Hurricane Gustav wasn’t as bad as feared; but a storm’s no fun.
Spent Labor Day weekend in Washington, D.C. with the siblings – We saw a Nationals v. Braves game on Saturday night; otherwise much sightseeing. Weather was nice and the sights were amazing.
Saturday: lunch at Fuddruckers in Alexandria, VA – quite a salmon burger! Walking the Mall – walking over to the Washington Memorial.
The World War II Memorial – quite a memorial! I liked it for giving quite the feeling of the American contribution – the 50 states and the territories.
Walked toward the Lincoln Memorial. The Reflecting Pool seemed to have a lot of duck crap along the way… hmm…
Sunday:
Thomas Jefferson Memorial; nice photos in Wikipedia. Took awhile to walk over there; I’m so out of shape!
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial was interesting, but not my cup of tea – yes, seeing FDR’s words etched on walls were quite powerful but seeing the statue of him straight out of the old photos of the Yalta summit and sitting by his little dog Fala — well, I can’t say that I felt impressed. The Wikipedia entry has some nice photos of the memorial.
Walked passed by and took a look at the International Spy Museum; hmm.
Walking through D.C.’s Chinatown felt strangely disappointing; felt very corporate, actually.
Took a break in the National Building Museum – beautiful building!
I kind of thought that D.C.’s Metro was impressive – more or less clean; fast; plus electronic signage that tells you the next train’s ETA. It did look a lot like PATH, in my mind; but PATH’s trains looks more like something out of the 1970’s – so you can’t have everything.
Watching some of the Republican convention, mostly out of trying to get context and to watch history in the making; I can’t say that I agreed with much of what was said on Tuesday night. Hmm. Anyway, I credit PBS for airing the full Joe Lieberman speech; ABC cut it off to get to local news; come on, networks – you’re doing people a disservice!
Slate’s John Dickerson on Hurricane Gustav’s effect on presidential politics; interesting point that he has: that maybe the candidates should just join forces to make ads to help the folks, instead of ads attacking each other.
Newsweek columnist Rabbi Gellman on how we can somehow move past our biases in this election; that is the question: can we?