The Nation's City

Washington D.C. is like no other city in the world. It has an area that cannot be replicated. Even Las Vegas has not tried to copy it. When you travel to the city you are impressed by the buildings that have been built to impress everyone. It is not just the Capitol building and the White House that impresses. I will write a separate entry about the White House. The public areas of the Capitol building equal and surpass most art galleries with the statuary and paintings that represent all of the states. The inclusion of statues of important people from all of the states, makes it both of artistic and historic importance. The mall is indeed a gathering place and with the monuments to key people and moments in our history makes it an important place and it has been said that it is the “nation’s front yard”. This is the only negative note on the area. The mall needs much work to make it a park that we can be proud about. Most of the grass was dead and not because of the time of year. Even with the Marine Corps Marathon preparations and the rain on the day I visited it is apparent that much work is needed to bring the area up to what is needed for us to be proud. Many thousands of people do use the area all of the time. That does not mean that we cannot maintain the landscape in a fashion that will set the tone for the city. It obviously needs more funding. Let us set aside the funds to do so.

On the positive side. The memorials to WWII, Korea, and Vietnam do respect those who served. The Women are memorialized for their service and it is nice, even if they are segregated from the acknowledgment of the Men’s service. There are monuments immortalizing a few of the great men (no Women) who have served our country. The monuments do need much more individual treatment and I will go into some detail on some later. The city itself is just a big city but with a very good transit system. On our recent trip the only time we needed a car was to travel out of the area. Riding the metro subway system we were able to visit the central area and even get out to the area of Arlington Cemetery and the Mall at the Pentagon. I find it intriguing that the Pentagon has its own subway stop. The variety of people on the subway was great with civil servants, military, tourists, and the rest of the population all riding together. The weather may affect the surface travel but I suspect that most of the subway system does well in the winter. So let me say that for an old city that the Congress does not seem to think is mature enough for self government it is OK. We had just a short visit to the city but I did come away with many things to write about and many nice people who I may mention along the way.