Newseum

Today, I may have possibly just taken the last class trip I will ever go on.   I'm glad I made it to 20 before those stopped though.  At 9:30, I met with Andrew, Ben and Emily (told you all I had new friends!) and we took the Metro into downtown to meet the rest of our class at the Newseum.  

The building is pretty amazing, really modern.  Plus, it has one of the most amazing views of Washington D.C.  that could be had, you take a glass elevator up to the top floor, and there's this huge patio where you end up looking straight out at the Natural History Museum, which is this big domed building, and then to one side you can see the Washington Monument and the other you can see the Capital.  I say this not because I think that people don't know how the mall is laid out, but because there were especially good views of all three things, which is pretty impressive for a building to the side of it.

Today the weather was especially dramatic, so the clouds loomed particularly ominously over the capital building (hmm, maybe the world is into symbolism?).  This picture really doesn't do it much justice.

And we took a class photo.  We are all white (except I'm half), which is actually somewhat upsetting.  The demographic is more normal in other classes.  Apparently, POCs are not interested in American Politics so much as they are in trying to work around American Politics to make change.  Probably smart - I probably would have been in a different program if I thought Tufts would give me credit for it.  Not that there aren't SUCH nice people in my class, I really like a lot of people here, but it's just, everyone's white.  Or directly from Europe.

The Newseum was pretty amazing, especially after working for the SAMOHI (so legit) and the Daily.  We saw this 3D (or 4D, as they billed it, because we were traveling through time) film about some journalism history, which was a cool attraction.  The woman who played Nellie Bly was kind of scary though, because she looked like what pictures of my Mom look like in her 20s and 30s, so watching her be investigative reporting in a women's asylum in Blackwell Island actually hit way way way too close to home, and was a little terrifying.   Also, when she's throwing a rat off her blanket, she throws the rat into the audience, and he runs by our feet, and that scared the shit out of me too.

Anyway, so then we left our 3D magic to go into the museum.  They had these two incredible exhibits, one on the Hurricane Katrina disaster and one on 9/11.  Parts of the Katrina one were under construction, so we didn't get to see everything, but the coverage on it was really interesting.  There were some off-kilter racial dynamics at play in some of the coverage, and I sort of wish some of it were more hard-hitting on that front, but a lot of it was really well done.  And the September 11th stuff...that was really just incredible.  We sat and watched a film they put together based on the experiences of the journalists in the immediate area, who were literally running towards the towers to try to give America a clearer picture.  Completely jarring.  This is a piece of the buildings they had on display, behind which is a wall of all the covers of newspapers across the country/world.

Aaaand, then we walked next door to see an exhibit about Elvis. Little lighter.

Anyway, it was cool.  They had tons and tons of front pages of newspapers from various historical events.  I really got into the civil-rights era ones, it was cool to see the coverage people saw during the Freedom Rides and March on Washington (who's 47th anniversary is this Saturday, actually).  When RFK was shot, the image they used on his front page headline was actually like a picture of him, dead.  His face, after being shot.  Freaked the shit out of me. And in the gift shop, the only front page they were selling to the public was the one that said "Nixon Resigns," so I think they really understand yuppie Boomers.  This is one of them that Ben took a photo of and stuck on Facebook:

Anyway, that was my day.  Obviously I was pretty inspired by it, kind of wondering if I should look harder at journalism as a career path, but I suck at deadlines and punctuality, so maybe not.  The rest of the day was just spent napping and writing cover letters for jobs I probably won't get.