National Gallery Of Art, 2016

Another day we walked to the National Gallery of Art, visiting a bunch of old friends and making a few new ones.

In the East Building, an exhibit of 20th century art from a
major historic gallery

Aerial view of the spiral jetty

In the tunnel 

We never miss a Penelope, this one by Gari
Melchers

Also never miss books

One of Edward Hick's many Peaceable Kingdoms

Never miss a Turner

Ditto

Nor a Watteau

Nor a Fragonard, reading

Or swinging

Or a Morrissey, reading

Or especially a Van Eyck, reading; we always
wonder what the Queen of Heaven/Mother of
God (to be) was reading; was she into
whodunnits? romances?

Or even a weird Botticelli painting of Giuliano
Medici, a rival for the affections of Simonetta

National Arboretum

One day we walked up New York Avenue to the US Arboretum. Mid-November is perhaps not the best time for looking at trees in the East, so we focused on the bonsai and rock collections, which were by themselves fairly stupendous. Also the Capitol Columns, the Arboretum's folly, as it were.

Capital Scenes, November, 2016

Dejected. Disappointed. Demoralized. Desolated. That's pretty much how we felt after November 8; and still feel. On November 14th we traveled to Washington, DC, to stay in Rachel and Will's house, pet-sitting, while they were with the Sehestedts for a Thanksgiving holiday in Maui. We were on foot nearly everywhere we went in DC--mostly NoMA and Truxton Circle, Capitol Hill, Dupont Circle, downtown--and every now and then took some pix...

Not a happy place...

Wandering into a Bernie rally; an alternative
reality...

Apparently did not get the memo about Trump

May they be just as inactive the next two years as the past two
(or six, actually)

"Move on...close up" said the dust-covered man on the
dust-covered horse as his troops approached Vicksburg; seems
like good advice again

Innovative use of containers

Flying buttress

Religious humor downtown

Covering over I-395 at NY Avenue will yield 3 whole new
blocks for the developers

Speaking of whom...the long-dead door-knob factory near
Rachel's is undergoing gentrification; historic door-knobs

The Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Ave., formerly home
to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
National Endowment for the Arts, where I spent many hours
over the years past

Sic transit, Gloria

Outside the Newseum...with Trump's ongoing
war on the media, and truth, one fears for
these values..

Pigeon Forge

Since celebrating our first wedding anniversary in the Smokies, in 1969 (we were poor college students), we have always regarded Cherokee, NC, as the gold standard of world tawdriness. No more. Cherokee now has Harrah's, and the tawdriness is largely but not completely gone. Into the vacuum, however, Pigeon Forge, TN, has rushed, and is now, in our opinion, having seen much of the known world, the tawdriest 10 miles on the planet, surpassing even Kissimmee, FL. We took few pix in Pigeon Forge. There was a traffic jam, taking us an hour to pass through the ever-unbelievable route 441, and gawking at all the incredible crap, repeating itself every mile or so, prevented us from fully documenting this most tawdry of all places on Earth. We hope to return, if only to more fully document this atrocious place.

We can't decide whether the Biblical Times dinner theater or the Hatfield/McCoy Christmas Disaster was most impressive. In any case, I think this is the proper place to leave the blog for a while. We are with Marie and Norm in Knoxville, packing and planning for a couple weeks in DC at Rachel and Will's place. It will be interesting to visit our nation's capital as President-elect PussyGrabber is assembling his administration.