#pershing park

[sugarrootwrites]

My town has both a Pershing and Park street in the same area

Saturday is tomorrow...

[emtulsa7]

Is this an Outsiders reference?! 🤔

[istandonsnowpiles]

Reflected Willard Center

[blogboestbelle]

Snapshots from yesterday’s walk.🏃🏻‍♀️

Pershing Park, Washington, D.C.

[moorheadthanyoucanhandle]

STATUE; GESUNDHEIT

Hope everyone has had a safe and happy Veterans Day, and thank you to all veterans for their service!

Before this day was called Veterans Day, it was of course known as Armistice Day, and specifically marked the end of World War I; it was changed, in the U.S., to a day honoring all veterans in 1954.

A month or so ago I was in Washington, D.C. for The Day Gig, and with a few hours to kill I visited the recently-dedicated World War I Memorial, in Pershing Park not far from the White House. Incredibly, D.C. didn't have a general monument to that war until now. I took a few pictures that do it absolutely no justice at all...

Titled A Soldier's Journey, it's the work of figurative purist sculptor Sabin Howard. His technique is magnificent and the horrors of war are emotionally depicted, but the piece could be seen as perpetuating a square-jawed romanticism about war along with the horror. It's a masterpiece, but it made me feel ambivelent.

Wandering around nearby I also saw this statue of late D.C. Mayor Marion Barry...

I lived there in 1990, when Barry was arrested for drug use in an elaborate sting operation; I can only imagine how we would have laughed at the idea that there would ever be a statue of him in D.C. But he became Mayor again in 1995, proof of a much less ominous sort than what we're going through currently that sometimes there are, indeed, second acts in American politics.

A little farther away I found this statue of Jose Artigas, father of Uruguayan independence...

Coming across stuff like this is one of the pleasures of that town. At least, it is if you're nerdy.

[theagreeables]

Biting the beautiful town hand that feeds them.

[dcwandercast-blog]

The Pershing Park crowd huddled against each other, shoulder to shoulder. They were surrounded by two rows of riot-geared cops standing stock-straight and clutching batons. Beyond these cops bunched bike cops, and beyond the bike cops were cops swaying on horseback. The cops closed in tight. At this point, at about 10:30, there was no uncertainty: They would all be arrested shortly. One protester threw up a peace symbol. Another held up a makeshift sign that read, "Help!" And that was it. Everything conspired to keep them silent. The nurses still waited. "The order never came," Norton remembers. "I heard no orders to disperse. I heard no orders to leave. That was what we were trying to do. The only orders I heard was when the perimeter was tightening, they were yelling, 'Move in, move in.' And I did that."

"Boss Hogtie" by Jason Cherkis, about the 2002 mass arrests at a Pershing Park anti-globalization protest