A Day in Downtown DC

Small, but beautiful: whenever you go to DC, go to the Renwick Gallery (how convenient, it's just next to the White House).
Not only are its temporary exhibitions breath-taking (if you think we glass is only useful for windows, think and watch again, cf. picture, source of the picture: http://www.linotagliapietra.com), but worth-a-visit is also teh George Catlin Indian gallery.

Lino Tagliapietra is a son of Murano, the famous Italian glass-blowing industry island nearby Venice. The connection to the US: he became acquainted with a glass blowing school in Seattle and helped to create talented people over there.

George Catlin (folk art?) anticipated the trouble between the Indians and the White Man and painted a couple of hundred pictures to contribute to the preservation of Indian tribes.
Besides him, you can find other stunning oevres, such as a seemingly veiled clock, whose perceived covering linen is actually wood (very fanzily made; even from a 2 feet distance you can't tell that this is actually wood, it's made so wel).

It's not just cool that there is no admission fee, but also that the museum actually consists of two buildings (i.e. the second part of American Art is together with the portrait gallery at F Street further to the East, let's call it the real SAAM).
The SAAM houses an amazing amount of presidential paintings and other inspiring pictures about American history. And if you fall almost asleep (e.g. because you sleep not enough also during your holidays), then you get a boost by a coffee and "gourmet" cookie at the "Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard" (i.e. the courtyard is covered by a 900-ton (really? so says the flyer), 28'000 square feet glass roof consisting of 864 individual glass panels.

go there and enjoy:
http://americanart.si.edu/

In times of trouble, it's always good to reinforce your confidence in democracy, its institutions and recall its ideas. Ideally, a walk on the Mall makes you thinking and inspiring.
But not only - a closer look, and a healthy portion scepticism reveals that the many lights on a Saturday evening 8pm in the many (and the many big) federal office bunkers, ahm, buildings along/around the Mall, is most probably not because zealous and hardworking employees...
People here seem to talk much about change, how to relaunch the economy ... and about climate change (watch out, the oil price is down to around 40$/b compared to the 145$/b this July...!). Why only talk and await a big push in the green direction when everybody can make a (little) difference on his/her own - AT NO COST? It just takes the willpower of a second to switch off the light in the evening and switch it on in again in the morning.
[if they have a central on/off switch for the whole bureau, why not use motion-detectors, so you won't even need to do the job on your own?)?
Energy efficiency does not just mean MPG (miles per gallon, which is here ridiculously low anyway) and it's not coming from big companies only, but from the bottom - from each individual. If we do not believe in change and our OWN capacity/discretion to (at least initiate it), then we do not need to listen to people promising us the same. Both need each other - otherwise it's not going to work, whether the world is flat, hot or crowded or not.