staying warm

While we haven't had much snow this winter, the temperature has plummeted making this one of the coldest winters on record. It has been so cold, in fact, that it hurts to breathe outside- at least for us desert-dwellers! So what do you do when it's too cold to play outside? Pretty much the same things you do in Arizona when it's too hot outside- well, with the exception of swimming!

One thing we've been doing while its been so chilly out is visiting museums. I think the District of Columbia must be the "museum capital of the world"- there are 44 museums (according to the American Association of Museums) in just a hair over 60 square miles. To put it in perspective, Arizona has 41 museums in almost 114,000 square miles. Anyway, suffice it to say that there are a lot of museums to choose from just in the District of Columbia- and even more in Maryland and Virginia.

The Smithsonian Museums are perhaps the most well-known museums in our nation's capital and we've visited several of them a couple of times when we've had out-of-town visitors. Two weekends ago we decided to try something different and went to the Newseum, a museum dedicated to... you guessed it... the news! One of my favorite exhibits is a display of actual newspapers dating from the 1600's to present-day. It's interesting to see how news reporting changed over the centuries and seems to follow a back-and-forth trend from "just the facts" to interpretation and even opinion as "news." Another interesting exhibit is the collection of all the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs. It is hard to look at some of them- photos of starving children in Ethiopia or people sitting on their rooftops as the flood waters of Katrina came up to the rafters. But all of them, happy or sad, represent a moment in history never to be forgotten.

This HUGE wall has the front page from September 12th, 2001 newspapers from all over the world. The Arizona Republic (not in view ☹) had the headline with the largest font size!

I found this toy in the museum gift shop... oy vey! 

Last weekend we went to the National Museum of Crime and Punishment where we enjoyed a brief history of criminals and their punishments or, in some cases, torture beginning with medieval times. I liked the pirate and gangster exhibits the best- there seemed to be some honor among thieves. However, the serial killer exhibit was... scary... and creepy. It made me acutely aware of the evil in this world- and how each of us, without the grace of God, has the potential for such violence.

The National Museum of Crime & Punishment covers two floors plus the basement which houses John Walsh's America's Most Wanted set- the tv show is actually taped at the museum.

CSI and tv shows like it have gained in popularity over the past few years. One fun interactive exhibit dealt with crime scene investigation- and how it's not like Hollywood. Richard and I discovered that working together, we are "very observant" and make a reliable witness!

We enjoyed both museums. They gave us a glimpse of the past, present and future as we roamed from exhibit to exhibit staying nice and warm. Oh- and we discovered they have "coat-check rooms" so we didn't have to carry our coats, scarves and gloves around with us- something we have never seen in Arizona museums!