“Is there a doctor on the plane,” or words to that effect, awoke me from what I thought had been a short nap. The crew hurried back and forth between the row where the stricken passenger laid and the cockpit. I could not make out their conversation but I prepared mentally for an emergency landing somewhere in the vastness between Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Pulled up, the window shade did not reveal clues as to our position in this transcontinental universe. An unlit emptiness spread out below the plane. Wherever we were, the unplanned stop no doubt would compel me to reconsider my plans for this fall morning.
A couple of days before I embarked on my first visit to the capital I had added a few hours in Harpers Ferry, swayed by the proximity of the West Virginia settlement to Dulles Airport, its historical significance, scenic post on a finger of land between the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, and the fact that the side trip would occupy the second six hours of the day before I would meet Nan who’d arrive in D.C. by train from her Pennsylvania home.
But now the medical condition of an unseen passenger was altering my plans, not that I complained. It meant that I would arrive in the District of Columbia at a less provocatively early hour.
The pilot requested flights attendants prepare the cabin for landing, which confirmed my supposition until he added that we would be landing at Dulles 20 minutes early.
Harpers Ferry it is, then.
This also meant that I had slept for at least half of the red-eye flight even though I did not feel rested.
Four emergency vehicles, lights a-flashin’, greeted the flight. You’d think that the medical condition would result in a gate slot being cleared for the urgent arrival but we sat on the tarmac for several minutes before docking. Medical personnel boarded the plane but the ill passenger, a woman in her 40s, walked off the plane on her own power seconds later.
As much as Washington had enjoyed unseasonably warm temperatures and that the forecast called for more of the same delicious intemperate luxury, a nippy 2 degrees overnight had left a coat of frost on my rental car. With just a jacket concealing a skimpy nighttime outfit I was not warm. A few kilometers out of Dulles I stopped by a yet unawakened Leesburg but did not dally. During the War of 1812 (look it up) the elegant colonial town became the repository of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution and other founding documents that had been sent for safekeeping while British forces sacked and burned Washington.
The historical center of Leesburg could fulfill the images of the “Virginia Is For Lovers” slogan but in nearly homophonic Lynchburg, Virginia is mostly for lovers of homophobic theology and other preposterous hubris espoused by Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell of Moral Majority infamy.
Harpers Ferry owes its fame to John Brown’s 1859 raid on the Armory, the second in the nation commissioned by George Washington. His attempt to incite an armed insurrection among the slaves met with resistance from the local militia. Holed up in a fire engine house, he was captured, tried for treason and hanged within two months.The election of Abraham Lincoln, an abolitionist, a year later spelled trouble for the southern states. Seven of them - South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas, in order - seceded from the Union before his inauguration and four more - Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia - would join then to form the Confederacy.
Harpers Ferry’s strategic location at the edge of the Union/Confederacy demarcation and its role as an arsenal guaranteed it a prominent role during the Civil War. The city changed hands eight times during the conflict. In June 1861, the western half of Virginia opted to re-attach itself to the Union. Thus was born West Virginia.
The ghosts of Robert Harper (yes, there was a ferry across the Potomac), Frederick Douglass, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, Thomas Jefferson and Merrywether (you gotta love that first name!) Lewis still walk the streets of the lower town, now preserved as Harpers Ferry National Historic Park. Mr, Lewis came to the Hole, the gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, to round up skilled artisans and weapons. He then traveled overland to Pittsburgh and downriver on the Ohio to its confluence with the Mississippi. He met up with William Clark in St. Louis where the pair sailed upriver on the Missouri on an expedition to open up the lands of the Louisiana Purchase and locate the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal would ease travel in the region starting in the middle of the 19th century. Today the majority of the 297-kilometer canal contains no water but its towpaths have been turned into walking trails between Georgetown (Washington, D.C.) and Cumberland, MD. Eight scores and five years after the end of the bloody Civil War (618,000 dead out of a 35-million population would equate to 5.4 million casualties today or almost 100 times more than the losses during the Vietnam War) the division between the more progressive and conservative camps today persists essentially along the same line.
