The Last of 2012

Another year is ending. It is a day to take stock of what has happened in the past year….and put off goal setting (i. e. resolutions) for the 2013 until tomorrow.

I started out 2012 knowing that it would be a transition year - from working for a big corporation to doing whatever I pleased and could afford. Some of my plans for the year did make it to reality. I posted to my blog every day and did a lot of writing ‘practice.’ Career and corporate related reading declined; the other topics increased to fill the gap. Most of my travel was planned early in the year and happened as planned - Shenandoah in the spring, Tennessee in early summer, Colorado in late summer, and New York for fall foliage. All the trips were enjoyable and kept me from getting too comfortable on home turf.

There was serendipity along the way as well: watching the heron cam at Sapsucker Woods for hours, attending a Women in Computing conference in Baltimore, volunteering for the Friends group of a local nature center, planting trees and cutting kudzu in a watershed, taking my first Coursera course and participating in the National Novel Writing month. Toward the end of the year I found myself in Texas caring for an older relative and learning more about hospitals, atrial fibrillation, and hematomas than I ever thought possible.

2012 has lived up to my expectation of it being a transition year. I am going to start thinking more about what my expectation is for 2013 for my blog post tomorrow. My initial thought is that the variety I created for myself in 2012 is something I want to continue!

Lady Bird Johnson

Tomorrow is the hundredth anniversary of Lady Bird Johnson’s birth. I’ve been reminded of it by the stamps issued in her honor by the US Post Office.

But today I am thinking about what I remember over the years about Lady Bird. Of course - my impressions are through the veil of the way the media portrayed her….but they are overwhelmingly positive. When I read her A White House Diary, her interests and approach to problems seemed so rational.

Every time I see wildflowers growing along a high way - the mowers avoiding cutting them before they go to seed - I think of her. Her advocacy to remove the eyesore of litter and excessive billboards has been so long lasting that many people in our country don’t really remember that ugly aspect of 60s.

So - here’s to legacy of Lady Bird Johnson.

3 Free eBooks - December 2012

The Internet has a growing number of online books….and many of them are free. This is the third monthly post highlighting 3 that I have found within the past month.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery have a number of online exhibitions available. The first one I looked at was Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Italian Glass - but I am now working my way through others that look interesting.

Miltoun, Francis. Italian highways and byways from a motor car. Boston: L.C. Page; 1909. Available at http://archive.org/details/italianhighwaysb00milt this book includes color and black/white illustrations that capture the essence of a road trip through Italy in the early 1900s.

 Paul May at the Bristol Chemistry Department Home Page has been posting a Molecule of the Month since 1996. Reading the postings for 2012 (or an earlier year) is a short book. Learn about the molecule that gives raspberries their smell and botulinum toxin (anti-wrinkle/neurotoxin).

The previous eBook posts can be found here.

Revisiting the Scene of Career Beginnings

Today I am celebrating the place where my career began…..this place launched the career that I pursued (and enjoyed) for the next 40 years. Now that I am making the shift to the next phase of my life - and next career - I am more objective about tracing the threads over the years and a lot of those threads go all the way back to this place.

When I first started in Information Technology almost 40 years ago - the building was as new as my career. The grass was newly planted. The trees along the sidewalk were spindly saplings. I moved away from the area 30 years ago but had an opportunity earlier this week to revisit the place.

The picture at the left is what the building looks like today. Now the grass is thin from soil compaction and too little sun. The trees are showing their age. The bushes that were planted around the foundation are gone but the flood lights that made the side of the building bright still exist. They helped me feel more secure when I arrived for test time on the computer at 4 AM 40 years ago. The brick has cracked below the large windows and been repaired. The railings along the sidewalk to the front door and the likes on poles are still the same. The whole scene looks remarkably enduring after 40 years.

I didn’t go inside but I could tell some things from the sign our front that the building is no longer used for a computer. It is a support building for the hospitals in the area so the original design for providing abundant cooling is still probably in use.

Christmas Decorations as Heritage

As I got out Christmas decorations this year, thoughts of how and when they became part of the collection contributed to the joy of unpacking the bins and boxes.

