My Recent stay near Washington DC

Washington DC is the Republic of the United States of America’s power center. There are lovely buildings and monuments surround the White House, which is yet another fancy and lovely building. I wonder what all the government buildings would look like and how well would they be constructed if they were built today. Thank goodness they were not built recently, and their visual grandness can stand today. I just want to remind myself that all the federal govt buildings belong to the TAXPAYERs, and that every taxpayer, including myself, should have the right to access our govt buildings and elected officials who work in them. I still have hope for a representative government, but the hope fades at times when letters to senators and congressmen go unanswered, when clearly a response is requested.

Take a look at the Washington Monument “money shot”.

It is amazing to me that the Hope Diamond, stolen from India, lives in the Smithsonian.

Through my stops into the Washington DC area, I have stayed in the District and all surround counties except for one, until now: Prince George’s County. PGC is the home of Maryland’s premiere state university, Univ of MD, the home of the largest National Archive in the country, the home of the world renowned Goddard Space Center, and the home to persons of color making up 75% of the PGC population. It was odd to me to see that the UofMD did not have a really cool college town center like Amherst, Berkeley, or Athens to name a few college towns of big state schools. Where are the college bars, and where do professors go to dinner? I asked daily of the locals where there was a hip place to eat and hang out in PGC, and I was met with “no where”. PGC has lesser chain restaurants and the worst restaurants I have ever eaten in my life. One restaurant, NY Buffet did not have food up to temperature, the food sources were obviously from the lowest end of the distributor list, the sauces were congealed sugar water, and it was worse than eating Umass institutional food on the last days of school when they are running out of food except for iceberg lettuce and chicken patties. At least Umass had food that was hot. The other underlying tone of PGC I felt was that every store or shop I went to was not kept up like their comparable stores in Fairfax Co, and the staff watched me like a hawk as if they were expecting me to steal something. The contrast between PGC and the other counties, Anne Arundel, Montgomery, Fairfax and Loudon are striking in many different ways. I am not sure why it is, I did not invent it, but the differences are apparent.