WWII SPECIAL

Yesterday afternoon the new World War II Memorial opened to the public. Well, it opened again. There isn't a part of it I couldn't walk around and through at will for several weeks now. Of course, yesterday everybody from Tom Hanks to Bill Clinton to Bob Dole and two George Bushes showed up to recognize the fact that there is now a big fountain in between the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool.

That fountain, along with the dozens upon dozens of Stonehenge-like obelisks around the perimeter, is pretty controversial. I suppose the consensus so far is mostly against it. Charles Krauthammer hates it. Tim Noah defends it, albeit a bit defensively. Krauthammer makes some good points and I agree with him on some of the design elements -- but also I'm inclined to agree with Noah (an unusual occurrence) on the overall look of it.

Anyway, I went on down there yesterday afternoon. Walking to the Metro, it looked like a cicada world war had broken out on the streets of DC. Well over half the bugs on the sidewalk were dead, many of them smashed to bits (sometimes a lone wing is all that's left), or in their death throes. It seems that when cicadas get knocked on their backs, they have a hell of a time getting up. Their wings are huge but apparently no use in flipping themselves over. So they just kick their legs frantically until they get lucky or get squashed. Usually squashed.

I got off at the Archives/Navy Memorial stop about halfway between the White House and the Capitol, thinking I had a long way to walk before I found the crowds. Not so. In the two blocks to the mall were dozens of street vendors and guys in wheelchairs selling (surely unofficial) souvenirs. And on the mall itself, though I was at least a half-mile from the WWII memorial, the Greatest Generation and their less-great family members were sitting in ticketed sections facing a series of giant television screens, watching someone speak from way over on the other side of the Washington Monument.

I trekked on over toward the main action, but as I approached the Washington, I saw a great wall of temporary interlocking partitions stretching as far as the eye could see one way or the other. They're doing construction on a new visitors center or protective wall or both, so I shrugged it off. I started walking around it, until I got to Independence. Then I hit the security detail, who were turning back a steady stream of people like me who just wanted a closer look. To get beyond that point, one needed a ticket. I should have figured. Like when Tractor Man commandeered the West end of the Mall last year, a sizable chunk of downtown Washington was pretty much impassable. So I hopped the Metro back home and watched the festivities on C-SPAN. At which point my story ceases to be at all interesting, if it ever was to begin with.

The last thing I noticed, searching but failing to find a literary hook to hang this post on, was the reader board on the front of all the buses waiting to take the best generation now or ever back to where ever they came from. They all said: "WWII SPECIAL." For some reason I can't explain, I thought that was sort of amusing. As Noah said about his praise for the WWII Monument itself: So sue me.

P.S. It might have been more interesting had I managed to peer out the window to catch the fighter jet flyby. As it turned out I missed them by seconds -- though the roar was deafening.

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posted by WWB at 9:34 PM |