The Newseum

After being bowled over by the grandeur of the National Cathedral, we got into the rental and made our way across town to Pennsylvania Ave. and the Newseum. We had to scurry over because; little known fact, just about every Federal Building and museum closes at 5 p.m. It was already a little before two when we got in the area and pulled into a public parking garage on 7^th and E streets.

Unfortunately, neither my colleague Tonia nor I had eaten since our breakfast at the Mark Center Hilton. It may be a Texas thing, but Tonia has neither a passion for or interest in eating Mexican or bar-b-que. As we walked from the car garage those seemed to be the only offerings within view. We turned up 7^th toward F Street. On the east side, we caught a sign for Carmines Italian Family Style  dining.

With the lunch hour long gone, we had the place to ourselves as we were seated (when I Googled the place, I found a photo of President Obama preparing to dine in the same section we were at). We turned to the menu, which had a great selection of traditional Italian fare ala Buca De Beppo. Problem was, like Buca, it was large portion family style. We were mobile and didn’t have any place to put the doggie bags but our server reported we were within the last 15 minutes of the lunch menu and could get anything they had in lunch portions. We both decided to get the spaghetti and meatballs for two.

After deciding to go to the National Cathedral, that was the second best decision we had made that day. The platter that came out had a more than ample supply of spaghetti with a sweet and rich tomato sauce topped with the densest meatballs I’ve had in a long time. The meatballs were a combination of beef, lamb and pork. I assured Tonia this would not be a “Lady and the Tramp” moment and we would most likely be sharing that third meatball. Wow!

 

Ridiculously full (no we did not do dessert); with time passing us by, we quickly walked the three blocks to the Newseum right on Pennsylvania Avenue. Just down the street from the Capitol Dome and next door to the Canadian Embassy, the Newseum is a depository of the history of newsgathering from the earliest days of our country.

The Newseum is sponsored by most of the major news outlets; ABC, Cox, News Corp, Hearst and Bloomberg are founding members and big time contributors. The Newseum’s mission is to educate the public about the value of a free press in a free society and telling the stories of the world's important events in unique and engaging ways.

We had less than two hours to rush through the six floors of the museum so the thoughtful folks at the Newseum put together a two-hour “highlight”  tour to hit the high points if you’re short on time. But, you miss out on the four theatre experiences on media bias, the press and Hollywood, the First Amendment, the press and the civil rights movement.

The Newseum takes pride in the ever-changing exhibits and displays (like the industry and history). What was very surprising to me was the amount of physical items on display from major world events specifically the events of 9/11. There were personal stories of many of the big name and not so big name reporters relating their experiences and especially photos of that time. There is even the mangled piece of antenna mast that stood atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center alongside huge copies of 127 newspaper headlines taken from the following day.

There is an eight-piece section of the Berlin Wall you can walk up to and touch. There was a section dedicated to the press and the FBI where they have some artifacts from the Hoover days and parts of two jet engines that were recovered from the World Trade Center dig. The shoes the Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber, tried to set off onboard that Christmas 2001 Northwest flight. One of the 300 guns recovered from the Branch Dividian Compund in Waco. They even have the cabin where Unabomber Ted Kaczynski lived and was captured in rural Montana.

 

 

While on the sixth floor, you can walk out onto the outdoor terrace for a grand view of the Capitol Building and most of Pennsylvania Ave where the Inaugural Parade happens when the Presidents walk (or drive) their way back to the White House every four years.

 

 

I have to say, beside the 9/11 displays, my favorite part was the section which had examples of all the Pulitzer Prize journalistic photos and an exhibit of Presidential photographers.



There was a section dedicated to President Obama’s official photographer, Pete Souza. There was a particularly moving behind-the-scenes shot of the President in a not so private moment with his wife back stage at the Inaugural Ball in 2009. The First Lady stands in front of the President wearing his coat with her formal gown tucked, in warding off the cold.

 

 

Although we ran through the place, I came away with a deep appreciation for how the news industry does their job. They are the people we love to hate and rarely are glad to see because their presence usually means bad things are happening. But, if you believe in Democracy and all that entails, you must appreciate that a true Democracy cannot survive without a free press to give meaning to the word “transparency” and hold everyone, especially governments; accountable to the people they affect every day.

