Hello again faithful Readers Deany V. here,
Back out on the beat in Washington D.C.,
today were visiting The Jefferson Memorial way over on the opposite side of the
Tidal Pool. It was placed here to complete something called the Four Point
plan, with the other three points being Mr. Lincoln’s Memorial, The Capitol
building and The White House. It seems awfully far away from the rest and sort
of lonely. The building in self is based on the Pantheon in Rome but it kind of reminds me of a booby.
There are so many legends and facts about Thomas Jefferson that I didn’t know
where to start so I asked Pop what he knows about our third President and he
said,” Thomas Jefferson suffered from Migraine headaches and chronic diarrhea,
and kept one of his slaves as a mistress, what else do you need to know”.
The Monument was started way back in 1938, and was placed on
a really popular spot for picnics that was covered by cherry trees given to The
United States by the people of Japan
back in 1912. So when the bulldozers arrived they found a bunch of ladies had
chained themselves to the cherry trees. President Roosevelt told the ladies
that they, plus the trees they were chained to would be moved as one. So the
ladies gave up, but they kept complaining all the way up to the day The
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, then for some
reason nobody cared about the cherry trees anymore. On the inside there is a
nineteen foot tall bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson one of the greatest men in
American History. Hank asked me if Thomas Jefferson was really that tall, and
if Jefferson could dunk a basketball. But I
explained to him that the reason he is nineteen feet tall is because there is
an unwritten rule in Washington
that no statue can be taller than the statue of Freedom that stands on top of
The Capitol Rotunda. So nineteen feet is the standard. The statue portrays Mr.
Jefferson standing and wearing a fur collared coat that Hank said, “looks kind of
fruity”, but with some investigative journalism I discovered that the statue is
based on a painting in which Jefferson is
wearing a fur collared coat given to him by a Polish immigrant. The statue was
sculpted by a man named Rudolph Evans. In Jefferson’s
left hand he holds what many believe is the Declaration of Independence, but I
guess it could be a grocery list as Hank insisted.
Due to war time restrictions the original statue had to be
constructed out of plaster and then painted to look bronze, I guess because we
still used a lot of bronze for shields during World War II. Only after the war
was over was a real bronze statue finally cast and the plaster one replaced.
Finally on April 13 1943 the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s
birth the Memorial was finally dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt. On
That day President Roosevelt said, “Today in the midst of a great war for
freedom, we dedicate a shrine to freedom”, Pretty keen, huh? Later when looking
out a White House window President Roosevelt found that he couldn’t see the
Jefferson Memorial because of all the cherry trees so he ordered more of them
cut down so he could have an unobstructed view.
All in all, I learned a lot about Thomas Jefferson from my
visit here. Things like he smuggled apple seeds out of Europe, that he hated to
wear wigs, that he basically started the Library of Congress, and that he loved
Ice Cream, but I guess the most important things I learned about the Jefferson
memorial are that Hank is a big stupid head and that old F.D.R. sure hated
cherry trees! Well in a couple days we will be leaving Washington D.C.
and heading home to the compound I think I will have time to write at least one
more report from our nation’s capitol. Pop wants to see the President about
some really important plans so I guess our last stop will be The White House
until then this is Deany V. your roving reporter signing off!
GO TEAM VENTURE!
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