This week's column comes from our temporary office in Washington, DC. Every single word contained herein was configured, compiled and constructed just a few blocks from the White House.
You're probably just as surprised as we are to find ourselves in the nation's capital. But we exhausted all the Pokestops around Elkhorn pretty quickly and the U.S. Capital has been one big Pokeparty for decades. Plus, after last week's Independence rant, I needed a little inspiration.
With inspiration comes perspiration and even the coolest cucumber in the salad would be sweating garbanzo beans around here. There isn't a more humid place in the world than Washington DC and even the cool breezes leave you with a trickle of sweat running down your neck.
All the marble just intensifies the heat. It's ten degrees cooler at my Foggy Bottom hotel than it is a mile away on the National Mall where the sunlight reflected off marble will charbroil a hamburger.
But my hotel isn't where the inspiration is, it's down with the heat at the Smithsonian Museums, the Monuments and Memorials, the Libraries of Congress and the National Archives. It's in the statues and the exhibitions and the faces of all the folks who are Americans like me who've come to be inspired, too.
And not only Americans. Washington DC is the most international city you will likely ever go. It is a place where cultures and religions and languages and races intermingle like so many raindrops in a puddle. Or as we once were so proud, so many ingredients in a pot.
It's easy to forget what a melting pot this country is when you live in eastern Kentucky. The ingredients in our stew are few. Sometimes we confuse new flavors with bad flavors and that hurts us.
I've roamed around the great buildings for a day and a half now. The Library of Congress, the Capital, the Native American Museum, the Air and Space Museum, the Natural History Museum, all are inspirations. Seeing the inspiration in so many different faces provides all the hope I need.
But before I sat down to another Paddling Upstream, I wanted to see, once again, those documents that we refer to nearly every week. When rationality seems to have abandoned our discourse, when the use of a mere word, whether it's black or blue or all, can drive all kinds of irrational behavior, I am simply seeking refuge in the Age of Reason.
I often wonder how many folk who rant about our constitution have ever bothered to go see it. It's open to the public 7 days a week. The National Archives houses the Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights in one grand and dark rotunda. It is awe inspiring, even for the most jaded of us, to take a look at these documents.
When people forget how our government works, all sorts of bad things can happen. That's why it feels so good to take another close look at the beautiful, painstaking writing of Mr's Jefferson and Madison.
And btw, the word corporation still isn't in any of those documents.