I hoped to climb the Maryland Heights bluff overlooking Harpers Ferry and the Potomac/Shenandoah confluence but I only made it a short distance under the fall foliage of the C & O Canal before I retraced my steps over the railroad bridge back to town. I had managed one of very few two-hour parking spots next to the Armory site and resolved to use that time to explore the restored buildings. During the busy season parking is at the National Park visitor center, four kilometers distant, where shuttles ferry visitors to the historical lower town. 
I dropped by John Brown’s Fort, St. Peter’s Church, the Dry Goods Store, the Boarding House, the Clothing Store and Saloon where displays bring the ancient ways to life. I read with revulsion abhorrent ads from a certain W.M. Anderson who sought servants in the form of 18-year old, 16-year old and 12-year old females. Isaac Fouke offered a “valuable negro man” for sale.
Harpers Ferry sits almost equidistant to the Maine and Georgia terminuses of the Appalachian Trail. An attractive proposition, to be sure, but one I will never pursue because of a pesky requirement for a daily (hot) shower.
The sight of the most famous apartment/office/hotel complex in the world let me know that I had arrived in the District of Columbia. I don’t remember where I was when I first heard the name but I was camping on the beach at Narbonne-Plage in southern France when the radio delivered news that President Richard Milhous (another unexpected name) Nixon had resigned. I was a glorious 13 years old and the news on 8 August 1974 rocked my small world. President Nixon’s undoing came from a scandal that started two years earlier after a burglary into the offices of the Democratic National Committee offices on the sixth floor of the Watergate.
The timing of my first visit to the nation’s capital comes after the Democratic Party suffered unprecedented losses in a midterm election. The President called it a shellacking, a term I had never heard, but I am inclined to concur. Those who had the, uh, audacity to hope for radical and substantive adjustments to our political and economic ways witnessed two years of frustration. Those who mourn the conservative narrative latched on to the Tea Party’s naive creed. (A seatmate on the flight over radiated joy to be able to return to Washington for the first time in two years. I queried the reason for happiness, imagining it was a family reunion. She sighed with great relief that the shame of the socialist Obama presidency was almost over. I excused myself and changed seat.)
The 112th Congress convenes in January and Republicans will seize control of the House. The Democrats’ margin of maneuver in the Senate will have shrunk. At best the country will be served two years of Clinton-style compromises. The next occasion for the fulfillment of progressive ideals may not come in a while.
The sudden Democratic decline owes a great debt to its own internal mess. Whereas it once espoused a liberal ideology it now comprises a coalition that includes a considerable chunk of so-called Blue Dog Democrats, southern conservatives that I prefer to call RIDs - Republicans in Disguise. Since the 1960s the dominant political paradigm has moved steadfastly to the right, so much so that some opine that Nixon-era Republicans would pass as Democrats today. Democrats have moved to the right with it, helped famously by Bill Clinton and his New Democrats. I do not disagree that without the help of its conservative element the Democrats would not be able to gain power. Under its influence, however, little of substance gets accomplished. With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?
Plenty of people it turns out.
Whatever their faults Democrats must maneuver in a country that is the most reactionary of all Western democracies. However fiscally prudent Republicans claim to be, however intent on reigning in the power of government, each administration has increased both the deficit and the scope of government.
The cost of our interventionist follies in Iraq and Afghanistan amounts to $1,125 billion, a figure backed by the Congressional Budget Office. The Bush administration’s 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war have been eclipsed but what is more telling is that there was scant opposition to the spending at the time and none came from today’s self-appointed Tea Party budget guardians. Deficit spending on military aggression is fine. Spending on social programs is not.
The narrative of the day - which is really a decades-old narrative repackaged and reformulated to the sensibilities of the moment - articulates, often rather vociferously,
how our greatness rules or ought to rule the world. It rejects policies that benefit the greatest numbers in society (derisively labeled “redistribution of wealth” and made analogous to communism). It favors the interests of the powerful who would be all too happy to help the rest of us if only we’d let them.
America is the land of self-reliance. America’s exceptionalism requires no adjustment. To question the merits of unfettered capitalism is to be unpatriotic. “Our economic fundamentals are sound” said President Bush on the eve of the financial meltdown. The future cannot be predicted, of course, but a past history of banking, investment, insurance, accounting, real estate, and other scandals and failures could have been seen as a sign.
