We’re in Washington D.C., primarily for the wedding of a friend of mine from college. Secondarily, Jodi and I are using this opportunity to hit the Hill and talk to some of our elected representatives. We decided to try for appointments with three offices: Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, Congressman David Obey, and Congressman Tom Lantos.
Our arrival in D.C. has been welcomed with rain. Lots and lots of the wet stuff poured from the sky, the result of a tropical storm splashing its influence on the mid-Atlantic states. We took the Metro in from the Fairfax/George Mason University station on the Orange Line and got off at Capitol South. This puts you right behind the House of Representatives “side” of the Hill, the home of the Cannon, Longworth, and Rayburn House office buildings. We were headed to the Rayburn building, to see Lantos and Obey (the person who handles science issues for Baldwin wasn’t available at all this week). We didn’t wind up scheduling appointments with Lantos and Obey, due to bad timing. Nonetheless, we were offered the chance to meet with the staffer for Lantos who handles science issues, and we had a fruitful 10 minute chat about our work the the Congressman’s support.
This was Jodi’s first time getting to do such things, and we had a fun time as a husband and wife tag team. After dropping off a packet of information that we put together at Obey’s office, we headed to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum for a day of fun. You can “check out the photos on my site”:http://steve.cooleysekula.net/photos/WashingtonDC_20051007/.
We went to see the Hope diamond, we checked out the “bones” exhibit, hit the gift shop, and checked out the “early life” exhibit before we left.
The best part of the day (the part where we REALLY got soaked with rain) was our hike from the Smithsonian, down the mall and past the Washington Monument, and over to the Vietnam Memorial. This is a stunning piece of work when you stand in front of it. I’ve spent my whole llife hearing about this monument, but you never really understand its power until you stand in front of it. First of all, I was shocked to find out that it’s not a wall that stands above ground. It is built like a retaining wall BELOW the surface, with a sidewalk that sweeps in and downward from both sides, sloping down to the deepest/tallest part of the wall. There are books on one side that contain the list of names on the wall, and the coordinates of each name on the wall.
Jodi called her mom to find the name of a pen pal she had during the way. She was writing to him in 1969 when he was killed, and Jodi wanted to find his name and take a picture for mom. We found his name on 29W, line 62. His was the very first name on the line, and we “took a picture of his name from several angles and with several flash settings to take the best possible photo”:http://steve.cooleysekula.net/photos/WashingtonDC_20051007/index-Pages/Image21.html.
To stand in front of these names, these young men dead in a long and costly engagement, and to see our “own faces reflected in the monument”:http://steve.cooleysekula.net/photos/WashingtonDC_20051007/index-Thumbnails/26.jpg,
made me realize that there is only a thin veil that separates us from the same sacrifice. There is only a mailbox, a phone line, an email, that stands between us and the call to service from a nation’s top seat.
Soaked, wretchedly soaked, we splashed from the Vietnam Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial. It was here for the first time I was able to truly appreciate the words of the Gettysburg Address. What amazed me was the fear that Lincoln expressed in his short speech: that we would spend too much time making ground, already marked by the sacrifice of many others, further hallow, rather than putting on the mantle of their hard work and going forth to complete their effort. How many of us, how many of our politicians, spend their time trying to make an issue more hallow by talking about it, by drumming up support for their cause, rather than furthering the cause by action.
We were sewer rats, squishing across the Mall, paying our homages at the Korean and World War II war memorials, until at last we returned to the Metro for our commute back to Virginia. Our suits dark with rain, our skin slippery, we grabbed some soup and sandwiches and rested until we went out to a pub, where we were supposed to meet the wedding party after their rehearsal. We never did meet up with them…
