Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

August 14, 2023

Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

With my time limited in Washington DC, I had to make some difficult choices on what to go and see. It has been many years since I really had a solid visit, so I really wanted to take in some of the amazing Smithsonian Museums at the National Mall. There are just so many to choose from and there was absolutely no way that I would be able to take them all in. 

My favorite is the Air and Space Museum, but it is also the one that I have visited the most often, so I wanted to see something different, so I began at the incredible and massive Museum of Natural History. This is the one that I recall the most from my first visit to Washington DC as a child. The impression that walking into the Rotunda and seeing the massive 11 ton, thirteen foot tall Bull elephant, Henry made on me as a child stays with me to this day and walking into that space again some fifty years later , I am still in awe.

The towering elephant symbolizes just what a Natural History Museum is and should be, and while the idea of taxidermy being somewhat dated as a way to display and educate about wild animals is somewhat dated, the museum has gone to great lengths to modernize and integrate their displays for a modern audience.

There is a reason that this museum is the single most visited museum of any kind in the United States, it has a simply spectacular collection of over 146 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals,rocks, meteorites, human remains and cultural artifacts. It is the largest natural history collection in the world.

It is absolutely impossible to see it all on a single visit, or even probably in a week of visits, so I wanted to catch a few highlights and focus on a couple of the massive galleries without even trying to cover the entirety of the exhibits. I started in the Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals where I was able to check out the world’s largest diamond, the famous Hope Diamond. I also visited the incredible Star of Asia sapphire and saw many of the over 15,000 precious gems on display.

In the Hall of Mammals, I witnessed a portion of what is the largest collection of invertebrates found anywhere in the world. Posed from the floor to the ceiling, the animals in this exhibition range from the familiar Eastern gray squirrel to the rare okapi, a central African mammal so shy scientists didn’t know it existed until the early 1900s. It is a fascinating display and a bit overwhelming.

My next stop was the Ocean Hall, a personal favorite. The Sant Ocean Hall opened on September 27, 2008, and is the largest renovation of the museum since it opened in 1910. The hall includes 674 marine specimens and models drawn from the over 80 million specimens. It is yet another massive and impressive display and something that I just love to see. 

Of course long perished animals and collections of skeletons of prehistoric dinosaurs are all well and good, but perhaps my favorite part of the museum features living creatures, the Insect zoo features live insects and exhibits about insects and entomologists. Different habitats have been created to show the type of insects that live in different environments and how they have adapted to a freshwater pond, house, mangrove swamp, desert, and rain forest. 

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/

National Book Festival

August 13, 2023

National Book Festival

Since the first National Book Festival was held back on September 8, 2001, the event has grown into one of the largest and best literary events in the country and it is one that I have always wanted to attend. Organized by the Library of Congress, the massive event invites many of the leading writers in America to Washington DC each year for author talks, book signings and other family friendly activities which are attended by thousands.

Held at the Walter E. Washington convention center in Washington DC, the event has a massive hall filled with vendors and non-profit booths, a number of rooms where multiple author presentations happen at the same time and a huge book signing area, where the authors sign books at assigned times.

The event most closely reminds me of the Miami Book Fair based on its scale, but it has the advantage of having everything happen inside without the threat of weather interruptions. When I first arrived, I was staggered by the sheer scale of the event, the convention center is massive and it seemed very daunting at first, but once you get the feel for where and when things are happening, it wasn’t too bad.

There were a number of authors on hand that I knew from my association with the Key West Literary Seminar and it was nice to see Jericho Brown, George Saunders, Tiphanie Yanique, S.A. Cosby and Victor LaValle. The event was so massive and there was such a demand for their time, I really didn’t get much of a chance to say more than a quick hello, but it was obvious that their experiences in Key West made a lasting impression and they to a person asked when they could be invited back, which made me feel really good.

It was awesome to see and meet so many amazing people, writers included. I had the good fortune to have a pretty good discussion with Jesmyn Ward. She is a two-time winner of the National Book Award and someone that I consider to be one of the greatest living American writers. She has never been to the Key West Literary seminar, having had to decline an invite last year due to the birth of her child, but expressed interest in attending in the future which would be awesome.

I also met Carla Hayden who is the Librarian of Congress, which was cool. She was out stopping by the vendor booths for every state in the US. That was another cool part of the event as each state and territory of the US had its own booth that highlighted the literary achievements of that state as well as two authors from each state, many of whom were on hand in addition to the stellar line-up of writers on the main schedule.

It was a really long day, as the festival is only the single day, but well worth the travel to DC. I loved it. The next morning began the tourist portion of my trip to DC. There is so much to see and do in the Nation’s capital that I could never see as much as I wanted to, so I started out with an old favorite by visiting Ford’s Theatre, the site where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April, 1865. I have been there many times, but my love of history, especially Lincoln related draws me back again and again.

The museum in the basement is small but exceedingly well-done and has a number of significant artifacts from Lincoln’s murder, including the murder weapon itself. The theater is still in use as an active playhouse but they have left the Presidential box intact as it was that evening and the National Park Service interpreter was one of the best that I have ever seen. The tour includes admission to the Petersen House, across the street from Ford’s Theatre where the stricken President was taken after he was shot and where he passed away the next morning.

The house has retained the ground level as it was and the upper floors are now part of the museum experience and again, it is an amazing glimpse into history.  I know that I learn knew things every time I visit and my fascination with Lincoln and the Civil War era is never fully satisfied,

https://www.loc.gov/events/2023-national-book-festival/about-this-event/