I love Tom Hanks

My Tom Hanks who made the top of my all-time favorite actor list when he did "Saving Private Ryan".

Watch here as Tom shows his true versatility doing a "Slam Poem" to memorialize the Sitcom "Full House" on Jimmy Kimmel's show:

Return to DC (sorry)

Ok...I must report on a new adventure in the nations capitol. It wasn't my fault, I was forced to attend another meeting with our grant partners CNA in Alexandria, Virginia. CNA is the TTA (Training and Technical Assistance) provider for our Smart Policing Initiative  grant.They organized a meeting and one-day conference as a replacement site audit by the US DOJ and their Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) to do a first year assessment of our activities on our two-year grant.

They normally would have come to us in Frisco except after the $16 dollar muffin fiasco earlier this year, Congress cut off DOJs travel budget and they were forced to have the grantees (that would be us) come to them. Oh, well...road trip!

The conference meeting went according to plan...you know, lots of Power Point presentations and suspiciously similar paper handouts to follow. But the DOJ audit meeting would be a little different. The "team" consisted of our Department Grant Administrator, Tonia, researcher, Dr. John of UTD (Go Horns), and I matched against two members of BJA. We were supposed to bring our SPI officer Chad but he had prescheduled a church mission to apply paint to a church in Honduras during that same week. Really, I'm not kidding.

Tonia had decided to bring the site to them so we made a 5 minute video presentation and a slew of handouts to present our case. All told the video was a hit and we got recognition for being the only site to have a "Presentation" for the audit team to watch. Cudos all around.

Having lived through that, we had built in an afternoon of sightseeing on our last full day. Tonia picked the National Cathedral and I picked (of course) the Newseum on Pennsylvania Ave. I must say, I wish I had thought of the National Cathedral on our May trip, we could have spent all day there. It's on the list for next time.

The neogothic cathedral, actually the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, was conceived by the seven Episcopal Bishops of DC after a charter was passed by Congress in 1893. Religion has always been a part of the American experience since the founding of America. So much so that three days before George Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States, Congress passed the following resolution:

Resolved, That after the oath shall have been administered to the President, he, attended by the Vice President and members of the Senate and House of Representatives, shall proceed to St. Paul’s Chapel (in New York City) , to hear divine service. (Annals of Congress, Vol. 1, p. 25, April 27, 1789). Once the National Cathedral was built, many of those inaugural prayer sessions have taken place at the National Cathedral.

Although Congress felt America needed a "National House of Prayer", the cathedral is wholly owned and operated by the Episcopal Church and has no connection with the federal government (that would be illegal). In the past, they have accepted grants and funding for special projects.

Started in September 29, 1907, with the laying of the corner stone by President Teddy Roosevelt, it wasn't completed until September 29, 1990 under President H.W. Bush (#41), a total of 83 years. "Completed" is not the right word in that the designers and worshipers had always maintained that the church will constantly evolve over time and never be finished.

Fourteen Presidents have had their funerals there, from McKinley in 1901 to Gerald Ford in 2007. But only one, Woodrow Wilson is buried there. The only other notable persons buried within the church are Helen Keller and her two companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson.

There are so many beautiful things within it's walls, there is no way I can describe them all or at length. Your eyes would roll back and I'd never get you to read my blog again. So I'll just hit the high points I saw.

 

The main Nave (the main floor of a church) is flanked on both sides by "bays". Each bay is dedicated to something in American history or experience. There are bays to the military, the Presidents, the wars and important events in history. One of these is where President Wilson is buried. His is typical of the theme bays. On the front is a record of his accomplishments. The symbols in front are his home state of New Jersey, his Presidency and his Presidency of Princeton University. The window is titled "War and Peace" for his term as President during WWI and his efforts at starting the United Nations.

Over the years, the cathedral was built one bay at a time from front to back. Our tour guide, a wonderful quiet spoken lady senior, recalls joining the choir in 1923 and watching the progress of construction as the church grew in proportions over the years she's attended there.The sides of the church contain upper and lower stained glass windows towering over the Nave. Many are depictions of religious events as well as the stations of the cross. Each with it's own message rise up to 35 feet tall.

