Washington D.C. 2022 Day 1

By Barry & Allyn Shulman
On November 8, 2022
3 Comments.

A marvelous view of the White House awaited us as we checked in to our hotel room last night.

A Capitol tour was our main daytime activity. We started with a well-done movie. I found it interesting that they promoted the theme that because of Congress “the right to vote is expanded and protected”. We seem to be going in the opposite direction lately.

It looks even more amazing by night.

We were not able to visit the Supreme Court. The building is certainly awesome from outside.

We took a night tour to see and learn about many D.C. memorials. Touring at night created a special view of each and certainly the crowds were materially less.

The size of the Lincoln Memorial is hard to comprehend without actually seeing it in person.

Daniel Chester French, who sculpted the statue of Lincoln for the memorial depicted Lincoln with his left hand clenched to symbolize his determination to see the Civil War through to its conclusion and his right hand open to represent a desire to welcome the vanquished back into the Union without vengeance.

Lincoln’s March 4, 1865 speech is carved into the wall. Oops!!! There is a typo.

This is the view back to the White House from the Lincoln Memorial.We found the city particularly clean. As we walked, we could see leaves falling and people sweeping them up almost as quickly. The roads are clean and wide. There are police and security all over. Yet, not unlike other cities all over the world, homeless have no trouble just sleeping virtually any place. Here we were walking past The Dept of Justice and the officers didn’t bother the man sleeping on the bench.

It seems like wherever you turn, there is the Washington Monument.

We loved the MLK Memorial although the statue created quite a bit of controversy. There was significant outcry about the entire project. One issue was that the artist was not an Afro-American, but a Chinese National who previously made a sculpture memorializing Mao. Another was why was MLK be shown so sternly?

For decades all sculptures in D.C. were less than the 19½ foot Statue of Freedom which is on top of the Capitol. The theory is nothing can be bigger than freedom. MLK is 30 feet high.

FDR was a big fan of Thomas Jefferson. He had two wide swaths of trees cut down in order to see The Jefferson Memorial from his window in the White House.