Saturday, December 16, 2017

Carter's Prescient Statement

Where: American History Museum

When: closing March 11, 2018

This is one of those "artifact walls" displays at American History that's probably more informative than entertaining.  I rarely have any company at these exhibits, so I hope some of the curators who clearly put a lot of time into these things see me when I visit.

Solar energy is a way to use a renewable resource to obtain the electricity we all use all day, every day.  During his term in office, President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House, which President Ronald Reagan subsequently removed.  If the country had continued to research and make use of solar energy throughout the 1980s, we wouldn't be in the climate change predicament we're in today, in my opinion.

One of the solar panels is part of the display, along with a quote from Carter indicating that the panels could be either the beginning of a better way to use the sun to meet our needs, or they could become a museum piece.  All I could do was sigh.

I think Father Drinan was in the photograph of Carter with the solar panels - he would have been a Congressman from Massachusetts at the time; I met him while I worked at Georgetown University - a funny and kind man.

Verdict: Worth a glance if you're in the museum to see a larger exhibit.

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