Shutterbugs: Just Another Day in the District

We headed in to the big city today...down to DC. Eric gets 4 free passes a year to the Newseum, so we took advantage and all went. Great museum...of course, it's near and dear to our hearts, bring that Eric is still in the business and I used to be.

First up, though...we parked at his work and walked to the Newseum from Union Station. What the heck is this??

Turns out it's a Mastercard ad. Something about stepping out in style or something. Weird.

My obligatory picture of the Nation's Capitol. This never gets old.

Now...on to the Newseum. It's a 6-story museum devoted to the news business...print, radio, television, internet...all of it. It has wonderful rotating exhibits and very important permanent ones, such as the Berlin Wall.

These are huge 12-foot pieces of the wall saved and brought over. This side was the East German side with all the grafitti, fighting for freedom...the back side, facing West Germany, was pristine. There was a portion we could touch...not this, though.

Another permanent exhibit is 9/11. Here is a piece of one of the towers from the World Trade Center.

The stories told, the debris found...shocking and sad.

Near the tower is a huge wall collection of the front pages of newspapers from 9/12...many from the US and all over the world.

But this one from the San Francisco Examiner says it all.

Yep.

Moving along...there was a nice collection of comics. Yes, those can be news-worthy, too! Here is one of my favorites from my childhood...

I used to buy Beetle Bailey comic books and devour them, along with The Archies, Richie Rich, Little Lulu...ah, good times.

One of the rotating exhibits was about Elvis. Lots of great music, great pictures, not-so-great pictures...;) Here is the Vegas Elvis outfit in all its sequined glory...

We spent several hours going through all the exhibits and enjoying ourselves. After an excellent dinner at Matchbox near Chinatown:

We popped over the National Portrait Gallery inside the Museum of American Art. There is a display of Norman Rockwell paintings there until Sunday, and I didn't want to miss it. We weren't allowed to take any pictures of the painting, but they were all great.

On our way out of the Rockwell display, we found this awesome license plate art:

The tag messages spell out the Preamble to the Constitution. For those who don't remember it:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this COnstitution for the UNited States of America.

Way cool. Way cool.

No visit to the Portrait Gallery is complete without a visit to the Presidential Portraits. The White House has a number of them, including President Obama's, so some of the pictures are unofficial. Like this one of President Clinton...