After a quarter century of irresponsible policies calibrated to benefit the already privileged and to appeal to the basest instincts, where have supply-side Reaganomics and deregulation taken us?
In the wake of the latest crisis the two sectors immediately responsible for the financial chaos of the last three years - banking and investing - have rebounded to record profits.
With very little – still - in the form of substantive regulation markets thrive on speculative mechanisms that reward antisocial risk taking: layoffs are good; foreclosures are good.
But what about those at the other end of the exploitative continuum, those who have been told that success comes from hard work?
Your money
The median household wage in 2009 was $50,221, down 7.1 percent over 1999. Only five states report increases. Most are tied to higher and volatile commodity prices. Worst off is Michigan where wages plunged 21.3 percent. Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia dropped by 15.1, 13.9, 13.6 and 12.9 percent respectively.
Between 1967 and 2003 household income, adjusted for inflation, rose 28.43 percent for the bottom fifth of earners, 29.94 percent for median earners, 57.18 percent for the top fifth of earners and 73.80 percent for those who occupy the top five percent of the pyramid. The number of workers with more than one job has surged,.
Income inequalities have shot to levels not seen since the Great Depression, the worst of any developed nation. A Newsweek study of health, education, economy and politics around the world shows that only one country in the top 20 overall rankings has worse (Singapore) inequalities. Our income distribution is statistically closer to Mexico’s than to Canada’s.
Unemployment is higher than in but a few developed nations. The economic crisis of the last three years hit countries that followed the U.S. model far worse than those that resisted it. If low taxes pave the route to job creation it is vexing that Denmark, Finland, Norway and Finland, countries with staggeringly high levels of taxation by our loose standards, all manage lower unemployment rates.
California, which not so long ago elevated itself to the rank of the world’s fifth economy if it were an independent country, has an unemployment rate (12.4 percent) greater than only one (Spain) of the world’s 33 largest economies. At the worse of the debacle the unemployment rate in Imperial County topped 40 percent. Thirty-eight of the state’s 58 counties (65 percent) surpass the state’s rate: Imperial has greatly improved with 29.1 percent of its residents unemployed in November 2010. These figures border on the Third World-ish.
Enthusiastic crowds at political rallies seldom fail to remind themselves that “We’re Number 1, We’re Number 1.”
The Newsweek study puts that number at 11, actually.
By whichever measure you wish to consider the U.S. trails 10 countries overall and many more on individual rankings.
Our homicide rate is 435 percent higher than the average of the 10 countries that precede us.
Perhaps not coincidentally our life expectancy is shorter - shorter than in 31 countries. For the first time in a quarter century it dipped a little between 2007 and 2008. The U.S. is not among the top 22 countries with the lowest infant mortality rates.
Our record health expenditures (15.3 percent of GDP) obscure the nearly 50 million residents without health insurance. Millions more have inadequate or substandard coverage. Not a single advanced nation - and many developing ones - tolerates this disgrace.
Kids are not the most educated but their collective college debt load reached $874 billion in December. The only hope of repayment is through salaries that exacerbate income disparities. A degree from an exclusive college is a guarantee of personal success but given how highly educated executives have failed in one industry after another it is not a harbinger of collective good.
Retailers rejoiced in November on news that spending was up 0.4 percent. Economists noted that income was up only 0.3 percent. To spend more than we earn we rely on credit and have amassed outstanding loans of staggering proportions. Up until the recent economic uncertainty our savings rate was more than minuscule, dipping sometime in negative territory, a lovely euphemism to mark a people that spends more than it takes in.
Notwithstanding the mythology of the earnest worker who toils away to secure financial independence, the only way toward some sort of wealth creation for the majority is through home ownership thanks to the duo of favorable tax policies and speculation. This worked until three years ago when price escalation stopped and reversed itself in a grand way in many markets. Until then creative lenders worshipped the (artificial) never-ending upward spiral. The communal belief worked for the average Joe and Jane (a single worker is but priced out of home ownership) who could get into a house they could not afford because its value would soon dwarf the mortgage. They could either sell the house at inflated prices or apply for an equity loan at advantageous rates to subsidize a lifestyle.
