Summer of Travel Continues!

Dear Readers:

Madame is off with her husband on a pleasure cruise (of which I am much envious!), so you will have just me for a few weeks.  She will probably delight us with her own travel chronicles when she returns.

Sunday’s post didn’t even get the whole travel day recorded (must have been the pics!), so it continues here (spoiler alert: it won’t conclude in this post either!).  As always, you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

The evening after Arlington we went on a DC lights evening tour, including of the many memorials.  Although they didn’t go on our particular tour, a group of Buddhist monks were touring as well.  I snapped a picture  of them getting ready to…snap some pictures.

The tour headed off to the Capitol for some pictures and witty comments by the tour guide, then to the White House for some pics.  MFP may not have been impressed; she spent part of the time on her phone.  Or maybe she was texting her friends how cool it was.

The World War Two Memorial was very well done, with tributes to both the European and Pacific theaters, as well as the contributions of each state, each state having its own block.

The Jefferson Memorial was off the beaten path just a tad, and impressive at night even without the cherry blossoms in bloom. Here's one of the quotes there: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

The FDR memorial was very impressive from the quotes, serenity, and simplicity, and makes for wistful longing for a time when politicians spoke and acted for the people they claim to represent.  Here’s just a sampling, many taken from the second inaugural address, a speech of importance for us today (http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5105/):

“We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.”

“In every land there are always at work forces that drive men apart and forces that draw men together. In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people.”

"No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order."

"Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men."

"Among American citizens, there should be no forgotten men and no forgotten races."

"Unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighborhood and does justice to the whole human race, the germs of another world war will remain as a constant threat to mankind."