This is my fifth national park, and certainly the most complex. Not only does the ranger need to know about pretty much the full sweep of American history to explain why the seven (going on eight) memorials are significant, but there is the history of the memorial itself, the logistical things of where to be when and what to do, and information on the rest of the city. It's stressful, and I hate having to tell someone I don't know the answer.
I learned quickly to identify the location of the first aid bag at every duty station. My first day in uniform, I was assigned to the Lincoln Memorial, and it was less than an hour before a kid splatted on the chamber floor. Marble > Lip. I've since carried my latex gloves and breathing barrier in my pocket at all times.
One of the tricks is learning where and how to stand. Changing your location, orientation, and even posture can radically affect the type of interaction you get with visitors. For example, I quickly found that standing near one column in the Lincoln Memorial means more folks will ask me to take their picture, which I enjoy. But when I'm ready to talk about the murals or the Lincoln quotes on the walls, all I need to do is take five steps to the east and those will become the primary questions. Take five more steps to the east, and I'll be answering questions about the reflecting pool and the nearest metro. So moving around the monument throughout the day spices things up.
Each monument generates some interesting patterns in visitor behavior. Lincoln, for most, is a photo op. Washington is a treat. FDR is a surprise. Vietnam is emotional. Korea is confusing in that it is not Vietnam.
Of course the big news is the National Cherry Blossom Festival, billed as the largest event in the National Park Service because of the volume of visitors that come during the two week festival. The trees look nice with the flowers on them, but cold weather has subdued the level of visitation through the first week. It's nice that the event gets people outdoors, but I guess the thing I like about nature is the variety. I've been able to see a wide variety of birds, for example, including herring and black-backed gulls, osprey, bald eagles, pine warblers, tufted titmice, pied-billed grebes, and red-bellied woodpeckers. I see the same red-tailed hawk every morning by the US Department of Agriculture building; it caught a squirrel on Sunday.
Now that I'm an expert commuter, and have virtually memorized the bus schedule, it's not so stressful. I have been able to finish reading Washington: A Life which was pretty good. I'm now reading The Coldest Winter. I have a big pile of books lined up, but thankfully have a Kindle so I can always have all of them with me. The commute home makes my evening shorter than I'd like, but that's the way it is.
There is no shortage of things to do, and I'm happily busy all day. I really enjoy it.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Reformatting
"I'm Tank. I'll be your operator."
The Matrix
I felt like a Mercury astronaut or a comic book character the first couple days at the new office. Everyone seemed genuinely glad to meet us and excited that we would be starting work soon. There are seven of us coming on as "new" rangers, so the treatment is a little bit different than when you are the only one. I haven't had such an experience since I was an SCA at Glacier when I was still in college. I was interested to learn each of us studied History. Everyone has worked in other parks across the country before coming here.
As you might expect, points reiterated during training often reflected the fact that the park is very high profile, and the fact that that is a double-edged sword. I will say now that this appealed to me from the beginning. From my "office," I can see the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Capitol. The presidential motorcade even went by during one of our training modules.
Despite feeling somewhat like an astronaut, with the responsibility and level of scrutiny, I still feel more like an ant under a magnifying glass. There is just so much to know and so little time. There are 7 monuments: Jefferson, FDR, Lincoln, Korea, Vietnam, World War 2, and Washington. Each has its own story about the monument itself as well as the history that the monument recalls. Then there's learning the little things like how to navigate the behind-the-scenes stuff, sometimes literally. Soon there will be an eighth monument, MLK. The monuments sweep virtually the whole of our nation's history, so the task of understanding them, as well as the history, is monumental.
In the first week, we did a lot of administrative work and got introduced to all the monuments with rangers who were just fascinating in their depth of knowledge. I enjoyed walking down the steps at the Washington Monument, which since the 1970s has not been open to the public. It's pretty fun to find the states you are interested in represented by their commemorative stones. After walking down all 500 feet, we immediately got back on the elevator and went straight back to the top to do some more work. I'm told a peregrine falcon sometimes eats its prey on the windowsill at the top.
