July 4, 2012 - The Museum of the American Indian

The Fourth of July in Colorado was, from what I hear, kind of a bummer. It’d been so dry, there were so many very serious fires, the danger of more fires starting was so high, etc. that there were pretty much no fireworks. Almost all the usual professional shows were cancelled. But spending the Fourth of July in DC was awesome! (It’s kind of a big deal there, for some reason. :P )

We decided to spend most of the day in DC, and go to some of the museums along the mall. Our original plan was to hit the botanic gardens and the natural history museum.

The Smithsonian Castle is pretty much my favorite building ever, by the way.

It's just SO PRETTY, okay.

The plaque tells me that this is Joseph Henry.

 

But then along the way, heading towards the gardens we decided that maybe we could take a look inside the Museum of the American Indian. [I wanted to link to their site, but it appears a little broken at the moment.]

Okay. So. We did go here last time we were in the area, and Alex had been there before as well. And we were both severely underwhelmed. It’s very disappointing, in my opinion. There are many very interesting artifacts and displays, but very little easily-accessible information. For instance, one display had a booklet of information about the pieces, but the book was on a fixed stand almost around the corner from the display, so if you wanted to try and find one piece, you had to walk to a point where it was almost out of sight in order to read about what it was. Much of what they have displayed is meant to be aesthetically pleasing (and it often is) but then provides no context or information about the pieces individually. I believe the laudable message that they seem to be aiming for by placing everything together, regardless of whom/where/when it is from is the idea of “everyone as one people,” but it comes off more as homogenizing. Obviously, this has been a huge problem historically, that all tribes were treated as interchangeable, as identical, as if they had nothing unique or important about their individual histories, beliefs, traditions, etc. The museum, to me, seemed to reinforce that mightily. It was very disappointing, and we’d decided that we probably wouldn’t bother coming back when we were pressed for time.

But we decided to go in anyway. And it was totally worth it.

See, this year (I think through next January) they’re doing an exhibit all about horses, and what they mean to different tribes. And it was a really impressive exhibit, in terms of what they had, and the range they covered. It’s a shame that this is a temporary exhibit, because it’s my favorite thing I’ve seen there.

The poster for the exhibit. We would have bought one, if they weren't 30 freaking dollars.

Awesome tipi. *

Saddle.

Navajo horse origin myth.

Horse headpiece that looks like a bison head.

Another horse headpiece/mask. *

Beautifully decorated.

Most of this is done with porcupine quill.

Picture of a picture, but it was just a very awesome picture.

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We did go through some of the rest of the museum, though not in as much detail.

Right side.

Center

Left side.

This wall of different points is one of the examples of homogenizing that I saw… the points are displayed in a really interesting way, and it’s lovely to look at. But at a glance, there’s little information given about them. It’s just a pretty wall-hanging of “look at all the arrowheads!” (Lots of these are not arrowheads.) They do have some computers nearby that you can supposedly use to “interactively search” for more information, but both times I’ve been there, the computers weren’t working (or were so slow that I gave up after looking up one or two things.) So, a pretty display that has some amazing individual pieces, but it’s not a very good for a museum.

I somehow doubt this is historically accurate...

Bearclaw necklace. *

And another display with frustratingly little information… things seemed to be categorized by type of animal? So all the birds were together, and all the fish were together, and all the snakes… but still lacking any relevant context. Still had a few neat things, though:

Turquoise bobcat. *

Scorpion basket! I want one! *

The silver and turquoise bit with the horses is awesome,
but I also dig the crazy crab and the puffin. *

I wish a picture of this without flash would have come out, to show off the mother-of-pearl inlay.
In the eyes of these masks, it looks like reflective animal eyes. *

And that’s the end of what we saw in the museum. I’m breaking this day up into two parts, because otherwise it’ll be even more horribly image-heavy. So the rest of our time in DC will be in the next post.

* These pictures were taken with Alex's camera.

July 3, 2012 - Mill Ruins

On the 3rd, we decided to go around to a few of the old cemeteries in the area. (There are a lot more of them out there than there are in Colorado!)  We’d gone to a few of them when we went out two years ago, so we wanted to visit some different ones this time.

First, let me marvel again at how beautiful and amazing and green and gorgeous everything is.

 The first cemetery we tried to go to was impossibly overgrown.

Seriously, this is a cemetery.

And of course it was overgrown with raspberry canes, so it’ll shred you if you try and poke your way around anyway. Staying at the edges we could see a couple headstones, but not a whole lot.

Green spider and bitchin' web!

 So that was sort of a bust.

The second one we wanted to go to had a big “no trespassing!” sign on the road leading to it. That may have been more for the cell towers and such down that road, and not for the cemetery, but we still felt like we were a little too out in the open to be ignoring signs like that. So that was ALSO a bust.

And then we gave up on cemeteries, heh. (Someday maybe I’ll post some of the pictures from the trip a couple years ago; we actually succeeded in visiting some that time!)

We were in the right area to go check out the (preserved) ruins of Black Rock Mill, which we had visited last time we were here, though only very briefly.

Kinda the front of the mill.

Where it borders the river.

Little bit of information, and a picture of it when it was functional.

Towards the back.

Mill innards.

The rafters.

Back of the mill.

Ferns!

Japanese beetles. I know these guys are crazy-destructive, but I've never seen them before! And they're very pretty.

 The mill is a neat old structure, and I like that it’s being preserved. As nice as it is to find old buildings and ruins and things “in the wild” such as it is, so much stuff ends up entirely disappearing that way.

Afterwards, we went on a very brief hike along Seneca Creek, the waterway next to the mill.

The creek.

Some rocks with trees growing in them.

Mutant tree!

Big daddy long-legs on my hand.

Green!

Ferns!

Last shot of the mill from across the creek.

HRC sticker on the road.

 It was pretty warm and humid, and we were pretty tired, so we didn’t go very far before heading back ‘home’ for the evening.

But the way back let us pass this:

This little shed can be seen towards the beginning of The Blair Witch Project. Yeah, that movie was actually filmed in the park here, despite not being set in Maryland. Much to Alex’s mingled amusement and annoyance, when he got to hear people freaking out over how scary and “totally real” that movie was.

And then bonus stuff about where we were staying!

This is the house we were staying in. It’s very, very old… the cabin bit in front there actually dates to the late 1700s, the middle portion to the 1800s, and then the far section to the early 1900s (I believe.) It’s a shame that it would be so expensive to do a true restoration of the place, because it’s a very cool house, in very sad disrepair.

And this is the view from the porch of the house:

Center view. *

To the left. *

To the right. *

Sunset from our window.

Later, we had to make a run to the grocery store, because we were mad-craving donuts. You know how it goes.

Not donuts, but I wondered if we could get a discount if we bought frowning "smile cookies."

And when we got home, there was a little green moth.

This was a much “fuller” day as far as what we went and did, though it was still pretty easy. It was a lot of fun though. But we definitely had to save up some energy for the 4th!

*These pictures are from Alex’s camera.