Exhausting Awesomeness
Feb. 12th, 2011 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarotgalI had an exhausting day. Giving Max his antibiotic did NOT go well this morning. And the stitches in his mouth are bothering him so he's not eating as much as he should. Then I went to volunteer at the library; that went really smooth and fast. I headed into DC. Last year I bought a groupon for the Newseum (which I'd never been to) and this was the last weekend I could use it.
I arrived at the Metro station just as a train was departing. Rather than look like an idiot running and jumping onto the closest full car, I let the train depart without me and I took the next train. So I probably wasted 20 minutes, but oh well. More time to read the third David Pelzer book. Last night I accidentally read a lot of criticisms and skeptical analysis of his books so I'm a little less excited about the third one. I know that the truth isn't very dramatic or exciting at times but, damnit, what's with these memoir writers making shit up? Now every time I read memoirs I have to be super skeptical so I don't get let down. That sucks.
Anyhoo, the Newseum staff had a special Groupon table staffed by two staff members outside the museum. Apparently ALL OF US waited until the last couple weekends to use our passes. LOL I don't buy a lot on Groupon or Social Living, but I have made a handful of purchases. They're mostly: things I would have purchased anyway (like amazon.com or Barnes & Noble gift cards) or tickets to places I've been wanting to go but haven't gone to because they cost money (and with so many free museums locally, it seems a shame to have to pay to get into museums, you know?). But in Markeroni you can't snarf a museum until you've been in it, which is why I jumped at the chance for discounted entry to the Crime and Punishment museum last year and then I was excited about the Renwick groupon and this groupon. I hoped I wouldn't be disappointed.
I'm SO glad I got the chance to go to the Newseum. It is possibly my favorite museum in Washington, DC now! I walked in about 3 minutes before an hour long highlights tour was about to start, so it was perfect timing. The tour took us to just about every section of the 6 floor museum, showing us just a taste of what was there. Then I went back and explored them all again on my own. I had other important things to do in DC so I had only expected to stay a few hours. Now I'm wishing I could blow off my plans for tomorrow and go back again (the Groupon pass is good for 2 consecutive days). I ended up spending 4 hours there and that wasn't NEARLY enough time to see everything, but I did get to see a lot. I'd seen a section of the Berlin Wall before in the Ronald Reagan building about a decade and a half ago, but there were 5 or 6 huge sections on display as well as a 3-story guard tower from near Checkpoint Charlie. I got to actually go inside the tower itself. There was a giant news ticker in the main atrium, and a news chopper hanging from the ceiling in there as well. A few stories above the Berlin Wall was a small tribute to 9-11 which made me tear up and then cry (luckily, there are a few tissue boxes placed unobtrusively and tastefully around the exhibit for just this reason). There was a bit of the plane that went down in PA and a bit of the wall of the Pentagon. There was a display and video on the photo journalist who was killed when the second tower fell on him. The rescue teams were able to find his body and his cameras (which are on display). Amazingly, the film in the cameras was intact and you can see the amazing photos he took right up until he died. There's also an enormous radio tower from the top of one of the towers that's all bent and burned, not only showing the destruction that happened in that location but the fact that that coming down cut off communication to so many people around the area that day. There was also an exhibit about Katrina (more tissue boxes strategically placed throughout, I noticed) and you can see a timeline of newspaper reports: the storm is coming, the storm is hitting, it's worse than we thought, OMG it's horrible. There's a canoe that a news team used to navigate the flooded streets. And there's a section I stood in front of for some time about the ethics--when do journalists stop being impartial observers and start doing something? There were many cases of people trapped in/on top of homes, calling out to journalists to rescue them, except the journalists aren't equipped or trained to do that, but they couldn't just take a photo and move on. It was very interesting--something I remember hearing about in the more recent "looking back" documentary on tv, but still, it captured my attention again today.
There were some less serious/emotional exhibits as well. I happened to be walking by (on my second attempt of five to leave) the TV studio there just as they were going to do a tour. So I decided to go in. The tour was just 10 minutes long but it was SO awesome to be in a real studio. It's the one where the ABC Today show films every Sunday morning with Christiane Amanpour--I got to touch her table and stand where she sits. And the view behind her just down to street to the Capitol building is totally real; all the other broadcasts use fake backdrops. LOL Apparently, if we give 5 million dollars to the Newseum, they'll let us have our own show there as well. LOL But a lot of news agencies use the space as well, just not CBS. I was fascinated by all the cameras and the teleprompters (which were on, though they apparently aren't usually). I also watched some of the short movies/films. They have a gazillion short films all over that are about 10 minutes long. I watched most of the one on the Civil Rights movement, one about those news reels they used to show before movies in movie theaters, and one about how the media is portrayed in hollywood. Apparently, this museum is made for people with short attention spans. There's just SO much to see they don't want to tie you down in one section for too long. And I watched the 4-D time travel movie about the press (they had me at time travel, LOL). There's also a roof deck with the best view of Pennsylvania Avenue in all of DC.
