always changing; always the same
Point the First: the DC tech guy left me a message last night (after i'd left) asking me to call him back, so i left him a message this morning. He came up around 11 (lol after I'd stolen borrowed Nancy's monitor because she was out (and i'd have been on her comp anyway)) and was like 'so, you're having a computer problem?' I told him the monitor was broken, and after the customary 'but you're not IT' raised eyebrow of doubt, i explained how i'd come to that conclusion and that i was using someone else's monitor. He took my broken one away (and i just realized, my note telling me to sign my time sheet. i will have to make myself another) and then! and here is the important part, and then he's back, like, maybe an hour later, with a brand new monitor of my very own. He set it up while I put nancy's back and then i fixed my brightness settings and was happy.
Point the Second: the enclosed courtyard in the portrait gallery is really pretty at night. (it's pretty in the day too, but i forget these things) i should spend more time there!
Point the Third: After work, i walked to chinatown (because it wasn't that cold, surprisingly), accompanied via phone by my favourite sillyandmorbid. then after stillesprite got to me from work, we went to fado's and got our longed awaited irish coffee, and then went to Ford Theater to watch The Rivalry, which is a play about the debates Douglass and Lincoln had during the run for the senator seat from IL told from Douglass' wife's perspective.
IT WAS REALLY GOOD! there were many cool things, like how much we're still having the same arguments. Obviously, not about slavery and whether black people should have rights (like ownership of their own bodies), but about state rights v federal rights, and the scope of the constitution, and supreme court rulings. It also showed, in some ways, how much the game has changed--campaigns as advertising platforms wasn't the status quo, and the debaters actually said nice things about each other in public (perhaps, as stillesprite said, the newspapers did the mudslinging for them).
It also brought to life a period of history we've all studied, but don't really take too much away from. In class, I vaguely remember studying the lincoln-douglass debates, and i know, basically, what the dred scott decision was. But it was always like 'such and such event happened, which all led up to the civil war. and that was basically that. and from the civil war, you take away 'it was brutal, the entire country was divided, the North won, oh and also slavery is bad.' We didn't look at the language in the dred scott decision, for instance. A bit of it was quoted in the play and to my modern ears, it was like '....oh no they didn't. they did not say that. how could they possibly have said that. and people were just. ok with it? seriously, you're kidding.' because the language in it, it was appalling. obviously we think differently about these things now, but dude, if we'd gone over that in high school, the takeaway would have been a lot more that 'blahblah civil war blah, slavery=bad'.
Just one more thing that was really cool was that, since it was told from Adele's perspective, so we had a real, well-developed female character. interesting things about this (aside from hey! a kind of developed female character!) were a) she made douglass's character sympathetic in ways, let's face it, he wouldn't be to a modern audience who may not (like i am not) be well-versed in history. by which i mean, no one (particularly not someone arguing pro-slavery) going up against lincoln is going to be 'the good guy' from a modern american perspective. lincoln just wins. but he so very clearly had a good, loving relationship with his wife, who was, admittedly, pretty cool, you couldn't just dislike him. And then, something actually cool about her, and not just how she makes her husband look good, it was really interesting to see how much of a politician she was. She did a lot of political work, and she did it very masterfully.
Anyway, really cool play in a very nice venue (with those cool historical ties), plus we had amazing seats. All in all, a great evening, and a good day :D
Point the Second: the enclosed courtyard in the portrait gallery is really pretty at night. (it's pretty in the day too, but i forget these things) i should spend more time there!
Point the Third: After work, i walked to chinatown (because it wasn't that cold, surprisingly), accompanied via phone by my favourite sillyandmorbid. then after stillesprite got to me from work, we went to fado's and got our longed awaited irish coffee, and then went to Ford Theater to watch The Rivalry, which is a play about the debates Douglass and Lincoln had during the run for the senator seat from IL told from Douglass' wife's perspective.
IT WAS REALLY GOOD! there were many cool things, like how much we're still having the same arguments. Obviously, not about slavery and whether black people should have rights (like ownership of their own bodies), but about state rights v federal rights, and the scope of the constitution, and supreme court rulings. It also showed, in some ways, how much the game has changed--campaigns as advertising platforms wasn't the status quo, and the debaters actually said nice things about each other in public (perhaps, as stillesprite said, the newspapers did the mudslinging for them).
It also brought to life a period of history we've all studied, but don't really take too much away from. In class, I vaguely remember studying the lincoln-douglass debates, and i know, basically, what the dred scott decision was. But it was always like 'such and such event happened, which all led up to the civil war. and that was basically that. and from the civil war, you take away 'it was brutal, the entire country was divided, the North won, oh and also slavery is bad.' We didn't look at the language in the dred scott decision, for instance. A bit of it was quoted in the play and to my modern ears, it was like '....oh no they didn't. they did not say that. how could they possibly have said that. and people were just. ok with it? seriously, you're kidding.' because the language in it, it was appalling. obviously we think differently about these things now, but dude, if we'd gone over that in high school, the takeaway would have been a lot more that 'blahblah civil war blah, slavery=bad'.
Just one more thing that was really cool was that, since it was told from Adele's perspective, so we had a real, well-developed female character. interesting things about this (aside from hey! a kind of developed female character!) were a) she made douglass's character sympathetic in ways, let's face it, he wouldn't be to a modern audience who may not (like i am not) be well-versed in history. by which i mean, no one (particularly not someone arguing pro-slavery) going up against lincoln is going to be 'the good guy' from a modern american perspective. lincoln just wins. but he so very clearly had a good, loving relationship with his wife, who was, admittedly, pretty cool, you couldn't just dislike him. And then, something actually cool about her, and not just how she makes her husband look good, it was really interesting to see how much of a politician she was. She did a lot of political work, and she did it very masterfully.
Anyway, really cool play in a very nice venue (with those cool historical ties), plus we had amazing seats. All in all, a great evening, and a good day :D