Allie came home for Christmas and we took a two-day mini-break in Washington, DC.
Saturday, December 22
I woke at 6:30am to get same-day tickets for the African American History Museum, which we got for 1:30pm. The museum’s pass system is a bit of a pain in the neck, but it’s worked twice for me and once for Jenny, so I guess it makes some sense. I went back to bed and we eventually headed into town around 11:30am.
We headed first to our hotel, the River Inn in Foggy Bottom, to drop stuff off and park our car. Our room happened to be ready which was a bonus, but we were there for only a few minutes before heading over to the museum. We took a moment to grab a fun photo with the Washington Monument, now a new favorite.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
I’d been to African American History Museum earlier in the year with Laurie, but it was the first visit for Barb and Allie. Allow me a little discursion in describing our visit. I’m still coming to terms with my feelings about the museum and, inevitably, with my attitudes toward race. I’ve got some baggage, I know (see my Confederate outfit, for starters). The museum is designed to confront and force you to examine your beliefs. In that, it succeeds. Does it give you the tools or information to adequately come to a full understanding, resolution or answer what is “right”? Not really, but that’s asking way too much of an institution to achieve in an afternoon visit. The fact that the museum exists and pokes at many painful questions is probably enough.
First off, my apologies for not using the proper name for museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Is there a clunkier name for a museum in all of Washington? Though accurate in describing its contents, the name smacks of being cobbled together by a committee and reeks a little of overly solicitous political correctness. But even in raising this point I feel like I’m siding with Trumpy conservatives and their Neanderthal way of thinking. Such is the world in which we live today.
We decided to first hit the Sweet Home Cafe to scope it out before plunging into the museum proper. The cafe has earned a reputation as offering the best Smithsonian museum food, and I’m a believer. The cafeteria style serving areas are themed (“The Agricultural South”, “The Creole Coast”, etc.) but it ends up being a lot of reasonably well-prepared comfort food items including fried chicken, ribs, and gumbo. We ended up sharing a fried catfish lunch with grits and hoppin’ john. A little expensive, but one plate satisfies the three of us and was all very tasty.
To get our actual museum visit underway, we headed down the elevator as recommended to the lowest basement of the museum and back in time to work our way up. The metaphor is to take you into the bowels of a slave ship to start your journey through African American history, and climb up to a the present day and toward the future. It’s a fair enough metaphor but the practical result is that the first few “centuries” are packed with people in dark areas trying to read and experience a dense display of exhibits. Since I’d done it before, I skipped ahead to the Reconstruction era and picked up from there. Before too long, Barb and Allie caught up and we essentially navigated the museum each in our own way. I had more time to see the 3rd floor “Communities” and the 4th floor “Culture” exhibits. We thought we might be done after 3 hours or so but we ended up staying until the museum closed at 5:30. I feel like I’ve now seen most of the museum, but still not 100%.
A few things I learned, or nearly learned:
- I’m still trying to understand the flow of people out of Africa to the Americas. Who went where, when, and why? I’ve seen the numbers before, but I’m still astonished to see that while 400,000 slaves came to North America between 1500-1865, more than 10 times that many went to the Caribbean and South America, each. It makes the North American “problem” seem smaller in comparison. Should this museum be telling a more all-encompassing story? I also have a hard time reconciling the 400,000 with the chart of the enslaved population in the “Deep South” from 1810-1860. How does the population grow from under 240,000 in 1810 to over 2.2 million in 50 years? Where are Virginia and the Carolinas? Not the Deep South? And Kentucky and Arkansas are? These are nits, I recognize, but it speaks to parts of the story that are still untold or not well explained. I’m not hinting at a conspiracy, but I’d like to see a clearer picture of the flow of people over time, and a better explanation of the economics driving what was essentially a business. People weren’t moving of their own volition, they were being bought and sold. I guess, as callous as it is, I’d like to see more about the economics and business of slavery. What was the dollar flow that was driving the trade, and who benefited?
- Was the American slave trade unique compared with the Caribbean, South America or Europe? How does it compare to other slave-trading societies through history? Arab traders? Vikings? Romans? I would like to see a little bit more of a global historical context. Granted, this is the museum of African American history, but I feel like a larger picture would be useful.
- I was surprised to learn in the sports area of the Communities floor that Paul Robeson was a star athlete, outstanding student, pro football player and Columbia law school graduate before becoming famous as a singer and actor. And I wasn’t really aware of his record of activism and being blacklisted in the McCarthy era. He is deserving of a renewed movie or documentary. I see that James Earl Jones did a one-man show and TV movie in 1979. I’d like to track it down; maybe I should get Amazon Prime after all.
- Also in the sports area, there’s a little baseball stadium setup and film to feature the Negro leagues. The film seems to vilify Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers owner who brought Jackie Robinson into the major leagues, not as a progressive advocate of racial justice (see Ken Burns’ Baseball or the Jackie Robinson movie, 42), but as a hard-nosed businessman who killed the competition of the Negro Leagues. While I grant that Rickey may not have been a progressive saint, I don’t think his motivation was to squash the Negro Leagues. Still, the exhibit points out the central importance of one’s perspective and the butterfly effect of unintended consequences. There are always at least two sides to a story; what matters is the storyteller and recognizing the spin. It’s rather like hitting a curveball in baseball. Not many can do it reliably.