In honor of the Apollo 11 flight and landing on the moon, there is a stained glass window that houses a piece of moon rock known as the "Space Window." It was donated by Dr. Thomas O. Paine, NASA's administrator during the Apollo 11 mission, and designed by St. Louis artist Rodney Winfield.Whirling stars and orbiting planets are depicted in orange, red and white on a deep blue and green field. The moon rock is in the center of a red ball representing the Moon, which is now encased in an air-tight, nitrogen-filled capsule in the window. The moon rock is a basalt, probably from a lava flow.

 

Lewis and Clark

Robert E. Lee

Stonewall Jackson

There's one to Lewis and Clark (nope, not Sacagawea), Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Suffice to say, photos cannot do them justice. You have to see them for yourself. An added bonus is by looking down the sides of the Cathedral. Because each bay's window is a different theme and color, looking down the bays from the front or back of the church, each bay reflects it's predominent color onto the upper reaches of the ceilings creating a rainbow effect of soft blues, greens, yellows and pinks. Again, my photos cannot express the beauty of the interior or the magnificent stained glass windows of the church.

 

It's made harder by the hanging of a mesh across the entire ceiling which partially obscures the upper windows. Recall that in 2011, an earthquake struck the DC and surrounding area which not only damaged memorials in DC proper but also causing some decorative features like the National Cathedral spires to fall to the grounds below. Although still structurally sound, some of the joint mortar broke loose and fell so the mesh remains until the joints can be inspected and filled.

The pulpit was carved out of stones from Canterbury Cathedral. The high altar, The Jerusalem Altar, is made from stones quarried at Solomon's Quarry near Jerusalem, reputedly where the stones for Solomon's Temple were quarried. In the floor directly in front of that altar are set ten stones from the Chapel of Moses on Mount Sinai, representing the Ten Commandments as a foundation for the Jerusalem Altar.The carved stone screen (or Reredos ) behind the altar, called the Ter Sanctus (Thrice Holy) Reredos is, except for the central image of Jesus Christ, carved from limestone quarried at Caen, in Normandy, France.

 

By the time they got to doing the central piece of Jesus, they ran out of the special French quarried stone so Texas came to the rescue and the central image of Jesus is carved in a brighter, yellow-er Texas limestone. Surrounding the altar are the figures of 110 men and women in various poses. Recall that all this was hand carved on special stones....no pressure for the carvers, there were no "do-overs" if they messed up.

Kneeling pillows are hand sewn by church members depicting historic events and famous people. All activities from flower arrangers, to bell ringers and tour guides are volunteers who work tirelessly to maintain the church for parishoners, tourists and guests.

 

The cathedral happens to be the highest point in DC (central tower is 301 feet) and taking the elevator to the 7th floor Pilgrim Observation Gallery gets you a panaramic view of the entire DC area all the way to Virginia and Maryland. It overlooks the U.S. Naval Observatory where the Vice-President lives, that's Joe's house at the far left of the photo.

My photos cannot reflect the scale of the place either, check out the stats:

Length (outside): 517' 8"
Length (inside): 457' 8" (a tenth of a mile!)
Width (outside across the nave aisles): 142' 6"
Height of central tower: 301' 3" (30 stories!)
Height of nave (inside): 102' 6" (10 stories!)
Total area: 83,012 sq. ft.
Weight of the entire Cathedral: 150,000 tons of Indiana Limestone
Heaviest single stone: 5.5 tons
Total years of construction: 83
Number of stained glass windows: 231
Number of gargoyles: 112
Number of angels: 288

The recurring theme of the Cathedral is that it mirrors American values and culture. As an example, in the 1980s, while the west towers were under construction, Washington National Cathedral held a decorative sculpture competition for children. Word of the competition was spread nationwide through National Geographic World Magazine. The third-place winner was Christopher Rader, with his drawing of that fearful villain, Darth Vader and placed high upon the northwest tower of the Cathedral. What's more American than a Star Wars figure decorating a National Place of Worship?  Really cool place, put it on your list if you ever get there.

