Visit Phillips Gallery
Lake Fairfax Park Campground
I had trouble finding a camp site that was relatively close to D.C. at this time of year. Some sites said they were open year round but I couldn’t reserve on the website and they didn’t answer the phone. Many of the sites were closed for the winter starting November 1st. I also didn’t want to drive long distances to a Metro stop or search for parking.
I discovered the Lake Fairfax Park Campground which is open year round. It is located less than five miles from the recently opened Metro Silver line in Reston, VA. There is all day parking at the same location for $4.95 per day. There is also a Starbuck and various restaurants in the plaza area.
I booked a site for four nights online and hoped that I would have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do in Washington, D.C.
There were two other tents in the area and I setup in relative darkness.
Meet Up With Jane
I lived, went to school, and worked in the Washington area for roughly eight years, from 1971 through 1979. That all seems like another lifetime.
I met up with Jane, my former boss at The Brookings Institution, for lunch and a walk in Georgetown. For some reason, I have such vivid memories of that time in my life. Perhaps it was just the huge difference between where I grew up in a small central Pennsylvania town and this city of power three hours away. For whatever reason, I remembered the names of almost everyone I worked with and how they all supported me in creating a career that I became passionate about. Later in life, I would be asked during interviews to talk about my best boss and worst boss. It was always easy to describe my best boss.
We talked about a guy that sold balloons on Wisconsin Ave. Near the Arby’s. I found a reference on facebook with an image. The image is copyrighted Library of Congress by David Blackwell.
He used to say in a very deep resonating baritone voice,
Make the ladies happy.
Make the children happy.
Make everybody happ.
Buy a balloon.
This black and white image has obviously been touched up with colored balloons. Its the same guy I remember but about 10-15 years younger in this photo. He was always wearing sunglasses, day or night.
Jetties
We had lunch at Jetties on Foxhall Rd. in Georgetown. Jane seemed to know Jetties pretty well. The owner had been in the bar and restaurant business in Georgetown for a long time. I probably frequented some of his bars when I lived in D.C. We both had sandwiches and sat outside to absorb some of the suns warmth.
Phillips Gallery
I was dreading finding a parking spot near the Phillips because street parking in this area was primarily for residents or limited to two hours parking. I some miracle from heaven, a block from the gallery, a car pulled out and I grabbed the spot. It was limited two hour parking. The woman at the front desk of the gallery told me the police don’t mark tires but they take an image of the license plate as they go buy. She didn’t know and didn’t want to suggest how often then came by.
I hadn’t been to the Phillips Gallery in 40+ years, and like the entire City of Washington it had grown and changed from what I remembered. This is a private art collection started by philanthropist Duncan Phillips in 1921. It is considered to be the first modern art gallery in America. Phillips used to display pieces in their home of different styles, sometimes with the same theme. The idea was to allow the viewer to compare and get different perspectives on a similar subject.
There were three main exhibitions happening besides the general collection:
Jacob Lawrence on the Great Migration
Children of Hiroshima
Jonathan Monaghan: Move the Way You Want
Jacob Lawrence explores the Great Migration of blacks from the south to a promised new future in the North, free from stigma of slavery and racism. He shows the difficulties and hardships they had to endure as they tried to make a new life.
Children of Hiroshima was a project in the late 1940’s where children were sent art supplies and the result is what they produced. This is a perspective on life after Hiroshima from a child’s perspective.
The exhibition Move the Way You Want is a video art piece. It was a computer generated, video game like, installation that begins with a mythical horse coming out of a peleton cycle display and wandering on a beach with various symbols of today fast paced disposable world. The horse boards a spaceship much like Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters of a Third Kind. For me, it reminded me of Arthur C. Clark’s book, Childhoods End. The Philips website describes it as:
Drawing on a wide range of sources—from historical artworks and ancient mythology, to science fiction, video games, and virtual reality—Monaghan’s work reflects the tensions of our commercialized lifestyle. Although posh and seductive, underneath its surface is a bleak futuristic vision of our dehumanized world where technology takes over.
Visiting galleries is hard work. It was mid-afternoon and my energy levels were waining. There’s a small cafe at the gallery that service good coffee, pastries and small sandwiches. They told me the key lime pie was the real deal. So, I went for it with fresh whipped cream and a tall espresso.
I had over extended my parking limit by two hours. There was no ticket on the car when I got there but there were two construction type trucks parked about two feet away on both sides. Having collision detection on the Subaru really helped in avoiding the vehicles as a maneuvered forwards and backwards.
I drove around the the Dupont Circle area for 30 minutes and decided to head back to the campground. Rush hour (s) had already started and there was congestion all the way out of the city. I remembered sitting in traffic on my way from VA to D.C. back in the day and it had only gotten worse. This is something I don’t miss.
Pupatella’s Pizza
I didn’t have much in my cooler for dinner. I made a reservation at Founding Farmers, farm to table restaurant in the plaza at the Reston Metro station. There was no parking on the street, and I went to park in the garage and still had my bike on the roof. That wasn’t going to work. So, I cancelled the reservation and looked for another restaurant in the area. I really didn’t want pizza for dinner. Pupatella’s was the closest restaurant that actually had parking.
The pizza was actually very good. It was Italian Napoletana style pizza and I had a beer to go with it.
I made it back to the campsite around 9:30. A large fan was running at the restrooms 100 feet from my site. It ran all night long. It seems the control unit to turn off the fan needed to be replaced.