Bethesda

The end of my first sightseeing week in Washington was much less hectic than the start. For start I didn't travel by myself, I was joined by Meghan, Christophe and Craig. This meant that there was no more public transport for me, however it also meant that I wasn't travelling on my own schedule so I didn't do as much as I might have wanted. I did, however, have more time to enjo and absorb what I was doing.Wednesday we all went to the Spy Museum, which was cool. The exhibitions covered a lot of material from Britain including a section on Bletchley Park and they had an Enigma machine on display. They mention Alan Turing and how he was mistreated by the British government because of his homosexuality. I am not so sure that it would be totally different today, of course I would hope that it would be. It shouldn't matter what your sexual orientation is, just as it shouldn't matter what your skin colour is. The most important question should always be "Can they do the job?".I was surprised by the amount of stuff they had on display from England. The displays seemed to be evenly split between American, Russian and British intelligence agencies. There was a small section on spies in movies and t.v. series but not enough on "Bond" for my liking! You can never have too much "Bond" as far as I am concerned.
After the museum we tried to go to Ford's theatre where Lincoln was shot but it was closed for a performance. I will have to schedule a visit here next week. On Thursday we went to the national Museum of Health and Medicine in the Walter Reed Medical Centre grounds. We all had to show our I.D. to get into the grounds, all of the U.S. Army injured soldiers are treated here. The museum documents the development and growth in treatment for injured soldiers and how this extended to peace time care. We saw Daniel Sickles leg, he was a union general in the American civil war. He shot the son of Francis Scott Key, the guy who composed the "Star Spangled Banner", in front of the White house. Key was having an affair with Sickles' wife, Sickles got off on a temporary insanity plea, the first time this defense was used . The museum came right up to date with an exhibition on D.N.A. identification. Meghan and I were both puzzled by one part of the exhibition, it said that all but one of the U.S. personnel killed in Kuwait was identified. We figured that if only one person remained unidentified out of all the U.S. personnel killed why couldn't they be identified by a process of elimination. We both came to the conclusion that maybe there wasn't a body to identify.Thursday night Craig and I had dinner together as Meghan had a family dinner to go to. We went to a Mexican restaurant in Bethesda, it was the only busy restaurant there.
Yesterday Meghan, Craig and I went into town and tried to go to the Bureau of Printing and engraving,a.k.a the mint. Unfortunately when we tried to go it was closed so we went to see "Smokey the Bear". This is a character the U.S. National Forest Service created to try and reduce the number of forest fires. We spent a while in there watching some videos and talking to two rangers. The mint tour was excellent, despite not being able to take photographs. You get to see the whole printing process from when they receive the special blank paper to when they apply the special seals and serial numbers. The first part of the process is almost fully automated and we didn't see many workers on the printing floor. The second part involves a lot of checking and so is more labour intensive. The workers seem to have a sense of humour about working in a goldfish bowl and having people stare at them all day. One worker held a sheet of money to me, another applied a sign saying "free samples" to some misprinted money. On the wall they was a sign which said " How do you think I feel? I've just printed my entire life's salary in a few seconds." . When the money has been printed they bundle it up in $400,000 stacks and then put four stacks together and wrap them in plastic. These bundles are put onto a pallet and then shipped to the federal reserve banks. I saw two pallets together, they totalled $64 million. This is the closest I will ever come to that amount of money.That doesn't stop me thinking about how I would spend it though!