Small town Marmee in Big City

Our last big trip/fling/get-away for the summer has been a combination trip to Washington, DC for The Call DC and a visit with our Joybear and Mike.

Saturday, August 16 was an amazing day of prayer and fasting for our nation and specifically for its Capitol. Only one day before, our group (Muffin and me, Pastor David and wifey and her mom, Precious Peggy, friends Eddie and Marisa) visited this lovely home where my favorite piece of furniture is the 1938 Roosevelt Steinway piano. Sadly (for me) I was not invited to play it.

After visiting the White House, touring the rooms open to guests and perusing the halls with historic photographs and the latests photo shots of President and Mrs. Bush at the Olympics--opening ceremonies, high fives with athletes, hugs with medalists, profile shots with daughter Barbara, we walked past Lafayette Park (What a debt of gratitude we Americans owe that fabulous Frenchman!) to the Old Ebbit Grill for lunch.

We personally recommend the crab cakes and the summer vegetable plate serve with polenta. Yum!

Following lunch most of the group walked to the Reagan Building and viewed and photographed the chunk of the Berlin Wall. If you are my age or older you vividly remember President Reagan's speech with the famous exhortation, " Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Muffin and I left the group at that time and strolled over to the National Gallery of Art to view a couple of current exhibits. Special exhibits do not allow photography, so it is illegal for me to show you what I saw. However if you check www.nga.gov you can get photos, podcasts, virtual tours of the Afghanistan treasures and the Martin Puryear exhibit. I was so blown away by the gold, the history, the fact that the treasures just survived, that I'm still slapping myself as a reality check on the Afghanistan exhibit. May I just insert a "WOW!". And M. Puryear is a genius with wood, fiber, and other natural materials. A Genius, I tell you. And I never, ever lie about a genius. Reserve a flight to DC, take the Metro to Federal Triangle and walk straight to the National Gallery right now. You will not regret it.