Old News

By now this is old news, but oh well.

Last Friday, the Newseum opened on Pennsylvania Ave. They had a grand opening celebration, and I was SO stoked. Rosemay, her baby, Josiah and I went.

It was pretty awesome. As we drove up, we saw all the fanfare: Tons of people (in line), confetti everywhere, news crews and limos. A huge banner of a newspaper front page was draped down the front of the building.


There was a lot of energy in the air and it was pretty exciting. It was also a gloriously sunny, beautiful day. According to weather.com, it got up to 82 degrees.

We saw some guy in white chef's clothes being interviewed by a TV reporter -- it was Wolfgang Puck! He was on hand to open his restaurant in the Newseum.

Here's a view from the balcony on the building's 7th floor, looking down:

My first thought was: "Someone's definitely going to jump from here one day."

Looking out, there's the Capitol. I don't think the Newseum folks are done constructing the balcony, hence the cones and tape. That, or someone jumped.


Highlight of the trip: I got to be a TV reporter. It's clear I'm a much better journalist from a desk than from in front of a camera.


My advice: Don't read too quickly from the teleprompter.
Check my broadcast.


The Newseum itself is pretty cool, I definitely recommend it. One display wraps around the front of the building with glass cases containing the day's front pages of newspapers from all over the country (and a local one, too).


Inside the building is another display with national and international front pages.


I'm wondering whose job it is to print those out and put them in the cases every day -- quite a tedious job, I would think! But it looks cool. A couple of interest to me -- Gannett (the company I work for) newspapers in places I've lived (in the case of AZ, a place I want to live):








The 9/11 exhibit is quite moving. There is an amazing collection from a photojournalist who was actually crushed when the buildings fell. His camera and digital images were retrieved and are part of a slide show with interviews from his wife. A lot of the images contain rescue workers, and you know they all died, too. It's quite haunting -- the last image is time-stamped the exact minute the tower fell.
A wall of 9/12 front pages from around the world:


This one, from the San Francisco Examiner, stuck out:

I think the headline is in poor taste and is unprofessional. But that's just me.

The rest of last weekend was spent enjoying the weather, taking ballet (me) and breakdancing (him), driving around, going to our friends' show at the NASA center in MD. Odd venue, but cool. They were celebrating as part of a worldwide party on the anniversary of the first person in space. The center (NASA, not the center of the universe) is actually blocks from where I lived from 1987-90, so we drove by my old house. Weird!

Saturday day:
Neil doesn't like to smile.

In fact, he often thinks he's too cool for my cameraphone.


Speaking of cameraphone, here's one from a couple weeks ago when my friend, Aly, was in town from GA and we went to see the cherry blossoms! The big pencil is reflected beside a bough reaching for the water. Nice composition, in my limited and biased opinion.