I love museums, and my hometown, Washington, D.C., is full of them. You’ve heard of the big ones—the Air and Space Museum with the Wright Brothers’ plane, the Natural History Museum with its elephant and dinosaurs. We’ve got privately-owned tourist bait, like the Spy Museum and a branch of Madame Tussauds. Then there’s a pile of more obscure museums for everything from textiles to bonsai to individual government agencies.
One of those lesser-known government museums is the National Museum of the U.S. Navy. The museum is in the Washington Navy Yard, a former shipyard—and still a Navy installation— in Southeast D.C., on the Anacostia River.
The Anacostia, a tributary of the Potomac, is flat and tidal, which is why the Navy could build ships there. But that’s also part of the reason why it’s so darn polluted; its waters are slow and they rise and fall with the tide, rather than carrying all the crud out to sea. In recent years, the river has started to transform. There’s a new path along the right bank and way less trash than there used to be, although you still shouldn’t swim in it or eat the fish. On the walk to the museum with a friend, I saw gulls, cormorants, and two ospreys. Continue reading →
First, if you please, a moment of silence for the thylacine.
