Leaving the Modern Rome

     After two whirlwind days, two of us are sitting in the airport waiting for our flight two hours from now. Unexpectedly, we whizzed through TSA with hardly anyone else in line. I think this is a first for me at a large airport like Reagan, where long lines at TSA are the norm.  

So here we sit, trying to enjoy the formless time that surrounds the beginning and end of any trip by airplane.

The Historic Post Office building as Trump Hotel...a metaphor for the future?

We arrived Wednesday night with enough time to find our hotel and crash. Getting anywhere from the middle of the plains is a "planes, trains and automobiles" ordeal that requires a couple good books.

 Right away in the morning, we bounded out to make use of the little free time by walking  a small loop from the Air and Space Museum right by our hotel, over to the White House and back before jumping on the Green Line to the Materials Resource Center of the Smithsonian Institution in Suitland Maryland. This is the place where, when I asked a worker if a large wooden crate in the corner harbored the warehoused Ark from Indiana Jones, they replied that if the government had it, this is where it would be. 

Walking into a dry storage area with humidity hanging  around 30 percent, we viewed a number of busts and facial casts that were made from living Lakota/Dakota people in our area. They span the early 20th century and provide incredibly detailed three dimensional images of ancestors of many people we know.  The photos taken by an amateur historian who acquired copies of the busts for his own tribe and made us aware don’t do them justice. They  are amazing pieces.. What was once an odd anthropological project of the early 20th century is now a fascinating record of family likeness and history for relatives. It will be great if one day the descendants of these people can have access to the likenesses.

The space in the MRC was fascinating. As we walked from one area to another, our guide offhandedly pointed out a 2,800 year old Egyptian artifact, covered, sitting on a special gurney in the corner. In fact, for an archival geek like myself, seeing the incredible, custom made preservation and storage arrangements was one of the highlights. One of the facial casts, made into a positive, was from George Bushotter at the age of 15. He later went on to write 3,500 pages on traditional Lakota stories in contemporary Lakota. The collection is currently the subject of work by a number of our language faculty.

 Seeing the busts, to get a feel for them was our main goal, but we were treated to a bonus, when we were taken into the primary storage areas. The cavernous space, filled with towering pallet racks, has the look and feel of a very clean, archival Home Depot. Each item sits on a specially constructed aluminum pallet that is framed out and draped with stable and fireproof Nomex fabric. Our guide, a combination between inventor, craftsman and archvist has the fascinating job of constructing these amazing storage regimes that preserve things for a distant future.. Quite possibly the coolest job in the world. As she guided us, she rolled back protective coverings to reveal everything from totem poles to Native American boats, Japanese pallenquins and a massive reproduction Olmec head.  I was awed and very appreciative of Smithsonian staff for giving us and extraordinary look behind the scenes. They are doing important work to assure that world heritage is preserved.

Leaving Suitland, we traveled to DuPont Circle to dine at Kramerbooks Restaurant and Bookstore. The last time  I was here, I mistook Ralph Nader, who ducked into the store to sign books, for a disheveled person who was down on his luck. After dining outside, we walked over to check out the oddly named Second Story books on the ground floor of a building. The place is filled with old and fascinating things including a number of fine and expensive pieces. A modest Picasso, priced at 800 dollars on consignment, sat in a window facing the street. I cringed at seeing the bright evening sunlight touching something so precious. I almost felt like saying something to staff motivated more by presentation than preservation.  I was tempted by some modestly priced, early 20th century avant-garde prints, but held back since I couldn’t get them home.

DuPont Circle is an interesting mix of embassies, stately old buildings, bohemian culture and great food. If I ever write a book, this area will have to figure in it somehow. As we were eating at Kramerbooks, I was telling Mike about the mysterious death of a leading Russian politician in the hotel across the street just a few months prior.

Friday was filled with a day of meetings at the offices of the National Endowment for the Humanities at the Constitution Center. Much of what we heard was familiar from other grants and projects, but it was good to meet other grantes as well as the NEH staff. I look forward to the next few years of the grant and working with these people.

The sequestered, park-like space surrounded by the Constitution Center

Following our meeting,  we raced out to take advantage of the little time we had to see things. We looped around the Capitol and then down Pennsylvania Avenue to 7th street, running in to a sort of nuevo-Indian fast food place called Merzi. It was a revelation to eat a meal that was better tasting and half the price of our meal the night before. In fact, before leaving on the train for the airport, we ate a second meal there, because we live in a south-Asian Indian food desert, where it is a drive of several hundred miles to get those flavors.

Following a good meal,  we walked past the White House, which was still surrounded by police following the shooting of a man who had stormed the grounds with a gun.  A terrible situation, but it is always an interesting, oddly connected  feeling to be a witness to history, even in the small, ancillary way of just walking by where something happened. D.C. Is full of such places, both present and past, that impact in degrees based on ones personal knowledge and connection. We walked past the Vietnam memorial, one of the most powerful, simple spaces in the world. It is a testament to design that blocks of stone filled with names can cause one to flush with emotion.  Then we continued on to the school kid packed spaces of the Lincoln, Martin Luther King, FDR and Jefferson memorials. Note to self, don’t travel to DC for pleasure in late May when every middle and high school kid in the country is in town.

Getting back to our hotel about 9:30, our out of shape, winter Dakota bodies were tired from the 7 miles we put on.

Next morning, we visited the National Museum of the American Indian, before loping over to our new favorite restaurant, then back to buy some souvenirs. Note to self, don’t try to visit the free Smithsonian Museums on a Saturday when every tour bus and school group is trying to get in. Grabbing my backpack, we took the train to the airport where I am now filling the liminal, formless time with this chronicle.