Other exhibits I saw: Elvis (temporary exhibit), the first amendment freedoms (origins, historical moments, modern challenges), freedom of press around the world (I was happy to see Papua New Guinea was green, meaning they have a free press there), a timeline of radio-television-internet media (showing comparisons and where they overlap), a 2-story tribute to journalists who have died while on the job, US presidents and their dogs (awww), the FBI & G-Men (including the actual shack the unibomber lived in for 20 years; he's pissed the museum has it), Tim Russert's office, and Pulitzer prize winning photographs (some made me smile, some made me ill, some made me tear up). I skipped the sports photograph exhibit because, after walking past twice, I didn't see a single hockey photo. There's also a big hall with copies of newspaper front pages from major moments in American history. It was neat to see those in print and also neat (as our guide pointed out) to see what else was going on that was front page worthy on that day. For example, I spent some time in front of the newspaper about the Martin Luther King Jr. speech & march in Washington. And down in the bottom corner was a piece about how more than 300 volunteers in DC packed more than 80,000 lunches for the marchers in something they had dubbed "operation sandwich." I had NO idea this had happened. What a neat thing to learn about an event I thought I'd heard so much about already. That hall with the newspapers also housed tons of other memorabilia--everything from the actual door with the taped doorknob from the Watergate Hotel to Ernest Hemmingway's press papers to Peter Jennings' mouse pad. I could have spent an entire day in that room alone. I didn't even get a chance to do any of the computer stuff. When I got home and started talking to my parents, they suggested that I should have looked up Papua New Guinea papers on the day I was born to see what the headlines there were. ARGH! I'm going to have to pay to go back just for that! LOL Really, it was just amazing. I was blown away and overwhelmed.
After that, I only had an hour to go to the other 11 museums I needed to hit. Needless to say, I didn't get to all of them. I did manage to track down pieces in 4 of them. And I found out that 3 pieces I had put on my list of literary things in other museums had been removed due to construction or rotated out. So now I have to figure out what to do about those museums. DOH! I'm doing a run-through with the local BookCrossing group on the 26th and I want to have it ready by then. Looks like another trip to DC is in my future on the 20th *sigh* My feet hurt from being on them ALL DAY today. And my legs ache as well. I have SO much to do but I have a headache and am exhausted. I'm going to take it easy the rest of the day. And maybe watch some more news. Man, that was an awesome museum.
Do you know what else is awesome? All the people in the square in Egypt who are actually taking pride in cleaning up after the masses because they want their new Egypt to be beautiful. OMG *loves*
I arrived at the Metro station just as a train was departing. Rather than look like an idiot running and jumping onto the closest full car, I let the train depart without me and I took the next train. So I probably wasted 20 minutes, but oh well. More time to read the third David Pelzer book. Last night I accidentally read a lot of criticisms and skeptical analysis of his books so I'm a little less excited about the third one. I know that the truth isn't very dramatic or exciting at times but, damnit, what's with these memoir writers making shit up? Now every time I read memoirs I have to be super skeptical so I don't get let down. That sucks.
Anyhoo, the Newseum staff had a special Groupon table staffed by two staff members outside the museum. Apparently ALL OF US waited until the last couple weekends to use our passes. LOL I don't buy a lot on Groupon or Social Living, but I have made a handful of purchases. They're mostly: things I would have purchased anyway (like amazon.com or Barnes & Noble gift cards) or tickets to places I've been wanting to go but haven't gone to because they cost money (and with so many free museums locally, it seems a shame to have to pay to get into museums, you know?). But in Markeroni you can't snarf a museum until you've been in it, which is why I jumped at the chance for discounted entry to the Crime and Punishment museum last year and then I was excited about the Renwick groupon and this groupon. I hoped I wouldn't be disappointed.
