DC By the Book

Excerpt: We started at the Lincoln Memorial, which Mr. G said was the site of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963. I wanted to breathe the air around the Abraham Lincoln statue, feel historic molecules blowing on my skin. But immediately Mrs. Seeley announced that it was the “ideal spot for a group photo,” so she organized us on the steps and took out a camera -- a real camera, not a phone.

Excerpt: Next we walked over to the Vietnam Memorial. As soon as I saw it, I had a weird feeling in my stomach, like how it felt when Grandma Wendy died and we went to the cemetery. A feeling like I wanted to cry, or something, but also like it was wrong to make any sounds. I guessed other people felt like that too, because the whole place was pretty quiet. We watched a woman hold a sheet of paper to the wall, and use a pencil to make a rubbing of a name. Who was that person, I wondered. Her husband? No, she wasn’t old enough. Her father? Uncle? Whoever it was, she loved that person; you could tell by the way her fingers stayed on the name.

Excerpt: Out on the street, he was quiet and nervous, the way he always was; inside the museum, it was as if he’d spontaneously combusted. He ran upstairs ahead of everybody into the Apollo room and began explaining everything there in a loud, enthusiastic voice: The Skylab 4 command module. The lunar roving vehicle. The F-1 engine.

Excerpt: That was how we ended up at the National Zoo. It was a very fun afternoon, actually. We saw the pandas and the great cats and the Asian elephants -- but I have to say, I liked the small-mammals exhibit the best. The meerkats were hilarious, the way they sat up on their hind legs and made rude eye contact, and I couldn’t stop giggling at one species with the name Screaming Hairy Armadillo.