In and out of the cold

My daughter shows off the card she made for students at an elementary school in Haiti. Amber's school recently organized a drive for school supplies to be sent to the Caribbean island nation.

It was 21°F (-6°C) this morning as my wife took my daughter and me to the East Falls Church subway station. Too cold, really, to go outside. But we'd already spent too much of this three-day holiday weekend indoors - heavy rain on Friday evening meant it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to go hiking on Saturday as I'd originally planned, while yesterday we had snow flurries from mid-morning to mid-afternoon (not to mention Amber's weekly Mandarin class). Today may have been bitterly cold, but it was also sunny and so the two of us (Pamela sensibly choosing to stay indoors) headed into Washington to spend the day there.

This being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the logical place to have visited would've been the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in West Potomac Park, southeast of the National Mall. But to get there would've meant a 20-minute walk in the frigid air from the nearest Metro stop (Smithsonian), so my daughter opted instead to check out the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, which was a much more bearable seven-minute stroll from L'Enfant Plaza:

I wish it could be said that the museum ranks up there with the other Smithsonian showpieces on the National Mall, but it doesn't. The building is huge, but makes poor use of the possible exhibition space. The exhibits within don't present a linear history of Native Americans, and although we are told there are 565 tribes recognized by the federal government, visitors are only introduced to a small handful of them. I'm not sure what my daughter took away from the displays - she seems to have learned a lot more at her elementary school about the tribes who live in Virginia. Still, there were some interesting presentations, such as the fourth-floor exhibit on the history of the numerous treaties negotiated between Native Americans and the federal government (virtually all of which were broken in some form or other by the latter):

A Northern Tsitsistas (Cheyenne) depiction of the 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn (c. 1890):

Amber enjoyed the activities center on the third floor. She was able to explore various aspects of American Indian life, including those related to igloos, kayaks, snowshoes and...skateboards:

The same floor has an exhibit on the Inca (Inka) road system. Here my daughter poses in front of a copy of a rope bridge: 

For me, the most fascinating exhibition was a small one on the Kingdom of Hawaii and the events leading up to its annexation by the U.S. in 1898, described as the first act in American empire building. The displays are refreshingly frank, especially considering they're presented in a publicly-funded museum:

There were decent views from some of the museum's windows, including the National Museum of Natural History and the National Gallery of Art...:

...and the Capitol and the United States Botanic Garden:

The National Museum of the American Indian is "best known" for its cafeteria, which is hands down the best eatery out of all of the dining options at the various Smithsonian museums. The dishes are organized by regional themes:

I went with the Indian Frybread Taco (with buffalo meat) for lunch, washed down with an alcoholic root beer:

Still, it's a poor reflection on a museum when its cafe gets higher marks than what it has on display. The National Museum of the Native American isn't bad, but it could've been done so much better; the indoor atrium, while impressive, is unnecessary, and uses up space that should've been devoted to more exhibitions. The original inhabitants of this continent deserve better:

It was an uncomfortable walk back to the subway station, as the wind was blowing directly into our faces, making Amber wish we had ski masks. The cold temperatures are set to continue for the remainder of this week, with snow a possibility for next weekend. The frigid conditions are no doubt good preparation for what we'll be facing next winter in the Baltic republic of Lithuania.

 

 

Destiny's butterly effect

A new year is upon us, vacation is over and it's time to resume the usual routine. At this point in life I've stopped making resolutions, knowing that they're most likely to be broken and with the knowledge that the first of January is an arbitrarily drawn point in time that is ultimately meaningless. If you're resolved to do something to change your life, why wait until a certain day of the month in the calendar? In any event, my goals for 2016 are simple:

1.) To pass my Russian exam in the spring and then take up my next post in Vilnius;

2.) To survive through to the end of the year; and

3.) To enter 2017 not suffering from something that will eventually kill me.

The last two points also go for my loved ones and pretty much everyone else who strives to be a decent human being. 

I was asked today via Facebook whether I believe in destiny. The answer is simple: no, I don't. I also don't believe in fate or karma, nor do I think there is a supreme being who finds time from running the entire cosmos to make sure that I can carry a football into the end zone or that my house is spared from an oncoming tornado. There are things in life that I can control, but many things that I can't (like tomorrow's weather, or whether I'm going to get run over by someone texting while driving). As I write this, somewhere in the Amazon there's a butterfly flapping its wings. The chain reaction set off by that simple action will eventually have an effect on what happens to us here in the northern hemisphere - hopefully, we'll make the right decisions and take appropriate courses of action to ensure that the ups will outnumber the downs as the year progresses. 

My daughter and I welcomed in the new year by driving 90 minutes into southwestern Maryland's horse country on a cold but beautifully clear Saturday morning to do some hiking. Greenwell State Park is a 600-acre (243 hectares) stretch of beaches, creeks, fields, forests and horse ranches on the banks of the Patuxent River. Here, Amber pauses for a photo on the beach as we set off on our walk:

An old historical tobacco barn:

Another old barn, set up like an museum inside, with various implements on display:

Any clues as to whether hunting is permitted within the park?:

"This land, this...America"*:

Reaching the Patuxent River again, after three hours and 4.5 miles (7.2 kilometers) of walking:

A beautiful old manor house (circa 1880), with a prime location on Maryland's Western Shore:

Wishing everyone a safe and ultimately satisfying year!

*a line from a skit on The Benny Hill Show (yes, really)

Staycation

Happy New Year. あけましておめでとうございます. 新年快樂. С Новым годом! 

In any language, here's hoping this year will be a good one for you. But hold off just yet in welcoming in the Year of the Monkey - that doesn't kick off until February 8, according to the lunar calendar. You still have a few more weeks of the Goat left.