The National Mall and Memorial Parks also takes care of a number of other monuments in downtown D.C., some of which are fairly new and might not be familiar to you. The D.C. War Memorial was built by the city and only recently became part of the national park; it is getting a facelift along with the Reflecting Pool's major rehabilitation. The Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II is another lesser-known monument tucked in a corner northwest of the Capitol, but it features a passionate and beautiful sculpture of cranes enclosed in barbed wire.
One lesser-known monument we saw was actually pretty far from the Mall: the African American Civil War Memorial. This monument features a statue of African-American servicemen, but interestingly also includes on stonework surrounding the statue a listing of every African-American regiment that served in the Civil War and the names of each man in those units. It's really amazing to see all the individual names. If you go, Ben's Chili Bowl is two short blocks away, where you can get a famous chili dog from the proudly black-owned store. It's a really fun experience and the food is also great. The sign on the wall says "The only people who eat for free here are BILL COSBY and THE OBAMA FAMILY and that's it!"
For all the excitement, I have to say the most stressful thing was figuring out how to use public transportation. Realizing that I didn't want to hike a mile to the metro twice a day, I had to figure out how to use the bus. It's been staggeringly easy, except for the little hiccup where I got on the wrong bus and took the long way around. (I found a Chipotle and a World Market as a result). My commute takes about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes including walking and waiting time, but it's virtually stress-free. It sure beats driving. I can get a seat on the metro both ways, and I can get my reading in. It's time I would have wanted to spend doing that anyway, and it's good decompression time. I wouldn't get that driving.
On Friday, as we were walking along the Tidal Basin, a couple of us spotted a bald eagle flying over the National Mall. Just another day in the life of a park ranger.
The Matrix
I felt like a Mercury astronaut or a comic book character the first couple days at the new office. Everyone seemed genuinely glad to meet us and excited that we would be starting work soon. There are seven of us coming on as "new" rangers, so the treatment is a little bit different than when you are the only one. I haven't had such an experience since I was an SCA at Glacier when I was still in college. I was interested to learn each of us studied History. Everyone has worked in other parks across the country before coming here.
As you might expect, points reiterated during training often reflected the fact that the park is very high profile, and the fact that that is a double-edged sword. I will say now that this appealed to me from the beginning. From my "office," I can see the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Capitol. The presidential motorcade even went by during one of our training modules.
Despite feeling somewhat like an astronaut, with the responsibility and level of scrutiny, I still feel more like an ant under a magnifying glass. There is just so much to know and so little time. There are 7 monuments: Jefferson, FDR, Lincoln, Korea, Vietnam, World War 2, and Washington. Each has its own story about the monument itself as well as the history that the monument recalls. Then there's learning the little things like how to navigate the behind-the-scenes stuff, sometimes literally. Soon there will be an eighth monument, MLK. The monuments sweep virtually the whole of our nation's history, so the task of understanding them, as well as the history, is monumental.
In the first week, we did a lot of administrative work and got introduced to all the monuments with rangers who were just fascinating in their depth of knowledge. I enjoyed walking down the steps at the Washington Monument, which since the 1970s has not been open to the public. It's pretty fun to find the states you are interested in represented by their commemorative stones. After walking down all 500 feet, we immediately got back on the elevator and went straight back to the top to do some more work. I'm told a peregrine falcon sometimes eats its prey on the windowsill at the top.
The National Mall and Memorial Parks also takes care of a number of other monuments in downtown D.C., some of which are fairly new and might not be familiar to you. The D.C. War Memorial was built by the city and only recently became part of the national park; it is getting a facelift along with the Reflecting Pool's major rehabilitation. The Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II is another lesser-known monument tucked in a corner northwest of the Capitol, but it features a passionate and beautiful sculpture of cranes enclosed in barbed wire.
