As of this morning I finally have an answer to the question of what I will be doing a month from now when school and my NPS position have come to an end. I will be helping to protect and interpret American history in our nation's capital.
Well, I won't actually be working just yet, but I will officially begin training on May 15. I will spend the first three months in Georgia followed by another four months back in Maryland.
This will be a very different position from anything I have done before, and certainly radically different from working for the National Park Service (NPS), but I am excited for the opportunity. Despite my best efforts I have been unable to secure any employment with the NPS when my current appointment expires (upon graduation), and of all the jobs I have applied for (over 300-I have lost track of the exact count), this is by far the best option that has come through. We had hoped to move back west once I graduated, but that is not to be. I did not receive a single job offer for any of the many positions I applied for west of the Mississippi, which is pretty clear guidance that staying here in the DC area is what the next chapter holds for us.
And that brings me to the other significant development, which is that we are moving back into the city, to live on Capitol Hill. We lucked into a great opportunity to live in close proximity to several other families from church in a location that offers easy access to the metro and central DC as well as to Maryland and Virginia. It is a fairly ideal location for this new job and will greatly aid us in being able to be more involved at church and invested in the lives of friends.We will be living in a row house with three bedrooms, which gives us much more space than our current basement apartment and opens up the possibility of hosting guests and having children.
We are actually starting the move this weekend and will transfer completely to our new house by the end of April. That means that the first few weeks of May will mark the end of graduate school, a move into DC, and training for a new job.
There is certainly the scent of something new in the air in these early weeks of spring!
These past few weeks, as we have slowly transitioned form winter to spring, have provided me with a variety of unique photographic and video opportunities as well.
This winter I started doing some video work for the Civil War Trust, which has included a behind the scenes visit to the Smithsonian Museum of American History and a tour of privately owned land over which the Battle of North Anna was fought in May, 1864. On March 14-16 I attended the Civil War Trust's Color Bearer Weekend in Winchester, VA in order to produce This Video highlighting the tours and activities, much as I have done for NPS events.
I ended March with a journey north to Valley Forge National Historical Park to film and photograph a special living history program on the "Incomparable Patience and Fidelity" of the colonial troops. It was my first official coverage of a Revolutionary War event and a fun opportunity in the waning days of my position.
This last week marked the arrival of the Cherry Blossoms along the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. I only made it out one morning, but, in addition to the pictures in the link above, I also filmed timelapse of the sunrise and early morning light on the blossoms and crowds gathering along the basin, which you can see in this video: The Cherry Blossoms Come to Life
Only a few days after the cherry blossoms emerged, the Virginia Bluebells joined them. I went out and took a few pictures and also filmed timelapse and video using a slider in order to create this video of the Bluebells Along Bull Run.
