Summer sightseeing in Washington

Washington, D.C., has been one of my favorite cities ever since my first visit, on a high school trip with Project Close Up.

Last weekend was my first time back in about six years. I saw some dear friends, attended a bar mitzvah and on Sunday, I had a chance to do some sightseeing.

My first stop was the Newseum, which I'd seen years ago in its old location, in Virginia.

The new six-story building on Pennsylvania Avenue is impressive and there's a great view from the rooftop terrace. Even from a distance and through the summer haze, the sight of the U.S. Capitol never fails to thrill me.

I liked the displays that focused on the history of newsgathering, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs, press freedom and challenges to the First Amendment.

You get a good overview of how covering the news has changed over the centuries, including the advent of online journalism, blogging and Twitter.

The headline flubs on the walls in the bathroom, taken from the Columbia Journalism Review, were funny - as long as you weren't the one who wrote them.

But I have to admit, the journalism theme park aspects of the museum left me feeling a bit cold.

I decided not to "shake rattle and roll through I-Witness! a 4-D film experience." I did walk through the "G-Men and Journalists: Top News Stories of the FBI's First Century" exhibit and some of it was a little lurid - the Unabomber's cabin and the electric chair that killed the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby.

Also, I was a little put off by the video of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. They're not journalists, they're comedians. Still, I realize it's 2010. You have to be fun and interactive while you're trying to inform and enlighten. And they do offer their own unique spin on the news.

The Newseum is worth a visit - use your AAA card for a discount on the admission. And it got me thinking - aren't we overdue for a Broadway revival of The Front Page?

My next stop, after a long, hot walk across the Mall, was the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History - hands down my favorite museum in the world.

I've always been a huge American history buff and I love the way the museum tells the story of the United States - not simply through the action of great men and women but through the lives of ordinary Americans and through popular culture.

There are examples of great courage - the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where four black students sat down in February 1960 and refused to leave until they were served. And there are items from our collective cultural memory - Kermit the Frog from The Muppet Show and Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.

While I've been to the museum numerous times, I have never felt as moved as I did on this visit, when I saw Michelle Obama's inaugural gown.

At the bar mitzvah on Saturday, the rabbi reminded us that it was the 47th anniversary of the March on Washington and he urged us to recall Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech.

Admiring the gown a day later, in a crowd with many African-American museumgoers including elderly men and women, families with young children, was incredibly poignant.

It was a tangible example of how far we've come in realizing Dr. King's dream and in fulfilling the promise of this country - the promise of equality.

Here is the first lady presenting the gown to the Smithsonian in March:



Since it was on the way to the Metro, I stopped at the National Portrait Gallery before heading back to my hotel.

There's an interesting exhibit through Jan. 2 of Norman Rockwell paintings and drawings from the collection of directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. I learned how Rockwell had influenced their work as filmmakers, which I hadn't realized.

I love the Portrait Gallery, with its collection of paintings and photographs of famous Americans from all walks of life. But after seven hours of walking around, I was getting a little tired. (In my mind, you haven't done enough sightseeing until you're ready to collapse.)

Hopefully I can return on my next visit - which won't take six years - and I can include a little theatergoing, too.

Sitting down and making history

I can't let this day go by without noting a milestone. Fifty years ago today, on Feb. 1, 1960, four black college students sat down at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and refused to leave until they were served.

That quiet, dignified act helped spark similar protests across the United States. "They spread to Nashville, Atlanta, Miami, Durham, N.C., and Little Rock, Ark.," says historian Andrew Lewis. "More than 70 cities and towns in eight weeks. By summer, more than 50,000 people had taken part in one."

The lunch counter was desegregated on July 25, 1960. (You can see a section of it at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, which is my favorite museum in the world.)

Sit-ins became part of a movement that helped make this country a more just, more equal and better place. "Greensboro was the pivot that turned the history of America around," says historian Bill Chafe, of Duke University.

