Hooray, Hooray! It's Field Trip Day!

Jeff is taking his docents to Congressional Cemetery today. He's put together a special tour highlighting the graves of "People Who Appear on Stamps." I don't think Mr. or Mrs. Ryther ever appeared on a stamp so I thought I ought to share this picture before I collect lots more tombstone pictures this afternoon. Have you ever seen a better union of font and name?

February will be ending on a high note, thanks to Jeff, and March promises more adventures. I'll spend a morning tromping around Arlington Cemetery in mid-March on my way to a friend's retirement ceremony at the Women in the Military memorial, the Postal Museum has once again booked all my Thursdays, Mike and his friend/trainer Charlie will run a half-marathon before Mike heads to Portland to take Jewls, Noah, and Moriah to the Oregon Coast for the grandkids' spring break (gadzooks! I'll be in charge of getting Matt off to school!), and we have Jane, Jim, Emma, and Mary coming here for their spring break.

Okay. Now I am going to shut up until I finish the Unabomber Manifesto. I really hate to carry a book over from one month to the next.

Biological Sykes Captures Word Challenge Lead

Word Challenge first caught my attention on Sandy's Facebook page. Then it appeared on Ann's. When it showed up on Hank's page a few weeks later, my curiosity got the better of me. I tossed aside the Unabomber Manifesto, followed the link, and found a slightly addictive beat-the-clock unscramble-the-letters-to-form-words game. That was about 10 days ago and I haven't been back to the Unabomber Manifesto since.

My mother would have liked this game and would have been tickled that two members of her family, Sandy and Hank, boasted the highest scores of all my Facebook friends. I can almost hear her sort of cackling in her non-witchy way about her children and grandchildren 'marrying well.' But those of us who knew and loved her would probably agree that, deep down in her heart, Marcia would have wanted to beat their scores. Because Marcia was a tiny bit competitive. Knowing this, I made a pre-Lenten resolution to defend the honor of the bloodline in her memory.

Overtaking Hank took a week out of my life. In the middle of that week, the Word Challenge people issued a new "50 games a day maximum" rule. Was it I, Lord? Probably.

I really had no hope of topping Sandy until I started feeling Hank's hot breath on the back of my neck. He was only 20-30 points behind me for two or three days. Clicking on the Word Challenge icon was starting to give me heart palpitations because I was so worried I would find myself trailing him again. Well, heart palpitations must be somehow related to adrenaline because I enjoyed quite a rush on Shrove Tuesday. With the simple goal of putting a more heart-healthy distance between Hank and myself, I somehow managed to spurt into the lead.

Yes, I know it was a total fluke and that it's a sad commentary on my life that I feel compelled to share this little 'victory' with you. Not to mention pulling a teenager away from his homework to take a 'picture' of the scoreboard.



I haven't managed to score higher than 21,000 since Ash Wednesday. I'm not giving up Word Challenge for Lent but you can be darn sure I won't be playing more than 50 games a day. And neither will anyone else.

Manny's on 48th Street

Time was running out Sunday afternoon. We had a bag full of stuff for Kate from the Museum of Modern Art, absolutely nothing for Matt, and four hours before our train was scheduled to depart Penn Station. That's when we stumbled into Music Row, just north of Times Square. How about some guitar picks for Matt?

After I snapped Mike's picture, we entered the store immediately behind me -- Manny's Music -- and found ourselves in Rock Star Heaven. Autographed celebrity photographs covered every inch of wall space. I especially liked the placement of a letter signed by Bill Clinton just above a picture of Michael Jackson at mid-career.

They are falling off the right side of this picture because I was more concerned with capturing Eric Clapton. Eric and his pal, Steve Winwood, will be playing at the Verizon Center the day after Matt's birthday and we have already scored tickets. Because every 17-year old boy wants to celebrate his birthday by going to a rock concert with his father, mother, and big sister.

Wow! Look at all those electric guitars! And the whole second floor's devoted to acoustic guitars. Wouldn't it be fun to bring Matt here in June to pick out his birthday present? What? You thought the concert tickets were his birthday present? Don't you read my blog? What in the world are you doing at work all day if you aren't reading my blog?

Alas, the salesclerk informs us that Manny's, established in 1935, will be closing this spring. The Rockefellers have bought the building and plan to tear it down. The stock and staff will be consolidated into that red store across the street. That's good to know but now I have a line on another great guitar store in Greenwich Village. Being a musician's mother has given me a new lease on life.

Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat!

Whew. Now that I have that out of my system I can backtrack to Saturday night when we saw the new production of 'Guys and Dolls' at the Nederlander Theatre between Times Square and the Garment District.

Lauren Graham, my favorite 'Gilmore Girl', played Miss Adelaide opposite Oliver Platt as Nathan Detroit. Since Lauren is also my friend Harry's favorite GG, I have wasted the better part of my afternoon trying in vain to embed a video so Harry can check out Lauren as a blonde. Harry, you are just going to have to follow the link above and click on 'interviews'. The rest of you - well, everyone but Sandy and Ann - should just skip the video and glance instead at the picture I lifted from the theater's website (gosh, I hope that's legal).

How memorable was the show? We're still humming the tunes five days later and I'm thinking of making "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat" my theme song. We had no idea Lauren was such a great singer, dancer, and . . . stripper. (Aside to Harry: Narita has direct flights to JFK).

