Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Washington, DC: June 3

June 3
A funny thing happened on the Friday night we were sitting on the steps of the Capitol. Mark had just posted something on Facebook and noticed that his friend, Merrill, had just posted a picture from the opposite end of  the national mall at nearly the same time. What? Merrill and Mark grew up in Minnesota where their families had farms that adjoined each other. Then years later, Merrill and his wife, Priscilla, ended up in Fresno when Merrill was president at Fresno Pacific University. When they retired, they moved to Arizona, so we rarely see them.

They texted each other, and found out that each of us had planned to go to the Museum of the Bible on Monday, so we made plans to meet there for lunch.

I'm not sure that the museum would have been on our list but we kept hearing how great it was. I admit thinking it was probably rather small, and probably devoted to the history of the King James version of the Bible. I was soooo wrong about that.

It's a rather large and very well organized, with so much information and many interesting exhibits, including exhibits on faith-based agencies. We were so happy to see MCC represented as well (on the left).

We saw a replica of the Gutenberg press, and a scribe working on the Torah, which takes 1200 hours to complete.

One wall contained biblical names. I'm not sure of the significance of those in gold lettering as compared to the others, but all the males in our family were represented (in gold), along with information about each of the names.






There was a walk-through exhibit meant to represent Nazareth. For some reason, visiting the Holy Land has never been on my bucket list, so this is probably as close as I will ever come...

Our admission had included something called Washington Revelations, which I thought was a "punny" title. If you have ever been to Soaring over California at California Adventure, it is very much like that. It was meant to show all the biblical references that are part of the monuments and statues around the DC area. We found out afterwards that indeed it was designed by the same people who did Soaring over California, thus the similarity.

We had lunch with Merrill, Priscilla, and their daughter Stephanie, who works in DC.
Then we parted ways and headed to the Air and Space Museum, which was high on Mark's list.






Next we planned to go to the Museum of Arts and Industry, but it was closed for renovation, so instead we headed to the Smithsonian Castle, completed in 1855, which originally housed the entire Smithsonian collection. We learned about the origin of the Smithsonian, which was fascinating.








On the way to the Castle, we passed this guy wearing a Minnesota t-shirt, so naturally we had to take a picture.
Another busy and rewarding day.

2 comments:

05 08
Anne / Springleaf Studios said... #

....and even more great photos. You did such a good job capturing all the places and things you and Mark did. You have an eye for seeing the things that others don't notice. I wonder how many quilt designs will come from this trip. Sometimes I take tons of photos and other times I flat out forget. Fun that you got to connect with old friends too.

OPQuilt said... #

What a great day this was! I've not ever been to the Bible Museum, so that was interesting to see. I feel like I'm getting my own personal tour of Washington DC. When you retire from being a quilter, that's a possbility, right? (Love that T-shirt at the end)