By brownpau
So the weather tricked me into staying in, but I did get to view tonight’s pyrotechnics from a friend’s apartment with windows facing towards the Mall. My camera sat on a tripod, set to do a time lapse video at one-second intervals. Here is the result, consisting of 1,271 frames taken over a course of 21 minutes:
Thanks to the Internet Archive for the 1913 Edison cylinder recording of Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. Sped-up video plus tinny Sousa makes for a whimsical little piece.
By Tom Bridge
That was the message today to 250 DC teachers and 500 teachers’ aides who missed a certification deadline this week. Official termination letters go out on Monday. Chancellor Rhee thinks it won’t be a problem, as these were “expected” terminations, and none of the firees have classrooms assigned. Well, I guess it’s good we knew it was coming?
By Carl Weaver
A Toast to the Flag. This is one piece of poetry, though a bit syrupy for my usual taste, and more patriotic sounding than I am known to go for, that always makes me feel good to be here in this great country and gives me pride in the flag. I first heard it in a very moving public ceremony at the Alexandria Scottish Rite Temple about a year and a half ago.
What is a flag? What is this thing I don’t mind people burning in order to express themselves, yet gets me choked up when presented by a National Sojourner and toasted in public? I have a strong sense of patriotism and national pride, yet I have never thought of myself as a flag-waving jingoistic person. I guess when it comes to the flag, things get a bit complicated.
The flag is a symbol of many things – democracy, truth, freedom from oppression – and yet it is still a symbol, meaning that it represents an idea and possibly different ideas to different people. People talk of the flag as if it is sacred. How sacred can something be if it simply represents an idea? The destruction of the cloth is not a destruction of the idea, yet people get quite upset when the flag is burned for some reasons but not for others. When I was a child it was more or less common practice to burn the flag if it touched the ground. This seems okay to most people but burning it in protest is not okay. To me, it’s the same thing.
Anyway, we have a pretty cool flag, get it now at the link. But where did it come from? And is it really based on George Washington’s coat of arms, as the legend goes? Or is it the basis for the original United States ‘stars and stripes’? This week’s Mythbusting gets to the bottom of the DC flag.
As I think about the flag and the great meaning it has for me, I grow concerned about its use as a political tool, especially as election season is rearing its campaign-hatted head. Those of us in the DC area are no strangers to this. A common mistake is to assume that the guy with the flag is what we label “patriotic” and that patriotism has a standard, common definition we all agree with. Not much can be farther from the truth. Again, symbols have differing, even changing, meanings.
Let’s take a moment on this July 4th and consider what it means to revere a symbol as much as a lot of our culture respects the flag. What does it mean to you?
By brownpau
As often is the case for the Fourth of July in Washington, the weather has been largely unstable: heat and humidity mixing with occasional showers. We’re now just about a half-hour from the scheduled start of fireworks on the Mall at 9:10 AM, and another wave of showers with some lightning has just finished sweeping the area. Here’s a closeup of our weather radar as of 8:30 PM:
The system that brought us that surprise rain twenty minutes ago is leaving to the northeast, but another system is forming to the west, and seeing that and considering the instability in the local atmosphere, my instinct — coupled with a general disdain for sitting in mud — is to stay indoors rather than go out to join the crowd of fireworks-viewers. But hey, that’s just me. There’s also a chance that system will dissolve into vapor and leave the district dry at 9:10PM, in which case, the show goes on.
Watcha gonna do, DC? If you’re living downtown, you now have under thirty minutes — just enough time to hop on a Metro or dash out to the Mall and maybe make it to a good viewing spot amidst the mass of humanity already there. And hey, if you’re reading this on your mobile device from out on the scene, send us a status report.
Update: Thankfully for those out there, the rain held off! We watched from the safety of a friend’s apartment, and I’ll have a time lapse video ready soon.
By Amélie
Well, if you’ve lived here long enough, you’d know that Metro and traveling by foot or bike is probably the best way to get down to The National Mall on July 4th. For those of you who don’t and insist on motorized transport, D.C. DOT has issued the list of street closures for the rest of the day.
By Ben H. Rome
For all you locals who don’t want to fight the incoming crowds for the fireworks displays across the region today, take heart. Alexandria’s found another excuse to throw some more explosives into the air next weekend.
(photo originally uploaded by The Library of Congress)
By Tom Bridge
Welcome, everyone, to We Love DC!
We’re going to be doing this a little bit differently than other blogs have done it. We’re going to be focusing on feature length content for our site, with an emphasis also on the hyperlocal microblogging. You can see that we have two columns here. The column in which this post is listed will be for featured entries, many of which are in the style of a recurring column, but there will also be coverage of news & events as they happen here.
The second column, called the Daily Feed, will be more oriented around the little local things we see happening all the time. The great photos we capture on the street, the news stories that just need to be posted. But sometimes, that picture’s just worth all 1000 words, and we won’t go all James Joyce on some of those posts.
Who are we, exactly? Well, most of us have been DC Bloggers in one form or another for years. This blog is the result of some hard work by a lot of people. We’ll have full introduction posts for each author (we’ve got a special feature planned) in the next week, starting Monday. You’ll recognize a lot of familiar faces if you’ve been reading Metroblogging DC. Don, Tiff, Max, Wayan, Ben, Carl, and others. You’ll also get to meet some new folks, including Paulo (our awesome WordPress master) and John Athayde (whose design is represented here).
We’re not finished implementing features and design elements just yet, but we felt we have a pretty good start here already. If you’ve got suggestions, or, even better, want to join us, please put something in the comments. If something’s not working right for you, please let us know.
And Happy Independence Day, everyone!
Armed Freedom, courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol
By Tom Bridge
david crying in grass
Originally uploaded by obiwanjr
So, if you were planning on catching the Fireworks in Vienna tonight, instead of one of the other multitude of shows, you might want to reconsider. They’ve changed their plan to be a laser light show on a 100×70 foot screen, instead of fireworks. Granted, given the accident last year that injured 11 people, maybe it’s the right choice, but there will be no fireworks on the fourth of july this year.
Yikes, that does sound unamerican, doesn’t it?