a profession to be proud of

The White House

Washington has more museums than anyone could hope to visit in a lifetime. Since I only had two days, I had to be rather selective. Top of my list was the Newseum. It is what the name suggests. A museum about news. Fa was meeting a friend so she dropped me at Dupont Circle in the morning. Driving is a bit easier here than in New York, where Vanessa and Kathryn avoid it at all costs. Parking is difficult, but possible. Fa played Edith Piaff while in the car. On top of her other talents (which also includes photography), she can also sing in French. I wanted to get a US cell number because Fa, and my uncle in Toronto, can't message my UK number. The phone stores weren't opening for another hour so I spent some time walking around and found a farmers' market. This one was more impressive than what I saw at the Rockefeller Center in New York. Peaches seem to be the flavour of the month, as were zester apples, which I'd never heard of. I picked up a couple of pieces of fruit for lunch and continued to walk around the circle.

Millions of peaches at the farmers' market

At noon I went into the AT&T store. I'd looked up some of the plans online and it seemed pretty clear that the cell phone market must not be all that competitive. The deals offered in the UK, and even by Telstra at home, leave these for dead. You pay for incoming calls, which strikes me as somewhat ridiculous. The phone companies would make money on both ends - the person calling, and the person being called! Turns out AT&T had a deal that suited me just fine. $2 a day only on the days I use the phone and unlimited calls, receiving calls and texts (international ones too). Since I'll only be using it until Thursday that sounded pretty good to me. 

I caught the metro to the Newseum, had some lunch, and went inside. The Newseum is six floors. They recommend doing the bottom, then going right up to the top and working your way round. I started at the collection of Pulitzer Prize photographs. The display covered decades of images and all of them, as you can imagine, were stunning. Some of them were a bit hard to look at, particularly ones taken in conflict and disaster zones. There were ones I'd seen before such as Nick Ut's photo of the naked girl running down the road in Vietnam after a napalm strike. All of them were quite intense, to the extent that after a while I found myself looking around for something a bit more light-hearted - sports shots etc - just to give myself a break.

The Berlin Wall

From the photos I went to an exhibition about the Berlin Wall, which actually includes parts of the wall. I knew the basics, but it was great to learn a lot more. Then came a 25-minute documentary on the history of sports reporting. Of course, it was all about American sports reporting, but fascinating all the same. Particularly with how often race has been an issue in sports.

One of the temporary exhibitions is on the FBI. There were a couple of cases I'd heard about but most, despite how big they were in the US, must have escaped much attention at home. The display focused on the media's role with some of the cases, which at times has been quite significant. There was one example when a bomber wrote a huge essay and asked the papers to print it. Although reluctant, one paper did, and it lead to the bomber being identified when a relative recognised some of the opinions and attitudes in the writing. A short 4D movie (4D because you feel some of the elements in the film, wind, the chair moves etc) about the history of journalism, and then it was up to the top floor. By this stage a storm was coming through the city so I was happy to be tucked up inside.

The top floor featured a large display on the reporting during Hurricane Katrina. I was really touched by the role the media played in parts of this, and the way the people valued it as well. It's nice to know I'm part of an industry that can have so much influence. The conditions some of the reporters battled to do their job, and print a paper, were incredible too.

A history of newspapers included editions that covered major news events: the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana and John Lennon, Martin Luther King's speech, the pull out of troops in Vietnam etc. Then it was downstairs to the coverage of September 11. I expected there to be a bit more here, especially after seeing the Katrina display, but I guess it has been 10 years and there has been a lot of news since. An announcement warned of the Newseum's closure in 30 minutes. I still had so much to see, but my ticket was valid for two days so i decided to head to the National Air and Space Museum, which was going to be open until 7.30pm.

Front pages from September 12, 2001

Fa had warned me that the Air and Space Museum was very "boyish" and would be packed with families on a Sunday. But I thought I may as well head along and see what I thought. If I wanted more time, I would head back the next day. The museum covers a lot of history, from the Wright brothers and the use of aircraft in war, to the space race and astronomy. I went to the planterium and watched a show on stars, voiced by Whoopi Goldberg, which made it even more enteraining. The details on the space race was particularly interesting. There was sufficient information on the USSR program too. I last a couple of hours before I couldn't absorb any more information.

I decided to walk to the metro but changed my mind and headed to the White House instead. Washington isn't actually all that big so it's not hard to walk to where you want to go. The White House was slightly disappointing. I first ended up at the back of it, looking at the kitchen garden. And when I got round the front so much of it is blocked by trees and fences that I had to double check that I was in the right spot. It did look nice with the setting sun as backdrop though. I grabbed some dinner and headed back to Fa's.




The Capital Building