It is the value of that equity - not hard work - that floated millions of otherwise impoversihed workers. To cash in on this scheme said worker needs more than the sweat of his brow. A couple of years ago a survey of California’s 58 counties showed that a couple earning the average wage in any of these counties could not afford an average-priced home in the county where they work.
The entire state is unaffordable.
To qualify for a loan the Joes and Janes that I know rely on generous help from their parents, either as cash or collateral when alive, or inheritance. The official figure for Santa Barbara County where I live is that only six percent of the residents have sufficient personal resources to buy a house.
More statistics?
Turn your attention to the 2010 edition of the annual “World in Figures” put out by The Economist. Back in August I hiked from Waterton to Glacier and met a deer at the exact moment it crossed the border between Canada and the U.S..
I wanted him (or was it a she?) to stop chewing grass for a minute and reflect on the following rankings:
Human development index
Canada 3
United States 15
Business environment rank
Canada 5
United States 13
Technological readiness
Canada 9
United States 11
Computers per 100 people
Canada 1
United States 5
Broadband access per 100 people
Canada 9
United States 13
Corruption perception index
Canada 6
United States not in top 16
Car ownership
Canada 6
United States 19
Most injured in car accidents per 100K population
Canada 20
United States 16 (with a rate 32 percent higher)
Most deaths in car accidents per 100K population
Canada not in top 30
United States 23
Environment performance index
Canada 12
United States 39
Percentage of clean energy use
Canada 17
United States not in top 32
Foreign aid donors, as percent of GDP
Canada 17
United States 24
Obesity rate
Canada 14
United States 3
Divorce rate
Canada 38
United States 9
Life expectancy
Canada 11
United States 32
Press freedom
Canada 13
United States not in top 30
Prison population
Canada not in top 24
United States 1
We are Number 1 after all. In that category we have no competition. The U.S. incarcerates more people, expressed as a percentage of its population, than any other nation on earth. Its citizens are either far more inclined than any others on the planet - by a factor of 12 over Europe's rate of incarcaretion - to commit crime, or our federal, state and municipal laws are far more repressive than even coutries with no democratic traditions.
Oh, and Mr. Deer (dear Ms. Deer), Canada also has universal health care, no death penalty, gay marriage and does not invade other countries....
But I digress. Before the reactionary throngs of the ultra right take over, Washington here I come.
A visit to Washington takes in an abundance of museums, memorials and public buildings. Too many to pack in a four-day tour, even one choreographed to exploit geographical proximity.
The biggest hurdle is to negotiate the conflicting security and entrance requirements at government facilities and most museums. The list of approved items that may be carried inside varies from one location to the next, sometimes within the same building: Cameras and small backpacks are allowed on the Capitol tour but not in the House and Senate galleries. At the Pentagon, no cameras or cell phones with cameras may be used but they can be carried. (Such items would be confiscated and destroyed by heavy equipment, my tour was told...)
Because there are no checkrooms, these policies make it impractical to plan sightseeing. Street parking is scarce (and I suspect expensive) so leaving items inside a vehicle is not an option either.
This consideration aside, a visit to the White House, Capitol, Pentagon and Department of State is not improvised but requested up to several months ahead of time.
To visit the White House and Capitol residents of the U.S. should contact their House or Senate representatives for free, timed entry tickets. Visits may also be arranged at http://www.visitthecapitol.gov/ for the guided Capitol tour and film. To see floor action in the House and Senate, apply for gallery passes (the public tour does not visit them) with your representative or senator. These passes will need to be picked up in their offices, which are nearby but not within the Capitol. Visitors may access House chambers even when it is not in session, but not the Senate. The White House offers a self-guided tour but secret service agents guarding each room act as de-facto guides. The building struck me as dignified, elegant and stately but not stuffy or ostentatious.
Foreign visitors should contact their embassy in Washington.
The Pentagon and Department of State handle their own visits with online reservations.
The Department of Defense is minutes away across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia. It has a dedicated Metro stop practically inside the five-sided, five-story building (plus two below ground), an ultimate convenience for its 23,000 employees.
