You must DO Washington, DC, the sooner, the better. Must.Do. It's not a suggestion, it's not up for debate.
EVERY time I visit, I come away with this same affection, a compulsion to hogtie and drag everyone I know--heck, everyone I DON'T know--back to our Nation's Capitol. The entire District is monument to our country's history, bringing the dead to life in a way not possible from all-too-often tedious and unimaginative schoolbook text or lifeless, one-dimensional photography or penciled renderings. New York well may be the city that never sleeps, but Washington is a city fully alive, reverberating with a palpable p o w e r
I can't imagine present anywhere else on planet earth. Certainly it is a place where insatiable political ego is fed--that amuses me at times, in spite of the fact it's often not funny--but it's also the birthplace of dreams and ideas and programs and policy that affect each of us daily from before cradle to after grave. If that's not power, I don't know what is.
Eleven hours on a bus, beginning at 8:00 p.m. Thursday night and ending Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. hasn't left me with much energy for writing right now. I need quiet and my family. I've been with people--constant NOISE for a week--and honestly, I'm drained (Willowtree, you'd probably have gone postal!). It was a fantastic trip with Rachel's class with an unexpected bonus: the company of parents I didn't know very well...hmmm, make that I didn't know them well before the trip, but 24-hour togetherness, a thousand hours in close quarters, circumstances that were at times maddening but always laughable, and time to tell the stories of our lives...let's just say post-trip they know enough about me (and, thankfully, visa versa) to get very rich from blackmail. When you're delirious from total lack of sleep, it's amazing what can slip out :).
More soon, you know I've gotta post My Top Ten Favorite DC Memories, and one thing I know for sure, there's no way my "Number 1" can be the same as last time...dang it ;).
