Time with Tom

Accidental Patriotism

I’m not a person that follows his country right or wrong. That would be insane. Every person I know (myself included) has their faults and screws things up, so why shouldn’t a country – which is run by people – have the same problems, but magnified? I do like the US, more or less. It definitely has its advantages (like a Dunkin Donuts on every corner. Or is that just this area?). It also has plenty of disadvantages, which I’m sure you could list off at a moment’s notice (please don’t).

That said, I’m a sucker for a good picture. I think we both know how nuts I go with my cameras in an everyday situation – playgrounds and Octoberfest, for instance. Could you imagine me in a setting that was planned to be picturesque? A situation where everything around me was carefully crafted to be eye catching? A situation such as, oh, Washington DC?

I can.

I got to go down to DC and visit a friend this past weekend. It was a blast for a number of reasons, not the least of which because we got to go sight seeing, and I got to see the houses of some of the gears of government, such as the White House and the Capitol Building (home of the US House of Representatives and the Senate). These are picturesque in of themselves, but framed by things like the National Mall (home to the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Memorial, and so on), they’re absolutely gorgeous. And being the photo-obsessed tourist I am, I couldn’t resist.

The first picture is probably the single most patriotic picture I’ve ever taken. I’ve included a couple more relatively patriotic ones, but don’t take that to mean I was looking specifically to do that. I wasn’t. I was looking for good pictures. Sometimes you have to be willing to admit that those can coincide. Feel free to follow those pictures back to the Flickr account I keep, where I have a bunch of pictures of DC (including interiors of the Air & Space Museum, which you should go see).

Tom