Sunday April 10, 2005 D.C. - Air and Space Museum
I was supposed to have flown back to Denver this evening, but a snow storm in Colorado has seen to it that I stay in D.C. another night. I am booked on a red eye flight tomorrow morning and have my fingers tightly crossed.
I spent the bulk of the day at the Air and Space Museum, reportedly the world's most visited museum. Like the American History Museum, the exhibits in this museum, and the stories behind them, are excellent.
The Milestones of Flight exhibit is especially fascinating. Included in this exhibit are the Ryan NYP "Spirit of St. Louis", the craft in which Charles Lindbergh made the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight; the Bell X-1 "Glamorous Glennis", the craft in which Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier; the Mercury "Friendship 7", the craft in which John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth; the North American X-15, the the first winged aircraft to reach Mach 6 and to operate above 100K feet; and the Apollo 11 Command Module "Columbia", the command module for the first manned lunar landing mission. I viewed the Wright 1903 Flyer, usually part of this exhibit, in the relatively new The Wright Brothers & The Invention of the Aerial Age gallery.
The galleries dedicated to military artifacts - Legend, Memory and the Great War in the Air; World War II Aviation; and Sea-Air Operations - were also quite nice. Interesting military artifacts displayed outside of these galleries include a German V-2, the world's first ballistic missile, and a Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe, the first successful jet fighter.
I have always had an interest in rocketry, and the Air and Space Museum does not disappoint in this area either. An entire gallery is devoted to Rocketry and Space Flight. I was delighted to find that this gallery contained terrific examples of early Congreve, Hale, and Goddard rockets. Rockets in other parts of the museum include the WAC Corporal, Viking, Jupiter-C, Vanguard, Scout-D, and missiles like the V-2 (mentioned above), Minuteman III, Pershing II, and SS-20.
After leaving the Air and Space Museum, I walked through the Hirshhorn Statue Garden on my way to the Metro. The Garden provides a nice setting to display a number of interesting works. I found The Miner (Saul Baizerman, 1939-45) to be particularly captivating.
( Apr 10 2005, 10:49:08 PM PDT )
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Dark Voyage
Dark Voyage: A Novel - Alan Furst (2004)
*** (out of 5)
Dark Voyage is Furst's latest offering set in warn-torn Europe during World War II. In Dark Voyage, Eric DeHaan, captain of the Dutch tramp freighter Noordendam, is enlisted by the Allies to engage, along with his crew, in a series of three covert missions. In the first mission, DeHaan transports British commandos to a nocturnal raid in Tunisia. The second mission consists of transporting supplies to beleagured British Expeditionary Forces in Crete. A dicey trip through Nazi-controlled regions of the Baltic Sea in order to deliver HUFFDUFF equipment is the objective of the third mission, the most dangerous of the three.
Furst is known as a novelist with a gift for nuance and subtlety. This might work in many of his novels, but I found the plot of Dark Voyage to be a bit listless. That being said, the strength of Dark Voyage, however, lies more in the settings and the characters with which DeHaan comes into contact than in the plot. And quite a cast of characters it is: in addition to DeHaan himself - a likable 'everyman' motivated by patriotic duty rather than an overt sense of heroism - Furst introduces the reader to a somewhat motely crew (no pun intended) and a diverse passenger list including an alluring female Russian journalist, a Swiss spy, and a Jewish medical student fleeing the Nazis. Most of these characters 'work'. The notable exception is the Russian journalist and her almost gratuitous sexual relationship with DeHaan.
Dark Voyage is not Furst's best work, but it is a decent work nonetheless.
( Apr 10 2005, 10:21:54 PM PDT )
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Words to Live By
"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin." - Mother Theresa of Calcutta
( Apr 10 2005, 04:16:44 AM PDT )
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