Today, the International Civil Rights Center & Museum is opening in Greensboro, at the site of that Woolworths. Here's a review of the museum from The New York Times.

And here's an interview from the Greensboro News & Record with the three survivors of the Greensboro sit-in: Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain and Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair Jr.) The fourth, David Richmond, died in 1990.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the civil-rights movement is the extent to which it was a movement of young people - blacks who took part in the marches and sit-ins and freedom rides, whites who came to the South to register voters.

McNeil says of those who joined the protests in the 1960s, “They didn’t come back and say, 'What’s in it for me?’ That’s something we hear a lot of today. People gave of their lives, their time and their money.”

It's difficult today to imagine how much courage it took those four young men to act. They faced arrest, physical violence, expulsion from college, the disapproval of their families.

But it was liberating, too. "The best feeling of my life," McCain said, was "sitting on that dumb stool."

Smithsonian stories

Last week I mentioned in passing that the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is my favorite museum in the whole world. That prompted a nice e-mail from Pamela Caragol Wells, the producer of a new series called "Stories from the Vaults" that takes viewers behind the scenes at the Smithsonian museums. It's hosted by Tom Cavanagh, an actor known for his roles on "Ed" and "Scrubs."

I've been a huge fan of the Smithsonian ever since my first visit to Washington, D.C., some 30 years ago, when I was in high school. I've been to almost all of the museums more than once, and I've loved them all. While the American History Museum is closed for renovations until next summer, they're all worth repeated visits. I can't think of a better way to spend a day in our nation's capital.

Until that first visit, I'd viewed museums as somewhat somber, stuffy places, filled with ancient paintings and sculptures. But the Smithsonian, especially the American History Museum, changed all that.

I'm a big American history buff, and I love the way the museum tells the story of this country from so many different vantage points, from the lives of presidents and celebrities to the struggles and dreams of average, everyday people, as it did in an exhibit called From Field to Factory that documented the migration of African-Americans from the South to the North before World War II. And best of all, like all the Smithsonian museums, admission is free.

My first visit to Washington came during the Bicentennial, and there was a terrific exhibit at the American History Museum called "A Nation of Nations" that took visitors through all of the various cultures that together make up the United States. I've always loved the collection of pop culture artifacts, like Dorothy's ruby red slippers from "The Wizard of Oz," Kermit from "Sesame Street" and Jerry Seinfeld's Puffy Shirt. Plus, the museum hasn't shied away from highlighting the serious parts of American history, including the fight against polio and the fight for civil rights.

One visit I made a decade ago will always stay with me. I'd just come from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and literally the first thing I saw when I walked into the American History Museum was a section of the Woolworth's lunch counter, from Greensboro, N.C., where four African-American college students sat down on Feb. 1, 1960, and asked for service. That simple, courageous act helped ignite the movement challenging segregation throughout the South. Here it was 15 years after the Holocaust and we still hadn't understood the evil of racism. It was a sad and powerful reminder that the struggle against bigotry is an ongoing one. I'm glad that this important artifact from American history, pictured above, is preserved at the Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian has many fascinating, quirky, important tales to tell, and I think "Stories from the Vaults" is a great way to make them come alive. The show airs on the Smithsonian Channel HD, which is available on DirectTV HD. While I don't have that system, I watched clips of the show on YouTube. The topics include Phyllis Diller's joke file, (50,000 of them in an immense steel filing cabinet), flesh-eating beetles, the first videogame, the marine biology collection donated by author John Steinbeck, nature photographer Ansel Adams, taxidermy and ants.

The show is a really interesting look at the back rooms where visitors don't normally venture. Caragol Wells says the idea is to be funny and informative, and "Stories from the Vaults" definitely is both. Cavanagh is a witty, affable host as he chats with the scientists and curators to get the story behind the story of artifacts in the collections. The clips brought back many great memories of hours spent walking through the Smithsonian. I can't wait to go back.