I spent my day today at Mount Vernon the home of George Washington. Though there's a heavy element of, er, bias, in the materials and explanation presented at his estate and museum and orientation center and tomb and porch and food court, I'm pretty sure George Washington was the best guy ever.

I guess what I was impressed about was all the stuff besides him being a great general and president - how much of an intellectual, farmer, and inventor George Washington was. So many wonderful quotes to warm the heart and shift the brain adorned the signs and walls of his home and its satellites. After retiring from public life, he returned to his estate and dedicated himself to inventing new strategies for agriculture that he hoped would cause his new nation to grow and prosper in yet another way. He loved technology, books, and in general seemed like the kind of guy I could talk with about crazy ideas for the future and not be laughed at.

They also did a fantastic job of not downplaying how much slavery played into his estate, even down to the individual tour guides prefacing descriptions of servants' roles with the word "enslaved", which is jarring among otherwise praiseworthy and fascinating history. There's an entire Wikipedia article solely dedicated to George Washington and slavery which I recommend reading if you want to see all the contradictions of a man laid plain. Part accepting, part detesting - part ahead of his time, part rationalizing the state of affairs - he whipped his own slaves for their punishments, but emancipated them all upon his death. It's pretty much impossible to coalesce, and I wouldn't bother.

Thanks to my friend Jessica for getting me out to see one of the many things that I am absolutely supposed to see as a resident of DC, because I have been terrible about this. I lived on Capitol Hill for 4 months, and I've been here for another year since then, and I haven't yet stepped foot inside a Smithsonian museum, or a monument of any kind. I am a fool.