One lesser-known monument we saw was actually pretty far from the Mall: the African American Civil War Memorial. This monument features a statue of African-American servicemen, but interestingly also includes on stonework surrounding the statue a listing of every African-American regiment that served in the Civil War and the names of each man in those units. It's really amazing to see all the individual names. If you go, Ben's Chili Bowl is two short blocks away, where you can get a famous chili dog from the proudly black-owned store. It's a really fun experience and the food is also great. The sign on the wall says "The only people who eat for free here are BILL COSBY and THE OBAMA FAMILY and that's it!"
For all the excitement, I have to say the most stressful thing was figuring out how to use public transportation. Realizing that I didn't want to hike a mile to the metro twice a day, I had to figure out how to use the bus. It's been staggeringly easy, except for the little hiccup where I got on the wrong bus and took the long way around. (I found a Chipotle and a World Market as a result). My commute takes about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes including walking and waiting time, but it's virtually stress-free. It sure beats driving. I can get a seat on the metro both ways, and I can get my reading in. It's time I would have wanted to spend doing that anyway, and it's good decompression time. I wouldn't get that driving.
On Friday, as we were walking along the Tidal Basin, a couple of us spotted a bald eagle flying over the National Mall. Just another day in the life of a park ranger.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial
At the end of his 2010 book, Colonel Roosevelt, Edmund Morris closed with mention of Theodore Roosevelt Island thus:
Morris was trying to convey two ideas with what he said. One was that people still loved Theodore Roosevelt long after he was president. He's still the 4th most popular president behind Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. The second was that TR spent his post-presidential years basically shouting in the wind - no one was interested in his ideas anymore - a major theme of Morris's third book on Roosevelt.
The emplacement of Theodore Roosevelt Bridge across the Potomac River in Washington gives many commuters the impression that it, and not the forested island beneath, is the twenty-sixth President's official memorial. Somewhere among those trees, however, he stands eighteen feet tall, one bronze fist upraised, eternally lecturing the doves and mockingbirds."
Morris was trying to convey two ideas with what he said. One was that people still loved Theodore Roosevelt long after he was president. He's still the 4th most popular president behind Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. The second was that TR spent his post-presidential years basically shouting in the wind - no one was interested in his ideas anymore - a major theme of Morris's third book on Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt Island was once an estate owned by John Mason, the son of George Mason. Like Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the island was converted into a natural memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, who took swims in the Potomac and led his cabinet on his famous point-to-point hikes while he was president.
It's easy to get lost trying to get to Theodore Roosevelt Island, just as it's easy to get lost going to the nearby Marine Veterans Memorial. The layout of the roads prohibits most maneuvers in the interest of keeping traffic flowing in an otherwise congested area, but you really have to pay attention to the lane changes to stay on the GW Parkway to make it work. Left! Right! Recalculating! Somehow I got it on the first try. Maybe I'm lucky. Maybe I'm learning. The penalty for missing the turn is some kind of tragically huge double U-turn operation.
Once you're there, Theodore Roosevelt Island is a pleasant, wooded setting in the middle of the Potomac River. I found a fair number of people walking the trails on the island and jogging or cycling on the Mount Vernon Trail which passes by the island.
Arranged in an arc behind the Roosevelt statue are four panels with TR quotes on four themes: Youth, Manhood, State, and Nature. There is a rather large, circular plaza with benches to sit and contemplate the natural setting and Theodore Roosevelt, who looms large over the area. That is, for the sixty seconds between commercial jet treetop buzzings of the island, following the Potomac approach to Reagan.
I walked most of the trails on the island in a failed attempt to find an open bathroom. To my disappointment, it opens April 1. Along the way, I saw a number of common eastern birds like hairy woodpeckers, Carolina chickadees, robins, and tufted titmice.
The island has some enjoyable nature trails and is a good place to see a number of birds. I assume it will be a nice place for woodland flowers in the spring, too. It's a nice retreat from the urban setting of downtown D.C., and you might just find a slice of solitude amid there beneath the towers in Rosslyn.
You can find out more about Theodore Roosevelt Island at http://www.nps.gov/this/index.htm.
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