No, not a Maritime Museum. This is one of the fishing boats used by the Danes in WWII to smuggle most of their 7000 Jews into neutral Sweden. It is one of the many artifacts in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

I spent a whole day (10 to 5:15) here and did not see it all. Designed of the same beautiful pale yellow stone that is used in most other government buildings in this city, the interior has a long atrium around which the horrible history unfolds, as one starts on the fourth floor and works ones way down. This atrium is glass covered and reminded me of a railroad station  -- such an integral part of the Germans "Final Solution". I have been to such museums in NY, Jerusalem and smaller ones in many other cities but none that were as comprehensive, with a significant slant on US responses before, during and after the war. It showed how gradually Hitler came to power, consolidated his power and set to work first trying to drive the Jews out by making life unbearable and dangerous, then deporting them and finally, exterminating them. One huge wall of etched glass, has the names of the numerous European towns where Jews lived before Hitler, including my fathers birthplace, Untergrombach, middle row, right, with my imagined "RR Station" below.

The place was very crowded with lots of high school kids who were very respectful. I was quite moved by the experience. The museum repeatedly discussed the plight of the Roma (gypsies) and other victims. It also had exhibits on the three post-Holocaust genocides: Cambodias killing fields, the Serbo-Croation conflict and Rwanda. It seems humanity has not learned yet, despite the saying "Never Again! We had lunch in the museums cafe, located in a small building outside the Memorial.
Our final day was for Congress and the Library of Congress. We had planned to visit the adjacent Supreme Court as well. I had to be admitted to its Bar to oppose a Petition for Certiorari  in the late 70s. (Since about 95 to 99 percent of such petitions are denied, winning that one was rather easy.) But our tourism stamina gave out before we got there, which was a shame because Lene has never been there. On our way we passed the Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building.

Ms. Perkins was one of FDRs "brain trust" and the first female Secretary of Labor. She co-taught a seminar in labor history I took at Cornell in about 1964.
In 2008 Congress opened a huge underground entrance, visitors center, "Emancipation Hall," with Museum, gift shops, a large cafeteria and many restrooms to handle the throngs of tourists. We were shown an inspirational movie about how well Congress works, which is somewhat of a joke given todays hyperpartisanship. Leah, our assigned

tour guide was energetic and bright with the kids but the tour did not include either house of the Congress. We easily secured a pass to visit the House, which was in session, but just barely. The person acting as speaker recognized a stream of Representatives who rose to give speeches of up to four minutes. It was mostly women in red suits on the Democratic side and men in blue suits on the other side. Several democrats spoke in favor of refinancing the Highway Trust Fund and opposing yet-another bill to restrict abortion, which the Republicans are addicted to and will undoubtedly pass. The Republicans spoke in favor of the anti-abortion bill and in memory of slain police officers. They all spoke to an almost empty room. The speeches go into the Congressional Record and are fodder for the folks back home. "See how I represented your interests!"
After lunch we visited the Library of Congress through an underground tunnel which avoids having to go through security again. Our first time here.

The entrance hall reminded me of The Hermitage in St. Petersberg, with its staircase, marble, red, statuary and grandeur.










The main reading room is much smaller than the one in NY but more elegant.

A highlight of my stay here was a visit to the Geography and Map division, where I was given access to their collection of nautical charts published by the United States Navys  Hydrographic Office from about 1850 to 1950. The charts are numbered, to about 6500, with some omissions. I have been studying them and cataloging them, as a volunteer in the Map Room of the NY Public Library for about seven years now. They describe the coastlines of the world (excluding the U.S. and the Philippines which are the subject of a similar series of charts published by the Coast Guard. Each branch of the armed forces had its champions in Congress and back in the 19th century they worked out this geographic compromise.)  I had a good conversation with the director of the map room who invited me back. Maybe, by land, some day.

I also saw a German antiquarian map of the world, in Latin, published a few decades after 1492, purchased for $11,000,000 (less than half of it taxpayer dollars), an exhibition of Herblock political cartoons, and a recreation of Thomas Jeffersons circular library of Monticello (he sold it to the government) with mostly his original books. He was a well read man.

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Well time off from boating for a pleasurable trip to Atlanta and another in Portland, Oregon, both with family, plus a LOT of cold weather this winter has slowed progress. When the daily high temperature does not reach 40, I do not do boat work. At the end of this post is Sonya Baumstein, well worth waiting for.

