Washington D.C.

The Awakening

While leaving Central Park in Chesterfield today, we noticed something strange across the street–what appeared to be a partially buried giant, trying to free himself from the ground!

I will admit, I don’t “get” a lot of art, this sculpture included. It does look pretty cool, however, and after doing a little research, I found that it’s not quite one-of-a-kind. It’s called The Awakening, and was cast by Seward Johnson. The original was not cast for Chesterfield, though–it was done as part of the International Sculpture Conference Exhibition in Washington D.C. over 30 years ago! The Chesterfield version, which is 70 feet long and 17 feet tall at its highest point, like the original, was unveiled in 2009.

It’s kind of cool that there’s a duplicate of a famous Washington D.C. sculpture right here in the Midwest!

Why Doesn’t John Adams Have a Memorial in Washington?

I have been thinking about this topic all week, and then I stumble across an article on the same topic…why is there no memorial to John Adams in Washington D.C.? Washington and Jefferson both have monuments in their honor, (and rightly so), and yet our second president, equally influential in my opinion, is overlooked. Through the research I’ve done so far this summer, John Adams has really become my favorite of the Founding Fathers, (if one can have a favorite), and he was so instrumental in our country’s quest for independence that it seems very unjust that there is no memorial in his honor. I hope that the Adams Memorial Foundation is successful in having a monument erected in his memory.

“Where is John Adams, our feisty second president and lifelong American patriot? If George Washington was the sword of the revolution and Thomas Jefferson the pen, why have we neglected the voice of our nation’s independence?

Adams himself predicted this omission. “Monuments will never be erected to me . . . romances will never be written, nor flattering orations spoken, to transmit me to posterity in brilliant colors,” he wrote in 1819, nearly two decades after his single term in office. At his farm in Quincy, Mass., Adams worried that he would be forgotten by history, and for good reason: The temperamental Yankee could never outshine Washington and Jefferson, Virginia’s two-term presidential all-stars — one a brilliant general unanimously chosen to lead the nation, the other the eloquent author of the Declaration of Independence.”

via Why doesn’t John Adams have a memorial in Washington? – The Washington Post.