For Rememberance Sake

These photos were uploaded as part of this draft entry almost a week ago.

Since then, we've lazed on the glorious beaches of Miami for days in a row, donated blood to hundreds of poor starving mosquitoes in swampy Everglades and are now watching a violent storm angrily brewing over Florida Bay (it's hurricane season after all) from a very windy pier in Key Largo.

It's hard to believe we were in Washington DC just so recently. It's hard to remember what it was like being there and doing the things we did. Which is why this blog is so important to us. It's for remembrance sake - a bank for fleeting thoughts and transient memories, before they fade into total obscurity and out of our minds' reach.

Just like our blog, the large stony memorials towering above DC serve to remind one and all of people and events which built the US' long history. We spent a day at the National Mall wandering through historic markers, craning our necks to catch a glimpse of the tops of tall towers, circling thick columns and squinting in the sunlight to read the inscriptions on the plaques.

The Washington Monument, which sets the max limit for building heights in DC.

Entrance to the top is free - if you can get your hands on a ticket. Which we didn't.

There's a whole bunch of memorials along the mall - one each for Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, the Vietnam Veterans, the Korean War, the two World Wars, etc. Well, not quite a bunch, cos they were placed really far apart from one another. Make that really REALLY far apart in the sweltering heat (read: very hot, even by Singapore standards.) We only visited those that happened to intersect our path between the Washington Monument nearest to the museum cluster and the Lincoln Memorial on the far end of the mall.

People dipping their toes in the cool fountain at the WWII memorial to cool off

Wreathes commemorating all the US states and US territories involved in WWII

The UFO-like WWII memorial with the pencil-like Washington Monument in the background

The Washington Monument, reflected in the, er, Reflecting Pools

The most impressive one by far is the Lincoln Memorial. I guess that's cos the statue inside actually takes the form of a human, unlike most of the others (we didn't see the Jefferson or the FDR memorials though, so we don't know if they got to look human too.) A very large human indeed. The distance between the ground and his toe alone is 8 feet - taller than any human I know. It was tempting to climb onto Mr Abraham's lap and beg him to tell a story, but the memorial's very well patrolled by omnipresent security personnel who guard him like a hawk. Even then, I've read that poor Linc has still managed to be the subject of various pranks, such as having his eyeballs coloured in.


There are free talks scheduled daily, where a ranger tells the story of Abraham Lincoln to anyone who cares to gather round and listen - if you can hear above the visitors' chatter. The ranger highlighted that there was no need to feel obliged to stay throughout his presentation. So we didn't and wandered off to read Lincoln's famous speeches about abolishing slavery inscribed on the walls instead.

Little kid in yellow holding his head in pain after reading all that text.

It was only after we repeatedly ploughed through the giant body of text in a bid to grasp it's full meaning (people in the past should have really learnt to use more punctuation and write in shorter sentences) that we realised Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address starting with the iconic phrase "Four scores and seven years ago" was another wall on the other side of the statue. Duh.

Unfortunately, we lost track of time in all that memorial-gazing and Dan missed his appointment at the White House! Sheesh. But it was okay. We just dropped Obama an SMS and he was cool about it, adding that he'll even dispatch his private chopper to fly us in any other time at our convenience. What a nice man indeed.

This photo was so not taken while we were clawing at the gate with the commoners for a shot of the White House.

The Grand White Dame herself

And this is it for ol' DC.

Recorded on 24 Jun 2009.
For remembrance sake.