Everyone knows I'm on Capitol Hill quite a bit lobbying on disability issues, but it's also an opportunity for me to snap a few photos with the miracle of a cell phone camera. Nope, not an iPhone, just a simple ole LG for $40 that came with the Verizon service plan. This time I looked up from my walk from Rayburn over to the Ford building as I stood in the shade to cool off from the 90 degree weather. Not only was I standing under a wonderful flowering Southern Magnolia but I could see this gargoyle gee-gaw thing on the top of the wall column. It seems to be a cornucopia or horn held by a creature like a squirrel and looks over toward the HHS building, past the ornamental garden that is alongside the Route 395 entrance way. I'd never noticed this before and wondered what was behind the design for this. If you look closely, it turns out to be the head of a little winged horse with a giant horn behind it and it may have waves carved in the base stone, although it's hard to see from below. It does remind me of the wonderful fountain sculpture in front of the old Library of Congress, so I think one day I will conduct some research and find out about this stone creature and when it was put there and what the iconography is all about. It just doesn't seem to fit into our techno modern world of sleek literal easily understood icons. Or at any rate, I've forgotten whatever it is I might have learned in Art History about this type of ornamental sculpture. But what a mystery to bump into, on the way to a policy wonk meeting with committee staff in a drab building! It quite got my mind in a better frame of thought, curious about its meaning. Can I say it influenced what I said at the wonk meeting or did I say less as a consequence? I don't remember but the image has stuck with me where the conversation has not.
Right in the middle of Seoul, Korea I visited what used to be the sacred shrine of a Chosun dynasty king from the fifteenth century who was buried in a tomb on the top of the hill. Standing next to his tomb are several stone figures of revered administrators as his dynasty was known for organizing the Korean culture and establishing stability in the kingdom. I don't think it likely that we would find such a memorial in Washington, DC to "administration" as it is our bent to make fun of federal employees and the federal government but maybe there is something here in terms of respect for God-given government which does in fact made our world safer and more stable. I also visited the nearby Buddhist shrine where the the royal family would perform ritual services for their ancestors, such as this king. Of course, off in the background is modern-day Seoul, with residential apartment towers and office buildings scattered over the hillsides which once were agricultural lands owned by the king and the traditional administrative families, who lived in pavilions amid the plum trees, I was told. It looks very different today but this city of over 10 million people seems to be well-run and organized, and the people that these stone figures may commemorate may be proud of their reach into a bustling 21st century world.