- There were several interactive exhibits in the music area where, on the one hand I’d like to spend more time on my own or in private, and on the other hand were both great places to watch others, especially kids, having fun. One was a big digital mixing board where you could pick out samples of classic tracks and overlay various beats and effects. I watched a dad and a couple of kids having a fine old time with a Stevie Wonder track. This should be a home game, and probably is…but I’ve never figured out how to properly play on Garage Band or other apps. The other area was essentially a digital jukebox of classic R&B, soul, funk and hip hop songs. When I went in, the room had about a dozen people of all ages with at least 3 or 4 people acting as DJs picking songs that would play for maybe 30 seconds of communal nostalgia before the next song popped up. There was a nice group vibe in the room and it made for a kind of sweet culmination of a long visit to the museum. The top two floors are a testament to creativity, skills and joy that has been produced despite all the pain and suffering of the lower floors of history.
In the final minutes before the museum closed, I snapped a photo of a nice sunset through one of the few windows in the upper floors. It’s an interesting design choice that this museum in the middle of the Mall with potentially superb views of the Washington Monument, White House and Jefferson Memorial, has very few windows and is mostly covered with a metal lattice that is perhaps meant to evoke both a jungle canopy, prison bars and shackles. As we left the museum, we took another tourist shot in the gloaming.
From the education and inspirational, we shifted gears toward the totally indulgent. We went back to the hotel for a short rest before heading to dinner. I’d made reservations months before at Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab restaurant near the White House. I have fond childhood memories of Joe’s Stone Crab restaurant in Miami Beach which was a destination for special dinners with my Mom and Dad (I hadn’t quite figured out the corporate relationship between these restaurants until Wikipedia enlightened me; Joe’s Seafood is a licensed spinoff by a Chicago company). Plus, we grew spoiled on fresh stone crabs from Tom in his fisherman days in the Florida Keys. This restaurant is an expense account destination. An appetizer plate of 6 stone crabs clocks in at about $60, and the waiter-recommended dry aged steak is about $80. We went for the stone crabs and also a couple of grilled tiger shrimp as appetizers; both were as good as we could have wanted. I opted for a not-dry-aged but still very nice ribeye, Barb got fried shrimp, and Allie chose a fish, Branzino. Add in some drinks and desserts and it totaled up to a hefty bill, but we exited with about a week’s worth of leftovers and overall it was pretty much worth it. Once in a long while. I will add that for all that eating, none of us slept very well that night. A small lesson learned, soon to be forgotten.
Sunday, December 23
Though we were still mostly full from the night before, we had a plan for the day and that plan included brunch, so after sleeping in and enjoying our little suite for a bit, we headed out at 11am to District Commons nearby. Our brunch was decent; I got a charcuterie and cheese board from which I saved some cheese and salami for a later snack. My assignment for the afternoon was to drive home to feed the cats and retrieve our mail and newspapers. Barb and Allie rested up for an afternoon tea at the Park Hyatt hotel, also nearby. Though advertised as a buffet of fingerfoods, Barb is dismayed to learn that it’s not and settles for a pot of tea and a scone. Sometimes you can’t trust the Internet.
We had tickets that evening for a Second City production, Love Factually, at the Kennedy Center. On the Friday before our weekend, I learned that the Kennedy Center was also hosting a free singalong Messiah in the Concert Hall with orchestra and choir. The Messiah started at 6pm and our show was at 8pm, so we decided to give it a try. I drove back from cat duty and got in line at the Kennedy Center a bit before 5pm. The line snaked all the way around the building to the riverfront terrace. Fortunately the day was mild and the views were nice, so I didn’t mind. Barb and Allie made it over from tea at about 5:45 as we were able to get decent seats on the upper level of the Concert Hall.
This was a first time Messiah for all of us. We enjoyed the spectacle of the first few pieces and thought of Laurie who often sings in such productions. Many other folks had full Messiah sheet music books and others had the words. Allie figured out how to get the libretto online and she and Barb followed along. It soon became clear that there were many, many “songs” and each one involved a great deal of repetition. After about 30 minutes we began to wonder how long the whole thing was going to be. I asked Allie to to find the full performance length and we learned it is roughly 3 hours. We didn’t have time for whole thing and bailed at first intermission, but not before being vigorously shushed by the grumpy people behind us for whispering and giggling too much. Zealots.
Allie and I wandered around the Kennedy Center for a bit (Allie hadn’t been before, at least not in her memory) while Barb camped outside the Concert Hall, reading and sort of following the concert on a TV screen. We came back to collect Barb just in time to hear the Alleluia Chorus from the hallway. Mission accomplished! So much for our bout with religious culture. We will likely rot in hell.
The Love, Factually production was a lightweight spoof, making indiscriminate fun of the original film and all manner of Hallmark Christmas movies. Highbrow entertainment it was not, but a fun evening, as advertised. We were mostly happy not to be chosen for one of the bits of audience improvisation.
Back in the hotel room, we had an evening snack of wine, cheese, including some of Laurie’s fine gift from Spain, and the remaining charcouterie. And Harry Potter on TV. A fine day for all.
Monday-Tuesday, December 24-25
The hotel restaurant served a nice breakfast. Continental buffet spread for Barb, featuring bacon which I’ve never seen on the Continent. A nice omelette for me. Then we checked out and headed home, taking a driving tour through the revitalized/gentrified Wharf and Navy Yards areas of DC.
To round out the rest of the weekend, for the record, that afternoon I made mashed potatoes for our Christmas dinner while Allie and Barb each got some work done. We drove back down to Virginia for Christmas Eve dinner with the Diamonds, in the tradition of Mary’s mom, Jessie O’Neill.
We had a quiet Christmas, with Manny making the greatest haul. We had the Staffords over for a pleasant Christmas roast dinner, and had leftovers that lasted into the New Year, by virtue of my first crack at beef barley soup. We had a nice Boxing Day lunch with Dan and David at Black Kettle in Catonsville, then Allie headed back to Boston that evening. All in all, a mighty fine Christmas 2018.
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