While in the States, my wife and I loved to bike up and down the C&O Canal (Chesapeake and Ohio Canal). The scenery is truly picturesque, particularly along the section from DC to Great Falls. I recorded these videos during the summer of 2008, on various of our biking trips.
The Waterfalls at Great Falls, MD
I hope you enjoyed them!
I took these photos in Rock Creek Park, DC, and in Grosvenor Park, MD. I selected them based on their ability to evoke the quiet hours of autumn afternoons, with the soft golden rays of the sun lighting up the burnished hues of the autumn leaves.
You might notice something else if you click on each photo to see it large… I’ll let those of you familiar with my photos to find out what it is. I may continue to do this in the future…
The National Park Service now runs the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, located along the banks of the Anacostia River. The park was built by the Shaw and Fowler families, who knew the value of preserving wetlands long before the government caught onto it. In it, they preserved waterlilies and lotus flowers, and kept pristine the original tidal marsh — now the only remaining tidal marsh in Washington, DC.
The park is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna once native to the area, but since destroyed by deforestation and development. It houses hundreds of species of birds, animals, flowers and plants.
In the 1900s, the wetlands in the area had been destroyed, because they were thought to be worthless, and by the 1990s, the Anacostia River had silted in, making it quite clear that the wetlands at least played a role in preventing that. So the local government worked with various agencies to dredge the river and rebuild the wetlands, some of which abut the Kenilworth Gardens.
Walter Shaw, a Civil War veteran, purchased the original plot of land in the 1880s, started planting waterlilies, then added more species over the years. In 1912, he opened it to the public. In 1921, when he died, his daughter, Helen Shaw Fowler, took over the park. By this time, the Anacostia River had begun to silt in, so the Army Corps of Engineers was called in to dredge it, and this endangered the park. Mrs. Fowler fought to keep it open, until Congress approved the purchase of the gardens for $15,000 in 1938 in order to preserve it.
Over time, more adjacent lands were added to the park. Now its total area is over 700 acres. One such stage took place in 1992-1993, when 32 acres of mudflats were restored to tidal marshes and added to the park’s domain.
Every year, the United States Botanic Garden in Washington, DC, puts on a great Christmas show that features toy trains. These aren’t your average toy trains, like my own set, but large-scale Lionel model trains, made of metal, lit up inside, painted carefully, running on metal tracks. The decor is also special. They put together a different setting to showcase the trains each year, built around a particular theme. The year that I filmed the train show, they’d put together a mountain terrain with tracks hugging the mountainside, going through tunnels inside the mountains, passing by waterfalls and little mountain towns, and crossing long suspended bridges overhead. The video you see below was recorded on December 1, 2007, and you can watch it on Youtube or here.
This year, the Holiday Magic show runs from November 26, 2009 through January 10th, 2010. If you’re in DC, don’t miss it. It’s held in the Conservatory East Gallery and Garden Court. Here’s what the US Botanic Garden says about this year’s show:
The U.S. Botanic Garden’s National Mall and fanciful garden-train exhibits have become a beloved Washington tradition, and this year we’re serving up even more magic with larger and more amazing displays made of plant-based natural materials. You’ll find an enchanted storybook garden with trains popping in and out of a landscape that now includes Snow White’s cottage and the Owl and the Pussycat’s beautiful pea green boat. Our exhibit of the National Mall landmarks is up to date this season with the Obama children’s swing set and another new addition: the National Museum of the American Indian. Again this year, one of Washington’s largest indoor holiday trees will tower over pools of colorful poinsettias and other holiday plants. The whole family will enjoy the children’s plant hunt, which will take visitors through our collections in search of particularly “magical” plants.
For more information about the US Botanic Garden, you may view a gallery of photos I took inside, or you can visit their website.
The US Congress recently passed the Cap and Trade Bill without reading through the over 1200-page document, which more than likely contained more pork than a Louisiana farmer’s pantry. It was a bill drafted by lobbyists and edited in closed door committees, paving the way for tons of very lucrative government contracts and taxes that will surely pad many insiders’ pockets for decades to come.
Now they’re getting ready to fast-track the House Health Care Bill, another over 1000-page document, introduced as H.R. 3200, which no one will likely read, except the lobbyists drafting it and the few congressmen whose larder needs refilling as the way for the bill is greased through the inner workings of our illustrious Congress.
What’s to be done about this? At the very least, Congress should bother to read the bills before they vote and sign them. Pretty simple, right?
That’s why the Sunlight Foundation came up with ReadtheBill.org, a website which proposes a simple rule: post all bills online for 72 hours before they are debated. This was introduced as H. Res. 554 — a change to the House resolutions — and is slowly making its way through the approval process thanks to people like you and me, who are bugging our representatives to vote for it. The 72 hour delay would give constituents a decent amount of time during which to read through the proposed bills and see if they need to act.
Let’s not forget President Obama promised his own 5-day delay on signing any new bills during his campaign, but has almost never respected that promise. So we’ve got a Congress and a President that don’t really bother to read all the bills they’re signing, and don’t even want to pretend like they’re doing it — at least not yet. It’s a grand example they’re setting for the rest of the world, isn’t it? They’re passing bills they haven’t read, and they’re telling us everything is on the up and up, and we have nothing to worry about, because they’re hard at work on fixing America. Whoopee!
Please tell your friends about ReadtheBill.org. Go there, sign the online petition, and bug your Representatives to pass the 72-hour rule.
Read The Bill from Sunlight Foundation on Vimeo.
Raoul Pop 