google-doodle-yosemite

Today's Google doodle tribute to Yosemite National Park, which is closed on its birthday.

Have you Googled today? Perhaps you did a quick search of the government shutdown? Or maybe you decided to look up Obamacare, which launches its insurance exchanges today, even as much of Washington closes down due to Congressional gridlock?

If you did, you encountered another

casualty

of the paralysis in D.C.: The 123rd anniversary of Yosemite National Park.

Talk about the birthday blues.

Sure, Google is paying fond tribute to the park with a cluster of Yosemite patches arrayed around the most important real estate on the Internet – the Google search bar. But it’s got to be a hollow celebration. After all, Yosemite is closed today, along with all other national parks. They are victims of the shutdown and the deadlocked battle over the budget down in D.C.

Yet, seeing all the Yosemite history in the form of those patches might bring home the costs of the shutdown stalemate just a little more clearly for people outside of the Washington beltway, which can seem like an alien environment to most Americans.

Indeed, close Yosemite on its birthday, and that makes an impact, doesn't it? I mean, just think of all the families who were planning a long-awaited trip to to the park? Surely, some planned to trek there this week to mark its anniversary as a national park.

Yet today, amid the shutdown, the closest anyone can get to a Yosemite visit is the nostalgia of that Google doodle, and its collection of so many Yosemite patches from decades before, when the park endured.

So what do you think of Google's birthday nod to Yosemite – and the poignant costs it captures of the government shutdown?

Did it cause you to pause before conducting your search? Or did you even notice?

Bid your birthday wishes to Yosemite in the comments.