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In this picture my sister is standing up on something and pretending she’s taller than Mom. She’s actually short like me. They visited to bring my car from Minnesota and see family, and also do fun trip things like drinking coffee and getting new books and snacks. They will be departing by train late tonight.
That’s not really my car, but it’s the one I’ve always driven at home and also last summer in Indianapolis. They named it Carly on the drive over, which seems rather uninspired considering they had all of North Dakota and eastern Montana to think about it. However, christening our van back home RuthAnn* is brilliantly appropriate.
*I had to ask them how they would spell it, and that’s what they decided after talking it out a bit. Though they said they hate capitalized letters in the middle of names and would never do that if it wasn’t just a van. As my mom said, “Whenever we take her into the auto shop they’re going to say ‘How do you spell that again?’”
An hour outside Spokane on winding narrow highways where roads have names like Gas Line Road and St. John Gun Club Road, thousands of people set up colorful sun canopies and gather for the day on one particular hillside. They’re out there to watch Webb’s Slough sprint boat racing, the Northwest’s loud, dirty version of Nascar that smells of hot engines and waffle cones.
Nick was doing a video for the Spokesman, so I went along for the ride. The race venue was cut into the base of a hill just off the highway, with kids from a local sports team directing traffic in the cut-field parking lot. Basically, teams of two (a driver and navigator) race around a twisting course, trying to beat the clock and avoid running aground on tight corners while plumes of muddy wake water douse members of the “Slough Crew” (it rhymes). Nick got caught on the wrong side of a mud splash trying to get a shot.
Sometimes I’m embarrassed by my Nikon D40. Designed specifically to market SLR cameras to the average consumer, it’s not an unusual camera and doesn’t command any sort of respect in the professional world. It’s like having read “Gone With the Wind” three times – people who know very little will be impressed, and people who know quite a lot will smile indulgently and inwardly snicker. Either way is awkward.
But the same thing that makes it too pedestrian to be really awesome is what makes it a technical marvel. I played around with all the settings at first and tried to treat it like a tiny D1H (the only other SLR I’ve handled), but it just doesn’t work the same. It’s missing crucial settings like white balance, and the auto settings are just too good to not use.
After a week of rain, thunderstorms and even snow in the area, it finally took a turn for perfect. Nick and I went on an easy hike at Riverside State Park this afternoon. The river was higher and more energetic than usual, with small trees near the shores underwater up to their branches.
My cousin is no longer in Iraq. He’s been deployed there since April 2007 with the 4th Stryker Brigade out of Fort Lewis. He left the day before my 21st birthday and he’ll be returning right about when his wife Kristena turns 21. His daughter Amaya, whom he’s only seen for a few days right after she was born, is going to start walking any day. He’ll be returning to a new sister-in-law and a new nephew. We’re all really excited for him to come home. It will be good to see him, and even better to know he’s not over there anymore.
I got to hold Ed and Fred the goldfish on my lap from Pullman to Spokane. The whole thing was quite tiring, but also exciting.
But it’s his job, so nothing to be suspicious about. This is just a belated update about the softball tournament Nick was covering last Saturday and Sunday. One of the teams he was following, Montesano, won the whole thing to become the 1A state softball champs.
During the tournament, one team lost their first game because a girl who hit what would have been a game-winning home run didn’t touch first base. They were very upset. So I was telling Nick about the technicality horror stories coaches always used to tell me, and how I got myself a lot of warnings from coaches (and officials) for stepping on the white line inside the track.
That very day the girl who won the Washington state 4A (I think) 3,200-meter run was disqualified for running on the line for three consecutive curves. All her competitors felt bad and passed their medals up and whatnot, according to a Spokesman story. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole thing, because I think it’s totally irrelevant rule in a race that long, and at the same time a major part of sports is following arbitrary rules. It sucks for her, definitely, and for all the other runners who were cheated out of a fair race they could feel good about. Too bad she didn’t have good coaches to tell her horror stories she’d still remember years later.
Everyone seems to be leaving Pullman, finally, including me. My last phone conversation with Victor before he left Sunday reminded me of this farewell from the Evergreen staff in the 1898 commencement issue:
“To the graduating class the Evergreen bids you God-speed, and wishes you all the success possible. May your lives be examples which will bring credit upon yourselves and your alma mater.”
