Friday, August 15th

Our last two mornings have started out bright and early at the "Kiss and Ride" lot at Takoma Metro station. "Kiss and Ride," and yes, I did have to research this, apparently refers to parents who park and walk their kids to the platform, give them a kiss, then come back to the car. We in the west call it short term parking. And we don't really get the concept, so Metro has gone to some lengths to explain it to us.


Looks pretty straightforward, right? So the first day we left the car at 8:30, returned at 3:30 and all was well. The second day, Gillian and Jonathan called our attention to the meters sitting in front of the parking spaces. Oh, those meters are artifacts of a previous metro parking system, we kindly told them. Not so, they maintained, pointing to the instructions actually written on the meter. We read those instructions. They seemed to involve a lot of quarters. More quarters than the average person could carry stuffed into an internal frame pack with waist belt and chest strap. More quarters, actually, than the average person should be allowed to own at one time unless they are a government certified quarter collector. More quarters, certainly, than any metro employee is willing to hand over in change. We pooled all our quarters, including the ones obtained from the change machine in the metro station, and fed them all into the meter for Gillian and Jonathan's car because a) Tom always likes his chances, and b) Julia looks on a ticket as the cost of being a tourist. After putting all but two of the quarters in, we discovered that the meter we were feeding with 90% certainty belonged to a car already parked on the opposite slant and not to Gillian and Jonathan's car.

I'd leave you in suspense as to whether or not we got a ticket from this maneuver, but then how can you relax and appreciate the Capitol, the White House, and the Library of Congress? Never mind that this would give you an authentic feeling for Gillian and Jonathan's day. I'll just skip all the touring and tell you that the white thing flapping on the windshield that nearly caused Jonathan heart failure was a brochure for the flea market. I think we were helped by a trash fire on the red line that prompted Metro (according to the Washington Post) to "put all its skilled workers out to pick up garbage." Phew.

Well, the Capitol Building, the White House, and the Library of Congress were as gorgeous and cool as I remembered, but these are not really "family attractions." As Tim said, "Mom, I think I'd better come back someday when I can appreciate all this." We caught up illegally with the tail end of an illegal White House tour--probably because they weren't supposed to be doing it, they couldn't kick us out. That was fascinating and gave our kids a great appreciation of just one thing: the presidential seal in the entrance hall.

The Capitol Building is just as you remembered it. The Library of Congress, on the other hand, has decided to go hip. A movie, made in conjunction with the History Channel, makes library research look positively dynamic. The kids were raring to go after viewing it. Our docent, unfortunately, was not as dynamic. In fact, he was soft spoken, pedantic, and without those stories that make kids sit up and pay attention. Only some of us survived the tour.


Some of the rest of us were reduced to photographing anything of interest.


By the time we were released from the tour and got to the good stuff (first draft of the Declaration of Independence!! Thomas Jefferson's source material for some of his best ideas in the Declaration! Drafts of the Constitution! Margin comments in his own hand! Thomas Jefferson's actual original library and the nucleus of the Library of Congress!), everyone was comatose and we finally had to utter our DC refrain ("Let's come back...") and return to save the cars.

I just read an article on the neurolearning blog I love that discusses how childrens declarative memory--memory for facts and events--is weak. It strengthens over time, but at the age of Nigel, Tim, and to some extent Alex, episodic and personal memory is much stronger. This seems to affect the way they like to discover and learn new material. I'm discovering that they want to approach and understand all the things that are here for them, but probably not through docent led tours. I find it fascinating to see how if we just leave them on their own to look and discover, they move through the boredom and after an hour or so, they start getting interested. That means a radical pace adjustment for Tom and me, though. It's like Christmas, I guess--we adults are always wanting to get moving when our children are finally starting to get interested.

Phew! Enough for today! But remind me on a slow day to tell you about the guard in the Peacock room.