The oldest ornaments were acquired when I was in elementary school in Wichita Falls, Texas. The caroling girls candle holder (minus a candle) was a gift from a friend. The gold and red tree was part of a set purchased by my mother and then passed along to me about 20 years later; I remember the drug store as a place we got a special treat for me: ‘cherry limeade with plain water.’

The felt birds were among the first ornaments for our tree as we moved into our first house almost 35 years ago. It was a red and white themed tree for years - birds and apples and lights.

The dough ornament is part of a set made by my sister almost 25 years ago - before either of us had children.

The ‘old woman’ ornament was purchased by my mother-in-law over 20 years ago; there is an ‘old man’ too. They were just a small part of her contribution to the one Christmas she lived with us. She really enjoyed decorating for Christmas!

The ‘tomato’ is part of a set of vegetable ornaments that we got by saving labels from cans - my daughter enjoyed them as a baby and now - 23 years later - our cats sometimes take them off the tree.

I am celebrating the memories of the many Christmases these decorations remind me of today.

Scissors

Scissors are a popular tool. One of my grandmothers always used to emphasize using the right tool for the job - and somehow scissors are often the most appropriate tool.

I have accumulated many pairs of scissors over the years - rarely lose them - and am surprised at how frequently I use them. There are the black handled office scissors that I use for opening packages and envelopes as well as trimming labels and stickers to the perfect size. The red handled sewing scissors left over from long ago when I made quite a few of my clothes. Now I use them infrequently and mostly for just cutting thread and patches rather than yards of fabric. Cuticle scissors have done double duty to tighten the tiny screws in eyeglasses. The sturdy kitchen scissors I use most frequently of all - cutting up herbs, pizza or pieces of chicken; they are the scissors that tend to wear out from use and myriad passes through the high heat of the dishwasher. And lastly - the steel scissors I inherited from my mother-in-law. I don’t know their whole history but they are still quite sharp and I think of her every time I pick them up to cut wrapping paper or curl ribbon or open a package.

3 Free eBooks - November 2012

The Internet has a growing number of online books….and many of them are free. This is the second monthly post highlighting 3 that I have found within the past month.

Cooper-Hewitt. Kata-gami : Japanese stencils. Washington: Smithsonian Institution; 1979. Available at http://archive.org/details/katagamijapanese00coop - Another feast for the eyes. It is hard to pick a favorite but I keep coming back to “Grain Plants on a Lattice” on page 19 (partial image at left).

Mathew, Frank James; Walker, Francis S., illustrator. Ireland. London: A&C Black; 1907. Available at http://archive.org/details/irelandf00math - Look at this one for the illustrations. They are in color and depict Ireland in the early 1900s. 

Clock, Emma Graham. Wild flowers from the mountains, cañons and valleys of California. San Francisco: H.S. Crocker Co; 1915. Available at http://archive.org/details/cu31924001686595 - How many of these do you recognize? The flowers are ‘reproductions from water colors’ - strikingly vivid against black backgrounds (example at right). 

The previous post is here. 

10 Years Ago – In November 2002

Many years ago I started collecting headlines/news blurbs as a way of honing my reading of news. Over the years, the headline collection has been warped by the sources of news I was reading…increasingly online. Reviewing the November 2002 headline gleanings - I forced myself to pick 10.  

1. Earthquakes and volcanic activity over the past few days in Indonesia, Ecuador, Pakistan, the United States and Japan are totally unrelated to each other or to the seismic events surrounding Italy's Mount Etna, experts said: the earth is not going to crack.
2. Elderly adults who perform as well as younger adults on certain cognitive tests appear to enlist the otherwise underused left half of the prefrontal cortex of their brain in order to maintain performance. In contrast, elderly people who are not "high performers" on the tests resemble younger adults in showing a preferred usage of the right side of the prefrontal cortex.
3. A severe shortage of people in the United States who know languages used by terrorists and who can decipher intelligence
4. A team of astronomers, routinely monitoring Jupiter's moon Io, have witnessed the largest documented volcanic eruption in history.
5. Last year's Nisqually earthquake caused damage to nearly 300,000 residences or almost one out of every four households in the Puget Sound area
6. About 10,000 years ago, glaciers pushed the range of North American earthworms southward and today the only earthworms found in most of Minnesota are non-native species introduced from Europe. New research suggests that non-native earthworms are radically changing the forest floor in the northern U.S., threatening the goblin fern and other rare plants in the process.
7. Enormous Irish Temple Discovered Underground once surrounded by 300 towering oak posts…each tree was approximately 2.2 yards wide.…dates from 2500 to 2300 B.C.
8. In the 1930s, wild turkeys were near extinct and numbering only about 30,000… the wild turkey population now stands at around 6 million.
9. Nepal - A security officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu has been shot dead by unidentified assailants in what police said appears to be a deliberate escalation of violence by Maoist rebels.
10. Open-heart surgery was performed without opening the chest