A new year has begun, and a winter vacation is soon coming to an end. As there were no classes held at FSI during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, students had the option of taking annual leave or adhering to a self-studying program at home. The idea of spending several hours a day working on Russian didn't sound very appealing, so I opted to use some of my vacation time to relax and chill out (even if the weather itself hasn't been very chilly). Actually, I have been setting aside 1½-2 hours every day to review grammar rules and vocabulary, and to my great surprise, so far I've stuck to that schedule. But at least I've been doing so on my terms, and therefore haven't had to submit any work to the language tsars and tsarinas for their condemnation review. The rest of the time has been used in trying to catch up on some personal business and just lazing about at home. These past few days haven't been spent entirely indoors, however, and what follows are some of the things I've been doing over the break:

The day after Christmas (aka Boxing Day for my friends and acquaintances in the Commonwealth) we drove to the National Harbor, by the Potomac River in Prince George's County, Maryland. Despite its name, the harbor is not a part of the National Park System, nor does it have any historical connections that I'm aware of. Rather, it's a multi-use development consisting of condos, a convention center, hotels, restaurants and shops. There's even some public art, in the form of The Awakening, a 70 foot (21 meters)-long statue of a struggling giant embedded in the sand:

We spent our time there having lunch and doing some window shopping...:

...but the impetus for visiting the National Harbor was that it's the site of a Build-A-Bear Workshop. My daughter wanted to use some of her Christmas cash reserves to make her own reindeer. Mission accomplished:

Amber and I took advantage of the unseasonably warm temperatures and sunny skies to go for a bike road along part of the W&OD Trail: 

The weather was also cooperative when the two of us (my wife preferred to stay indoors) went to see the Winter Walk of Lights at the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens last Sunday. It rained heavily on the drive over there and and on the trip back home, but stopped pouring while we walked around the gardens, taking in the light decorations. Amber even got to try her hand at roasting (or is it toasting?) marshmallows over an open fire, then using them to make s'mores, part of the ongoing Americanization of my born-and-raised in-Taiwan offspring:

While the staycation has been nice, I had to get out of this area at least once during the break, so on Wednesday the three of us made the hour-long drive down I-95 to Fredericksburg, Virginia, site of a bloody battle during the American Civil War. Nearly 19,000 soldiers on both sides were either killed or wounded during a series of futile Union attacks on well-fortified Confederate positions during four days of fighting in mid-December 1862. The Fredericksburg Battlefield Visitors Center does an excellent job presenting what transpired before, during and after the battle:

After the visitor center, we took a walk along the Sunken Road trail, where some of the fiercest fighting took place. The misty weather that day set an appropriate mood:

The Innis House survived the battle, but was riddled with bullets. Though most of the outdoor panels were subsequently replaced, leaving only a few bullet holes visible, the interior walls were retained and showed just how fierce the fighting had been. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good photo of the inside from the outside:

The large brick house known as Brompton also survived the battle. It's now a private residence for the president of the University of Mary Washington:

This is the view Confederate soldiers had looking down at the Innis House, as they mowed down the advancing columns of Union troops:

The trail loops back to a fitting conclusion at the Fredericksburg National Cemetery, where the remains of more than 15,000 Federal soldiers are interred. Fewer than 3000 of them were positively identified before burial:

Crows are associated with death in many cultures:

In addition to its Civil War connections, Fredericksburg's history is also tied in with the American Revolution, as it was an important port and trading center during the colonial days. The downtown area makes for a pleasant stroll, but the first thing we did there was to have lunch, where I opted for crayfish étouffée:

The Fredericksburg Area Museum, housed in the 1816 town hall building, is closed until further notice, but the downtown business district, with its many antique shops, still makes for a nice walk:

The highlight for both Amber and me was a visit to the Rising Sun Tavern on Caroline Street. Built by George Washington's younger brother Charles in 1760, it operated as a tavern/inn from 1792 to 1827, and in that incarnation has been restored and presented as a living history museum. A guide gave an extremely interesting overview of life in Fredericksburg during that period, with its class distinctions and segregation of the sexes, and focusing on what people ate and drank, how they paid for it etc. My daughter and I both came away from the museum glad we didn't live during those days, when everybody drank alcohol or tea because the water was too filthy, when you only bathed once a year (during the summer) and, if you were a woman staying at the tavern, you answered nature's call by sitting on a chair with a hole in the center (and a chamber pot underneath) and thus did your business in full view of everyone else in the room, much as you would today in a prison cell (men got to use outhouses). It's a wonder anybody survived at all during those days, much less procreated:

Yesterday I drove with Amber to Politics & Prose, one of Washington, D.C.'s most noted independent bookstores, where we both spent more of our Christmas money (in my case, on Japan and the Shackles of the Past by R. Taggart Murphy and Japan Restored by Clyde Prestowitz). After lunch and on the way home, I took my daughter to see the Marine Corps Memorial, aka the Iwo Jima Statue. Amber was impressed by the famous image, as well as of the view of the Capitol Building, Washington Monument, Smithsonian Castle and Lincoln Memorial across the Potomac in the distance (the Jefferson Memorial can also be seen from some angles):

To the south is the Netherlands Carillon, a 130 foot (40 meters)-high bell tower dedicated to the liberation of the Netherlands from Germany in 1945. Sadly, the monument is showing signs of rust and decay these days:

Finally, and fittingly, the two of us walked to downtown Falls Church last night (my wife prefers to stay home much of the time these days) to take in Watch Night, the city's annual New Year's Eve celebration. Amber had a great time, especially after meeting one of her classmates on Broad Street. It was a fun way to close out the old year...:

...especially when you have your own lightsaber. I think I was able to convince her to join me in seeing The Force Awakens.