Supreme Court

This past Wednesday, we went to the Supreme Court.  Unfortunately, we didn't get to meet any Justices, but it was still awesome to see it.  The architecture, like most government buildings in DC, was very impressive.  There was so much marble!  We did get to sit in on a short lecture by someone from the curator's office, while seated in the courtroom.

While I was there, I just kept thinking that I was sitting in one of the most influential rooms in the country, the location of Brown v. Ed., Roe v. Wade, as well as other landmark cases.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures while in the courtroom, but I did get this blurry one from the doorway:

Signs of the Time

One of the most entertaining parts of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was the variation in the signs that people made for it. The following are some of my favorites that I spotted while I was there:

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear

As many of you know, the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was this past weekend. I could not pass up the opportunity to go, and it did not disappoint. We arrived on the Mall around 10:00, two hours before the rally officially started. There were already thousands of people there, and we ended up not that close to the stage. But fortunately, we positioned ourselves in from of two jumbotron televisions and could see all the action on them.








During the rally, we saw some interesting individuals. A lot of people made signs, mostly jokes about politics or completely unrelated to anything. I have never been to an event that had so many people at it. I believe estimates claim that there were roughly 215,000 people at the rally. This number doesn’t really surprise me.









The entire rally was packed with celebrities. Besides Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, stars included Don Novello (of SNL fame), Sam Waterson (Law and Order), Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman (Mythbusters), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The Mythbusters led the crowd in “experiments”, collectively making the same sounds simultaneously, performing massive versions of “the wave”, and having the crowd simultaneously jump. Sam Waterson read a very funny poem by Colbert about fear.




Musicians included The Roots, Sheryl Crow, Jeff Tweedy, Tony Bennett, John Legend, Kid Rock, Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), and Ozzy Osbourne. More than half of these were unannounced prior to the rally, leading to collective surprise when they would take the stage. The most remarkable time this happened was when Yusuf Islam came on stage to sing “Peace Train”, supporting Jon Stewarts message of sanity. He was dramatically interrupted by Colbert who brought Ozzy Osbourne on stage to perform “Crazy Train”. The two continued to “duel”, before finally embracing and walking off stage together.













Stewart and Colbert gave out awards to individuals who demonstrated sanity and fear, respectively. One recipient of the sanity award included the “dude, you have no Qur’an” guy. A recipient of the fear award was all the news stations that didn’t allow their staff to attend the rally. Since none of them were there, the award went to someone more courageous, a 7 year old girl.
But it wasn’t all a joke.












Well, it kind of was.

Jon Stewart claimed that his main goal was to put on a good show and for people to have a good time. But he did talk for about ten minutes about his intentions for putting on the rally. You can read the full speech here, but I’ll put some of the parts that intrigued me here.

"This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies. But unfortunately one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country’s 24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder."

"We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is–on the brink of catastrophe–torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!"

"If we amplify everything we hear nothing."
He was essentially saying that the media exaggerates and builds up stories in order to gain viewership. That’s not the way it should be, and truthfully, it’s a disservice to the public. And Stewart was not alone in his proclamations. The majority of the people there, as the majority of the people in the country, are fed up and tired. Tired of the government and tired of the media. Tired of conflict. Tired of a lot of blame and excuses, with little action. It is highly unlikely that this rally was meant to inspire drastic changes, but I think it did portray a common message than a lot of people can identify with.

The White House

We recently went on a White House tour, which was pretty awesome.  It was really strange actually being there.  We saw more on the tour than I thought we would, but of course not as much as I would have liked.  The rooms we actually went into during the tour were the Red Room, Blue Room, Green Room, East Hall, and the State Dining Room. 

Red Room

Blue Room

Green Room

East Room

State Dining Room

We peaked into several other rooms, including a library.  Most of the tour was focused on the furniture, portraits, and historical uses of the rooms.  I have to say though, one of the best parts of the tour was being able to leave through the front door of the White House.  It would have been neat to actually see the president, but I guess we can’t ask for too much.



Pentagon

I went on a tour of the Pentagon today.  Unfortunately, we were allowed to bring very little into the building, so I was not allowed to have my camera.  Therefore, there are no fun pictures.  The building is a lot bigger than you think it is.  Our guide gave us a few statistics that put it somewhat in perspective for me.  The Pentagon has more floor space than the Empire State Building, even though the Pentagon has seven floors while the Empire State Building has 102.  The height of the Empire State Building is roughly the same as the length of the Pentagon at its widest point.  So, to clarify, the Pentagon is substantial in size.  We visited the portion of the building struck by Flight 77, which was sad and eerie.  We went to the memorial within the building and then to the larger memorial located outside of the building.

After our tour, we talked to a Colonel who was working in the Pentagon on 9/11.  His office was located 50 yards down from the point of impact.  I have never had a conversation with someone who was not just present during the attacks on 9/11, but also involved in the discussions afterword.  He also discussed his involvement in Iraq, which was very interesting.

Sorry for no pictures.  Hopefully I'll have some fun ones from this weekend.

The Russian Bazaar

Today, I went to St. John the Baptist’s Annual Russian Bazaar.  In essence, it was a small cultural event at the Russian Orthodox Church to celebrate Russian culture through music, food, and booths selling crafts, jewelry, books, and music.  I love Russian culture, so I was very excited when I heard about it.

To eat, I had stroganoff (a beef dish with mushrooms and onions), begos (or bigos – sausage and cabbage), teftel’ki (or tefteli – Russian meatballs), kasha (buckwheat), and a cucumber salad.  To drink I had kvas (a drink with very low alcohol content) and I also had a Baltika (a Russian beer).  After that, I had several Russian style desserts.  Everything was delicious, and it was a nice change from my steady diet of bagels and pasta.

After I ate, I enjoyed some live music.  Several musicians performed renditions of Russian folk songs.  While they played, several people would dance.  It was a lot of fun.

After that, I perused the various stands selling crafts and other items.  As I was looking at some Russian poetry, the man next to me said “I wrote that, you know.”  I look up and see an older man wearing an ushanka staring back at me.  The man, Valentin Fetisoff, and I continued to talk, and he told me about how he got his first album recorded.  He not only writes poems, but also romantic songs.  I bought a CD and listened to it when I got home.  I am really glad I met him because I probably wouldn’t have bought a CD if I didn’t hear the compelling story behind it.  It was also nice just to talk to him; he was a really nice guy.

I also bought this for myself, because I love them:

I had only heard about the bazaar last night and I almost didn’t go today.  I’m really glad I did though.  The food was awesome, the music was great, and it was just a great environment.  It had a very “local” feel to it, which is something you don’t get very often in DC.

The Zoo!

I promised pictures of cute animals, so here they are.  From the National Zoo in DC.