I accompanied Nick to Spokane today while he covered the state boys 4A soccer quarterfinals. Eastlake beat Mead 3-2. It was a pretty good game, and brought back memories of that time really long ago when my life was dominated by soccer. I’m not really sure why it was such a tremendously important event for the Spokesman-Review to cover, and everyone there seems equally surprised a Spokesman reporter cared about their game. They didn’t have any media preparations, but then they didn’t even have a refreshments stand, either. They did have printed rosters, so after Nick showed Ticket Booth Mom his press badge she called after him – “Spokesman Guy! Spokesman Guy!” – to give him a roster.
It was really hot. It showed; the teams scored a combined five goals in the first half, and none in the second half. They looked tired. I got sunburned and tired, too.
From the drive home from Seattle. It was raining.
I’ve been told there are a few special readers of this blog who are far more interested in posts about running shoes than journalism. This goes out to you.
Nick has been needing new running shoes. So after we went running around a little lake in Seattle, we stopped by Super Jock ‘n Jill to get him a new pair. While he was out doing the “just run down the street to see which feels better” part of acquiring new shoes, I chatted with the youngish sales guy helping us. From talking about my still-fairly-clean 858s, it came up what kind of running I’m doing these days.
I told him it’s mostly just casual now, trying to get back in shape, that running 80 to 100 miles a week took a pretty hard toll in a series of injuries once I hit college.
“That’s kind of like my wife,” he said. “She ran at UW for a while, but she used to run 80 or so in high school.”
At this point I had the defensive pride instinct about other girls who ran high mileage in high school. But then he told me her 3,200 PR in high school was 10:11 and my eyebrows went sky-high.
You see, as I explained to Nick when he returned, each year there’s a small set of high school girls in the nation who run the 3,200 in about 10:30. Maybe a dozen or so. That was me at my best. Then there are the girls who we can do nothing but gape at while they run times closer to 10 minutes.
It turns out his wife is Alison Tubbs, a name I definitely remember from my early days caring about such things. She’s two years older than me.
I don’t really miss those days. But after living in Nick’s crew world for most of the weekend, it was like stumbling into an old home.
This is the lesson I learned after getting immersed in Nick’s former rowing life in Seattle this weekend. The two sports are similar in nature and the surrounding culture:
- Both require relatively rare types of water, limiting their scope and popularity.
- Both require expensive, specialized equipment that is damaged fairly easily.
- Both make athletes chronically cold, wet and subsequently tougher. And both develop the friendships that come with group suffering.
- Both require a sense of rhythm and technique that takes a while to learn (you can really tell who’s new), along with high levels of overall fitness.
- Both are dominated by high school kids and old men in spandex.
- Both are miserable sports for parents, requiring long drives to obscure places, generous funding, and standing around all day to watch maybe 200 meters of racing (most of the race is hidden).
The actual story is below.
Today Nick and I returned from Seattle. It was an all-around good time. We didn’t know for sure we were going until like 24 hours before we left, so the most-uttered phrase of the trip was “I’m glad we decided to do this.”
I’d been to Seattle three other times during my college years, but I’d never really seen the whole city. We had good company, good food and good weather - until today, when it rained while I drank coffee on the way out of town for a stereotypical Seattle farewell. More later, with pictures.
This weekend I am in Seattle with Nick. I couldn’t mention it before we left because he was surprising his mom for Mother’s Day. This picture is from Vantage, a traditional stopping spot by the Columbia River on the route from Pullman. The drive was uneventful, except for running over a tumbleweed and getting caught in a baby dust devil.
We’re heading back to the Eastern part of the state Tuesday, after visiting Nick’s families, friends and old haunts. It feels like vacation to me.
It would have been so easy to not include the photographers. That’s what I thought was neat about these segments (the prison camp liberation above, and this handshaking) from the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. I know it’s been a while since I was there, but writing up the twined history of photojournalism and war for my thesis reminded me of it.
In case you were wondering, the camera is probably mean to be a Graflex Speed Graphic.