Shuttle Endeavor comes to LA

Ok...I'm not endorsing the Toyota Company (although I drive a 4 Runner) but this is a pretty cool video they did for their sponsorship of the move to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

 

And here is the California Flyover:

 

 

Last Flight for the Shuttle Endeavour

For you lucky Bastards in California who get your very own Shuttle to see and visit, here is how they got that thing onto the back of the NASA 747. Known as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), Flying with the additional drag and weight of the Orbiter imposes significant fuel and altitude penalties. The range was reduced from an unladen range of 5,500 nautical miles to down to 1,000 nautical miles. Meaning lots of refueling stops just to get from coast to coast.

Most people shutter to think whether the 747 can hold and lift something the size of the Shuttle. Not so tough if you know the Shuttle weighs a paltry 172,000 lbs empty and a typical 747 can lift a payload of 247,000 lbs into the air. The SCA is no Trump jet in that, except for a few seats still in the first class deck, the rest of the aircraft has been stripped of wall panels and even insulation to keep the weight down. Way too noisy to hear the in-flight movie or your iPod.

Shuttle Carrier N905NA was used to ferry the retired Shuttles to their respective museums. It retired to the Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base in California after a short flight from Los Angeles International Airport on September 24, 2012. It now joins N911NA as a source of spare parts for NASA's SOFIA aircraft.

 

 

Here is one of the mounting points where they connect the Shuttle to the 747. Note the bit of NASA humor in the mounting instructions:

 

 

Here is the listing the number of ferry and free flights, in Silhouette, of the various Orbiters and the Phantom Ray on the port side of the SCA:



Mustangs of Las Colinas

In the early 1970s, Dallas businessman Ben H. Carpenter converted his family ranch into a residential and business development called “Las Colinas”. Carpenter wanted the center piece of this commercial development to be a larger-than-life sculpture of a group of wild mustangs fording across a stream.

 

As many of you may know, there are no native horses to North America. All the horse breeds we have are derived from those horses brought to the New World by the early explorers. Mustangs, in particular, were Iberian horses brought by the Spanish. A lot of cross breeding has occurred over the years but they draw their lineage from the original Iberians. The Iberian horse is a title given to a number of horse breeds native to the Iberian peninsula (Spain, Portugal). At present, no less than 18 horse breeds are officially recognized.

Iberian horses are thought to be one of the oldest types of domesticated horses. Modern Iberian breeds tend to be of a Baroque horse type that resemble their most famous member, the Andalusian horse, in “conformation” (the degree of correctness of a horse's bone structure, musculature, and its body proportions in relation to each other).

In 1976, Mr. Carpenter commissioned African wildlife artist Robert Glen to bring his vision to reality. Glen spent a year researching and studying the history of the mustangs to better understand his subject. For his sculpture, Mr. Glen discovered a line of horse with the same pure bloodlines in Southern Spain. He used these horses as the models for his sculpture.

Working from his studio in Nairobi, Kenya, Glen made scale models of mustangs in various poses to help him work out the design of the sculpture. He then made ½-life-size models of the horses. For the next step in the process, Glen made life-size fiberglass molds of these models and shipped them to a foundry in England.

 

After an elaborate course of creating positive and negative molds, the foundry completed the bronze casting in November 1981. The mustangs were shipped by air from England to Irving, Texas, and after the intricate procedure of mounting the figures, the Mustangs of Las Colinas sculpture was dedicated on September 25, 1984.

The plaza itself is massive (rather stark really) and sits in the center of a three building complex known as Williams Square on N. O’Connor Blvd. in Irving, Texas. Some of you may recall seeing the plaza and sculpture from a recent Travel Channel documentary for the opening of the new TNT Dallas series. The plaza and sculpture were depicted in an episode from the original CBS series.
 

 
The sculpture consists of nine horses in a line as if galloping through a stream bed. The running water of the stream cascades down into a steeper canyon formed from granite tiles. The canyon has steps for sitting right down to the edge of the stream where one can sit and dip their feet in the cool water. Must be a great place for workers and visitors to take a nice relaxing lunch.

Pentagon 9/11 Memorial

 

On the anniversary of 9/11, I decided to honor this day by relating our experiences at the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial. It was our last full day in DC and, somewhat surprisingly, Dianna was the one who made it a point that we see the memorial before we left.

