What's up kids? Miss me? Yeah, me neither. I just got back from a whirlwind tour: a week in DC, a weekend camping at Camp Perry Air National Guard Station, and a week in Memphis. I enjoyed all of it, but this has been my first week back, it's already Thursday, and it feels like three weeks of my life disappeared in a blink. At this time next spring, not having that Guard weekend in the middle of it will make all the difference!
I took the fam to DC with me - their first time there - and that was nice, although sharing a hotel room that is usually silent after 7 pm with 4 women (my niece joined us) presented a level of noise until all hours for which I wasn't completely prepared. (I was the only one who had to be to work by 7:30). It was an entirely enjoyable trip though.
We began our visit the Monday before my work started so we did the monuments/National Mall walking tour that day. We were lucky that the forecasted 95 degrees never materialized. It never topped 90 so it wasn't too bad, but we walked our butts off starting at the Smithsonian Metro stop, north to the Mall, then west down the Mall to the Washington Monument, north around the White House, only stopping for a brief break in the White House visitor center air conditioning, west again to the Vietnam and Declaration Signers memorials, the Lincoln Memorial, back east along the south war memorials (Korea, DC War, and JP Jones) and then we finished up that evening at the WWII Memorial before eating dinner back near the hotel in Alexandria.
We did another night at Arlington Cemetery watching two guard changes, a night walking up and down King St. in Old Town, and the ladies spent their days in the hotel pool, the Pentagon City Mall, and the Hirshorn Museum. Then we headed back home after I finished up my program on Friday. I headed off to Guard Saturday and Sunday, then caught a plane to Memphis Monday morning. I didn't make it to Graceland, but I ate a lot of barbecue, and spent my Thursday afternoon (after finishing up work) in the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel.
I was there by about 1:00 and figured I'd breeze through and maybe even get to Graceland before I had to be at the airport by 6. Though I'd seen most of the video footage on display, the level of depth of the other displays was completely engrossing, and for a white guy who is rather fond of his homeland, more than a little embarrassing. One video I hadn't seen was of the treatment of black diners protesting by sitting in a whites only diner. How those folks remained as passive as they did amazes me. That's strength, courage, and a payment made that most of us never even think to repay. The big names have been immortalized, as they should, but the names of a lot of other courageous folks are long forgotten.
Another exhibit that caught my attention was a recording of the phone call between President Kennedy and Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett after Ole Miss refused to admit James Meredith. Not only did Barnett flat out lie to the President, he sounded like some spoiled teenager speaking disrespectfully to a parent.
I'll admit to all the Bush bashing I've done on this stupid old 'blog, but if he were to call my office on the phone, you bet your ass I'd be calling him "sir" and trying to find a way to do whatever he asked. Barnett didn't seem to grasp who he was talking to or what he was arguing about. I was in the main building for almost 3hours. Standing between the rooms MLK Jr. occupied that day was more than a little creepy, but nowhere near as creepy as what came next.
The self guided tour ends after you go across the street to the boarding house where James Earl Ray rented a room. The display there turns all CSI on you, which helps wash some of the embarrassment from your brain after being reminded of just how stupid we can be as a group. I'm not much of a conspiracy theory guy, but the collection of details, evidence, and information on display there aroused more than a little doubt about the idea of Ray as a deranged loner acting completely on his own.
If you claim to love this country, you have to spend some time there. Beale Street takes some of the sting off of wondering which side of the civil rights movement you'd have been caught up in if you had been alive back then. It's easy to see how stupid people were back then, but times have changed significantly and I'm afraid I'm not so sure how I would have acted without 40 years of hindsight between me/now and society back then. I'd like to think my sense of fairness and justice is inherent and would have prevailed had I been born a generation earlier, but I just don't know. It was a great lesson in the importance of history lest we repeat the same mistakes.
Anyhoo, it's past my bedtime. Type at ya later.
Luth