This is what my walk to school looked like today, from the relative shelter of a fir tree so my lens wasn’t assaulted by a flurry of fat, wet flakes.
Today the U.S. federal government started distributing the new $5 bills, and I have one in my possession directly from the source. Right now it’s being used as a bookmark, but the photo is when I first got it today at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
My mother suggested touring the mint, and it was worth it. The Intaglio presses they use to print U.S. currency operate pretty much like your standard newspaper printing press (better, but the same process) that I’ve seen a number of times. I’m not sure if this made the tour more or less interesting for me. We saw a guy tinkering with the registration for the black plate that gets printed on the front of all bills.
More money facts from the tour and pamphlets:
18: tons of ink used each day at the facilities in D.C. and Fort Worth, Texas
16: average circulation lifespan, in months, of a $5 bill
2 to 3: years it takes the bureau design team to redesign a bill from start to finish
12: number of Intaglio printing presses in D.C.
$2 million: amount of money we saw a worker “flipping and rolling” to prepare for inspection
1997: year they switched to computer inspection for consistency
$1,466,250: value of a stack as tall as me of $100 bills
Business model least likely to succeed.
Most ridiculous tour bus. (What if they really painted the monuments those colors?)
Most disturbing bridge decor. This was in a little enclave on a bridge built in 1908. But what is it? This man face-manatee hybrid is really bizarre and frightening.
Heading briefly back to yesterday, my first stop was the National Air and Space Museum. I decided that based on my affinity for shiny red things (cookware, electronics, accessories, etc.), I would want a Lockheed Vega like Amelia Earhart’s.
My other favorite plane was this sherbet-colored “Jenny.” The space stuff doesn’t have enough personality (i.e. colors!) for me to pick favorites.
It’s a cool museum, but everyone knows that. They had an odd amount of hammer-and-sickle imagery around to commemorate 50 years since Sputnik. The history bits reminded me how much I love those obligatory montages at the beginning of every school flight video ever showing goofy attempts with flying machines as vaudeville music bounces along in the background.
I also liked the display about whether I would be suitable flight attendant in the early ’50s. Being unmarried, 21, 5-foot-4 and white, I’d be a great candidate. I’m a little too heavy to be a perfect candidate, but nothing a month or two and a perky flight attendant attitude couldn’t fix. Being the ’50s, I’ll assume my dimples could boost me to the “just below Hollywood” appearance standard.
But I’d rather be a lady pilot (aviatrix?) in the the 1920s and ’30s, because they had great little pantaloon flying outfits. And I imagine they didn’t have to smile all day.
None of this fit that well in my other posts, so I’m just going to leave it all here without any forced transitions.
The actual “60 Minutes” stopwatch caught my attention in the “National Treasures” exhibit because it mentioned Don Hewitt, our Murrow Symposium guest this year.
I never got a good look at R2D2 or C-3PO because a swarm of adolescent boys was permanently fixated there, but I had plenty of gawking space all to myself at a display of two photographs. The first was “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange, and the other was a D-Day photo by Robert Capa. Probaly most people have either seen these photos plenty of times or don’t understand the significance. I didn’t know they were in the exhibit, so to see them and know they were actual prints from the actual negatives meant a lot to me.
Dorothy’s ruby slippers did not. I saw them in a traveling Smithsonian show in Minneapolis when I was in I think middle school, so that was nothing new.
I took this picture of little Harry Truman in the Archives for Christina, but now I can’t remember whether it’s Truman or Eisenhower she likes so much. Whatever, the picture is still adorable because he looks like a kid dressing up as President Truman for Halloween. He also looks a little like Harry Potter.
There’s a statue outside the Archives that’s all about symbolism and the value of history, but mostly I just like the way the baby looks. The baby’s distressed expression is absolutely realistic to how a baby would feel being held in that awkward position for so long.
“Yeh ain’t in liiiine, Mary, yeh cutted people.”
- a girl infuriated with her sister at the National Archives rotunda. I imagine I would sound just like that if I were 14 and from the South.
Jenna and I passed the new Newseum on the way to the National Portrait Gallery before dinner. It’s like looking at the front pages online, only in real life. We walked by like industry snobs, analyzing design and news judgment.