 

Little known factoid is that there is no public parking for the memorial on the Pentagon grounds. Parking for the memorial is located at the Pentagon City shopping mall across the highway. Access is by parking in the Mall parking structure ($2 dollars for 2 hours). You walk across the street to the outer Pentagon parking lot, through a really cool tunnel under the I-395 highway and a walk on a well designated path to the memorial. Don’t stray, there are security police and cameras everywhere.

Oh yeah….absolutely no photography around or toward the Pentagon except when it’s directed into the memorial site. Fact….saw a lady get yelled at for poking her camera lens through the perimeter fence of the memorial toward the building. I, on the other hand, just casually snapped my shots without lifting the camera (old surveillance trick). A cool feature is the cell phone self-guided tour you have access to by calling (202) 741-1004. Very informative.

The Pentagon Memorial captures that moment in time at 9:37 a.m. when 184 lives ended when American Airlines Flight 77 hurtled over the DC landscape and came to rest at the south wall of the Pentagon. There are 125 Memorial Units honoring the victims of the Pentagon (55 military personnel and 70 civilians) and 59 lives lost on Flight 77. The unique design of the Pentagon Memorial reflects the path of the aircraft and serves as a timeline of the victims’ ages, spanning from the youngest victim, three-year-old  Dana Falkenberg, who was on board American Airlines Flight 77, to the oldest,  John D. Yamnicky, 71.

Begun in June of 2006, dedicated and opened to the public on September 11, 2008 by President Bush, the memorial is a bit of a departure from other traditional memorials we have seen over the years. Rather stark by most standards, it was at once, powerful and hauntingly barren. I say that because the memorial is flat and expansive, layered with crushed rock, almost a moonscape. After the 9/11 attacks, an impromptu memorial had been set up at the Navy Annex on the hill above, overlooking the Pentagon where the  Air Force Memorial now resides (completed in 2006). That hill also marks the point where Flight 77 flew over as it made its final descent into the Pentagon.
 

 

On the western perimeter of the gravel field, an Age Wall grows one inch per year in height above the perimeter bench relative to the age lines. As visitors move through the Memorial, the wall gets higher, growing from three inches (the age of Dana Falkenberg) to 71 inches (the age of John D. Yamnicky).

 

 

The memorial is a set of 184 illuminated benches in the landscaped two acre lot. Each bench is engraved with the name of a victim. The benches representing the victims that were inside the Pentagon are arranged so those reading the names will face the Pentagon's south facade, where the plane hit; benches dedicated to victims aboard the plane are arranged so that those reading the engraved name will be facing skyward along the path the plane traveled. If more than one member of a family died during the attack, family names are listed in the reflecting pool under the bench.

 

The sight of the aircraft striking the building must have been horrific. Traveling at approximately 530 mph, the plane hit the Pentagon at the first-floor level and, at the moment of impact, the airplane was rolled slightly to the left, with the right wing elevated. It flew so low, the aircraft cut down five street light poles before contacting the wall. The front part of the fuselage disintegrated on impact, while the mid and tail sections moved for another fraction of a second, with tail section debris penetrating furthest into the building. In all, the airplane took eight-tenths of a second to fully penetrate 310 feet into the three outermost of the building's five rings.



 

Looking at the Pentagon today, all the destruction has been repaired but the point of contact for the aircraft is still visible. When the façade was repaired, several of the original exterior tiles were salvaged and placed at the point of impact around the 6^th window, between the first and second floors, just left of the three wood exit doors bottom right. You can tell by the slight color difference between the new and old wall panels.

 

Although stark and simple, the memorial evokes a powerful statement about that event and it’s place in the overall 9/11 tragedy. On the plane were a family starting out for a vacation in Australia and a group of students were attending a National Geographic trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary in Santa Barbara, California. Who could have imagined how that day would end for those people. Where would they be today, 11 years later, if some stupid fanatics hadn’t set out to conquer America? We’ll never know what contributions they would have made but we do know the hurt and suffering of the families and friends left behind will be with them as long as they live. Above all….we can never forget.