THE POLITICAL PROCESS

I’ve been working like a dog this whole week, and though its been rewarding, I needed a break. I definitely didn’t need to hang out with a bunch of high schoolers on a Saturday night, during their 80’s-themed party and Goonies viewing. So I called up Todd and arranged to meet him down in Baltimore for the weekend.

Shawn apparently ditched town to go to a wedding, so he and I drove around downtown Baltimore to Fells Point to go drinking with a bunch of sauced up east coast types. The next morning, we planned to go into D.C. to check it out, since it was only a 40 minute Amtrak ride away and neither of us had been before. The Amtrak website quoted us $23 dollars round trip, but somehow it ended up costing over 40. Since we took the shuttle out to Penn Station, we were basically stranded in Baltimore (not the best place to be stranded), so we went for it.

Here’s Penn station:

It has one of them old-timey schedule boards that rotates around to display gate numbers and such, which was kind of neat. The station was fairly quaint all around. Outside the station is this monstrostiy:

We saw it coming back from drinking the night before, but didn’t know what the building was for. It was a surprise to see it coming off the shuttle. Union Station, on the other hand, was fancy as all get out.

As you can see, there is construction going on outside the building. Apparently all of D.C. is under construction to some degree or other. It was especially bad at the capitol building, which was almost entirely devoid of tourists. The place was completely empty, which was surprising only a few days before the 4th. These pictures don’t do the sheer grandeur of these buildings justice, but all I had on me was my cell phone. I need a digital camera (hint hint)

Apparently they are building a visitor center directly between the capitol building and the SCOTUS building. There are a few parking spots for senators behind the capitol and in front of the construction site, I guess for times when they need to just run inside and cast a vote. No one was around except a few security gaurds, who were extremely friendly.

Behind the construction is the SCOTUS building, which was almost blindingly white. I had to squint walking up the steps.

There was a small protest/demonstration against the death penalty in front of the building, but there weren’t many tourists around to take their flyers. A cop was positioned across the street, but everything was very civil. It was mostly futile anyway, since SCOTUS has already adjourned for the summer. The building itself was simply awesome and humbling, and it had that effect on everyone. As you can see in the pic above, no one was on the steps of the building. Everyone was taking their pictures from the base of the steps, just behind the protesters. Todd and I walked right up to the door. As we did, other people followed along, apparently realizing that this was a public building- it was their building.

The door to the SCOTUS building was bronze and maybe 20 feet high, decorated with a dozen or so detailed carvings depicting some historically important scenes. I snapped a pic of the Magna Carta.

Next door to SCOTUS is the Library of Congress. We walked inside, past the security gaurds, and contemplated taking the tour. Todd didn’t seem interested in that, but he wanted to know who got access to the archives and why. We asked a guy at the information desk, and he said that only researchers can get a card by registering at the James Madison building next door. Well, damn it, we’re researchers. So we went to go see Madison.

The Madison building was completely different from the other buildings we saw. Completely modern architecture, with tall, rectangular marble columns (I forgot to take a pic, but you can see it here]). It had a totally different feel from the Capitol and SCOTUS buildings, which were nouveau-Greek and populist and inviting even in their magnitude. Still, we had been pleasantly surprised by everything so far, and decided to push our luck and try to get LoC cards. After a short registration process (“We are interested in your collection of Plotinus”), we got our library cards.

With our souvenirs in hand, we started down Pennsylvania Ave towards the White House. I have to admit, I was feeling rather patriotic at this point. Walking up to these amazing, important buildings connected me to our political process in a way I haven’t really felt before. Ironic, then, that the first thing to catch our eye, not a block from the Capitol building, was this:

Other points of interest on the walk down:

The Department of Justice was across from the FBI building, which was surrounded by ‘Caution: DO NOT CROSS’ tape. So I crossed the tape and snapped a picture.

Again, there weren’t many people around, which was surprising for the 4th weekend. I saw about as many homeless people as I saw people on Segways.

As we got closer and close to the White House, though, my sense of patriotism dropped off sharply, and we saw some rather sickening displays of nationalistic pride. This one was especially bad:

This was about a block away from the White House, and it was around this point that we started running into tourists by the droves.

The White House itself is totally set off from anything else. It was a total contrast from the Capitol Building 10 blocks away. You can’t get anywhere near it on car, and you can barely see it from the street. Plus, its surrounded by a huge iron fence wrapped in chicken wire. I stuck my arm through to get a picture. Todd commented that this is the picture you always see of the White House, but it is rather misleading. In fact, the White House is totally surrounded by other big, menacing buildings, and is rather dwarfed by them in the skyline. Its very apparent from the Washington Monument, but you never really see that picture.

We decided to try and walk around the building and see what it looked like from the north side. On the way, we passed the monsterous, menacing Executive Office Building, which was an eye sore, and filled me with contempt for the executive branch. In front of the building (again, no pic) is a big ‘1’ in flowers for no concievable reason.

The other side of the White House gave a better view of the building, and there were some protesters who had set up camp outside. I now wish I had taken a picture of them.

I guess we had walked about 2 miles by this point, and it was around 5 o’clock, so the museums were closed. We went up to E street to eat at some TexMex restaurant (there are a suprising number in the area), and I considered going up to K street, but I didn’t have any explosives on me. We then headed over to the monuments. I’ll continue there in the next post.