My wife and I are in DC as tourists for a few days. Some notes…

We took a two-hour docent-led tour of The National Portrait Gallery. Tom Thompson, the docent, knows everything and can put it in perspective. I’m a sucker for portraits.

The three-paragraph write-ups pasted next to each presidential portrait are surprisingly frank and overall quite negative about our fearless leaders. Surprising and refreshing.

Almost forty years later, it still find it difficult to watch the videotape of Nixon appealing to the “silent majority” to support his secret plan to end the war in Vietnam.

The National Gallery of Art has a special exhibit of its Rembrandt sketches and etchings. The craft almost overwhelms the art. (Simon Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes is an amazing, eye-opening work.)

The Library of Congress is closed on Sundays. It makes for a brisk walk up Capitol hill, though. We’ll go today, if it’s open on Presidents’ Day.

The History Boys movie was quite enjoyable, although less substantial than I’d thought, less surprising, and less about the teacher it thinks it’s about than it is. (The “academic” lesson it teaches is the same as in David R. Williams’ little book of advice to students, Sin Boldly , [Tags: washington_dc dc travel rembrandt national_portrait_gallery]

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