In greater depth

Most of our DC vacation was just vacation time: walking 'round, seeing museums, hanging out in a different place than where we usually hang out. It's vacation, and I'm guessing Friday's listing of where we went was about as boring to you as any slide show of anybody's vacation ever could be.

So I'll continue with more details about my favorite couple of places on the trip...the Library of Congress and the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).

Before we headed to DC, we'd both gotten fairly middling reviews of the NMAI, and our initial explorations didn't do much to dissuade that. The top floor covered the universal beliefs of many Indian tribes - their cosmologies, their religions - and while each each presented very attractively, I couldn't help looking at each one the way I would a two- or three-paragraph summary and drawing of either Greek mythology or current religion and wondering just how such crazy thoughts came to be a full belief system. You're saying that a wolf coughed out the entire world which landed into water and now floats on an island supported by a giant salmon? Really? Okay...

The top floor also held an exhibit of the history of the American Indian as Europeans came to North America. The most interesting part of this was the introductory video explaining that some of the comments within the exhibit would challenge our beliefs and cause us to explore what we already knew. The comments were, as the speaker said, one person's belief system held at the time of the exhibit's creation. It was an interesting way to acknowledge but defuse any controversy right at the beginning. The exhibit went on to compress a half dozen centuries of history into an exhibit through which you could walk in about two minutes if you didn't read everything. Far too short a shrift.

Things didn't get exciting until we headed down a floor and skimmed the exhibit on the current lives of Indians around North America, how they were keeping their traditions, languages, beliefs alive while leading lives that didn't seem terrifically different from what I would expect most non-Indians in the same areas to be leading.

Then came Indian/Not Indian, a retrospective (also covered by NPR on the works of Fritz Scholder, an artist - painter, sculptor primarily - who grew up with a German name and proceeded to become - according to the exhibit - one of the most important Indian artists working. He initially refused to paint Indians, having grown up - by his own admission - non-Indian and feeling that he had nothing to say about the Indians that he knew - or at least knew of.

Luckily, for us, he came to become a fabulous painter, portraying Indians often as contradictions caught between a huge legend and a very tangible reality. The work in the exhibit that impressed me most was Indian with beer can, something I found very reminiscent of Ralph Steadman's work.

One floor down, then, was an even more impressive exhibit: Ramp It Up: Skateboard Culture in Native America. The exhibit showed a history of skateboarding in Native American cultures from the first skate days, tacking skate wheels on the bottoms of small surfboard-style boards through to the current trend of some Indian-founded companies using an impressive sense of graphic design to keep their Indian heritage alive and pass on some of that heritage to the youngest skaters in many Indian communities.

This one image, in particular, struck me. It was shown on a skateboard as well as a t-shirt for sale by the exhibit. I'm thinking pretty strongly about getting a t-shirt or hoodie with the design on it.

Below the Ramp It Up exhibit, on the main floor of the museum, was Mitsitam Cafe, effectively the museum's food court. This was the only part of the museum that people had actually recommended to us - somewhat understandably as the other two exhibits that impressed us were temporary exhibits that others probably didn't see on their previous visits. The food court is, admittedly, a bit of a mess as directional signs are lacking, but the mess is worth the work as the food here is outstanding and reasonably priced.

The cafe is broken up into five regional cuisines: the Northern Woodlands, South American, Meso America, the Great Plains, and the Northwest Coast and Columbia Plateau. Each provided diners with an opportunity to taste what the typical diet of that region would have been in pre-Eupopean days, and everything that I tried - two meals of mine and two of The Girl's - was amazingly tasty. The dishes change every few days, but feel free to ask the servers what they would recommend as the labels can be a bit confusing. (For visitors like Tony & Jennette's info, meals can range anywhere from $7 to $20 depending on your choices. It's a solid value for the amount of and quality of food, though.)

And then came the Library of Congress.

The awesome, fabulous, amazing Library of Congress.

We began in the Madison Building - one of three that make up the Library of Congress now. The Madison isn't the building typically visited by tourists. That's the Jefferson, and it's amazing, but we started at the Madison by taking an elevator down two floors to the basement and turning the corner to room B03.

See, it turns out that the Library of Congress (henceforth, the LOC) has too many books. Every book that has LOC information on the verso has to send three copies to the LOC, and lots of people who publish books without this information also send their books to the LOC. Were the LOC to keep all of these copies, they would have quickly run out of room. So any books that they don't want - or books that they simply don't want all three copies of - go to the Surplus Books Program and are made available to any school or non-profit institution - like PHS!

So The Girl and I each got letters from our building principals stating that we were, indeed, representatives from such non-profit institutions, faxed them to Joe Mahar - check the bottom of the surplus page, that's him - and took our copies in to Joe. Joe is a smallish man who clearly spends a lot of time alone and who really seemed to enjoy having people visiting who would talk to him and were impressed and geeked out (that would be me and The Girl) to be taking books from the Library of Congress.

Joe sent me to the bay that started the month with about five thousand surplus books from which we got to choose. The Girl got to start on the book carts with elementary-appropriate books. After we'd spent enough time searching the half-month-old bay, Joe let us head to the next month's bay, from which no one else had yet gotten to choose. He likes to help out first time visitors, he said, by giving us a little special chance to search.

And we geeked right out for three or so hours picking our books - most of which will find their way to school with us, either into classroom libraries or school libraries.

But we were pretty near our limit already with what we could take with us on the train, so we had no way to get all of these books back with us. We'd have to pass by a bunch of the books we wanted. At least we would until Joe stepped in to save the day. It turns out that there's a plan already in place to let Senators or Representatives take care of the shipping of the books. All we had to do, Joe said, was to check with our Senators or Rep and get a mailing frank - an address label with the Congressperson's signature on it.

The next morning, we headed to the Hart Senate office building to Sherrod Brown's office to get a few mailing franks. We Senator's staff took care of things quickly for us, and we headed back to Joe's B03.

We didn't have to pack up the books, just stack them up on a side shelf, and the LOC's staff would take care of the packing, wrapping, and shipping for us. Sure, the books would be sent media rate, but I'm all cool with that. It'll take a few weeks to get things to us, but no worries there.

(Except that the books showed up today, just a weeks and a half after we chose our books. Awesome!)

None of this even mentions the awesomeness of the Jefferson building and it's ceilings, statuary, exhibits (Jefferson's recreated library, Bob Hope, Pete Seeger, Creating the United States), and phenomenal reading room. The Jefferson building of the LOC was easily the most beautiful building that we saw on our trip. (Buildings also in the running: Reynolds Center, National Museum of Art east building)