The largest office building in the world racks up impressive statistics. Sixteen parking lots hold as many as 8,770 cars. Nineteen escalators, 131 stairways and 17½ miles (28 km) of corridors move workers and visitors around 3.7 million square feet (344,000 m²) of offices. They can stop at 691 water fountains, use 283 washrooms and keep an eye on 4,200 clocks to get to their destination.
The inner central plaza, informally known as Ground Zero during the Cold War when it was thought Soviet missiles were aimed at the building, is the only place where salutes and hats are not required.
My guide, an amiable fellow attached to the military ceremonial unit, knew the ins and outs of the building well enough to walk backwards during the duration of the tour. The hallways are largely unadorned and quite sterile: activity takes place behind closed, key-coded, cryptically numbered doors.
Impossibly, building the Pentagon took only a year and a half from groundbreaking to completion. Sixty years to the day after the first shovel pitched dirt the building was hit by American Airlines flight 77, which had been commandeered by terrorists on Sept. 11 2001. All 64 passengers and crew as well as 125 people in the building died. Two memorials, one inside and one outside, mark the attack.
The Hall of Heroes pays tribute to the 3,449 recipients of the Medal of Honor, the highest award for valor in action against an enemy force bestowed upon an individual in the Armed Services of the United States, often posthumously. Of 246 medals awarded during the 15-year Vietnam War 154 went to deceased soldiers. Thus far 4 soldiers have received the commendation for their sacrifice during the Iraq War and 4 for the Afghanistan War. President Obama decorated Army Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, 25, with the Medal of Honor for distinguished service in Afghanistan at a White House ceremony the day of my visit. He is the first living person to receive it since Vietnam.
News coverage of the military praises its individual members as valiant, noble warriors and heroes. Issues of substance abuse, spousal violence, suicide and homelessness don’t get much air time or print space. In Los Angeles County between a quarter and a third of the 82,000-strong chronic homeless population are veterans, invisible to the flag-waving crowd that screams patriotic slogans.
While in Virginia, take a moment to stroll down Alexandria’s quaint King Street. I only had time for coffee (always) and I wish I had time to walk all the way to the bay.
The corridors of the Secretary of State exude a depressive aura even worse than the Pentagon’s. Rest assured that your tax dollars do not buy lavish furnishings except in the official reception rooms that display more splendor and, uh, stateliness. Crammed with limitless American arts and crafts stylistic touches they suffocate diplomacy more than liberate it.
Sadly the Supreme Court of the United States did not hear oral arguments on the day of my visit. The term begins the first Monday in October and in the first two weeks of November the Court heard arguments in cases involving AT&T, Costco, an Arizona Christian school, the Tohono O’odham Nation, and various corporations, hospitals and legal entities. But not today. A film shows the history of the court and “lectures” (a glorified term for a tour) invite the public inside the chambers.
By virtue of its status as the highest court of the land it boasts of a history of precedent-making opinions that have altered the course of the nation for the better. But not always as in last term’s Citizens United ruling that lifted a ban on corporate election spending, an assurance that powerful interests will strengthen their chokehold on politicians and public policy.
The Roberts court leans conservative. In the past, the Supreme Court has lifted the cause of the less powerful as in segregation (Brown v. Board of Education), due process (Miranda v. Arizona), right to counsel (Gideon v. Wainwright), reproductive (Roe v. Wade) and gay (Lawrence v. Texas) rights rulings. The court of last resort could be counted to fulfill the promise of American law and to embody a moral force in American life. With civil rights protections undermined left and (mostly) right, I trust the fundamental constitutional judgment of associate justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor with a lot of help from Anthony Kennedy will insist on fairness in this country. In our system of criminal justice, a wealthy guilty defendant is in a much better position to assert his rights than an innocent but poor defendant.
The swiftest way to get around town is by underground Metro. Unlike many subway systems with a single fare for journeys within a city, Washington’s Metro prices by distance and time of day. The three-stop trip on the Yellow Line from Gallery Place/Chinatown to the Pentagon costs $2.40 during the “peak-of-the-peak” morning and evening rush hours and $2.20 at other times. I’m not sure why a public transit system should discourage ridership during the busiest times.