In the portrait gallery we mostly talked about profound things like whether the artist enhanced FDR’s eyelashes. (”They look pretty hearty,” Jenna said, comparing to a photograph.) Other observations: Millard Fillmore was not only totally useless as president, he was not hot. Not at all. … Thomas Jefferson, already one of my favorites, had attached earlobes.
These probably aren’t the only ones, but I definitely had two misconceptions about D.C. The first was I expected the mall to be a stretch of unbroken golf course grass connecting the Capitol to the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. I estimated the length to be about five or six football fields. In reality, the whole thing is better measured in miles and is broken up with a bunch of cross-streets and paths and concessions vendors. A lot of the grass is in pretty crummy shape and I the first day I felt like it took me 15 minutes just to walk past this bit of grungy field populated by geese that separates the Washington Monument from its reflecting pond.
The second was I expected protests everywhere. Not like big ones, but small groups of passionate/crazy people with signs or something. I saw my first protest today. There was a small group of men near the Capitol’s pond blaring Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” with huge speakers running off a generator. I asked one of the guys, and he said they were from Cameroon.
“We’re standing up for our rights,” he said.
He asked me what country I’m from, so I said the U.S.
“You’re an American citizen?” he said, and I nodded. He nodded back slowly.
His accent and the music made it difficult to ask much else, so I just asked if I could take a few pictures.
D.C. is a place where I can go from feeling like an unimportant bumpkin to conspicuously privileged in less than one metro stop.
I just found a spot at the Smithsonian “Castle” to get wireless, so I have a whole slew of stuff to post from today. Catching up from yesterday will have to wait because I forgot my notebook (that is, the notebook I was using; I still have four with me). But first a quick story, from when I was just sitting here signing in. An older gentleman on an adjacent bench was watching me.
“Excuse me, miss, is that a computer?” he said.
I told him it was, and he asked if he could look at. I said sure, and he came over to very carefully hold my MacBook. He asked me how long it takes to learn how to use something like this, and I told him I wasn’t really sure since I’ve been using this kind for a while. He asked me whether it was difficult to know where the words are going to show up when I type, and I said it’s pretty easy for me since I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid.
“Since you were a little kid? Why, you still are a little kid!” he said.
He asked me if I’ve ever had problems with “losing my programming.” I said I haven’t personally had any problems, but they mostly come with good warranties these days.
Then he asked me if I could use it to “send messages back and forth to companies” and I started trying to explain wireless internet access. He kept looking at the bottom and back of the computer, which must have been frustrating since it’s devoid of any “machinery” indicators. His daughter (?) came by and they left to go look at an exhibit of old stuff that was probably way less interesting to him than my computer.
It was neat to see how all the different papers treated the Gov. Spitzer story today. It’s like Newseum on every street corner.
If you haven’t seen it, The Washington Post has a good series this week about how tenants are getting evicted so landlords can convert buildings to more lucrative condos. It’s good in print, but the package is strong online, too.
I need to end here tonight because I’ve got an early morning, but look tomorrow for my trips to the Air and Space Museum, the National Archives and the war memorials.
I took the metro to Arlington National Cemetery in the afternoon. I got off a stop too soon on the first try (I couldn’t hear the station announcements and counted the stops wrong), but it worked out. I got there just after 4 p.m. and realized I might have missed the last changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I asked the information man, and he said there was a final one at 5 p.m. He had been chatting with a second information man, and that guy then asked me where I’m from. I’m not sure if I sounded funny, or maybe he was just curious. I said Minnesota, which is not what I usually say anymore, but that’s what came out first. He asked me if it was my first time in Washington, and then he said he hoped I had a good time.
I did. I love military cemeteries. It might seem counterintuitive, but they feel like peace to me. I like the smooth rows and white stones, the way they reach out and pull the landscape into it like long spines. I like looking for the ones who were babies, and I like looking for the fresh stones indicating a wife who died an old woman sometimes five decades after her husband was killed. I like reading the names – I’ve long thought that if I have a child I would go to a military cemetery to figure out its name, not necessarily getting it from a headstone but just to be surrounded by names other parents chose.
