I'm not at Arlington Cemetery. And it's more than a week after I promised readers I'd be back, and bring a report from these historic, hallowed grounds. I didn't lie; I got sidetracked.
And it may be because I had a bad experience there when I first moved to the area. I had gotten lost, and my first off ramp was the street that led me to Arlington Cemetery. Heart racing, I gazed out at what - the Potomoc? The Lincoln Memorial? Breathless, I struggled to take it all in. Postcard-perfect, though I clearly was not; I was not ready, and I would return. So next time.
...So today I'll take you to the
Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, a place that brought out the eight-year-old boy in me. It reminded me of when I was, well, nearly 8 and Man was about to land on the moon. I raced back to my grandmother's house in Alice, Texas, despite the protestations of my nine-year-old friend Stephanie who seemed bored by it all. I remember lying down on my grandmother's shag carpeting on that sticky July day in 1969. "One small step for man..."
The Air & Space Museum offers something for every science geek, young and old, male or female, English-speaking or Italian (I mention Italian because, at the Sally Ride exhibit, I thought I heard some young men speaking French, and said: "Très triste" and they looked at me like I'd swallowed a gondola. "Are you French?" I asked. "No, Italian.")
The best part of the day for me, though, was seeing the plane that Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in, winning $10,000 from a New York hotelier. No one thought he could do it, or perhaps everyone did, especially himself. It's called The Spirit of St. Louis, named after the plane's funders' location. It hangs from the ceiling outside the
Einstein Planetarium, where I went to hear Neil deGrasse Tyson narrate "Dark Matter" while staring up at a half-watermelon-shaped ceiling that shone images of stars and planets.
Other famous fliers are on offer including Amelia Earhart, whom, I learned, said before her last flight that she only thought she had one flight left in her. I didn't realize she was so young and beautiful. Others shown are the Tuskegee Airmen, the ground-breaking African American pilots who flew in WWII; balloonists; and examples of what are called "bizjets", fancy planes that can fly internationally without stopping.
Another favorite exhibit was getting to "tour" Mars, the Moon, even Earth via a Google Earth app on steroids -- walk inside a dark semi-enclosure, press and maneuver a knob, and you'll jet around the landscape of the moon, dipping into crevices, then zooming into black outer space surrounded by twinkling diamond stars. It's delightful, and I didn't want to leave. You can even zoom into any place on Planet Earth - say San Francisco - and land yourself smack dab in the middle of anything on these giant screens.
Gift shops, of course, sport souvenirs of every stripe. I'm heading back to get the space suit for a certain seven-month-old I know, and maybe something else for his auntie.
PHOTOS: Inside the Air and Space Museum - Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, and going inside the Einstein Auditorium to see the film "Dark Matter" narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Next time - Arlington Cemetery, really.
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