My Prize Winning WASHWORDS Contest Entry!

Today is the deadline for WASHWORD's Share Your DC Knowledge/Love/Hate for Prizes" contest. The rules are very simple and unlike the requirements for getting your blog named one of the daily "DC Blogs Noted" you do not have to sleep with the judges!

All WASHWORD asks is that you answer 5 questions.

And the winner is...me?

1. One reason why I LOVE DC.

Tourists! I love biking to the Lincoln Memorial and watching kids excitedly run up the steps. This is the one trip they will remember the rest of their lives and WE LIVE HERE!!!!

What about going to the Vietnam Memorial and watch the visiting Veterans reaction as the Wall engulfs them? Heartbreaking.

The Cherry Blossom Festival. The Smithsonian Folk Life Festival. Driving visitors around to see the monuments by moonlight. Pointing up to the Eternal Flame flickering in the night in Arlington Cemetery and saying in a very knowing voice "It goes out all the time you know."

2. One thing you hate/snark/whine/mock about DC.

Tourists! Tourists who line up to see Madame Tussuad's wax museum, eat at TGI Fridays or ask for directions and then argue with me. Fine, I hope you enjoy your tour of the White House that is apparently somewhere in Georgetown.

3) A DC favorite or secret (can be a restaurant, a deal, a park, an intersection, you name it).

Your clue: It should come in a very large robin's egg blue box. Instead it is wrapped in Vermont Marble and is dedicated to the Women of the North and the Women of the South for their noble service during the Civil War.

Give up? Okay, but it is no longer a secret!

My favorite DC secret is the magnificent Louis Comfort Tiffany windows in the Board of Governors Hall of the American Red Cross National Headquarters building (430 17th Street NW). Dedicated in 1923, they are reputed to be the largest suite of Tiffany windows created for a secular environment that have remained in place where they can be appreciated in the environment for which they were created.

The windows depict the theme of ministry to the sick and wounded through sacrifice and are filled with enough symbolism to keep both Art and English majors in a delirious frenzy of thesis updates.

Free tours of the building which was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965, also include peeks at some of the exquisite art and artifacts donated to the American Red Cross since it formal inception in 1881.

4) Your favorite DC photo (own the rights please! that means you took it or it’s public or I’m not gonna get in trouble for sharing it!)

Ok, but I really suck as a photographer. Please, please will someone agree to be my photography intern? Oh and while we are at it I need an editor also. Thanks!


















5) One DC blogger we might not know about.

Well he is very well known but YOU may not know him--the very funny and thought provoking Jimbo.