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May 3, 2010

Loraine Anderson: Fabric of time is what makes us whole

By LORAINE ANDERSON Local columnist

The din of children's voices bounces off the walls of the Smithsonian Museum of American History and echoes down the halls of time.

I can hardly hear the volunteer docent, who grows hoarse as she tries to explain a cannon ball wedged in the wooden hull of a small American Revolution ship sunk by the British.

I look at the exhibits but keep watching the kids on school field trips, family vacations or with friends. Something important is happening here. Joy of learning, perhaps?

May admission to the nation's Smithsonian museums always be free.

The museums are national treasures. They preserve and safeguard the many stories of our nation's founding and development of our system of government based on democratic principles of equality, justice and the freedoms of speech, religion, public assembly and the right to petition our governments.

They showcase our diversity and commonalities. They record missteps and failures, successes and triumphs.

The museums and memorials throughout Washington, D.C., contain the many threads that weave a rich, multi-hued national tapestry. It is this fabric that helps us find the way between far right and far left, between greedy bankers and many congressional representatives who serve themselves instead of the people who elected them.

I brought many images home from my vacation that refresh, sustain and give me hope:

-- Five little girls, probably about five years old, standing in a row along the window of a small dinosaur diorama at their eye level, pointing, laughing, bright with delight.

-- Moms, dads with tots in strollers or whole families.

-- A man in a wheelchair looking for a name on the Vietnam Wall.

-- A group of African-American students in bright red T-shirts from the Detroit Academy, at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and their smiles for group snapshots taken around the bronze sculpture of FDR in a wheelchair.

-- A woman from a Spanish-speaking country asking her husband to take a picture of her standing so proudly beside the sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt.

-- Drafts of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Abe Lincoln's top hat worn the night of his assassination. The American colonies' first newspaper. The giant American flag that inspired the words to the national anthem.

-- American history that includes American Indians, Euro-Americans, African-Americans, massive European and Mexican migrations, abolition, Civil War, the Great Depression, civil rights and anti-war movements. Trains, cars, radios, TVs, computers, cameras and cell phones.

-- On the lighter side, Dorothy's ruby red slippers and a contemporary statue of an American Indian chief made from baseball gloves.

-- Preparations for an Earth Day gathering on the National Mall.

So much has happened since the Boston Tea Party. May we always remember the whole fabric. It is what makes us whole.

Associate editor Loraine Anderson can be contacted at landerson@record-eagle.com.

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