The White House

After accidently memorizing the address by over-exposure to Bloom County since childhood, I actually found myself at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.


I lucked out and had an awesome friend who thought to schedule a White House tour for me ahead of time. I guess they have to do background checks, which makes sense.

The lady ahead of me asked the secret service agent, "Is Barack in today?"

"Yes, ma'am, he is," came the polite reply. "Oh, well, tell him I was here!" I think she was trying to be amusing. He chuckled and assented politely and noncommittally. I had also been standing behind this lady at the visitor security check. She had many various metal accessories and bangles that she kept forgetting to remove as she attempted the metal-detector, but each time she tried with bubbly cheerfulness. She, her husband, and I were the last people through, so the security guard rolled his eyes at me behind her back, apparently wanting to know that someone was appreciating the kinds of things he had to put up with. I replied in-kind.


The tour was a guide-yourself tour complete with a brochure-thing and secret service agents in every room to answer questions. A long line of visitors snaked through the Ground Floor and then up to the State Floor. I lost the aforementioned lady and her husband in the crowd, but it was interesting to reflect on the fact that the President, and perhaps the rest of the Obama family, were at home on the second floor. The place seemed big enough from just the first two floors - it was hard to imagine that this tourist-filled building contained yet another floor that was a home.

On the Ground Floor, visitors were not permitted to enter the rooms, but you could look inside. The White House (and many things in DC) serves a secondary function as 'time capsule'.



The line of visitors wandered up the stairs and into the East Room.




This photo is in the public domain, as featured in the Wikipedia East Room article. The piano was not in the East Room while I was visiting. It was in the Entrance Hall.


I asked the agent posted in the East Room if there was anything in particular he thought I ought to know about it. He pointed to a large red object behind me, indicating that it was the red carpet that gets rolled out across the Cross Hall before press conferences. The East Room is a common room for press conferences and for dinners. It usually also contains the Steinway that was sitting in the Entrance Hall. Steinway # 300000 was a gift to President Franklin Roosevelt.



Photo from The White House Museum

Things I learned about the White House:

Every room has a bouquet of fresh flowers, ever since one of the presidential families lost a son before moving to the White House and the President ordered fresh flowers to be placed in each room to help lift the First Lady's depression. This was one of the many barnacles of history I observed on the various ships of state in DC. In DC, history doesn't go away. It gets institutionalized or made into a statue.

There is an interior decorating committee that the First Lady is often a part of, but certainly does not run. Any change to the interior, such as removal or replacement of paintings must be approved by this committee.

The secret service has two major divisions, the Uniformed Division and the Special Agent Division. The agent who explained this to me said that she thought of the difference as being that the uniformed agents ensured the security of a location while the special agents would travel with a dignitary to ensure that he or she was transported safely between locations.

There are many portraits of past presidents hanging on the walls. Apparently, it was the always the president himself who chose his pose for how he wanted to be depicted in his portrait. I asked this question after being fascinated in particular by JFK's choice of portrayal. I am assuming - though I didn't ask - that the president was also free to choose which artist would paint him.

Lincoln and Washington (DC part 1.1)

My first stop was the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting pool, but all those pictures are mental images. I did go back later to see the tourists and to take this picture which perfectly complimented a recent meme-discussion that my brother and I had been having about the historical awesomeness of Abraham Lincoln.



Abraham Lincoln, the man.
If you aren't familiar with how the internet is remembering Abe as THE MAN, then do your research. If only historical figures could know what they would mean to future generations...


The following pictures were taken after I returned from New York, so this is a little anachronistic, to overuse the word. The first day I wandered around here, it was much much less rainy.





If you want more of the 'classic' pictures of these monuments, there are plenty on the internet. You can check out the following Wikipedia pages on the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. There are also plen-ty of other people who have posted pictures of these exact objects. My interest trends towards the pictures that are meaningful to me, or that I know I won't find (or will have a hard time finding) elsewhere.



I liked the peaceful space behind the Lincoln Memorial:





That's enough. I need some of these for my posts on returning to DC after NYC.

Refrigerator wisdom (part 2)

"I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships, so will our healing"



I have been meaning to post this quote, found on my friend's refrigerator, for at least since last July. Now is as good a time as any, especially since while in Connecticut, I found the quote within a book. It should be attributed to: William P. Young, The Shack

Oracle at 112 5th Ave

I was walking with a friend in New York City when this vertically-scrolling column caught my eye.

Enjoy yourself because you can't change anything else

The sign was speaking to me. And it was relentless.

Aspiring for love is stupid

Even your family can betray you

Extreme self-consciousness leads to corruption

Fear is the greatest incapacitor

I'm glad that my friend was there too, because he began reading aloud from the display. Otherwise, it would have been easy to think that I was seeing some kind of hallucinatory prophetic vision.

Freedon is a luxury not a necessity

Giving true reign to emotion is an honest way to live

Keep your life in flux

Hiding your motives is despicable

I kept semi-expecting the quotes to begin repeating themselves, but they never did. They only began sounding perhaps more political. I kept reading and hearing the words in the rising voice of my friend.

It is man's fate to outsmart himself

Is Liberation dangerous? Only when overdue!

Let it explode. Run with it. Don't control or manipulate

Grassroots agitation is the only hope

It is sometimes better to die than to continue

I considered that it might be good practice to read these things out loud from time to time.


As with everything of course, add salt to taste.




(* We asked some people emerging from the building what sort of building it was. They replied, Barnes & Noble)

East Coast

I am currently adventuring on the East Coast which I like much more than I thought I would. DC has important stuff all over, Connecticut and people in New York are very nice and helpful. This post is just a time-marker. I'll have more to say in the near future, but this is when it's all going down. I'm in Connecticut now, at the midpoint of my DC -> NYC -> CT -> NYC -> DC journey.