Post-pandemic, I’ve had occasion to go to Washington DC relatively frequently, for conferences, as part of my responsibilities as board chair for the Institute for Conservation Leadership, and even for the day to see exhibitions at the National Gallery. It’s an easy flight from Chicago. Although both Sean and I really like DC (I mean with all the museums it’s like free Disneyland for thinking people), we hadn’t really been there intentionally within the context of the National Mall being a unit of the National Park Service.

In both June and August of 2022, during trips to the District, I’d walked through the astounding installation, Raven and the Box of Daylight, by Tlingit artist Preston Singletary at the National Museum of the American Indian. I really wanted Sean to see it, and we were softly looking at weekends to spend in DC. In late summer, while telling Angela about the installation, she mentioned that she had never been to DC. So we three decided to go for a weekend to see the installation, to check off some National Mall stamps in our Passports to the National Parks, and to see the Space Shuttle Discovery, something all three of us had wanted to do ever since the Space Shuttles had been decommissioned. We chose a weekend in October, when it wouldn’t be too hot in the District.

We took an evening flight from O’Hare to National Airport on Thursday, October 13 [2022] after getting a glass of Prosecco and some Frontera (per tradition).

On the ground, we glimpsed some of the lit-up monuments as we rode a Lyft to our AirBnB townhouse in the Shaw neighborhood. It was pretty perfect for us with two bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a little backyard.

Next morning, Friday, October 14 [2022], we had coffee at the townhouse before heading down to the National Mall via Metro at 10am.

Singletary’s immersive installation depicts the Tlingit tale of how Raven, once a white spiritual being, brought light to a world bathed in darkness. He schemed to be reborn as human child. Once accomplished, he convinced his human grandfather, the clan leader, to give him three boxes, one containing the stars, one the moon, and one the sun. Raven child released each in turn, bathing the world in light. As punishment, after he changed back into his winged form, the clan leader held him in the smoke and soot of the fire until he turned into the black, mortal bird.

Bathed in light, the Animal People, Sky People, and Water People became the animals we know, and the most stubborn among them became humans.

Using a non-traditional medium, glass, Singletary both depicts the story, its characters, and its key moments, and also recreates traditional Tlingit objects like baskets, hats, and rattles, usually fashioned from wood, bone, reeds, and other natural materials.

Individually, the works are astounding. Taken together as a narrative installation, they are nearly overwhelming.

The only thing that marred our visit was that the projection system that served as atmosphere throughout the installation had a breakdown when we were there. The room with the three boxes of light, the climactic moment, was just a blue screen. I was disappointed that Angela and Sean experienced the installation this way.

Afterward, we had an early hearty lunch (brunch?) in the museum cafeteria, which emphasizes indigenous foodways. For instance, I had shrimp ceviche, jicama salad, corn chips, fry bread, and prickly pear juice.

We didn’t linger at the National Museum of the American Indian because we had timed entry tickets for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Out on the Mall, Angela had her “it’s all here in real life” moment as she took it in.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture, which none of us had been to before, was very busy. And it wasn’t even the weekend. Despite our timed tickets, we waited in a long line outside. Without our timed tickets, there would have been zero chance of getting in at all.

Once inside, we headed up to the fourth floor, which focuses on visual arts, food, fashion, crafts, music, and the performing arts. We began with visual art, and it packed a punch.

Sean was really taken with a tiny flag by Basquiat.

And we were all overwhelmed by Amy Sherald’s gorgeous, heartrending portrait of Breonna Taylor.

We moved into the “Smithsonian as America’s attic” section, with artifacts from famous Black Americans, including the dress Marian Anderson wore when she performed at the Lincoln Memorial.

In 1939, contralto Anderson was supposed to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington DC, but she was barred from doing so by the Daughters of the American Revolution because she was Black. So instead, in part through the influence of then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Anderson performed a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

After spending a long time on the fourth floor, we descended to the entrance to the museum’s history section, mostly below ground. The line to enter was forty-five minutes long, and we realized that we would have to rush through it to then make our timed entry at the Air and Space Museum, so we decided to forego it this time. None of us was particularly bothered. Not that we didn’t want to see it, but Angela brought her “any first visit to somewhere is to get a taste before a return” attitude to the trip. True enough. Sean and I have since been back and experienced the museum’s profoundly moving history section.

On to the National Air and Space Museum, where we were greeted at the entrance by the original model of the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek.

Easily the highlight of the museum was the section about the Apollo missions.

My parents spent a combined seventy-six years working for American Airlines, so I enjoyed some of the early AA planes on display.

And the Wright Brothers’ flyer was cool.

That evening, we grabbed a drink at the bar next door to our townhouse before getting fantastic takeout from FishScale. We also got some mead they were selling, which Angela and I had a bit too much of after dinner while Sean ran out and fetched us four pounds of chocolate.

Next morning, Saturday, October 15 [2022], our plan was to walk to the National Mall in time for the 1pm Ranger Talk at the Lincoln Memorial.

But first brunch at Nina May.

After our pumpkin- and squash-forward autumn brunch, we wandered toward the White House.

And then we headed toward the Mall through the Constitution Gardens.

At the Lincoln Memorial it wasn’t obvious where we were supposed to be for the Ranger Talk. One-o-clock came and went and nothing happened. So I went and inquired at the kiosk for the Vietnam Memorial because it had a National Park Service Arrowhead. They apologized, and called a Ranger.

