Today due to cool wet weather, I had to punt and change plans for my play today. I was planning to head east to Annapolis, MD. Instead, I headed back into the District and hit two museums and visited the house where our late Abraham Lincoln died, after being shot at Ford's Theater.
I started my day at a newer museum called the Newseum. I would highly recommend this museum. It is a paid museum, but I really enjoyed this one.
After a quick orientation of how best to navigate through this museum, I was quickly catapulted back to Friday, November 22nd, 1963 at 12:30 (CST). I found myself watching live footage of the motorcade in which JFK was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald. I was surrounded by 10-12 individuals easily in their sixties and seventies. The raw emotion that two of the women demonstrated watching the footage filled me with humility. I have always heard what a great President JFK was and had seen footage of his assassination, but this exhibit was so well done. I am pretty sure the two women above mentioned will be calling their therapists in the coming days.
As I left the JFK exhibit and explored the ways in which the freedoms of press, religion, speech, assembly, and petition change our world as we know it daily, it made me realize that each generation has their "Where were you" moment. For my parents it was the JFK assassination. For my generation it was the Challenger Shuttle explosion that everyone my age probably remembers Christa McAuliffe, whom was the first ordinary citizen to go into space. Then on September 11, 2001 America's sense of safety and security was robbed from us in a way that we could not fathom. There was an unbelievable tribute to the lives lost in this tragedy, survivors, and the reporters that brought the footage to us. There was a room with top headlines from papers going back into the 1800's. I found this fascinating! OJ Simpson found "Not Guilty." Hurricane Katrina. Michael Jackson dies. I could go on for days. This museum is so hard to describe other than awesome. It displays how media infiltrates our lives in every aspect imaginable. We are affected everyday by television, ipads, smartphones, newspapers, comics, movies, photographs, bloggers, facebook users, and other social media.
I can vividly remember my dad watching two thirty minute segments of local news, followed by the world news, and then at least one more local news segment. That is two hours of the news! Let me also add that even though he was asleep, when the channel was changed, he would immediately wake and say to turn the channel back. So I watched a lot of news. So I am proud to say that I grew up with Barbara Walters, Walter Cronkite, Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley and many others. I still to this day usually watch a local news segment.
I left the Newseum and walked down to the Peterson House, where Lincoln was carried to, after being shot at Ford's Theater. After viewing the three rooms where Lincoln and his people were housed, I entered the Education center where Lincoln's Legacy was displayed. It was interesting to read similarities between Lincoln and Obama. Obama looked up to Lincoln and it is because of Lincoln that we have a black President today. I think a statistic that I read was that there are over 15,000 books written about Lincoln. How is that even possible?
I then made my way to the Crime and Punishment Museum. This was a museum about outlaws, bootleggers, kidnappers, killers, and forensics. The show America's Most Wanted, one of my favorite shows growing up, was filmed in the basement of this museum. I give this museum a C+/B-. I liked it but it wasn't great. I really liked the forensics and learned a lot about cases I have heard about over the years; maybe didn't really ever know that details about though. John Wayne Gacy, The Boston Strangler, Jeffrey Dahmer, and some of America's most vile individuals. The most disturbing part of this museum was a section devoted to dog fighting. The pictures and words expressed in this section left me speechless and not a dry eye. My beloved late Dakota was part pit bull and Heinz 57. Pit Bulls are sadly fought frequently and labeled as an aggressive dog breed because of their mishandling. Seeing the pictures of their wounds and the voice that do not have was heartbreaking. I just want to punch anyone that thinks it is right to take a soul that loves you from the get go and break it in ways unimaginable. I am not one to cry easily and this exhibit tapped into an area that really hurts. Dogs are such amazing creatures!
Another fun day had here is DC! Have a great weekend everyone.
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