Why You Ought to Visit DC

Oddly enough, there ARE reasons why you should visit Disneyland-on-the-Potomac. There's our wonderful National Zoo (no, not Congress, the other one), the National Mall (now with less police protection and trash collection, thanks to the Sequester), our wonderful array of museums (many still free or low cost*), and lots more.

Including the magnificent Washington National Cathedral**.

Yesterday Agnes and I met up with our friends Kathy (who blogs at Kathy's Peace) and Dick for a very pleasant lunch at 2 Amys Pizzeria in northwest DC, followed by a visit to the National Cathedral - just a short walk away.

The last time I visited the cathedral was in December of 2001, when I took Agnes's niece Lea (who was then an exchange student with a family in Texas, and in town for the holidays) to visit. This time, the weather was much nicer and the Bishop's Garden behind the cathedral was in full bloom. For those of you who don't visit my Facebook page, here are a few pictures to spark your desire to visit one of the most beautiful places in DC ...

This is a view of the cathedral as we approached it from Wisconsin Avenue. Sadly, there's a lot of scaffolding on many parts of the cathedral as they work to repair the damage caused by the August 2011 earthquake, so the symmetrical beauty of the architecture is a little marred ... but it's still a magnificent structure ...

As with all cathedrals, it has many beautiful stained glass windows, including the "Space Widow" that actually has an embedded piece of rock from the moon, returned on one of the Apollo missions. I couldn't get good pictures of the Space Window, but here are a few others ...

I liked this picture because it captured one of the beautiful rose windows and an extra - there's a lot of otherwise-ugly safety netting spread above the interior areas of the cathedral to catch pieces of stone that were loosened during the earthquake. In this picture, you can see the colored light from stained glass windows on the right spilling out onto the netting, adding some beauty to an otherwise jarring element ...

Outside the cathedral is the famous Bishop's Garden, a small, intricately-designed, beautiful garden of trees, flowers, and herbs of all sorts, filled with little niches and benches for quiet contemplation. The combination of floral and herb scents makes even the air beautiful. Here's Agnes at the entrance to the Bishop's Garden ... 

Inside the garden are many interconnected paths that wind through the various areas. This is an overview of part of the garden area ...

 And a closer look at one of the winding pathways ...

This structure is known as the Shadow House Gazebo - a cool, beautiful place to rest and contemplate your surroundings ...

This shows one of the many small statues that dot the garden, with the cathedral in the background. It occurred to me to wonder if the statue was designed to represent the bishop one finds in a chess set ... unfortunately, there was no sign to give us an idea ...

Another view of the Shadow House Gazebo, approaching it along a path lined with herbs and flowers ...

Another beautiful sculpture tucked away in a small nook - the return of the prodigal son ...

Another random pathway under the beautiful blue sky ...

Last picture ... this is the sweeping lawn outside the Bishop's Garden ...

Should you find yourselves in DC and need something to revive your spirits after a day of listening to Congress accomplish nothing but turning your tax dollars into shrill noise, there aren't many better places to go than the National Cathedral.

Just bring sunscreen, depending on the day.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Well, there's the $15 fee to park at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Air and Space Museum, but we won't mention that.

** There is no charge to visit the cathedral, although they request a $10 donation. On-street parking is available but hit-or-miss, and there's an underground parking garage at the cathedral. It's pretty expensive during the week - $16 maximum fee for more than 2 hours, but a flat rate of $9 on Saturday. Plus your car stays in the shade, yee-HAH.

Lesson from Mars

As you know, Dear Readers, I tend to be pretty critical of our government ... at least, of the parts of it that don't work particularly well*. And the GOP in particular has made the denunciation of government into an art form, blaming "big government" for everything that is wrong with the country, and thundering that all will be well if we just shrink the federal government, "get it out of the way," and unleash the power of the private sector.

What gets lost in the noise, though, is the fact that there are some areas in which the government works really well, and some things only a strong, central government can do.

Such as ... say ... going to Mars.

You should take a few minutes to read this wonderful article by David Sirota on Salon.com - Lesson From Mars: Government Works. Mr Sirota makes the very good point that only the government could provide the vision, the funding, and the coordination of effort that made the Mars program possible. The government that is so often denounced as unable to organize a one-car funeral built a sophisticated robot, sent it on a journey of more than 150 million miles, and landed it within 1.5 miles of its intended touchdown spot ... where, within a matter of hours, it was sending back highly-detailed color photographs of another world that humans themselves may never be able to visit.

Now, you can argue (and many will) that the cost of the Mars program represents money better spent on other things**, but I would rather see the money spent on advancing the frontiers of our knowledge than on propping up misogynistic and religiously bigoted governments like those of Afghanistan and Pakistan. And you can also argue (and many will) that a big national government can't do some things as well as a smaller state or local government ... and in many cases, that's true. But as Mr Sirota eloquently states in the conclusion of his article,

"... under the right conditions, we should have confidence that government has the capacity to address serious challenges. After all, if today it can successfully realize a sci-fi-esque goal as fantastical, daunting and complicated as the Mars Curiosity mission, it surely can accomplish objectives on this planet that involve fairly straightforward solutions."

And that's why you and I need to hold our elected officials' feet to the fire and insist on a strong, well-managed government that takes on big challenges and reaches for big solutions. Because ... sometimes ... only a strong and responsive government can do the job.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Congress, for example.

** Such as tax breaks for wealthy "job creators."