Gleanings of the Week Ending October 27, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:

'Time-Capsule' Japanese Lake Sediment Advances Radiocarbon Dating for Older Objects - provides a much more precise way to examine radiocarbon ages of organic material that is 11,000-53,000 years old

Poetry in Motion: Gemini Observatory Releases Image of Rare Polar Ring Galaxy - two galaxies interacting

Shuttle Endeavour’s Complete LA Journey - less than 3 minute time lapse video of Endeavor’s trek through LA streets from National Geographic

Space Oddity - comments from Richard Watson about the famous picture of the earth seen from the moon

Roasted Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash - my grocery story has bins of the squash already cut up…making this recipe very simple. I’m going to try it.

Antibiotic Contamination a Threat to Humans and the Environment - a study from Greenland

New Way to Mimic the Color and Texture of Butterfly Wings - a way to create colorful surfaces that won’t fade like conventional pigmentation

Archaeologists to Mount New Expedition to Troy - less than 20% of the site has been scientifically excavated. Without about 4,500 years of nearly uninterrupted settlement at a crossroads between Europe and Asia…there is a lot to learn

'Large and Dirty' Companies Adopting Greener Strategies to Earn More Green - more companies are seeing environmental safeguards as a business opportunity to embed innovations that save production costs in the long term and that also improve their standing as good corporate citizens in the public mind.

A Long and Winding Road: Cassini Celebrates 15 Years - It’s already sent back some 444 gigbytes of data and more than 300,000 images. There is a still a lot in the plan for it too - before it enters Saturn’s atmosphere on September 15, 2017.

OneZoom Tree of Life Explorer - a zoom in and out visualization of the mammal ‘tree’ from Imperial College London; the project’s goal to eventually include all life on Earth

12 Expert Tips for Fall Fitness - from Marlo Thomas. Anything on this list you should turn into a personal habit?

Ada Lovelace Day Celebrates Women in Science - it was 10/16…and I didn’t see the story until too late. I’m celebrating away. And - becoming more of an activist for the idea that we need more women in the sciences. When I was in college in the 70s, I thought the increased availability of education would lead to increased women in the sciences but the numbers didn’t increase the way so many of us thought they would by now.

The Conversation Project - a starter kit with tools and tips to have the conversation about ‘when it comes to the end of life, I want mine to be…..’

Design for the Public Good (infographic overview of an exhibit at the Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco)

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 29, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:

Speaking of Science: September 2012′s selection of notable quotes

Gender Bias when Hiring Scientists - Both male and female researchers are less likely to hire a female candidate than a male candidate with the same experience.

Pictures: Fire "Tornado" Spotted—How Do They Form? - from National Geographic

Flatworld Knowledge Catalog - online that textbooks that can be read online for free

Chia Seeds - more ideas from VegKitchen on incorporating chia seeds into your diet every day

Cloud Collector’s Reference - from the Cloud Appreciation Society

Lighter-than-air craft rise again - made possible by advances in materials and computer control systems…potential for transporting freight, big enough to be a hotel, casino or spa

Snacking Outside the Box - geared to children…but these are good for adults too

Of Frogs and Embryos - micrographs that could be art

Chip Kidd: Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is. - Book cover designs you’ll recognize and how they came into being

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 22, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:

Another Way to Think about Learning - from Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of the One Laptop per Child Foundation

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #22 - from the Wild Bird Trust

Antlion  - otherwise known as doodlebugs…find out what the ‘bug’ at the bottom of that conical pit really looks like?

Antietam 'Death Studies' Changed How We Saw War - 1862…. photography of the aftermath of the battle at Antietam

Does cracking your knuckles cause arthritis?

