America is All the Way Back Outside. But Did We Learn Anything from Isolation?

I spent this afternoon on a walking tour of the Smithsonian Museum District in observation of folks being fully back outside and reflecting on what all we did or did not learn.

Photo by Andy Dunaway/USAF via Getty Images

Today is an absolutely gorgeous day in Washington, D.C. There’s no overcast to be found, the sun is comfortably beaming, the temperature is just kissing the lower end of 70 degrees - it cannot feel any more Spring.

After an aggressive winter and weeks of on-again/off-again cold fronts, I relish days like today and usually make a plan to get out of my place and do some sightseeing. I have a series of photo essays here on The North Star where I’ve visited culturally prominent and/or historical landmarks in D.C., capture images and write in response to what I observed. The plan today was to visit the Breonna Taylor exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, but I didn’t reserve a time-stamped pass in advance and today was one of those days when hundreds of folks flocked to the museum, and there were no more same-day passes available.

I probably knew better than to try to get in but I’ve also pulled up on the same day in the past and lucked up. Needless to say, those other times were not nearly as pristine as today.

My next thought was to try to visit one of the many other Smithsonian museums in the area, but I ultimately decided to just take in the beauty of the day, and observe the thousands of people who walked the area on family vacations, field trips or maybe just casually out and about like I was. Because there is no longer a mask mandate in D.C., much as in the majority of the country, I saw more expression-filled faces than I’ve seen in the past two years. This got me reflecting on the multitude of narratives we carry as strangers and just how much of the stories that our faces tell were hidden throughout this specific history.