Another Great Benny of Living in DC - Call Out to NOLA Fans

I got a meetup message about the closing ceremony for John K. Lawson's exhibit - Floodline at a gallery in DC. I don't care if I go with people I know or not - I'm heading over there today after work. Here's a brief description of the exhibit:

One morning in Maine, John Lawson took a dingy from the island where he and his wife were vacationing to the mainland to fetch the morning paper, and learned that his home and studio were under six feet of water and that his adopted home city of fifteen years was in a state of chaos. It was six weeks before they were allowed to return to New Orleans and sort through their personal belongings. Everything was damaged. From his studio drawers Lawson pulled out twenty-five years’ worth of soaked sketches and drawings. By pulling the paper carefully apart he laid what was still intact onto the porch of a friend to dry in the sun. The piles of photographs though were less salvageable; in some the subject was still discernible, but for most the colors had bled into one another, creating abstractions in brilliant colors, which melted and crept eerily across the faces of family and friends. With these remains, about a third of his life’s work, Lawson began his journey of understanding the disaster that had changed his life forever. In this exhibition we are witness to Lawson’s mourning, healing and ultimate discovery of acceptance and hope.

I've been missing New Orleans for a few weeks now since I saw a friend's photo of the French Quarter in her facebook album. And I hardly ever went into the French Quarter (unless I had an urge for a muffaletta from Central Grocery).

Anyway, I figured this was a small way to reconnect with what I consider my hometown and remeber the city before and after Katrina.

I'll post my reaction and experience to Floodline afterwards.

DC Tourist, Part 1

I did some searching online last night, and ran across an announcement for the Jim Henson Exhibit at the International Gallery of the Smithsonian. No photography was allowed, but I did stop and read every placard which took about an hour and a half. Lots of Jim Henson's earlier work was displayed, and clips from some of his non-Muppet film shorts, as well as drawings, sketches and storyboards from Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth, the Dark Crystal and others. Fantastic. The exhibit is traveling, and I already let my sister know it's coming to Orlando in February. I got teary walking through room after room of Jim Henson's vision of teaching children community, learning, and peace and thinking how much the world lost when he died.

No pictures were allowed inside the exhibit, so this was the only one I could get.



Due to some weird twist of fate, I walked over to the National Holocaust Memorial Museum around 3:30 pm. When the museum opened, tickets were needed to go through the permanent exhibit, and I wanted to see if tickets were still necessary and when they usually ran out. Lo and behold, active duty military and veterans get special tickets reserved for them every day, so I snagged one. Since I knew I could get a ticket any time, I wasn't in a huge rush to get through the exhibit in the two remaining hours the museum was open.

The elevator took me up to the fourth floor, and immediately the experience was the polar opposite from the Jim Henson Exhibit. There were about 30 people in the first room and hallway coming from the elevator, and not one person said a word. Other than the shuffling of feet, a dead, heavy silence filled the area. The ceiling and walls are black and the floor dark, so that the displays, pictures and videos starkly contrast in black and white. Having read up a lot about the Holocaust growing up, and reading fiction set in that time, I knew the horror of what I was getting into. But when I came across pictures of Polish school teachers and priests moments before they were executed in the woods and fields, I started to tear up again. Perhaps the Nazis being so organized and documenting everything wasn't such a bad thing, there is plenty of photos and videos giving evidence to their systematic approach for domination. One thing interested me: Along with exterminating the mentally and physically handicapped, acute alcoholism was considered a mental illness and acute alcoholics were sent to concentration camps or shot on sight. I got about halfway through the permanent exhibit; up until Auschwitz which is probably a depressing point to stop. I quickly cruised through the last half which encompassed the liberation of the concentration camps, heroes, children of holocaust survivors, and the memorial room. I plan on going back to spend more time listening to the tapes and watching the videos and seeing the last half of the exhibit.

I'm not sure why I happened to visit one exhibit full of light, love and happiness, and the next one filled with horror and despair. Sometimes life is like that.