The most trouble-free method of paying for fares is to use a preloaded SmarTrip card. It avoids repeated visits to the fare machines and fumbling with change. Trouble is, with the Metro’s unique pricing scheme, it is hard to gauge how much money to load onto the card. The calculation is made more complex because SmarTrip users receive a 25 cents discount off the above “farecard” fares. A farecard can be preloaded, too, but it will need to be inserted in the exit turnstile for the fare to be deducted. SmarTrip cards can remain in the wallet and be brushed against a reader.
Whereas 10 journeys by bus, subway or tram, anywhere and at anytime, within the (entire) City of Lights (and its immediate suburbs) would require a straightforward 10 tickets or €12 (about $16), the same 10 journeys in Washington will cost between $19.50 and $24.00 depending on time of travel and method of payment, assuming the travelers doesn’t stray too far.
Or take the bus, which is subject to an entirely different pricing structure.
Or fly in or out of the supremely convenient Reagan National, only 6 km away but charged at yet another rate: $2.75, $2.50, $2.55 or $2.30, pick your poison. Washington might be the only capital with a main airport, Dulles, inaccessible by rail.
And to save 25 cents on each trip with the SmarTrip card, tack on an extra $5 ‘cause the card itself ain’t free .... But it works on neighboring transit agencies whose networks are otherwise and, as is typically the case in the U.S., shockingly not integrated.
Nan and I stood in front of Union Station’s vending machine to determine the cost of getting to Eastern Market for crab cakes at the oldest continuously operated public market in the country, transfixed and puzzled by these intricacies. I threw myself on the kindness of strangers for help in deciphering the puzzle and readily found two willing ladies, deaf but skilled at reading lips. I offered $15 for a SmarTrip card to a guy who approached me, wanting $30 - an immediate 50 percent discount!
As efficient as Metro is - save for a slew of out-of-order elevators - traveling between most sights of central D.C. is best on foot or by bus but the latter requires a familiarity that the casual visitor will not have. All we could figure out was the Circulator, a parallel network of six lines operated by the same transit agency but much cheaper at $1 a ride. We hopped on the line that runs along K Street, the home away from home for lobbyists, between Union Station and Georgetown (no Metro stations in this neighborhood) but were confounded by abbreviated evening service.
The line that makes the most sense, and the only one to complete a circle, is the one that loops around the National Mall. It is perfect for the Smithsonian facilities, other museums and memorials along the grassy expanse, the Capitol and the White House But it only operates April 1-Sept. 30!
The smart visitor will stick to clusters and not combine the Capitol and Lincoln Memorial on the same day although it is an enchanting 3¾-km walk.
Its curvilinear architecture was the first museum I saw but I never found the time to enter the National Museum of the American Indian, neither for its collections nor for the native foods dishes at the Mitsitam Cafe. Instead the honor of my first visit fell to the National Air and Space Museum, next door, which houses crafts of every epoch, from the beginning of aviation with the Wright Brothers’ 1903 Flyer to the Apollo 11 Command Module and Viking Mars Lander of the space age exploration. The lunar capsule is tinier that I would like for my personal comfort; the Boeing 747 flight deck is not that much comfier.
Across the Mall the National Museum of Natural History contains half a billion specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites and human cultural artifacts displayed in galleries that radiate from an elephant in the central rotunda. Somewhere lurks a giant reef that is in fact made of crocheted wool. The fishes are real and they swim in real water.
Acting on a recommendation from a fellow visitor I perused some of the nation’s most significant documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which I learned last year on a visit to Philadelphia are not stored at Independence Hall or the National Constitution Center even though they were signed in that city. Instead they reside in the safety of the National Archives along with the Bill of Rights and an original copy of the Magna Carta.
For what seemed like a private tour at first we joined a docent for an introduction to the bronzes of the Gods of Angkor special exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, mistakenly accessed from its sister Asian Art museum, the Freer Gallery of Art.
