Yesterday, we toured two great museums in Washington D.C., the Newseum and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Both were excellent, and I highly recommend both to anybody who has not visited them yet.

The bus picked us up at Cherry Hill Park and took us to the Metro station, where we rode the Green Line train into Washington. It was less than an hour from the time we got on the bus until we were walking on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Metro is fast and easy to use, the trains are very clean, and every line is color coded and keyed to free maps available everywhere to help you get around.

The Newseum is devoted to the history of news gathering and reporting, from the earliest town criers to the first printed handbills, the evolution of newspapers, television and radio, and new technology such as online news sources and blogging.

From the Newseum’s observation deck, we had a great view of the U.S. Capitol Building, and the Federal Trade Commission Building, as well as other Washington landmarks.

The museum’s seven floors of galleries include permanent and changing exhibits of major news stories, including several graffiti covered sections of the Berlin Wall, extensive video and print coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, and studios where visitors can try their hand at broadcasting the news.

There is even a Bell news helicopter hanging from the ceiling!

The G-Men and Journalists exhibit includes such rare items as John Dillinger’s death mask, the Unabomber’s cabin, and the electric chair Lindberg baby kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann was executed in.

We spent several hours at the Newseum, and could have easily spent all day, but we still had more to see and do.

Our next stop was the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and it was one of the most moving experiences we have ever had. The Newseum was a bright and overall uplifting place, but nobody is smiling when they tour the Holocaust Museum, because there is nothing to smile about there. Frankly, it’s a really sad and depressing place. But everybody should see it, if for no other reason than to honor those who perished under Nazi rule, and to be sure that it never happens again.

Photography is not allowed in the museum, but they did allow me to download this photo of the  gate museum visitors pass under, a cast taken from the original entrance to the Auschwitz death camp, inscribed with the ironic phrase Arbeit Macht Frei, German for Work Makes One Free.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Holocaust Museum, and we saw a lot of tears in the eyes of people seeing the horror that man can bring upon his own kind.

When the museum closed, we walked down to the World War II Memorial, which was still under construction during our last visit to Washington. My dad and several of my uncles served during that war, and one of my mother’s brother’s died fighting in North Africa, so I appreciate this memorial to their service and sacrifice.

It was a gray, cloudy day, but we managed to get a few decent photos of the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool.

It was a busy day, and by the time we rode the Metro and bus back to College Park, had dinner, and got back to our motorhome at Cherry Hill Park, there was just time to download our digital photos, write this blog post, and get ready for bed. Today we plan to do more sightseeing, gathering stories for the next issue of the Gypsy Journal.

Thought For The Day – Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.

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I spend a lot of hours every day working at my computer, and a lot of that time is spent online, either answering e-mails from our readers, updating my blogs and websites, or researching new places we want to visit to see what kinds of stories I can find there for the Gypsy Journal.

But you know what they say about all work and no play, so occasionally I take a break from whatever I’m working at to check out interesting, fun, or even goofy websites. But why should I have all the fun? So I thought I’d share a few of them with you.

1. People of Walmart.com – I guarantee that if you spend a few minutes browsing this collection of candid photos of the denizens who hang out at your local WalMart store, you’ll be amazed, appalled, and get a chuckle or two. I also bet you’ll double check your RV’s door locks the next time you spend the night at Camp WalMart!

2. Mental Floss – Mental Floss magazine, and its sister website, bills itself as “Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix.” Here you will finds all kinds of interesting trivia, from The Weird & Scary History of Winter Olympic Mascots, to People Born on the (Exact) Same Day You Were, to 9 Tasty Foods Named After People, and a lot of other information that would come in really handy if you ever land a spot as a contestant on Jeopardy or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

3. My Parents Were Awesome – Long before they were introduced to dirty diapers and 2 a.m. feedings, our parents were hip youngsters who had the world by the tail. Contributors to this website send in photos of their parents that you’ll find interesting and even funny at times. My only concern, when looking at these photographs, is that sometimes I suspect it is our kids sending in pictures of us when we were kids!

4. Today’s Front Pages – After a career in the small town newspaper business, I’m a born newshound. I pick up newspapers wherever we are traveling just to get a feel for the community. At Today’s Front Pages you can view the current front pages of newspapers around the country.

5. Newspapers, USA And Worldwide – Just one part of the great refdesk.com website, which is a wealth of information, their links to small town and big city newspapers worldwide is another favorite site for news junkies like me.

