The Rally to Restore Sanity
Today thousands of people gathered on the National Mall for the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear). It had been a while since I had been to a large gathering on the Mall, and this time it sounded like a reasonable thing to do. So I decided to go with sketchbook in hand, and met up with Christian in front of the Hirschhorn, and watched people gather.
As the rally started, I attempted to make my way closer to the stage, but that proved to be a difficult task, so I spent most of my time on the outskirts. People wore all kinds of costumes and brought many ironic signs. The Swedish Chef arrived with a sign reading "Bork Bork Bork!", which was a quite persuasive argument, but I think my favorite message was the one that simply stated "I'm carrying a sign!" - it's hard to argue with that. People climbed trees (sometimes to the cheering of the crowd) to try to see what was going on - I never really got a good view, but I do think I got a brief glance of Stewart on stage towards the end, from the National Gallery plaza.
At the end of the day, I came back to the Hirschhorn to see what Christian had drawn, and sketched a few nearby buildings. I'm not quite sure we really succeeded in restoring sanity, but we had a good time trying anyway.