I get lost of time in military cemeteries the same as I do in libraries. I was wondering today if they would let you get married there, because it’s the only place I can think of that has the bright solemnity a church is supposed to have. (Don’t worry, I wouldn’t really pursue the idea.) Monuments are fine and emotional and I’m interested to see them, but if I have time to return to one place this week I’d pick Arlington National Cemetery, even if I like the Punchbowl in Hawaii and the one in San Diego more.
I gathered with a large number of other tourists to watch the final changing of the guard open to the public today. Before it began I moved a few feet so I wouldn’t be in the way for a man taking photographs, only then he adjusted his shot to keep me in it. Either I was wearing an intense expression he took for patriotism, or he was just creepy.
Taps was played from a nearby monument when the bells chimed 5 o’clock. The silence of the ceremony was punctured by the whirring, buzzing and clicking of several dozen cameras, everything from the abrasive film wheel of disposable cameras to the artificial shutter sound of cell phones. I thought about whether they were devaluing the memory in their need to preserve it, which is something I think about a lot when I’m taking pictures or notes. I don’t have any photos to post from the ceremony because I didn’t take any.
I love scale models of things. There’s one in particular I remember looking at over and over when I was a little kid, but I can’t remember what it was depicting. Anyway, here’s a model in the Smithsonian “Castle” of buildings on the mall, shot through the side of the glass case. I looked at it for a while. This is one reason it’s nice to be a tourist by yourself.
Other things from today:
- I was on my feet for more than eight hours, and I walked at least 10 miles.
- The Senate investigations of the Titanic sinking and the Watergate scandal were conducted in the same place, the Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Building.
- The Smithsonian sells shot glasses, and there are liquor stores in really weird places in D.C.
- Men who are otherwise dressed well wear hideous ties.
- There are a lot of middle-schoolers running around everywhere. They would be annoying if I didn’t know they are becoming better people by seeing all of this. There are a lot of babies, strollers and dogs.
- I was staring off into space by the Washington Monument reflecting pool when a man asked me to take his picture with the monument in the background. His camera was his iPhone. He was fortunate he asked me, not because I’m a stellar photographer but because I’m at least aware of things like not getting my own shadow in the frame, which was actually somewhat tricky given the position of the sun and the monument.
Jenna works for Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., who does serious business with the Senate Finance Committee. I was in the reception area when some guests came for a meeting: Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
They all paused when they came into the reception area to watch CNN coverage about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with a prostitution ring. Several of them wondered aloud whether he was involved as a participant or owner.
Then they joked about how much they love budget season.
I walked by two young women deep in conversation near the Capitol and caught this snippet:
“Just because you have the Dewey Decimal System memorized doesn’t mean …”
I couldn’t hear the end of it, forever leaving me unsure what having the Dewey Decimal System memorized doesn’t, in fact, mean. I invite you to theorize, or at least it makes an interesting creativity exercise if you are stuck in traffic.
A: Get a library card.
I took the Metro with Jenna to Capitol Hill where she works in the Hart Senate Building for her Montana senator, and then I navigated around to find all my own senators (Minnesota and Washington). The front desk guy in Sen. Patty Murray’s office gave me passes to sit in the House and Senate galleries, so now I just need to figure out when they’ll be doing a vote.
Then I got coffee and a cherry scone at a little place called Firehook, and then I went to get my Library of Congress card. On the way I wandered around the Jefferson library building, which was neat. I like a library with “liberty” on the ceiling. It had Grecian decor all over the walls and ceilings, along with a bunch of truisms like “The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.” The others were more over-the-top.
The card was really easy to get. They asked you to choose 1-4 research areas from this long list, so I chose journalism, history and political science, in that order. I forgot my SS# and had to call my mom. I don’t actually plan on using the card because it’s kind of a pain and I’m at no shortage of reading material this week, but it’s always good to be prepared.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the Jefferson building bathrooms were – and this isn’t a word you should often use for bathrooms – stunning. I lamented the fact that I couldn’t take a photo without being really creepy.
I’m working up a bunch of photos and typing, but in the meantime here’s a photo I couldn’t resist posting even though it’s all blown out. It’s dedicated to Nick.
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