The Potomac River

Part 4 of the adventure which began on Sunday, backdated from a few days later.

Once I reached the end of the canal, I hastened across the bridge over the freeway and found myself once again in Foggy Bottom.  Walking southwest I paralleled the river as best I could - I had been doing so since descending Georgetown hill and wanted to see how much longer I could do so - running into the Watergate and the Kennedy Center (which deserves a couple of posts of its own, since I've been short-changing it regularly and I do have things to say about it).  But once I got to the Kennedy Center, I found myself in a tight spot - literally, caught behind an impassable barrier of freeways, unable to continue westwards towards homes.  Frustrated, I went around the center and saw the river, and a path running along it, separated by a four land road with a narrow, grassy median.  Reliving Frogger, I crossed, and found myself face to face, for the first time all day, with the Potomac River.

It ain't pretty.  Many of the waterways we think of as beautiful - Paris's Seine, the Arno in Florence, or the Grand Canal of Venice - are those which are well integrated into their cities.  In Washington, the Potomac is an obstacle, to be bridged as many times as possible so people can cross over into Virginia twice daily during their commutes.  The riverbank is put to use as a place for a parkway (the fate which would have awaited the site of the canal I had just visited, had it not been set aside as a park), nestled within an impenetrable (to a pedestrian) web of freeways, interchanges, and overpasses.  All of this I can understand, since Washington has only gotten busier as time progresses, but one thing I cannot understand or even excuse.

This:
Before you dismiss the images in the mud as driftwood, you might want to blow this picture up.  I count thirteen tires, three buckets, what appears to be a plastic jug of some sort (the yellow thing), and a traffic cone.  There are other objects in this picture - and in the river mud - that I simply can't account for.  But I would also like to draw your attention to the upper left of the picture.  See that balustrade?  Here, look again:

It's a rather fancy affair, what with it's smooth surface, pillars, decorative motifs, and so on.  It is in fact a promenade, designed so that pedestrians can walk along the river.  And look at Washington's very own dump, within sight of the National Mall.

Follow the promenade to the bridge in the background - dodging cars if ever you should try to cross, since there are no traffic lights - and you will eventually arrive at the back side of the Lincoln Memorial.  Guarding the bridge are these scupltures:

They are as shiny and beautiful (if this style is your thing, and I'm not confident it's mine) as the river bed is ugly.  They are gold within spitting distance of grime and white stone pedestals grayed and pitted by car exhaust, cousin to the delicious chemical cocktail leaching from those tires and plastic products into the river.  I will spare you the environmentalist's rant, but suffice it to say that this is another one of those moments - just like the homeless men in DuPont Circle - when I begin to see the ways in which the capital can serve as a microcosm for the entire country.  And I don't like it.

However, some good did come of this part of my journey, for I passed the Lincoln Memorial, and I have at last found Wisconsin's allocated place.  It is on the southern side, which is only visible from a rather inconvenient spot.  And, thanks to river, I was in that spot, and able to snap this picture:

So there.  Some good comes of trailing along an ugly river anyhow!

[Just a note - tonight my boyfriend gets into town for his long-awaited visit, so posts may be a bit sporadic while he's here, since I want to take advantage of our sadly-limited time together.  I will make it up to you, though, promise!]

DuPont Circle

Part 2 of an adventure which began on Sunday, backdated from a few days later.

DuPont Circle, 1:00pm (cont.)

The phrase "DuPont Circle" refers to one of three things: the neighborhood between Adams Morgan and Foggy Bottom, the Metro station which services it, and the traffic circle after which both are named.  I'm in the actual circle, sitting on a bench (as noted earlier) digesting my lunch.  I'm also people-watching.  It's a habit I learned from my father, although I'm tempted to call it a skill; it takes more than simply passivity to observe the world around you.

The Circle is an interesting place to observe people.  DuPont is a pretty tony neighborhood, an apartments here aren't cheap.  This is the sort of place that young people like me aspire to live in, and by the time we can actually afford it, we're no longer young.  Yet alongside the well-off not-so-young urban professionals who walk through the Circle, Starbucks in hand (or, it being a weekend, who jog through the Circle, earbuds firmly inserted) are families playing ball on the grass, students picnicking, people walking and grooming their dogs, and tourists (or maybe natives - can't tell from this distance) lounging about around the fountain (above, with people and below, with pigeons).

But also meandering about this circle of grass enclosed in a ring of concrete are the homeless men, some sitting alone, some asleep, some whiling away their time playing chess at the tables, and some wandering aimlessly about.  All are black, save one who sits at a table and talks incoherently to the air.  It is interesting that amidst the undisputed affluence of DuPont Circle is an element of poverty, and not the "just-getting-by" sort of poverty, but the grinding poverty of the homeless, the mentally ill, and the dispossessed.  For someone from the well-heeled Midwest, where the poor are kept out of sight, it gives pause (my first exposure to this sort of poverty was in Chicago, but it is even more present here). 

I shouldn't be that surprised, I suppose, since Washington has a rather troubled past.  As little as ten years ago my waterfront neighborhood was a no-go zone, and fifty years before that, it was a crowded, disorganized slum (perhaps a bit strong, but they did raze the area in the 50s for a reason - this author is of the opinion that it was a horrible mistake*).  A slum from which, if you looked the right way, you could see the U.S. Capitol.  The homeless men in the Circle may not be able to see the Capitol, but they could walk there from here.  I wonder if anyone there would do anything for them?  Some things change, some things change only on the surface, and some things always remain the same.

* I should note, for the purposes of clarity, that the Waterside Mall the author mentions has since been torn down and the area redeveloped into a sleek complex of office towers, one of which, I am told, will soon house the Mayor's office, and the glitzy new Safeway I shop at every week.  Redevelopment isn't all bad, you see.