A couple of blocks from the J. Edgar Hoover F.B.I. Building (no visits) the Newseum is one of the capital’s latest addition to an already mighty full slate of quality offerings. It is not, however, part of the free Smithsonian collection: admission is $20.00. The Pulitzer Prize Photography Gallery captures frozen instants with clarity. The archival collection of newspapers, the sections dedicated to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Towers in New York City (including a mangled chunk of the radio tower that stood atop it) and the Berlin Wall brought history to life. I lamented the overall self-congratulatory tone of the exhibits and the uncritical assessments of the role of the press. In front of the interactive World Press Freedom Map a guide shared his pride to live in a country where the press is free to report, lauding with veiled restraint its place at the pinnacle. The United States certainly is no North Korea but the formula that evaluates the legal, political and economic environments in which the news media functions ranks the country at number 23. Freedom of the press is more comprehensive and established in 22 other nations. Read the 261-page report.
It might be too early, too sensitive, too politically incorrect to ask but after seeing war monuments in Germany I look forward to some contextualization and certainly no glorification even in absentia. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, somber in its black stone and nighttime darkness, bears the names of 58,178 soldiers who died during the long years of this unprovoked conflict. Without diminishing their ultimate sacrifice could we not find a way to atone for the deleterious assault on a small, impoverished nation that lost about 1,366,000 of its citizens (which, proportional to the U.S. population, would have resulted in a casualty count 114 times greater)?
France, with its own imperialistic implication in South Asia, lost 34,935 soldiers there in the two decades that preceded the U.S. involvement. The country constructed an Indochina Wars Memorial in Provence but few know about it. That war and others like the conflict in Algeria are seen as acts of aggression, elements of an unjust past that needs acknowledgment but not admiration.
Fifty-six granite pillars arranged in an oval make up the dignified National World War II Memorial at the east end of the Reflecting Pool and near the Washington Monument. Each honors the District of Columbia and the states and territories that existed at the time, Oddly and unlike similar monuments in Europe, it makes no mention of any allied nation.
It would be two scores and a year before the memorial would interrupt the view from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the other end of the Reflecting Pool. On Aug. 28, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his seminal Civil Rights speech.
When I heard it years later his electrifying oratory and eloquence washed over me in a wave of optimism. “I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Some measure of redemption came in November of 2008 with the election of the country’s first African-American President, an equally intelligent and eloquent man. I share Dr. King’s and President Barack Obama’s dream of a transcendent and egalitarian nation.
President Abraham Lincoln had a dream, too. Initially he acquiesced to the Southern States’ demands to keep slavery but he refused to extend this contemptible option to the states joining the growing union. The country went to war with itself. Before the Union defeated the Confederacy a staggering 618,000 soldiers died, more than in all American wars combined. At Antietam 26,134 men died in one day; 51,112 perished during the three-day Battle of Gettysburg. A ranger dramatizing the life of Lincoln said that if their names were inscribed on a wall similar to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial it would stretch the length of the Mall, all the way to the Capitol nearly 4 km away.
President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address delivered at the East Portico of the Capitol at the other end of the Mall on March 4, 1865:
“At this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral [sic] address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissole [sic] the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
Violence settled the score but the rifts of distrust persist into the twenty-first century.
I took my place on the spot where Dr. King stood when he delivered “I Have a Dream.” Awed with the memory of history I scanned the nighttime horizon for the hundreds of thousands that listened to this most radical man one August day. A light mist mottled the specks of light that bounced off the Reflecting Pool. On this same spot conservative talk show host Glenn Beck organized a nauseating “Take Back America” rally on the 47th anniversary of the seminal speech. Weeks later, comedian Stephen Colbert countered with a sardonic movement to “Keep Fear Alive.”
The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial might open in the spring of 2011 at the Tidal Basin, in time for the cherry blossoms.
Ford’s Theater is not named after the automobile giant but simply after its owner. Cast was rehearsing “A Christmas Carol” when I visited but I wasn’t there for the holiday favorite. In its subterranean museum, displays chronicle the life of Abraham Lincoln and one John Wilkes Booth, an actor, with particular attention paid to the 24 hours preceding 14 April 1865.
