Busy Day

Hello,

My friend left for her family reunion this afternoon, but we had a good day yesterday. She is a member of the DAR, but she has never been to their headquarters so we had to fix that! It really is a cool place, but I don't think it is somewhere we could take our whole group of school kids. If a smaller group or some of the chaperons wanted to go while we have free time at the Smithsonian that would probably work.

After that we went to a lecture at the National Archives. The author of Declaration:The Nine Tumultuous Weeks When America Became Independent, William Hogeland, was going to be speaking about his book. I found out about this a few weeks ago so I had a chance to read it and it was really interesting because it talked about a third group of Americans at the time of the Revolution that I hadn't heard anything about. Everyone knows about the Revolutionaries who wanted independence and the Loyalist (Tories) who wanted to stay with England, but then there was a third group that Hogeland calls the Reconciliationists who were loyal to America but didn't want to go to war against England. His talk only lasted about an hour, and then we spent some time on the Mall. My friend hadn't been to DC since the American History museum reopened and she had never been to the Castle so she decided to go there, and I took care of a few things that I wanted to do. I am glad she had a chance to see what she wanted at her own pace.

Today before she left we decided to go to Dupont Circle because we are both fans of the movie The American President and Annett Benning's character mentions that she keeps getting lost at Dupont Circle. It is no wonder because there are no less than 4 lanes of traffic around the circle and 9 different streets that come off of it! Now we can both nod in a knowing way when that scene comes up in the film. I also got a chance to take her to the Portrait Gallery (my favorite place, as you all well know) for a short visit and then it was time for lunch and for her to get going.

It was nice having company again!

Tami