Welcome Aboard
The first thing patients see as they enter Building 10.
Source: Scott Cameron, NPR
You are all probably familiar with the Bethesda Naval Hospital (formally the National Naval Medical Center, and known as the "NNMC" to those who work here). It's where Presidents go for their annual check-up. As it happens, I've lived either a couple of miles north or a couple of miles south of this facility for the past twenty years, so the handsome tower on Wisconsin Avenue (or is the name of the street already changed to Rockville Pike? I get confused) has been part of my personal landscape for a long time. They used to show movies on a big screen on the lawn outside in the summertime, free to all, and we locals got excited when a movie crew shut down much of the area to shoot the final sequence of Dave. If you saw the picture, the only thing that's changed is the substantial fence erected around the perimeter after 9/11 and the sharply increased security. No way Kevin Klein could just wander off into the night now, and there are no more movies on the lawn.
I can justify calling myself a local after only 20 years because between the Naval Hospital and the even more extensive campus of the National Institutes of Health right across the street (whatever it's called), this is a highly transient area. Within a five year span, a sequence of next door neighbors hailed from the Netherlands, Brazil and Norway, and the conversations in the public schools around here sounds like lunchtime at the UN cafeteria.
After all this time, it's exciting to be inside for the first time; Scott's going to post pictures of the Clark Auditorium to give you an idea of an idea of what it looks like -- on remotes, we're usually up on a stage. Here, we're in the well of a lecture hall with about fifteen rows of kelly green seats marching up the stairs in front of us. Can't wait.
10:57 AM ET | 05- 8-2007 | permalink