New Test House to Generate More Energy than It Uses - a stereotypical suburban house that can generate as much energy as it needs to run

U.S., Russia Move Closer To Sharing Their "Beringian Heritage" - Beringia National Park in Russia to be linked with Bering Land Bridge National Preserve and Cape Krusenstern National Monument in Alasak

Crews Uncover Massive Roman Mosaic in Southern Turkey - 1,600 square feet of mosaic….from a Roman bath

Rx Guide for High Blood Pressure - BP medications are currently failing millions. The author of a new book on the topic says “Despite their best intentions many physicians continue to place their hypertensive patients on blood pressure medications, drug combinations or doses that may not be the best treatment available to them”

Give peace (and quiet) a chance - Is there any place to hear the early morning bird song without the backdrop of traffic?

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 21, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article:

Jared Ficklin video - (TED talk) sound visualization

Photos: Big sunspot kicks ball of energy toward Earth - views from the STEREO Ahead spacecraft and the Solar Dynamics Observatory over the past year

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week #16 - from National Geographic

Brits Top Energy Efficiency Ranking; US Ranks 9th (Out of 12) - Wow! Even China is ahead of us. How can we be competitive with so many of the major economies of the world ahead of us in this arena

States Lead in Freeing the Grid for Small-Scale Renewable Energy - How well is your state doing?

New Metric for Obesity Strongly Correlated to Premature Death - A Body Shape Index (ABSI) is a combination of Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist circumference

Web Quiz Tells You Which Presidential Candidate Best Fits Your Worldview - Interesting quiz

Cassini Spots Daytime Lightning On Saturn - Seen for the first time on the side illuminated by the sun

Green Plants Reduce City Street Pollution Up to Eight Times More Than Previously Believed - and they look good too! Green 'billboards' of vines or grass may be more effective than trees.

Storm Scents: It's True, You Can Smell Oncoming Summer Rain - Just what are you smelling before, during and after a summer rainstorm? Here are some answers from Scientific American

Longwood Gardens in May 2012 - Catalpa Trees

The catalpa trees were blooming at Longwood Gardens when we went last week. They were past peak but it was the first time I had seen them in bloom so I took a series of pictures of them.

Catalpas are one of my favorite trees. I associate them with summers at my maternal grandparents. There was a big tree behind their business and another in front of their house that was kept small and trimmed into a round shape. Both trees provided deep shade and, by the time of year I saw them, had the long green seed pods.

Later in my life - there was a large catalpa tree over the swings in the park when my daughter was little. Again, I remember the seed pods but not the flowers.

So - seeing the trees in bloom was a special treat. I had read about the flowers - described as ‘orchid-like’ and they do resemble orchids both in shape and markings. They are large and Henry Adams mentions ‘the thick odor of catalpa trees’ in his The Education of Henry Adams  but these catalpa trees at Longwood did not seem have a strong smell. Maybe different types of catalpa have more smell that these did.

Previous Posts about Longwood Gardens: 

• Longwood Gardens in May 2012 - Lilies
• Botanical Images - October 2011
• Water Lily Pictures
• Squash and Gourd Images
• Orchids

Gleanings of the Week Ending April 28, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Red-Rock Splendors of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks (video)

Anti-depressants likely do more harm than good - How many other drugs would come out like this is reviewed from a whole system perspective?

A serving a day of dark chocolate might keep the doctor away - A study that showed 50 grams of 70% dark chocolate was good for you. I love having it for breakfast (although I usually have only eat 20 grams)!

Surging Seas - a site that gets specific about the expected impact of rising sea level by 2020.

Almost Seven Million Birds Perish at Communication Towers in North America Each Year - a study that documented the problem…and some possible solutions (for example - making the red lights blinking rather than solid would reduce mortality by 45%!)

Building Muscle Without Heavy Weights - more repetitions with lower intensity also works!

If the food’s in plastic, what’s in the food? - Maybe we need to know more about the packaging of the food we eat

NASA Landsat Satellites See Texas Crop Circles - An image and a bit of history about irrigation and Landsat

Psychologists use social networking behavior to predict personality type - Some research results that prompts more questions than it answers

Less invasive scoliosis treatment - A rod system that is manipulated with magnets - marketed by a California Company - being tested in Hong Kong because of the difficulty getting technology approved for testing in the US

Roosevelt Memorial

A few weeks ago when we went down to Washington DC to see the Cherry Blossoms, we walked through the Roosevelt Memorial as well. It is open to the air and has lots of cascading water that blocks out other sounds most of the time.

