.
Probably not actually a live game; NFL teams don’t even start their training camps for another few weeks, and the first preseason games don’t start until early August.
I’m guessing that whatever channel you found (probably NFL Network) was carrying a tape of a regular-season game from last year – those two teams played against each other last December, and in that game, the Vikings came back from a 33-0 halftime deficit to win the game. It was one of the biggest comebacks in league history.