A Saturday in DC

so my boy emilio hits me up a couple saturdays ago and invites me to check out this solar decathalon competition on the lawn in dc.Emilio, his roomie Eliezer, their girlfriends and our boy Clarence headed downtown to see the event. colleges from all over the world come and compete in their ability to design a functional but solar dependent residence and they only have 800 square feet to do it. it was very interesting to see how when you have to scale back how much stuff that we take for granted to find in a residence goes out the window. in this competition everything must be functional and necessary in order to make it into the design. check out the entries here http://www.solardecathlon.org/ you might find something you like.

after the decathlon and scrounging up some food from a street vendor. we decided to check out the national archives. i had never been to the archives but apparently this was the saturday to go because it was packed. 30 minutes after arriving we finally got in. there's some very interesting things on display in the archives. report cards from the presidents. declassifed recordings from former presidents, even a video of the 41st Bush exclaming his dislike for broccoli. i found a few things i didn't know such as President Gerald Ford was offered a contract to play for the Green Bay Packers for $200 a game. Ford turned it down and went to work at Yale. however the highlight of the archives is the display of the Decalaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. it was amazing to see the history of country on paper. it was funny because i had this picture of the display room placed in my mind from watching the movie Natural Treasure. i figured the room would be bright and well lit, maybe with a few windows in the ceiling. no such thing; the room is dark and cold. the documents are displayed as they should be, behind thick uv light protected glass.

when looking at the documents i thought it was interesting that you cant read them anymore. the ink on these writings has faded. someone could decide to tell the world the constitution said something in particular and we couldnt go back to the source documents to validate it. but i guess your cant expect ink from over 200 years ago to last forever. really the only thing you can still read are the signatures, john hancock's is huge, you can understand where the term came from after looking at it. you can make out most of the others if you strain a bit. but go check it out, our country's history on display, its viewing can make for an interesting day.