|
Joyce Kiefer |
 |
|
AND THE HIGHLIGHTS...
A glimpse of Hillary and
a minor demonstration
By JOYCE KIEFER
of TheColumnists.com
Before Marc Foley, terrorism by spinach dominated the news in the Washington Post early this fall when I visited our nation’s capital.
The Post savored the fact that the e-coli-contaminated spinach came from John Steinbeck country. It was easy to inhabit this pocket of relative serenity in the headlines because despite Iraq, despite the great political divide, despite security everywhere, I felt like Mr. Smith when he went to Washington–full of awe and gee-whiz.
As my husband and I drove across the Potomac, I reverted to the first time I went to Washington, the summer I turned 13. Truman was president and the country basked in a prosperity the middle class had never known. The U.S. was pitching itself as the bastion of freedom to countries making the choice between democracy and communism. To those without the freedom to choose, we offered a dream.
Some haze lingered from rain the previous day but the sun was out and the Washington Monument beckoned us into town. In our modest hotel we had a room with a view–the air conditioning fans on a rooftop surrounded by the sides of the rest of the building.
But when we walked the neighborhood, we passed the National Archives, the National Portrait Gallery, Ford’s Theater, and a view of the Capitol as we crossed the street. We licked ice cream cones on the way to the International Spy Museum, filled with spy gadgets from the Cold War–the spoils of victory, you might say.
The first thing we did was walk to the war memorials. The Capitol, the Supreme Court, the White House personify institutions, but the war memorials lift up specific points in history and infuse them with the emotions they evoke in the generation or two that follow. The World War II Memorial resembled the government buildings in its noble grandeur. The arches of its monument to the war in the Atlantic towered above the twisted, elderly man who placed flowers by a soldier’s picture at its base.
I had seen the Vietnam Memorial before, when we took our youngest daughter on a D.C. pilgrimage 20 years ago. This time I noticed that lawn grows at the top of the wall of names.
What moved me the most were the statues of soldiers that march through the Korean War Memorial. They looked tired in their ponchos, shoulders stooped. Their glory was simply the execution of duty. This war was in progress when I went to Washington the first time. General Douglas MacArthur, covered in glory by World War II, had been recently fired over this one. Now North Korea is more of a threat than it was then.
I took my second trip to the Senate chambers. Richard Nixon was our senator from California when I went with my parents. Now Senator Dianne Feinstein was our host– through an intern, of course. We started out in the contemporary style Hart Senate Building and descended in the elevator to the senators’ tunnel that leads to the Capitol. There, surrounded by brick-lined walls, our intern told us, is where Jimmy Stewart stood when “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” was filmed. That was as good as history.
But I soon ran into–almost literally–a senator who could make real history and thus, our guide said, get her face carved on the blank stone in the sculpture of suffragettes in the Capitol rotunda. Would that face be sharply etched like the unflattering shots of her in the daily papers?
As we waited to go through security before entering the Senate chamber, a dark-suited squad came out the door. A somewhat short woman in a navy blue pants suit walked in the middle of these men. She had stylish, short hair, fairly heavy makeup, and a calm expression. Could it be? My husband was too preoccupied with the security apparatus to notice. I could shout, “Are you Hillary Clinton? I worked at Stanford when Chelsea went there, you look better than your pictures, I’m not going to ask for your autograph because you deserve to walk down the hall without anyone bothering you.”
But I didn’t shout anything. And it was Hillary Clinton, all right.
Stepping into the Senate chamber was aftermath.
The only senator present was Orrin Hatch of Utah who was rambling
on about the virtues of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
No one was listening except a tall woman in a royal blue suit
and four-inch heels. She stood near Hatch, balancing a machine
strapped to her shoulders and waist as she typed his words for
the Congressional Record. Soon a male recorder took her place.
Her feet must have hurt and the senator showed no sign of stopping.
The young pages looked bored, no doubt thinking how dull senators
can be when they’re not sending e-mail.
I was hoping to witness the kind of action in Washington you read about in the papers, like a good anti-Iraq war demonstration. Sure enough, when we returned to the Hart Building, an anti-war demonstration was starting up in the lobby. Alas, the players looked like the cast of the anti-Vietnam protests.
Gray haired ladies lined up next to each other for the cameras. Their red T-shirts each carried a letter that all together spelled “End War.” Pony-tailed men lay down in a circle for the police to arrest them. They got their wish after the obligatory warning to disburse, delivered by a cop over a bull horn. The group sang “This Land is Your Land” and I joined in. Young clerks and interns crowded the landings to watch the show dispassionately. Then the police snapped plastic hand cuff straps on the prostrate demonstrators, dragged or prodded them away, and the action was over. It made Page 14 of the Washington Post.
The cabbie who drove us to pick up a rental car for the rest of our trip, emigrated from Egypt in 1989. Each president puts his stamp on the atmosphere of D.C., he declared. When Bill Clinton was president the city was laid back. Now it feels tight, just look at all the security–city police, FBI police, K-9 units. Clinton used to wave when he drove by. Bush looks straight ahead.
Yet the cabbie makes his home in D.C., not Cairo, and drives its streets lovingly. That’s why I stand in awe when I visit our nation’s capital.
©2006 by Joyce Kiefer. The photos are the property of the author. All rights reserved. This column first posted Oct. 30, 2006.
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Joyce Kiefer . To send an email, click
here and don't forget to mention Joyce's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|