This day will last a thousand years

With the Air and Space Museum closed I thought about going back to the hotel, maybe exercising, maybe getting on the Internet, and remembered I do that pretty much every day anyway except not within the Beltway. (I think I was within the Beltway.) And the Washington Monument was just nearby ... maybe I could go up and get a wonderful city view on the approach of sunset.

There are efficient ways to play tourist and one of them is to actually look up in many abundantly available guides what the operating hours for things are. I wasn't touristing in an efficient way. This can have the advantage of making even the simplest thing surprises; it can have the disadvantage of a lot of redundant steps or walks that don't quite lead anywhere. It turns out the Washington Monument stops taking visitors inside at some ludicrously early hour, maybe 5:30, so while I was able to wander around it on a strikingly beautiful evening, I couldn't get closer than leaning against it and staring up like it was the Battle of Bennington Monument or something like that. Inefficient but adventurous anyway.

And then I remembered the World War II memorial monument was new since I'd last been around and was somewhere nearby and thought I should visit that. It's at one end of the reflecting pond, and while my sense of Washington geography may be fairly vague --- what I mostly know is the Smithsonian Metro station isn't the best exit for the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum --- but I could find the reflecting pond starting from the Washington Monument and indeed it's right there.

I knew the rough layout of the monument --- pillars for each of the United States and territories as of the War Years (so, the Philippines are included), with bases for the European and the Pacific theaters, including concrete ponds that list the major operations within the theaters. Described like that it doesn't sound like anything, really; but, it's ... well, it's done in that classic Works Progress Administration architectural style, and add to it the wreaths made part of the pillars, and the statues of Victory, and the quotations from major speeches and announcements of war objectives and of successes and ... and then people leaving their own memorial tokens by the various states ...

I had no idea that it could be this potent. Maybe it reflects my increasing study of that era, maybe it reflects knowing better the campaigns that my extended family participated in, maybe it was just the length of the day and the lateness of the hour, but just being there brought me within a few breaths of breaking up. I've felt that power before, particularly in Singapore at the memorial to those who died in the Japanese Occupation, but it's still lasting.

Trivia: Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders invaded Cuba using smokeless powder cartridges, although most volunteer units in the Spanish-American War were issued black-powder Springfield Rifles. (The smokeless powder was, against all precedent for this sort of thing, controversial within the War Department.) Source: The Spanish War: An American Epic, 1898, G J A O'Toole.

Currently Reading: New Writings In SF 8, Editor John Carnell.