Washington, DC, redux

I finally got around to downloading the pictures from Jackson's camera, and he had some nice shots from the Washington trip in January.

This truly is a redux.... 30 years ago the same principals (with Jackson--the same age I was then-- standing in for me) struck this same pose in front of the Custis Lee mansion on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.

Jackson took several shots of the Washington Monument. These are my favorites.

I find this photo curious and interesting. That's the Vietnam Veterans Memorial--"The Wall." I've always found the wall a strangely moving experience. Moving because you can't escape its intensity. Strange because I can't quite fully understand everything I'm seeing, thinking, or feeling.

I knew nobody who died in service there, I even "disagreed" (after the fact) with the war, and yet when I look upon each name, engraved in the shiny black granite, I feel an acute sense of loss. I find it a perfect monument to an event that still has not been fully apprehended in the national consciousness. If you do a google search of "Vietnam syllabus," you'll see just how much we think, talk, and feel about this war.

So there's Jackson, in the yellow sweatshirt, reflected in the wall. He's standing next to his grandfather (blue hat with the yellow dot), and that might be his uncle Paul about to walk in front of them. A 12 year old, who understands the current American wars primarily for their consequence on the individual lives affected; his grandfather, who turned 18 in November of 1945 and served a year helping occupy the South Pacific; his uncle who turned 18 in 1970, a way station between the two, in which the strain between human consequences and grand--if still awful (necessarily evil?)--projects became most acutely felt in modern American life.

The perfect picture, then, of my own practical and moral uncertainty. Nicely done, Jackson.