Globe Corner Blogs

Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian - photo by Cecilia

I count 39 museums and galleries in the Washington DC’s Official Visitor’s Guide, and I read that the Smithsonian alone has 19 separate museums. It is my last day here, and I have only one afternoon to see something of this city. When I was in DC two years ago, we visited the Mall, the White House, the Natural History Museum, and walked Constitution Avenue. With the “basics” covered on this rainy afternoon, the obvious selection was a museum. I just had to choose from those 39+ options. Looking at the map in the city’s visitors guide, I discover the National Museum of American History (one of the Smithsonian’s museums), and I decide to visit when I  read that Julia Child’s kitchen and Kermit the Frog are there.

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My first years in Washington, DC, I was skeptical about all the cherry blossom hoopla that swirls around our nation’s capital every spring. We had a cherry tree back home in Ohio, and for the two days its sparse blossoms clung to the knotted limbs, it looked as if a rather pathetic spring had sprung. So why was it such a big deal here?

Though I had avoided the Cherry Blossom Festival initially, frightened off by the rumors of roving hordes of tourists, one year I broke down and traveled to the Tidal Basin in Potomac Park. It was early spring (peak bloom is usually around April 4th), and I was in short sleeves. …And so were the roving hordes of tourists. As I struggled out of the Metro station, carefully tip-toeing around squealing little kids, I began to doubt my choice of Sunday afternoon activities. But as soon as I neared the water my doubt dissolved.

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View from where MLK delivered the "I Have a Dream" speech

The Reflecting Pool was frozen over last week when I visited Washington DC, my first time back since moving away three years ago. The trees lining the center aisle of the mall were stripped of their leaves. The tourists, spouting cloudy breath in all languages, were heavily bundled against the cold. None of this was new, though: when I lived there the Washington Monument was my point of reference while walking through the city, and I had many times stood at the feet of Abraham Lincoln, trying to comprehend it all.

It’s hard to wrap your head around all the history that is behind the building of these monuments and all the history that took place around them. I stood on the tile carved to inform visitors that it was the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood to deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech. How difficult it was that bitter afternoon to stand there being bustled about by fellow tourists and imagine a steamy August day in DC, 1963.

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