Solar Decathlon 2011

Because the National Book Festival has top billing this weekend, the Solar Decathlon has been relegated to West Potomac Park, which is just off the Mall, near the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and not far from the new Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial.

The Solar Decathlon is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Twenty teams are competing in the 2011 event, which will open on Saturday, September 23, and run through Sunday, October 2. The team from The Ohio State University will try to improve on its top ten performance of 2009. Because of the plethora of interesting things to do on or near the Mall this weekend, Glenn Fellows could easily scratch a half-dozen activities off their checklists for the quarter. And then they can write about their experiences on the WAIP blog.

National Book Festival

The Fall 2011 class of John Glenn Fellows moved into the Congressional apartment building today, which means that the National Book Festival can't be far behind. Sponsored by the Library of Congress and now in its eleventh year, the event will take place on the National Mall next weekend, September 24-25.

One of the big attractions of the National Book Festival is the opportunity it provides to meet best-selling authors. Here is a list of featured authors.

September 19 update: See photo above of the Fall 2011 class on the stairs at the National Archives. From left to right: Zachary Druga, Alexandra Constantinou, Joseph Guenther, Gianna Domine, Blake Swineford, Abby Warner, Karlton Laster, Mitchell Moximchalk, Anthony Adornetto, Kyle Nappi. Check out their brief bios here.

Remembrance and Reflection

For the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the National Museum of American History has assembled an exhibition of more than 50 objects recovered from wreckage at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. These objects, which under any other circumstances would be regarded as entirely prosaic, help to convey the human dimensions of the tragedy of that day. For one week, the objects will be displayed on open tables at the Museum, which is on the Mall at Constitution Avenue and 14th Street, N.W. Dana Milbank has a piece about the exhibit in Sunday's Washington Post. In the same issue, Marc Fisher writes about the how the Pentagon attack has been completely overshadowed not only by the images of Ground Zero but even by the extended memorialization controversy. Meanwhile, Anne Applebaum considers the appalling cost of the War on Terror pursued in response to the attacks. It is my understanding that after this week the artifacts will become part of the permanent collection of the Museum, which means that the incoming class of Autumn 2011 Glenn Fellows will be able to see them under glass.

September 7 correction: I went to see the show today. It's very moving, in part because the items are spread out on tables quite informally, along with minimalist identifying labels, like the objects for sale at a church bazaar. When the show closes on September 11, they will be sent for permanent storage to New York. So it's now or never for Washingtonians.