FDR’s stature is caped and Fala is nearby. Are Fala’s ears shiny because people like to pet him?

I like the statue of Eleanor Roosevelt; the pockets of her coat look used.

There are visuals of the times in textured tiles and a bread line of statues.

The memorial seems to invite interaction. It is set up for people to stand in the bread line with the statues or to stand beside the statues of the Roosevelts or Fala. The tiles invite more than looking…they are to be touched. 

Life History Part II - Favorites

This is the 2nd of 7 posts with prompts to develop a life history. The first one (and intro) can be found here.

~~~~

The second series is about favorites. Some on this list are probably more important to you or have a more dominate favorite…or there may be whole categories of favorites to add. The idea is to capture an individual’s preferences. Maybe some of those preferences have changed over time and that is worth a conversation rather than the short answer. Or maybe there really is not a favorite (i.e. if you choose a different flavor of ice cream every time you buy some…maybe you simply like almost all flavors of ice cream!).

Here is my starter list for ‘favorites’: 

1. Animal
2. ColorColor
3. Food
4. Nut
5. Ice cream flavor
6. Flower
7. Kind of vacation
8. Vacation destinationVacation destination
9. Jewelry
10. What do you most enjoy doing outdoors
11. Tree
12. Car
13. Thing to do when you have time
14. Home architectural styles
15. Furniture
16. Stores
17. Restaurants
18. Kind of music/performer
19. Movie
20. Book
21. Friend

Topics for the upcoming parts of the series: habits, family and friends, the present and the future. I’ll be posting them about once a week.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is new enough that the first time I was down at the national mall since it opened was for the Cherry Blossom festival in March. The memorial is right on the tidal basin - the statue of Dr. King looks out over the water. Looking at it across the tidal basin, the Lincoln Memorial is behind and too the left of it.

We were there on a week day and there were buses of students on spring field trips. A large group of high school aged students all wearing the same T-shirts were at the memorial as we arrived. Many of them had their phones in their hands but they weren’t texting or talking on them. They were using them to take pictures. They were paying attention to what they were seeing. The tones of their voices were not loud or strident. The monument seems to encourage a reflective demeanor more than anything else.

We walked around reading the quotes at our own pace. Some that I photographed are below. They are etched in the low wall to either side of the statue itself.

Prompts for Developing a Life History - Part I

Today I am starting a series of 7 posts that will include questions that can be used as prompts to develop a life history. They could be used as:

• A personal assessment of your own life (i.e. your own life history)
• A structure for initial conversations with someone else to get to know them (i.e. you each answer the question…and discuss further if needed)
• Interview questions for someone you know fairly well but have gaps in what your know about them (i.e. like a grandparent or parent or a grandchild that has always lived far away

You don’t have to use every question and you may think of others you would like to ask as you go through these. Writing or recording the answers will result in a rudimentary life history. Consider embedding pictures of items the supplement the narrative. Eventually you'll want to get it into a form you can easily edit - like a word processor - but you can start out with a tablet/blank book and pen. Sometimes ordinary things can have a lot of meaning (for example - a raggedy baby's blanket that is part of a 'first memory').

~~~~~

The first series of questions is about your childhood through the completion of your education.

1. Where and when were you born?
2. What was your favorite activity as a child?
3. What is your earliest memory?
4. Who taught you your numbers and letters?
5. How much did you know before you went to school? Could you write your name, etc.?
6. What was your favorite subject in elementary school?
7. Who helped you with your homework in elementary school?
8. What was your elementary school classroom/school building like?
9. What was the most memorable event of elementary school?
10. Did you play a musical instrument? Do you still play?
11. What kind of ‘trouble’ did you have as a teenager?
12. What do you remember the most about high school?
13. What was your hardest class in high school?
14. Did you participate in sports in high school? Do you still play?
15. What extracurricular activities did you participate in during high school and college?
16. Did you have a job while you were in high school? If so - what did you do?
17. Do you have friends from high school you still keep in touch with?
18. Did you go to college?
    • Where?
    • What do you remember the most about college?
    • What was the hardest class for you  in college?
    • How was your college paid for?
    • What did you major in?
    • Did you have a job while you were in college? If so - what did you do?
    • In retrospect, to what extent did you use your college education in your work?
    • Do you have friends from college you still keep in touch with?
19. What was your first car?
20. Did you ever travel by yourself prior to college? If so - where, how, when?
21. Did your family take vacations? If so - where did you go/what did you do?

