Day 2 - Washington DC

Day 2 - Washington DC #dcjordan2022

Good rainy morning

Still trying to figure out how to activate my e-sim might have to wait for my brother to wake up for that so depending on there'll be no updates until wifi sections

Today the plan is to be sad. We're doing the Holocaust memorial museum and then the African American History museum, then free time and dinner, probably a chill day after? Not sure

We were going to walk there but with this weather... Hmm... Probably just Ubering because no thanks, hopefully the museum has wifi

Ok time to speedrun today's activities before crashing for sleep. I did keep some notes as we did stuff to try and not miss things.

So we took a cab to the Holocaust Memorial museum as it was a bit chilly and raining. We got there as it opened around 10, had a nice Egyptian driver that's been here for like 35 years which I only know cause Farah is good at talking to strangers (unlike me)

I'd been to this museum once when visiting DC for a family wedding and i knew going in it would be a heavy one especially for someone super empathetic like my wife is.

I won't dwell too much on the contents of the museum as I think it's something best experienced reasonably fresh (even if you know the history i feel like seeing these kinds of places first hands hits different)

But it did tie into experiences and memories I had when visiting Auschwitz, especially this entry gate vs the one I took 8 years ago. Also the exhibit showing the shoes of people that went through it all, for some reason the volume of shoes brings it home in a visceral way

One thing that is remarkable is how much of the museum keeps hitting you with the complicity of people in that time having the power to help but choosing to do nothing (if not outright hindering or worse).

The other thing that jumped at me, especially in the build up to the start of the Holocaust is the parallels with today, in terms of how xenophobia keeps ratcheting up and the exaltation of the ingroup as superior, personality cults, alternate realities due to propaganda...

Not just in the US but in a lot of countries where right-wing groups are just running the same playbook, we're lucky no one has been as good at it and/or the memories of this period still have some vaccinelike effect but the protection seems to be waning.

Anywho... I'll leave this quote as it just kind of sums it up.

Then we headed to the National Museum of African American History and Culture because why not learn more about how bad people are...

On the way there (short walk) the rain had stopped and the day was nice but it started to get cold and extremely windy. Quick drive-by Washington monument pic

When we were almost at the museum the wind just went crazy and starting blasting. It was legitimately hard to walk for a couple of gusts. It didn't help with the cold. The museum is really gorgeous and has a great design/architecture, don't think my picture does it justice

Here's some of the inside structural feel

I got sidetracked by the internet while posting updates delaying sleep even more... Insert ticking down "you will now only sleep x hours" meme. So anyway, i just want to really emphasize how intense the wind was right before we went inside the museum.

Ok, now that we were inside we ate at the car since it was supposed to be decent, i would say it was. Overpriced, of course but decent southern-y food, i liked my po'boy sandwich's fish and the sides were actually very good.

Onwards to the history exhibition which is the largest one. Starts where you'd expect with the state of play in Europe and Africa around when the transatlantic slave trade started with a lot more time dedicated to context and events than I'd previously gotten

That pattern repeated often. It's a large museum and they really have a lot more information than we usually get about black people's journey into and through America. Part of that is not having grown up here but from conversations i don't think most people here get it either

The lowest floor goes from the beginning of the slave trade to around the 14th amendment and is tragic in a very different way than the Holocaust museum

But one thing both did that I liked a lot is that amid all the people being shitty porn, they again and again showcased people fighting to make things better or retake control.

Of course there were some (a lot) parallels in how the degree of normalization and othering in both museums led to horrible outcomes

One other thing that I've never really thought about is how much work goes into designing the exhibitions themselves in terms of flow and visual language / effect. Both museums had some sections or passages that were powerfully designed

I can't really do justice to how well this wall worked as a backdrop to the struggle for recognition as people but it was well executed.

On the other hand, while visually stunning, the museum felt a lot more chaotic and dense than the Holocaust one. That one had a linear path with a consistent storytelling methodology and only a few sections that had uncertain "best" paths

The African American museum had a lot of the exhibitions laid out in ways that at least to me made it feel like i was overwhelmed by information and unsure about what the "correct" path was, even heard a lady tell her friend she wasn't sure if they already done a section

It's hard to see in these pictures but there's a lot of places with multiple exits and where the displays just surround you on all sides and I didn't like it as much, made me feel like I might be missing things or doing them out of sequence

Like I said, it made me really curious about the thought process behind exhibit design because both museums had a consistent language for interaction but they were so different it crystallized how much work goes into designing that.

Another minor thing is since this one and a lot more artifacts they and most text behind glass and the glass panel junctions could be very disruptive when lots of people were there by forcing certain angles to read properly

Digression about exhibit design over.

I liked how they portrayed Jefferson as a flawed man.

One minor thing that was a funny confluence of timing and content is that two portions of the exhibit had come up recently while studying for the Canadian citizenship test, the story of Mary Anne Shadd and the resettlement Sierra Leone, neither of which I'd heard about before

Next floor was reconstruction through civil rights but to be honest by then we had serious dense museum burnout so we weren't as through as we had been up til then. Next floor was more the modern era.

The other exhibitions we kind of speedran through due to the burnout and they focused a lot on the cultural contributions and also specific individuals. After that we went out and walked back towards the hotel though i took a supposedly short detour...

Was trying to fix the e-sim to have data and went to the store and it took forever for them to say they can't really help. Originally i was blamed because "well, we sunset 3G last year so your weird bizarre phone probably can't connect anymore", bitch i literally ATT in November

It's a pixel 6xl btw which ATT sold or sells lol.

Anywho, went back to the hotel for a bit and warmed up then went to dinner at China Chilcano which is a Peruvian place. Peruvian food has a lot of chinese and japanese elements in their dishes due to immigrants.

Ceviche and cilantro dumplings

Tuna bowl (basically poke tbh) and aji de gallina which is a type of chicken stew.

Personally really enjoyed the ceviche and the stew the most, the stew wasn't exotic but it had a nice comforting flavor with just enough differences, also it added olives which work well

Dessert was a churro like dough but crispier with chocolate cream and powder with a banana ice cream which was pretty decent. Lighting was very yellow and dim so none of the food pics gave great color balance

Then we went to a pharmacy to get meds for wife's grandmother where i saw the fabled weirdo escalator junction where they go in opposite directions

Finally headed back to the hotel, trying to catch a cab (no data for Uber) because it was cold a windy but to no avail until we'd gone for a bit and found one. One thing we noticed is streets here have much less foot traffic than we're used to

Yes it was cold but it's so rare to feel like you're waking alone in Toronto but it was a common feeling here

Then hotel was time chill, brother managed to figure out how to fix the sim issue so i have data now, big props to him and now time to sleep and wake up in... 6 hours hehe.