A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Denver to get on the California Zephyr, Amtrak’s most popular long-distance train. It travels through the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. The train originally starts in Chicago and ends in Emeryville (San Francisco).
This is a fabulous trip for those interested in seeing parts of the country you would never see on a plane or driving in a car. The deserts of Utah and Nevada were absolutely breathtaking!
I love visiting public libraries whenever I go out of town. Not only do I like to be in a space that celebrates literacy, but public libraries are a good reflection of how much a town or city feels about its public spaces and infrastructure, as well as supporting art and culture in the community.
So my business partner in Kenya told me about this tour of public libraries in Nairobi, I was overjoyed! The tours are hosted by a company called Book Bunk.
This is from their website: “We are Angela Wachuka and Wanjiru Koinange, the founders of Book Bunk. Book Bunk is a social impact firm restoring some of Nairobi’s most iconic public libraries. Our background is in arts management and book publishing – we’ve managed projects ranging from podcasts, artists’ residency programmes and publication of some of Africa’s leading authors in the past decade. Our collective work centres around literature, memory, public art spaces, and the creative economy. In 2018, we featured in The Kenyan Cool Girl’s Guide to Nairobi on Vogue Magazine!”
I hope to do the tour the next time I am in Nairobi. If you want to go on the tour, click on the image below from Airbnb.
During a business trip last week in Washington, DC, I FINALLY got into the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)! It took me a year to get a ticket to go, as getting tickets is almost as difficult as going to a Beyonce concert!
It was everything I thought it would be and more. I was there for five hours and still feel like I didn’t get to see everything. The museum is organized so well that even for a history buff like myself I learned some new stuff. It took me about an hour just to get through the first floor, which was dedicated to the Atlantic slave trade and slavery. NMAAHC has a rule that says to refer to Africans brought to America as enslaved people instead of slaves as to point out the injustice of the whole institution of slavery. The bottom three floors focus heavily on everything from the first slave landings in Jamestown in 1619 to President Obama’s inauguration in 2008. I learned so much that I will have to go through the notebook I brought with me and write future posts on other specific topics brought up in the museum. The top three floors also had shorter exhibits on the Double V campaign, the black press, South Carolina Gullah culture and even a hip-hop photography exhibit.
The food was great there too! The cafeteria has five stations of food, each representing different African-American foodways throughout history. I was looking at my pedometer during my time in the museum and walked closed to 5,000 steps. My legs were so tired, but my friends and I were determined to see everything because we didn’t know when we would come back, due to how hard it is to get time-entry tickets. I would definitely go again if someone got me tickets!!!
I was really in DC for business, but I found time to do other things like go to the National Portrait Gallery to see the new Obama portraits. I don’t understand what people are complaining about; President Obama’s portrait isn’t the only abstract painting in the Presidents’ Gallery. Portraits of Clinton, JFK and even FDR are not what we would consider “presidential” portraits either. I saw Mrs. Obama’s portrait, and while it didn’t look like her, it was nice to look at. I am just a little disappointed that LL Cool J’s portrait which is right across from the former first lady’s painting was bigger. There were also great portraits of Paul Robeson, Lena Horne, and Michael Jackson.
We also had time to go to the Library of Congress and the National Archives to see the Gutenberg Bible and Declaration of Independence, respectively. I also say the memorials for Lincoln, Jefferson, MLK, and FDR.
Besides going to NMAAHC, I also had a great time going to the National Museum of the American Indian. They had a great exhibit called the Americans, which looks at how Native Americans have been viewed in popular culture. And the food there was great too! I had a chili topped with Frito chips, making myself a Frito Pie!