Later parts to this series will focus on favorites, habits, family and friends, the present and the future. The segments will come out about once a week.

History of Botanical Print Making - Online Examples

Botanical prints have been popular since the beginning of books. They were intended to be educational and often show dissections of flowers or seed pods. They are often beautiful works of art as well.

Many of these old books have been scanned and are accessible via the Internet. I’ve created a time ordered sequence below and pointed to where you can find the whole book of similar prints.

Published in 1484, Peter Schoeffer’s Herbarius latinus contains simple drawings like on the right. The drawings clearly could not be used by themselves to identify a plant. This book was created not that long after the printing press became more widely used (i.e. the Gutenberg Bible was made in the 1450s).

In 1487, Hamsen Schonsperger published Gart der Gesundheit. An example showing an Iris is on the left; the color is rather primitive.  The images are embedded with the text rather than being on separate pages.

Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Das Distilierbuoch came in 1521. It has some plain drawings and some colored. The plain drawings show more detail than earlier drawings although some parts seem stylized rather than reflecting of reality as shown in the grape vine representation on the right. This book also include manufacturing type diagrams...it is a 'how to' book.

In 1546, Kreüter Buch, darin Underscheid, Würckung und Namen der Kreüter so in Deutschen Landen wachsen by Hieronymus Bock was published. The strawberries are easily recognizable. The color is a little better than in the 1400s example.

Skipping ahead to 1788 when Joseph Gaertner published De frvctibvs et seminibvs plantarvm the attention to detail had increased even more. 

In 1805, William Hooker published 2 volumes of The paradisus londinensis:or coloured figures of plants cultivated in the vicinity of the metropolis with color representations. While these volumes were focused on plants near London - the 1800s were a time of plant exploration around the globe and the botanical prints of the era made those discoveries more widely known with their realistic portrayals.

In 1818, William Jackson Hooker published 2 volumes of Musci exotici - with renditions of mosses. 

The 2 volume Florae Columbiae by Hermann Karsten was published in 1869. 

Medizinal Pflanzen was published in 4 volumes in 1887. I picked the dandelion print for the example from this book (on the right). Note the way the illustrator sought to fit as much as possible about the plant onto a single page.

In 1904, Kunstformen der Natur was published by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel. This book has a wide range of prints, not just botanical. The one of pitcher plant is shown at the left. 

In 1907, Alfred  Cogniaux published the many volumes of Dictionnaire iconographique des orchidees. The prints are lovely and grouped by the classification of orchids at the time. My favorite orchids are the slipper-like ones.

This is just a small sample of what is available. The two main repositories that I’ve used are Botanicus and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Both have many more volumes of botanical prints than I've shown here and I encourage you to browse through them. Both repositories have a similar online viewing design. The frame along the left side of the book browsing window generally shows which pages have an illustration (marked 'illustration' or 'plate' or 'tab', for example) so it is possible to skip to the pages that include prints.

Enjoy!

Jefferson Memorial

When we went down to the see the cherry blossoms in Washington DC back on March 23rd, we walked through the Jefferson Memorial as well. I like the classical shape of the portico and columns…the round dome…the marble.

In the center - there is the larger-than-life statue of Jefferson. His words are etched into the walls. I found myself marveling at how relevant they still are.  This memorial is not only about remembering the man; it is about renewing our understanding of the foundation for our country that is still vibrant and strong.

Around to the side of the memorial, there is an entrance to go under the memorial where there is a museum and gift shops. Jefferson’s words are etched in the walls here too.

The memorial is visible from most of the walk around the tidal basin. The last picture is from the other side of the tidal basin - just past the Martin Luther King Memorial - framed by cherry blossoms.

There always seem to be a lot of people around the Jefferson Memorial. It is a calm spot amid the bustle of city traffic. Somehow it seems to be above the fray and it helps everyone who comes here to be that way too for a few moments.