After leaving at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, the Fellows made their way to our nation's capitol via charterbus and arrived early Wednesday afternoon. The goal of the trip (I think) is to introduce us to the ways in which city and national politics interact, especially for a city like New York City. The schedule was jam-packed with at least four seminars a day. Highlights included meeting with a former fellow who is now a senior education advisor for Senator Kennedy, a guy from Homeland Security (who pronounced certain key words, like "terrorist" with the exact same inflection and intonation as his boss, Mr. Bush...), and someone from the Department of Treasury. I was childishly excited to see all the national monuments, since I haven't been to DC since I was six, but sadly I didn't even get to see the front of the White House (I only caught a brief glimpse of a side garden from the Treasury Building. However, we did take an evening trip to the Lincoln Memorial. It had been snowing all day and it was absolutely beautiful. I didn't realize everything was all lined up like that - from the steps of Lincoln you can look straight out and see the Mall, the Washington Monument and the Capitol building, all glowing very white against the snow.
Lincoln can be pretty formidable...
Fellows in front of the capitol building, in front of the Museum of the American Indian, our one cultural stop.
Other than the monuments, though, I wasn't all that impressed with DC as a city. It's so square and squat. Everyone told me that there was a law forbidding any building to be taller than the Washington Monument ("Or the capitol building. I can't remember..." was how the conversation usually went) but the internet says it's actually because of a 1910 law restricting a new building's height to be no more than 20 feet (6 m) greater than the width of the adjacent street. Either way, it makes for a streets that look like they're lined with giant air conditioners, or something...
In other news, I am officially qualified for the New York Marathon after completing a pretty slow and painful 10K this morning (I haven't run for close to a month...). So excited. But now I have to stop just talking the talk and start running the run - 11 months to get into shape. I'm going to have to find a club or team to train with, I think, because I need some accountability.
Lincoln can be pretty formidable...
Fellows in front of the capitol building, in front of the Museum of the American Indian, our one cultural stop.
Other than the monuments, though, I wasn't all that impressed with DC as a city. It's so square and squat. Everyone told me that there was a law forbidding any building to be taller than the Washington Monument ("Or the capitol building. I can't remember..." was how the conversation usually went) but the internet says it's actually because of a 1910 law restricting a new building's height to be no more than 20 feet (6 m) greater than the width of the adjacent street. Either way, it makes for a streets that look like they're lined with giant air conditioners, or something...
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