Went to Washington D.C. for a couple of days with my husband. We went for the the National Portrait Gallery, which was a pleasant surprise, as is the Freer Gallery. Visiting monuments was not a pleasant surprise. The reflecting pool is a smelly, mosquito-infested, algae-ridden mess, full of beer cans and other garbage. It was like a dirty kiddy pool in an abandoned trailer park. The Washington Monument looks like shit--the lower corners have sad cement patches that look like crappy spackle jobs people do on dinged interior wall corners. Cement has been splatted over walking paths near the Lincoln Memorial that originally were lovely fixed pebble walkways. What would Lincoln and George say? I've long thought that Jesus would be pissed if he could come back, assuming he really existed, but I think the "founding fathers" would be even more angry. What the fuck have we done? The District of Columbia was a swamp to begin with, literally, and it's a swamp figuratively too. Driving in D.C. is the biggest cluster fuck ever--who the hell planned the street grid there? Downtown DC in general, with the exception of monuments and historic buildings, feels like one big bland office park. People bitch about New York's architectural mess--NY has NOTHING on DC. And DC people all look like extras from the movie "Wall Street." Yuppie politician hell. Worst of all, the grass at all these monuments and institutions isn't even really grass at all--it's brown dirt ruts and dandelions--very sad. If you want to know whether we are functional as a country, as a federal government, as a people, go to DC. I guess the grass and maintenance is the first thing to go when we're snared in yet another bazillion-dollar pointless war.