Wednesday: Washington, DC, Day 1

I actually got in from Charlottesville last night with enough time to go out to dinner with the extremely generous friend who is letting me crash. And then I slept on an air mattress! The simple things in life, my friends. Today was the first of possibly several tackling the many free and magnificent museums of the Smithsonian Institution. All y'all should join, it's for a good cause and the magazine is great to boot. First stop of the day was the Library of Congress. I love librarians, and they deserve an edifice like that. A must see, especially for Thomas Jefferson's surviving library on display. Next up, the U.S. Botanic Garden. It's worth wandering around for twenty minutes, but the time would be much better spent at the National Air and Space Museum. I will never get tired of it. Chock full of THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN TO OUTER SPACE. Relics of mankind's greatest triumphs of ingenuity and imagination. So much of what makes us great as a nation and as a species is reflected in there, and so much of the terrors we can inflict on each other. I can't think of a better place to spend Independence Day and to think about our nation. So I spent quite a few hours there, then hit up the Hirshhorn Museum (modern art, guy covering himself with bees), the International Gallery (collage portraits, exhibit of Steve Jobs' patents), one wing of the American History Museum (old house and its many occupants), and then I parked myself on the Mall in front of the Washington Monument and waited for the fireworks show. (Also there was some kind of parade or other, but New Orleans may have turned me into a parade snob.) The show was very impressive, although it looked like a decent number of the fireworks misfired and detonated too low. Tomorrow's schedule: more museums!