I grew up in Baltimore, an hour north of the nation’s capital. Spending the day in Washington, D.C. was never a very big deal. In fact, many of our school field trips were spent in the Air and Space Museum, driving by the Jefferson Memorial and walking up the steps to the massive statue of Lincoln sitting on his chair. it wasn’t until later that I realized these were the very same steps where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous “I have a dream” speech.
One of my earliest memories of Washington, D.C. was my mother taking me to the Library of Congress. Since then, I frequented the city for various purposes. I have sung several times in the National Gallery of Art, cried in the Holocaust Museum and played Balinese gamelan in the Cherry Blossom Parade. Over the years, I have joined demonstrations and protests of all sorts, including flying down from Connecticut for the Equality March in 2000 and, most recently, flying up from Florida for the first Women’s March in 2016.
Since moving away from the area, my relationship with the capital has changed a bit. It’s no longer “just down the street”and I discovered that there is actually quite a lot about Washington, DC that I have yet to discover. I flew into DCA and decided to spend an afternoon and evening there before driving out to California, Maryland to celebrate my friend’s 50th birthday.
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