The fourth day of the removing of old anti-barnacle paint from the bottom (3.25 hours is a days work according to my by then achy muscles) has gotten the aft 1/3 of the boat scraped off. Now the sander comes into play to really clean and give a "tooth" to the bottom before a couple coats of ridiculously expensive "barrier" coat paint and then equally expensive bottom paint. Only the aft 1/3, you ask? Yes, alas, Rome was not built in a day; the complete bottom job will be spread out over at least three seasons. And because we will go south next winter, the next two winters out of the water for this will be 2015-16 and 2016-17. The parts not done "right" this winter will be spotted out (sanding at the bare spots and then painted over, before the entire boat gets its last coat.

Also, I have spent more time working inside the pumping mechanisms of the two marine heads. And Ive obtained all the replacement parts I need. Now all I have to do is call the friendly helpful techie at Groco to get a couple of hints on how to put humpty dumpty back together again. Here is more than you ever wanted to know about the inside of a Groco head, with its white porcelain bowl removed. The extreme left black piece at the bottom of the photo is the rubber Joker valve and its round flange fits between the two parts of large white hose to the left and forms the gasket sealing them and creating the passage for sewage to leave the head, for either the holding tank or for overboard discharge, out at sea.

The large black disk at the bottom is the rubber gasket between the unit you see and the bowl. The most extreme right round looking piece is the piston for the pump with two white plastic rings that seal it, and just to its left is a valve, currently upside down that sits above the piston and lets water from the bowl to the pumps chamber. Have you had enough yet? I thought so. Too much? Sorry about that.

Other work has involved snow and ice removal. While in Atlanta, a thick crust of ice had formed atop the blue canvas winter cover-- a lot of weight up so high. And I surely could not get at it from the top because it is too far off the ground. So I crawled into the airspace between the deck and the bottom of the cover and pushed up and out to shake the snow and ice off the cover. And I threw out my back a bit in the process. Also, despite the cover, water enters the boat through its top and collects in the bilge and freezes. This had to be chopped up with the ice pick and then access to the water beneath the ice was available for the manual pump into the bucket. All in a days work.

In Oregon we visited the Historical Society Museum which has a full room devoted to the history of the Battleship Oregon, nicknamed the "Bulldog of the Sea." She served our nation from before the Spanish American War through and after WWI and was much beloved by her home state (though she was built in California). Battleships were the largest and proudest of the navy, though they became relatively obsolete with the advent of air power projected from aircraft carriers. The most amazing thing about the Oregon, to me, was her size -- 346 feet! This is tiny by todays standards. Big compared to ILENEs 43 feet, but the USS Hammerberg, DE-1015 was 306 feet long. A tiny thin hulled Destroyer Escort almost as big as a heavily armor-plated mighty Battleship!

And we had the pleasure of a visit to the Harlem YC by Sonya Baumstein. Who is Sonya Baumstein, you might ask? Well she ROWED, with three men who she recruited as her crew, across the Atlantic from the Azores to the West Indies in a 23 foot rowboat.

This 57 day adventure was choped into two hour shifts: two for rowing and two for eating, cleaning, repairing and sleeping -- continuously, for 57 days. Thats twelve hours of rowing per day! Sonya had dinner with us and then presented her slide show.  I dont know how old she is but her poise and intelligence made her an absolute pleasure to be around.  Her ease in presenting her story and her self deprecation while speaking was endearing because it was a display of natural humility...and this coming from a young woman who goes so far beyond what any of us in the room has ever done!  I think I speak for all who attended when I say she was a big hit!

Since her Atlantic adventure she paddled a stand up paddle board, across the frigid waters of the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska in eleven hours, this time wearing a drysuit and accompanied by a small fishing boat.  She also bicycled from San Diego to Seattle and paddled a kayak from there to northern Alaska. Many exciting, scary and funny incidents on each adventure.
Her next adventure, planned for April 2015 -- is a solo row in a newer, better designed boat from Japan to the US, scheduled to take from four to six months. And she does a lot of marine biology research along the way. For more info, google sonyabaumstein.com. As she told her story, including her graduation from College and Graduate school and her recovery from being hit by an automobile which took three years of multiple surgeries to recover from, before these adventures began, we could see how much she has learned about the seas, currents and winds since she set off from the Azores. I predict greater success for her next crossing.A portion of the enthralled Harlemites:

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