Sunday, January 4, 2009

Museum of American History

With the possibility of leaving the area looming in the future, we decided to take advantage of a relatively nice Saturday morning and head downtown to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It had been closed for a couple of years for renovations and has recently opened up again. We've been wanting to see it for quite some time.

This place is huge - and you really need several days to do it justice - but we did what we could.

On display are these Stradivarius stringed instruments and they were just exquisite. They were just beautiful, to say the very least.



Here is a picture of Seinfeld's puffy shirt (I'm sure we all remember that scene) and of course, Oscar the Grouch.



Here is Kermit THE Frog. The original Kermit. I'm sure you're wondering to yourself "Why is Oscar and Kermit here in the museum when we clearly still see them on Sesame Street?" These two are the originals - the first ones.



The day wouldn't have been complete without seeing the ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. :)



We were going along our merry way and all was good. Then we stepped into the area about wars. I was doing well through World War II - learning some facts that I hadn't known before. But then something started to happen. We went on to the Korean War - the war my Father had fought in. Then on to the Vietnam war - the war that was going on when I was in high school and early college. It was actually a little hard to go through these displays. They were very well done and I had tears in my eyes. In most other areas of the museum, there were kids everywhere but not so much here. Everyone was pretty quiet and reflective. And it made me sad.

But then we came to this display.



These are pieces of scrap metal from the twin towers. I can't even begin to tell you how seeing this impacted me. It all came down to this. Everyone just stood there. There was nothing to say.

By the time we left that wing, I was pretty much done. It took a little bit of time to re-group. My kudos to the Smithsonian - what a powerful display! Well done!

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