I'm SO glad I got the chance to go to the Newseum. It is possibly my favorite museum in Washington, DC now! I walked in about 3 minutes before an hour long highlights tour was about to start, so it was perfect timing. The tour took us to just about every section of the 6 floor museum, showing us just a taste of what was there. Then I went back and explored them all again on my own. I had other important things to do in DC so I had only expected to stay a few hours. Now I'm wishing I could blow off my plans for tomorrow and go back again (the Groupon pass is good for 2 consecutive days). I ended up spending 4 hours there and that wasn't NEARLY enough time to see everything, but I did get to see a lot. I'd seen a section of the Berlin Wall before in the Ronald Reagan building about a decade and a half ago, but there were 5 or 6 huge sections on display as well as a 3-story guard tower from near Checkpoint Charlie. I got to actually go inside the tower itself. There was a giant news ticker in the main atrium, and a news chopper hanging from the ceiling in there as well. A few stories above the Berlin Wall was a small tribute to 9-11 which made me tear up and then cry (luckily, there are a few tissue boxes placed unobtrusively and tastefully around the exhibit for just this reason). There was a bit of the plane that went down in PA and a bit of the wall of the Pentagon. There was a display and video on the photo journalist who was killed when the second tower fell on him. The rescue teams were able to find his body and his cameras (which are on display). Amazingly, the film in the cameras was intact and you can see the amazing photos he took right up until he died. There's also an enormous radio tower from the top of one of the towers that's all bent and burned, not only showing the destruction that happened in that location but the fact that that coming down cut off communication to so many people around the area that day. There was also an exhibit about Katrina (more tissue boxes strategically placed throughout, I noticed) and you can see a timeline of newspaper reports: the storm is coming, the storm is hitting, it's worse than we thought, OMG it's horrible. There's a canoe that a news team used to navigate the flooded streets. And there's a section I stood in front of for some time about the ethics--when do journalists stop being impartial observers and start doing something? There were many cases of people trapped in/on top of homes, calling out to journalists to rescue them, except the journalists aren't equipped or trained to do that, but they couldn't just take a photo and move on. It was very interesting--something I remember hearing about in the more recent "looking back" documentary on tv, but still, it captured my attention again today.
There were some less serious/emotional exhibits as well. I happened to be walking by (on my second attempt of five to leave) the TV studio there just as they were going to do a tour. So I decided to go in. The tour was just 10 minutes long but it was SO awesome to be in a real studio. It's the one where the ABC Today show films every Sunday morning with Christiane Amanpour--I got to touch her table and stand where she sits. And the view behind her just down to street to the Capitol building is totally real; all the other broadcasts use fake backdrops. LOL Apparently, if we give 5 million dollars to the Newseum, they'll let us have our own show there as well. LOL But a lot of news agencies use the space as well, just not CBS. I was fascinated by all the cameras and the teleprompters (which were on, though they apparently aren't usually). I also watched some of the short movies/films. They have a gazillion short films all over that are about 10 minutes long. I watched most of the one on the Civil Rights movement, one about those news reels they used to show before movies in movie theaters, and one about how the media is portrayed in hollywood. Apparently, this museum is made for people with short attention spans. There's just SO much to see they don't want to tie you down in one section for too long. And I watched the 4-D time travel movie about the press (they had me at time travel, LOL). There's also a roof deck with the best view of Pennsylvania Avenue in all of DC.
Other exhibits I saw: Elvis (temporary exhibit), the first amendment freedoms (origins, historical moments, modern challenges), freedom of press around the world (I was happy to see Papua New Guinea was green, meaning they have a free press there), a timeline of radio-television-internet media (showing comparisons and where they overlap), a 2-story tribute to journalists who have died while on the job, US presidents and their dogs (awww), the FBI & G-Men (including the actual shack the unibomber lived in for 20 years; he's pissed the museum has it), Tim Russert's office, and Pulitzer prize winning photographs (some made me smile, some made me ill, some made me tear up). I skipped the sports photograph exhibit because, after walking past twice, I didn't see a single hockey photo. There's also a big hall with copies of newspaper front pages from major moments in American history. It was neat to see those in print and also neat (as our guide pointed out) to see what else was going on that was front page worthy on that day. For example, I spent some time in front of the newspaper about the Martin Luther King Jr. speech & march in Washington. And down in the bottom corner was a piece about how more than 300 volunteers in DC packed more than 80,000 lunches for the marchers in something they had dubbed "operation sandwich." I had NO idea this had happened. What a neat thing to learn about an event I thought I'd heard so much about already. That hall with the newspapers also housed tons of other memorabilia--everything from the actual door with the taped doorknob from the Watergate Hotel to Ernest Hemmingway's press papers to Peter Jennings' mouse pad. I could have spent an entire day in that room alone. I didn't even get a chance to do any of the computer stuff. When I got home and started talking to my parents, they suggested that I should have looked up Papua New Guinea papers on the day I was born to see what the headlines there were. ARGH! I'm going to have to pay to go back just for that! LOL Really, it was just amazing. I was blown away and overwhelmed.
After that, I only had an hour to go to the other 11 museums I needed to hit. Needless to say, I didn't get to all of them. I did manage to track down pieces in 4 of them. And I found out that 3 pieces I had put on my list of literary things in other museums had been removed due to construction or rotated out. So now I have to figure out what to do about those museums. DOH! I'm doing a run-through with the local BookCrossing group on the 26th and I want to have it ready by then. Looks like another trip to DC is in my future on the 20th *sigh* My feet hurt from being on them ALL DAY today. And my legs ache as well. I have SO much to do but I have a headache and am exhausted. I'm going to take it easy the rest of the day. And maybe watch some more news. Man, that was an awesome museum.
Do you know what else is awesome? All the people in the square in Egypt who are actually taking pride in cleaning up after the masses because they want their new Egypt to be beautiful. OMG *loves*