Ranger Jan came over and offered an interpretive talk to a small group of us.

She focused on the planning, design, and symbolism of the building’s architecture.

Because they were not yet states when the Memorial was constructed with the other forty-eight states incorporated onto its stone festoons, Alaska and Hawaii have a special plaque on the plaza in front of the Memorial.

Ranger Jan took us up the steps and showed us the inscription making where Martin Luther King, Jr. stood when he delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington.

After a discussion of the March on Washington, we turned and regarded Lincoln, and Ranger Jan invited us inside.

She interpreted the continued symbolism of the Memorial’s interior and the text of the Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural etched into the walls. Unfortunately between Ranger Jan being masked and the echoey cacophony in the Memorial, it was difficult to make out what she was saying.

Despite its being so familiar, it was moving to be there in person.

Weirdly, we got our stamps for the Lincoln Memorial at the kiosk for the Korean War Memorial. Then we hightailed it over to the edge of the Tidal Basin for the Ranger Talk at the MLK Memorial.

But with the delay at Lincoln, we only caught the end of the interpretive talk. (I feel like the Park Service could time these out better so that folks can easily do a cycle throughout the day.)

I like how Dr. King gazes across the Tidal Basin at the Jefferson Memorial, an embodiment in space of the centuries’ long struggle for a more perfect union.

I also hadn’t realized the concept of Dr. King’s emergence from a block itself sliced from a larger edifice.

After stamping our passports in the Visitor Center, we continued on to the FDR Memorial, which I had first visited way back in the previous Millennium.

We waited near the first plaza with a medium-sized group for the talk. Soon Ranger Matt was guiding us through the plazas depicting FDR’s four terms as president.

It really is a gorgeous Memorial because it incorporates the context of the big events that defined FDR’s tumultuous years in office. And it does so not with a neoclassical symbolism like the Lincoln Memorial from 1922, but with more accessible visual imagery, grounding everything.

And the final, monumental depiction of FDR depicts a man at the end of his life careworn from leading the nation through the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Still, though, it’s difficult not to feel conflicted at the FDR Memorial having now visited Tule Lake National Monument, one of the internment sites of Japanese Americans during World War II, a grotesque and appalling injustice that will always mar FDR’s legacy.

(Aside: The last time I was at the FDR Memorial, in the summer of 2001, the Boy Scouts National Jamboree was being held in Alexandria. My then boyfriend and I watched three of them climb up and put their arms around Eleanor Roosevelt and make lewd gestures. We rolled our eyes and ironically remarked that boy it sure was a good thing that gays were banned from Scouting because they might be a bad influence on these upstanding young men.)

We continued on around the Tidal Pool.

Before a fairly perfunctory look in the Jefferson Memorial, we looked back at MLK from this side of the Tidal Basin.

After a nod at Jefferson, we walked back toward the Mall proper.

It was already 4:30 as we crossed the Mall near the Washington Monument. Most of the Smithsonian museums would be closing soon, but not the one that has rapidly become my favorite, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. It’s open late, so we decided to go check it out.

Inside, one of the exhibitions was the winners of the Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today competition. There were many astonishing works in the show. Here are three:

We will make a point to return for the Outwin 2025.

Here are some highlights from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection that caught our eyes that day:

The Obama Portraits were still on tour, which was disappointing. But we did get to see Shepard Fairey’s original. (Angela had already seen the Obamas in Chicago, and Sean and I have since seen them during a return visit to DC.)

After a long day of walking around, we had a pretty low key evening. We took the Metro over to the food stalls at Western Market for dinner. Then we watched Star Trek: Lower Decks back at the townhouse.

Next morning, Sunday, October 16 [2022], our big plan was to see the Space Shuttle before flying home in the evening. Incredibly, our AirBnB host let us know that there was no one coming in that day after us, so we could leave whenever we wanted since the cleaning folks wouldn’t be coming that day. So cool!

We had Eritrean coffee and breakfast at the Roasted Boon Co. in Shaw, and the hopped in a Lyft.

The Lyft deposited us in suburban Virginia, near Dulles Airport, at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Udvar-Hazy is where the spectacular crafts in the collection are housed.

There were many interesting aircraft on display, but we were there for Space Shuttle Discovery. For we three space nerds who grew up in the 1980s, this was the absolutel best.

Below are probably too many glamor shots of the Space Shuttle.

Space Shuttle Discovery was in service for twenty-seven years, from 1984 to 2011, and it flew thirty-nine missions, including the one that launched the Hubble Space Telescope. It also flew the “Return to Flight” missions after the Challenger and Columbia disasters. It was also the first Space Shuttle to be piloted by a woman, Eileen Collins in 1995.

Also cool, the quarantine facility from Apollo 11.

We managed to pull ourselves away from Discovery long enough to watch the facility’s IMAX film, Journey to Space, narrated by Patrick Stewart. And Sean and I died in a flight simulator. Oops.

It wasn’t all thrills, though. The facility also houses the Enola Gay. It’s sobering to gaze on the machine that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

I did also geek out at the Concorde. Sean and I have a bottle opener shaped as the Concorde that my mother got to commemorate the supersonic plane’s flight to Detroit way back in the 1970s.

More shots of Discovery:

Sean in particular was impressed by the SR-71 Blackbird.

Afterward, we took a Lyft back to the townhouse, collected our bags, and headed to DCA for our flight home.

And when we got there, Elsa was pleased to see us. Although we had only been gone for the weekend, so she had no need to complain too much.