By law the tallest building in Washington DC is the Washington Monument. It's been that way for more years than I can remember. The Washington Monument is five hundred and fifty five and a quarter feet tall, so everything else is shorter than that. That's why every building on K St. is about the same size, "the biggest allowed by law."

Funny that I would find out there is a new version of the $100 bill by walking past the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, but DC is like that.

     

As I went into the Jefferson Memorial I saw a lot of tourists. Many were taking selfies with Jefferson or pictures of their friends at his feet. Around the room were excerpts from his most famous writings. Click the statue if you want to be reminded of those. Some I didn't remember, others I'd had to read in school.

I gotta say that wooden sign put a chill on me. I was hoping to hang around pushing stickers there, but suddenly I felt like there were probably rules against that. The feeling hollowed out my respect for the place.

  

After that I walked on around the reflecting pool. Not that far down there were monuments I'd never seen before memorializing Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. Click above to see more about those.

  

Not much further down I found another new to me monument, this one remembering WW II.

     

After leaving the World War II memorial I stopped in Constitution Gardens to have the peanut butter sandwich my brother had made me take with me. I was glad he did that, because the food choices I saw as a tourist were not that good. Definitely pack a lunch if you're touring that place!

Then I visited the Viet Nam Wall. The power of the monument doesn't appear instantly the way it does for things like the one that reminds us of Jefferson. What goes on there gets more clear as you get closer. Click above for more of that.

     

  

The Institute of World Peace was a new building on Constitution Ave to me. Unfortunately when I went in the door all I found was a security guard that wanted me to leave. Whatever's going on in there is too important to talk to John Q. Public about. Nice building though!

        

I got myself a souvenir T shirt from a street vendor. It was cool tie dye art with DC in big letters and "POWER CITY" in the fine print.

DC is almost littered with monuments and statues commemorating this and that. I remember many times when I saw a statue with a name on it and wondered "who was that?" These three were all on the lawn of the Organization of American States, so obviously they had something to do with South America.

Behind the OAS building was the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) building. In that was a huge genealogy library and a little museum that showed the evolution of household gadgets. The clear message of many of the displays was that the old labor intensive ways of doing things can be replaced by technology.

There were all sorts of gems there, including this, the first letter Samuel Clemens wrote on a typewriter. Nuggets below the edge of the page included his feeling that it would make better copy faster than he could by hand and using it would save a lot of paper. He also said the price of the thing was $125.

Most of the displays traced the development of labor saving gadgets like toasters and vacuum cleaners, but they also devoted some space to entertainment technologies like the radio and TV. I don't remember seeing any video game displays.

  

Pennsylvania Ave. in front of the White House has been closed to cars for years now. Back in '95 (when I lived in the area) the closure had a much more temporary feel. Now people walk on that block as if it was made for them. Bicycles also flow through, but cars have to go around. Obama is the third President to not see lots of cars when he looks out towards Lafayette Park. Clinton was the one that saw the transition.

  

Every time I visit DC I stop and see how the vigils across the street from the White House are doing. One time I met a guy that had responded to the '91 Gulf War by making a pushcart out of a casket and walking it all the way from Los Angeles, CA to Washington, DC, picking up rocks that caught his eye on the way. He'd arrived with a casket full of rocks and had given them away one at a time to tourists he talked to while doing booth duty in front of a previous incarnation of the tent behind Concepcion in the picture above. Most of the previous times I'd been there Thomas had been the guy in the booth. Now he's gone. As Concepcion put it "He couldn't take it any more."

I'd not seen the woman in the wheel chair before. She said she's been there since a couple of years after the second Bush became President. I gather she has some sort of auto immune system battle going on inside her, and the only way she has found to work on it is to talk to the public about it in that very public place.

  

I wanted to get out of of the sun for a few minutes. I walked into a tobacco shop and asked the guy if he could sell me one cigarette. Usually when I do that they say "No." and I walk out. This guy offered me a small cigar for $3.50ish. I bought it and he threw in a box of matches and cut the end off. At the time the world cup match between  Belgium and the USA was on his TV. That was no surprise. Walking down the street I could hear the game coming out of every bar and a lot of other radios and TVs.

     

By this time I was very hungry. Back in '95 my favorite place to eat had been the Burrito Brothers at DuPont Circle. They had a great spinach and cheese burrito. Unfortunately, they were gone. The nearest thing to a burrito joint in the area was a Chipotle a block down on the other side of the street. I'm still grumbling about that. :-(

This was the most interesting poster I saw on the Metro going back to my brother's home. The closest runner up was one inviting readers to visit "Washington's other Supreme Court", but that one didn't photograph well.