President Lincoln had been sworn to his second term in March. The Civil War had ended less than a week earlier with the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, Virginia. Resentment had not evaporated. Given that some Southern States plan to commemorate Secession’s 150th anniversary in the coming months with unconscionable jolly celebrations – and no mention of slavery – that bitterness still runs deep.The President and entourage came to Ford’s Theater on the evening of 14 April to watch “Our American Cousin,” a farcical play. At roughly 22:10, his life and Booth’s intersected when the assassin barged into the unguarded box and fired one shot into the back of the President’s head. He died across the street the next day in William Petersen’s boarding house. Soldiers tracked Booth who had escaped to a farm in Virginia 11 days later where he was killed.
The attack on the President was part of a conspiracy to provoke Confederate soldiers to keep fighting. A plan to kidnap the President was hatched and later abandoned. Vice-president Andrew Johnson and General Ulysses S. Grant were targeted, too. The same evening President Lincoln was killed, Secretary of State William H. Seward, also a vocal abolitionist, suffered an assassination attempt. (He would recover from his wounds and become known, later, for masterminding the Alaska Purchase.)
Topmost on my list of institutions I missed is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. With more time I would have thumbed through the Library of Congress, revisited the past at the National Museum of American History and rewritten it at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, investigated the National Museum of Crime and Punishment, sought new impressions in the Phillips Collection, reflected at St. Matthew’s Cathedral or at Washington National Cathedral.
We filled our tummies at four remarkable eateries in addition to the crab cakes at Eastern Market.
Near the hotel, the Chinatown Coffee Company poured strong but not bitter espresso shots that mixed with organic milk. One of the best coffees I have tasted. I stopped there for lunch before heading out to Reagan National on my last day.
Washington’s architecture and pedestrian-friendly streets make is a pleasure to walk and that’s how we got to Founding Farmers on the ground floor of the International Monetary Fund whose managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, might run as a socialist (!) candidate for France’s next presidential elections. What’s on the menu is what the harvest from said farmers brings to the table. On this bustling Sunday night I selected not from the land but from the founding fishers, as it were, and enjoyed a fish I had never heard of.
In rainy Georgetown (great weather except on that day but then again umbrellas can be fun!) we spotted Bangkok Bistro on a back street where a four-course meal of salad, teriyaki beef, curry and mochi ice cream went for $26. With a glass of wine, too!
We were seated with Nan’s sister-in-law at Jaleo in Penn Quarter and happily feasted on one Spanish specialty after another flavorful tapa when I realized in horror that the show time for our concert had already passed.
I was not unduly concerned because I remembered reading about an opening act. We arrived at the Sixth and I Synagogue to catch the last few songs of Alain Johannes, a one-person-cum-guitar-box band (and no other instruments) whose stylistic variety surprised me.
During the planning stages of the trip we had tossed the idea of catching a musical but I was not keen on putting down $100 for an evening out. I told Nan that a new band made up of Joe Arthur, Hen Harper and Dhani Harrison was going to play when we’d be in town but that its show, like ones in Los Angeles and San Francisco, had sold out in minutes.
An ad on craigslist proposed four tickets at $119 each, a near tripling of the face value. Nan suggested I approach the seller and offer what we’d be paying to see the musical. Still too rich for my blood I tempted fate and tendered $50, reasoning that I had little to lose.
The seller agreed and after a Pay Pal transaction the tickets arrived in the mail!
And so it came to be that we spent our last evening in Washington at a very intimate and cozy venue enthralled by the harmonies and melodies of Fistful of Mercy, which NPR named as one of th ebst side projects of the year. For its final number, the band walked off the stage accompanied by violinist Jessy Greene and Johannes to play an acoustic version of “With Whom You Belong” in the audience.
And so it came to be that Joe Arthur stopped to my left and Dhani Harrison stopped to my right. I managed to tell Dhani “This is so cool,” to which he replied a simple “Yeah!” Many years ago I had a timid conversation with his dad, George, of Beatles fame, in the studio of a Paris radio. Sandwiched between them I lost all restraint and intoned with them and the rest of the crowd. Deep Throat could not have sung it any better.
“You’ll find your way
To write your song.
And come what may,
I hope you find friend with whom you belong.”
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| The Watergate says goodbye..... |
