To put a bit of a caveat on this one, there's definitely a bit of whitewashing. I think one of the white dude upper brass types in the movie is shown going to bat a fair bit for the women against his colleagues but iirc, that definitely didn't happen irl and it seems like they really had to wrangle with ugly office politics more than was shown in order to get taken seriously.

Like, it's a cool movie about a chapter in the history of space flight that definitely doesn't get as much attention as it should, but I saw it and looked it up the historical details afterwards and it definitely made me question some of the choices the script writer and director went for to make it more palatable, I guess, to general audiences?

There's rock creek park. Also, DC has loads of venues for plays, concerts, ballet etc etc so maybe they can check out what's going on at the Kennedy Center or Wooly Mammoth?

Or they can walk around near DuPont circle and check out all the embassies. Some of the buildings have very cool architecure. I think the open embassy days are in may but maybe there might be other events going on.

What are your folks into?

For other outdoorsy stuff in particular, if you have a car, there's the arboretum, which has some good walks. For smaller museums, Dumbarton house and the hillwood house museum- these are both manor houses with fancy gardens.

Would this be an ongoing availability or just this weekend? Cause there's plenty of non profits that are looking for volunteers but they generally want consistent, long term ones, not just one time drop ins.

Congressional Cemetery does drop in grave clean up throughout the summer but I don't think they've started that quite yet this year.

City Wildlife is always looking for folks, but they generally want long term volunteers. If you've ever wanted to bottle feed a baby squirrel, this is the place lol.

Clockoutdc on Instagram does a pretty good lineup every week of all sorts of events in town.

If you're looking for events for a friend, what are they into?

Yooo, he needs to hit up USAJOBS.com. if he's a recent grad, there are pathways/recent grad programs

Not quite the same thing, but I have a lot of ultra lefty "fuck the fed" friends and I basically just jokingly call myself a government desk minion when the topic comes up to avoid getting into an awkward space, especially since it's a law enforcement org though thankfully not a remotely controversial one. If the mere mention of your organization is just inherently going to annoy people, keep it simple and to the topic of what you do- ie I'm a program a manager at a small non profit in DC and my day looks like this, this and this.

Kinda helps if your organization has a long, unfamiliar acronym because then people's eyes start to glaze over pretty quickly when you start explaining and it's real easy to change the conversation to something more interesting haha.

Yeah sure but being like "hey you as an immigrant, give me a detailed break down of where you're from/your affiliations" is gross and just reminds me of the times my folks got hazed by randos about their citizenship status.

I mean, I'm not keen on shittesting immigrants about "well are you really from here" if they've lived here for decades lol. It comes across as a little hostile and also just not super relevant?

My folks are immigrants too and had citizenship for 25+ years at this point. They've lived in the U.S city I'm from for pretty much all of that and they've lived in the states for longer than they lived in their home country, since they left as young adults. If we're really going by "you're not a real DC/whatever city person unless you went to a highschool in this specific geographic area" of course they don't qualify but like, they've had far more lived experiences about being a local than most of the younger crowd who have lived in the area since birth. Especially since it's not particularly hard to have a very limited impression of the DMV if you're a broke teenager still living under the thumb of your folks.

Okay so, super fun tip from a Midwesterner:

Black ice isn't actually a thing. It's literally just ice you didn't see plus people generally driving way too fast for current weather conditions. The roads likely will be treated at that point but still use your brain and drive carefully, don't slam on the brakes and be mindful that bridges and other higher elevation spots freeze first and often.

If it's dry by the time you drive, you're probably good since the salt will stick and do it's job on treated roads.