Alternative Capital in a Era of a Shutdown

Today marks the start of another week of the shutdown of the Federal government in Washington and elsewhere in the nation. A nation’s capital city is a city full of artistic, cultural, and recreational sites that attract tourists and residents alike. London has its museums such as the National Gallery of Art, the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Tower of London. Paris has its Louvre and Musée d’Orsay. Until the shutdown, Washington’s famous Mall was lined with museums operated under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution. Young people and adults alike enjoyed the array of creatures exhibited by the National Zoo. The National Gallery of Art had a splendid collection of works, my favorite being Thomas Cole’s view of Crawford Notch, a famous mountain pass in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Today, due to the shutdown, Washington is a cultural and recreational desert. The National Gallery of Art, the National Zoo, and the Smithsonian museums are now closed. Washington is now a political playpen of players who act as toddlers and not as adults. It is not the capital city that celebrates our nation’s artistic and intellectual endeavors.

And so it’s time to look at other cities that do play their roles as alternative capitals. I am adding a new portfolio that features a few scenes of Philadelphia, my home city, as one of several alternative capitals. I may add other alternative capitals, such as New York, Boston, and Baltimore, should this shutdown continue. The photo of a tiger walking on an overhead bridge is a scene I captured at the Philadelphia Zoo. The zoo is one of Philadelphia’s wonderful array of recreational and artistic sites that tourists, who may had been bummed out by Washington’s artistic desert or are seeking Philadelphia as an alternative capital, will enjoy. Philadelphia was once the ‘big city’ and capital of the American Colonies and served for a short while as our then-new nation’s capital. The Benjamin Franklin Parkway is Philadelphia’s counterpart to Washington’s Mall. It is lined with museums including the Barnes Foundation, which has a fine collection of Impressionist and Post Impressionist art, the recently-opened Calder Garden, the Franklin Institute, the Rodin Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

So enjoy a quick survey of an Alternative Capital City in this current age of the shutdown. And if you live near an Alternative Capital, support that city’s artistic and cultural treasures.