June 16 2o12 Washington DC
I must be feeling better as I look forward to eating crab cakes that I have just ordered. A white sangria to go with it -the first mouth full is fantastic. A mouth full of bread roll – with jetlag sangria might just go straight to my head.
BUT I am so confused as to what the time is … the motto “it is 5pm somewhere in the world” seems particularly fitting
A spectacularly gorgeous day in Washington DC. The sunshine is out and although I thought it was gorgeous last time I visited it is just so much more beautiful bathed in sunshine. Have just spent a wonderful few hours at Newseum. Had read that it was pretty good but all descriptions didn’t do it justice. Loved reading the front covers of newspapers over the years and the 9/11 exhibition was really moving. Felt extremely humble standing beside the twisted news antennae that came off the World Trade Centre. Standing beside bits of the Berlin wall and watching the wall come down on a video was just so interesting.
One of the Smithsonians
The Pulitzer prize photographs were just great and enjoyed the fantastic short films showing on each level. The journalists memorial really made me think, with a montage of photographs of journalists killed over the years. The 2011 list included two Australians and although their deaths in a helicopter accident in Australia was obviously tragic, it seemed to somehow pale when I read of those decapitated or tortured in the various news hot spots of the world.
Was all put into perspective with a large world map that was coloured to show countries freedom to news coverage. With North Korea coloured red and Australia covered green, to represent free news coverage, it was confronting to see how much of the world is red. While we might whine about the press just having access to free press is something I don’t think I will take for granted again.
This afternoon I plan to tackle some of the Smithsonian’s. I am sitting very close to the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery so that will be my next stop.
Sleeping under the stars 
Freedom of the press bahaha! I wish…
Perhaps you have seen a video I released entitled ‘collateral murder’.
I wonder whether the Reuters journalists murdered in that video were memorialised…
Good morning “Julian” interestingly I have actually seen ‘collateral murder’ .. perhaps I should have put ‘free’ in quotation marks – my post was a chatty tourist comment and definitely not a philosophical comment on the definition of free – whilst I agree with you – I would still argue that despite Murdoch we have a wee bit more freedom than downtown North Korea