A sunny day in Washington, D.C. January 28

What a gorgeous sunny day.....brisk and refreshing.  We finally did hear from Nick on Nantucket.He had been without power for 16 hours.  He said he played a lot of solitare and did a lot of reading.  Today he shoveled out to go to work, but went in for only an hour when they sent him home and shut down.  The roads are still disastrous,

We first drove to Alexandria and got our pre-check approval for the TSA (a political comment: we now pay to have ourselves checked out and the government has contracted it out, which is really a shame, as, if we have to pay for this, I would rather pay it to the government than to a well connected
private company.  85 dollars gets you a card that says you are not dangerous for five years.

Then we went to the National Archives in Washington and miraculously found a parking space right in front of the archives building, and what a gran building it is too.  An archivist sat with us and we explained that we were looking for a bit of a petition taken to Washington in 1842 by Cyrus Peirce. We explained that we had found it years ago, but only got a photocopy of it which was not very clear and not really good enough for publication.  He brought us up four possible boxes of files to look through and Mark found the piece we wanted. Another man helped us get high quality copies.  There over 100 names of Nantucketers on the petition, so it was quite exciting.  It includes Absalom Boston, Eliza Barney and Harriet Peirce....very cool.

Then we went to very popular Thai restaurant on G Street "Absolutely Thai"  Delicious.  Then didalittle museum hopping..Natural Science.....National Archive, (saw the original Geneva Conventions)..and the National Gallery