The Weight of History
I had decided to go down to Washington DC to take pictures of the cherry blossoms. Toby, as inquisitive as ever, asked if this was a cherry blossom. He didn’t see any cherries and was worried that he might chip a tooth if he tried to eat it.
‘No,’ I told him, ‘it’s not a cherry blossom, it’s the Washington Monument. It was put up in remembrance of General George Washington who led the Continental Army against the British in the Revolutionary War and was later the first President of The United States.’ Toby said he sounded pretty important but wondered why his thingy didn’t look better. He pointed out that the color changed part-way up for some reason. He figured that if this Washington guy was really important that they would have done a better job.
After a quick Google search, I told him that they started work on the monument in 1848 but had to stop in 1854 due to funding issues and didn’t start back up again until 1877 finishing in 1884. When they resumed they had to use marble from a different quarry resulting in the color change. Toby was incredulous. ‘I can’t believe you read something on that interweb thing and then just believe it’, he said. ‘The next thing I know you will be using FaceyBook as your news source.’ He went on, ‘if you were actually any good at that FotoShoppe thing, you’d have been able to fix that. Maybe you should watch a UTube video or something…’ Just as I thought he was finished he asked, ‘So what about the cherry blossoms?’
A7Riv, SEL1635GM, 16mm, f/2.8, 1/1600sec, iso100
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