Family Time

Bennett enjoyed having friends over during the weekend

trying out a special birthday gift

 and painting the bird house that each of the children received at his party.

 Cheryl and Dave host a grill night about once a month during the summer and we enjoyed being a part of it.  The children have fun playing while the adults get into some intense conversations, it is DC after all.

In the “it’s a small world” category, Tom, nephew of a friend of ours at home, is at the grill night and sends his hello to his aunt.

On one of our first trips to DC back in the ‘90s, we toured the Holocaust Museum.  This time we went for a specific exhibit, “What Did Americans Know?”  This powerful exhibit tells of the authoritative people in Washington who knew and tried to hide Hitler and Germany’s slaughter of Jews.  It also tells of people like Rabbi Stephen Wise, who repeatedly sent factual reports to the Roosevelt administration pleading with them to allow more Jews to enter the US and for the military to take action to try to deal with the concentration camps.

On display are thousands of articles telling of the holocaust. These were collected by students and the general public from newspapers throughout the country.

The tiles on the Children’s Wall are created by children who have had guided tours of the museum and have been given an opportunity to share their reaction.  They have been most graphic in showing the impact of their visit.

A presentation of late 1930s and early 1940s movies shows how films were used as propaganda for support for the US in the war, but, untold, was what was happening to the Jews.  One person whose call for help we were unaware of was Charlie Chaplin.  In his 1940 film “The Great Dictator,” he plays both a Jewish barber and stand-in for Hitler.  In his speech, Chaplin condemns what is happening and calls for unity in a decent world.   Later in life, when he learned of the great horrors perpetrated, his expressed regret for a movie that seems satirical.



Brag time, Cheryl posed for us with a copy of Curator, the Museum Journal of which she was guest editor for the issue on the destructive uses of ivory.

We ended our time in DC with eating, game playing and book reading, three of our favorite activities.