Rara Avis: the Udvar-Hazy Center

When our sons were younger, no trip to Washington, D.C., was complete until we went to the Smithsonian, and the museum we most often toured was the Air and Space. It's impressive and inspiring, but we were blown away last weekend when we decided to go to the new addition, the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center outside of Dulles Airport. What a fascinating museum on so many levels: architecturally, historically, educationally - even emotionally.

For example, across the aisle from the space shuttle Discovery is a display of missiles the size of minivans or larger designed to carry multiple nuclear warheads to their targets. It made my heart sad to compare the amount of money spent on building and maintaining weapons of mass destruction against the money spent on NASA's space projects, which yielded scientific advances that continue to benefit ordinary people.

The day after our visit to the museum, we attended President Obama's swearing-in. In his inauguration speech, he called for America to take the lead in R&D that would address the consequences of climate change. I thought back to the missiles at Udvar-Hazy and wondered how much money is budgeted for nuclear weapons in an era so different from the Cold War.  I'd prefer tax dollars to be redirected into more peaceful, useful initiatives.

Other thoughts: 

• Space Shuttle Discovery. I expected to see something as smooth and sleek as a yacht, but up close, it looks like a tugboat - interesting to look at, callused, a lot of miles on this baby. And man is it big!
• We spent a lot of time looking at the shuttle and talking about our reactions to it. Maybe it's because we grew up during the Space Age. Maybe it's because I always wanted watch a launch in person.
• Aviation as art. I was smitten with the sculptural quality of some of the collection: the Flying Cloud, an Air France SST, the SR-71 Blackbird.
• The military played an enormous role in aviation history, but the museum has many examples of civilian-initiated advances, too: single-person planes built from kits, experimental aircraft that have coasted around the world.
• There didn't seem to be much acknowledgement of the role women played in aviation. There was a case of Amelia Earhart stuff, and one wing of the museum honors Mary Baker Engen, wife of a former FAA director and a major fundraiser for the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy.
• Kudos to the thought given to the challenge of displaying so much 3-dimensional material in what is essentially a hangar. We were there for nearly 5 hours and spent at least half of that time on the ground floor. Signage was confusing - did the sign in front of us refer to the artifact in front of us, immediately above us, or way up top? Ramps lead to the second viewing level on the periphery of the hangar, and then the third. Aha! Signage refers to the what's hanging at eye level.
• If you are pressed for time, skip the observation tower, which gives you a view of the Dulles runways. The volunteer there is very well-meaning, I'm sure, but he made it seem that every plane on approach was sure to crash. 

SR-71 Blackbird

Blackbird as sculpture

Close-up of some of the shuttle's tiles

Showcase of WW2 bomber jackets

The swoops and curves of the SST

More Blackbird as sculpture. Towers over humans.

Blackbird, full size

For scale, check the plane hanging above the SR-71

The Enola Gay

Detail of Pan Am Stratoliner Clipper Flying Cloud

For those who sense the missing piece

... especially on All Hallow's Eve

Ghost House
by Robert Frost

I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.

I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.

It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me--
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.

In search of harmony

Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain"

Last week I attended a concert presented one of my favorite performing groups, the Silk Road Ensemble. Though it was a wonderful evening overall, two selections struck me as rambling and unmelodic. Impatient for each piece to end, I wished I were listening instead to a CD so that I could press the "skip" button.

I fidgeted in my seat, then closed my eyes and tried to make sense of the dissonance.

What's art's purpose -- to entertain? to discomfort? to elicit a response?  Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" caused an uproar when he submitted the signed urinal for exhibition in 1917, yet 500 British art experts recently voted the piece the most influential of the 20th century.

Certainly art makes us think, and what we think may not be what the artist intended.

I remember discussing with a friend a sculpture on display in town. It is called "Dance of Peace" by Anne Mimi Sammis, well known for her works inspired by love and the goodness of humankind.

The sculpture features six figures -- one whose feet are firmly planted, the other five soaring on the breeze, tethered to one another by a foot or hand. My friend considers the work a celebration of family and happiness. Far from being a celebration, the piece to me represents a family being blown apart. I guess our past shapes our perspective.

So where did my in-concert meditation lead? To an awareness that people traveling different paths can unite to advance a cause. In this case, musicians from different cultures and beliefs were united by a desire to bring to life a musical work described by one reviewer as being filled with "muscular rhythms and courageous dissonances." The realization made me long for civil discourse among people with different viewpoints. We can get noisy with our counterpoint and polyphony, but surely something of importance -- and perhaps of great beauty -- can arise from courageous dissonance.

The difference between men and women, part 2

An actual conversation.

Sunday morning

HE: You look lost in thought. What are you thinking about?

SHE: What kind of tile I'd want the kitchen back splash to be.  I don't really mean "tile." I'd rather have river rock or weathered wood or something. What are you thinking about?

HE: Sex.

Do not look back

My henna OM tattoo is taking on a weathered look that I really like. Watching it disappear has been an interesting meditation on the passage of time, the impermanence of tangible things and the eternal Presence, which I believe is Love.

---

Do not look back,
No one knows how the world ever began.
Do not fear the future, Nothing lasts forever.
If you dwell on the past or future,
You will miss the moment.

~ Rumi

Eulogy for a tree

An owl hoots in the distance tonight, and I'm in mourning.

Sometime this week, while we are away, a neighbor will cut down a maple tree that is rotting in our back yard.

I think of all the tree has given to us:

the dappled shade on the grass in the summer
a calico blanket of leaves in the fall
an anchor for a clothesline and a hammock

I think about the nuthatches descending head down and round and round, the woodpeckers, the cardinals perched on a branch and silhouetted against the winter sky

Thank you, tree, for your lessons of life and death, of exuberant color, of quiet service to others.

The difference between men and women, part 1

An actual conversation

It's less than 24 hours before we go away to celebrate an anniversary. Each of us appears to be making a mental vacation list. We compare notes.

SHE: Oh yay! I just figured out what to pack so that when I wear my yoga top I won't get sunburned. What's on your list?

HE: When are we going to have sex?