6. Thinkexist.com – This is another one of those neat websites where you can get lost for hours. With more than 300,000 quotations by over 20,000 authors, you’ll be able to find just the right words for any occasion here.

7. Find A Grave – Whether you’re searching for your great uncle Harry’s final resting place, or the graves of the rich and famous, you’ll probably find it here. It’s a great resource for genealogists.

8.  Speedtest – Do you ever wonder how your current internet connection compares to the average for that server, or to your last location? You can check it quickly at Speedtest.

9. Snopes.com – Before you blindly forward the next wild story that shows up in your e-mail inbox, check out its validity at Snopes.com.

10. Post Secret - PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on a postcard. The voyeur in all of us will find it interesting.

Thought For The Day – If at first you don’t succeed, give up, there’s no use being a fool.

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If you ever watched the popular Headlines bit on the Tonight Show, where Jay Leno shows what should be blatant typos and misprints in newspapers, you might wonder how anybody could be so dumb as to let something like that slip through. 

Trust me, it happens all too easily. After a lifetime in the small town newspaper business, I know that no matter how carefully you proofread and how sure you are that there are no errors, as soon as something hits the pressroom, the gremlins go to work and everything goes to hell.

I’m proud to say that one of my own newspaper front page headlines once made Jay Leno’s show, when I referred to the Arizona Department of Public Safety (their name for the Highway Patrol), as the Department of Pubic Safety. I missed it when I typed the headline, the spell checker didn’t catch it, the proofreader missed it, the two girls laying out the newspaper missed it, and the guys in the pressroom missed it. But the moment the paper hit the newsstands, everybody spotted it and the phone started ringing off the hook!

Even knowing that things like this happen all of the time, I was still kicking my own butt yesterday when Brenda Speidel noticed a conflict in room assignments on the rally schedule. I never saw it, Miss Terry never noticed it when she proofed the schedule, nor did Brenda when she also proofed it. That would be too easy. We had to wait until after I had paid for hundreds of copies of the schedule to be printed before we caught the error. What can I say? My buddies back home in Arizona would have just shaken their heads and said “Nick happens.”

Speaking of schedules, I had another of those frustrating things happen yesterday that give Bad Nick justification for coming out, but then it turned comic, and eventually worked out okay.

Several weeks ago I called the V.A. hospital in Lexington, Kentucky to make an appointment for my annual medical exams. Because my Primary Care provider recently retired, I had to be assigned to a new medic, and the appointment was set for October 5, right after our rally. Yesterday I received a notice in the mail telling me to call and schedule my appointment, so I called back to tell them I already had.

The lady on the phone said she did not see me on the schedule, and after checking, she said there had been an error and my appointment had been entered for a different patient, who doesn’t even have the same Primary Care provider. Then she said she the next opening available to me was October 29.

That would have really messed up our travel plans, and I asked her why they couldn’t take out the wrong patient’s name and insert mine into that timeslot instead, and she said because it was already taken by the other patient. “But he doesn’t see that Primary,” I told her, “So he won’t show up, because he doesn’t know he has that appointment scheduled. All you have to do is change names, I show up as originally scheduled, and all is good.” She started to tell me again that the time slot was already filled, but about that time I dropped the telephone, and when I went to pick it up, I managed to push the disconnect button.    

I immediately called back, reached another clerk, and told her what I had done and that I didn’t want the first lady to think I was being rude and had hung up on her. She said no problem, she’d pass that on, and they’d see me October 29.

The call ended, and just as I was telling Miss Terry that our travel schedule was going to have to change, the phone rang again, and it was the original clerk, who said after she lost my call, she started to tell another clerk about this stubborn patient who “just didn’t get it,” when suddenly it hit her that yes, she could just delete the phantom patient’s name and put mine back in the original time slot, since he didn’t see that Primary anyway! What can you do but laugh? All’s well that ends well.

Dropping my phone and then disconnecting my call wasn’t my only telephone adventure yesterday. I think I’m phone challenged.

Jim and Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour were here, and Chris was checking out my Blackberry Storm. After they left, I returned a phone call that had been interrupted earlier. As I was talking, I started moving some pillows around on the couch and rummaging around on my desk. Terry asked what I was looking for, so I asked the person on the other end to hold on a second, and then told her “My phone. I don’t know where Chris put it when she was done looking at it.”

She gave me one of those looks you usually reserve for the village idiot, or my weird cousin Terry up in Michigan, and then said “Dear, you’re talking on your phone. It’s up against your ear.”

What can I say? Nick happens.

Thought For The Day – If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?

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