Department of the Interior

Hello, One of our days in DC we toured the department of interior murals. It was quite interesting. We rode the metro to be followed by a short walk. Perhaps we were not clear to the phone that we were walking, because we took the long way to get there. We were still in plenty of time to check out the small museum before the tour started. The video was quite interesting. Not sure how the tour leader knew we had watched it, but she mentioned it. There were seven of us on the tour which allowed us to hear and ask questions easily. The building has three miles of corridors, but we only walked about a mile on the tour. The building was built in 1936 giving lots of jobs to construction workers. Often the murals were in pairs across the hall from each other. Many of them reminded me of ones that I have seen in post offices or other public buildings. Some had been done by Native Americans, depicting their lives as they saw it rather than the European view. They also had a large number of flags from tribes. Almost 600 tribes have an official connection to the United States Government. I was happy to learn that they are acknowledging the pre-European settlers here and that history. There was one really early inhabitant represented. Leroy and I are standing by the head.

Our walk back to the metro was much faster. We got some help from one of the people who was with the tour. Good people everywhere. Paula