We were not alone in appreciating Lauren's performance. I overheard another middle-aged lady exiting the theater exclaim to her friend, "Oh! I am just SO proud of her!" Which is exactly what I had said to Mike about 30 seconds earlier. You would think every middle-aged woman in that theater was Lauren's mother. Oh, wait a minute. I sort of am her mother since my children delight in calling me Emily Gilmore.

P.S. Can anyone explain to me why we were the only members of the audience who didn't recognize the actor who played Sky Masterson? His name is Craig Bierko.

Nero Fiddled, Congress Twitters

We listened to the State of the Union message on C-Span last night. This works better for us than network television. One commentator's voice, ie, mine, is more than enough for Mike. Next year I'm going to try to talk him into turning off the video feed to eliminate the distraction of the Speaker of the House passing notes and leafing through her program while the President is talking.

Where was Teddy? More to the point, where was Meryl Streep? I waited in vain for Meryl to glide noiselessly down the aisle in her nun costume and confiscate all those electronic devices our elected leaders were busily thumbing when they ought to have been paying attention to the President. Kindergarteners on a field trip have better manners than some congressmen. As I recall, a basic tenet of Communications 101 is that a message requires both a sender and a receiver. When the intended receiver is engaged in sending/twittering rather than listening, communication cannot and does not occur. Sigh.

Washington Post pundit Dana Milbank intercepted some of the twitters and shared them in his column this morning:

• "Capt Sully is here - awesome!" tweeted Rep. John Culberson (R-TX).
• "I did a big woohoo for Justice Ginsberg" tweeted Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), misspelling Ruth Bader Ginsburg's surname.
• "One doesn't want to sound snarky, but it is nice not to see Cheney up there" tweeted Rep. Earl "Snarky" Blumenauer (D-OR).
• "I am sitting behind Sens Graham and McCain" tweeted Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA).
• "Fixed the tele-prompter, I think" tweeted Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who also let his constituents know his whereabouts "In the House on the Floor six seats from center aisle stage left. Sitting next to Jeff Flake R-AZ. Seventh row."

The President's entrance, when he was mobbed by congressmen (AKA President Wannabes), reminded me of a 25th high school reunion, and why I skipped mine. If they were so darn happy to see President Obama, why did most of them play hookey during the economic summit he hosted earlier this week? The post-speech scene, when they were thrusting their programs in his face and begging for his autograph, reminded me of those film clips I've seen of adolescent girls when the Beatles played Shea Stadium.

The speech itself? I liked it. I'm just sorry he had to deliver it to such a clueless, rude audience.

Kathy Loses Her Appetite But Finds It Again

Our make-believe trip to Tokyo exceeded my expectations. Before we even aimed ourselves at the Japanese stores, we grabbed breakfast in a little hole-in-the-wall that had a little sushi bar tucked in the back corner. Mike totally missed this positive omen because he was so immersed in his bran muffin. I opted for an apple (yes! fruit! me!), knowing we would be passing Magnolia Bakery within the hour.

What I did not know, alas, was that we would have to squeeze past roughly 2,000 hefty applicants for "The Biggest Loser" outside Rockefeller Center to reach the bakery. By the time we entered the bakery, my appetite for fattening foods had totally evaporated. A languid wave in the direction of the cupcakes, banana pudding, crisps, and cheesecakes was all I could manage. Was I pleased with this turn of events? What do you think?

Although we couldn't afford to buy anything in Takashimaya, we had fun chatting with a Japanese salesclerk and admiring a $35,000 tansu. "I told you we should have bought one in Japan," hissed my long-suffering companion. "You were right," I replied for probably the first time in our marriage. Chalk it up to sugar withdrawal.



I scored four mysteries at Kinokuniya, Mike got his bento fix at Cafe Zaiya, I wolfed down a cream puff at Beard Papa's (having finally put sufficient distance between myself and those Biggest Loser wannabes), and we achieved total serendipity by locating the sake store mere seconds after the import guy taped a "Free Sake-Tasting" sign in the window. We even found two Japanese groceries, one in Midtown and one in Greenwich Village, and the latter was selling mushroom-shaped cookies . . . for only twice what we paid in Yokosuka.

We managed to make it to all the Japan stores on our list, and then some, before the curtain went up at Nederlander Theater Saturday night. Sunday was supposed to be an American sort of day, but we didn't bargain on bumping into four Hello Kitty! sculptures between our hotel and the Museum of Modern Art.

Christmas in February

Psst! Look what came in the mail from Japan! Aren't Kathleen Jr. and Diane the most amazing ladies ever? Chasing after two toddlers each in a foreign country and they still found time to feed my favorite addiction.

Don't tell Matt, okay? I waited until he left for school to rescue these treats from their secret hiding place. Of course I intend to share my good fortune with him . . . absolutely . . . shame on you for thinking otherwise. I just want to stretch this pleasure out as long as I can. Those cookies will be gone in five minutes if he ferrets out my stash.

Check out those two boxes in the top row, the ones with the lettering that looks like birch bark. Do you suppose those boxes contain mushroom cookies capped with white chocolate? I'll be sure to let you know.



When Mike and I board the train to New York a few hours from now, at least one of us will be pretending they're heading to Yokohama or Tokyo instead. Carefully tucked into our travel file is an article from the January 7 Washington Post mapping out the Manhattan locations of several Japan-based retailers, notably Takashimaya Department Store, Kinokuniya, and Muji. I am especially keen on visiting one of the several Beard Papa outlets so I can stop kicking myself for not following Darlene's advice and trying a fresh cream puff the day we had lunch in Kamiooka. Mike decided to bring an empty suitcase when he heard about Sakaya, an American-owned store devoted to sake.

If we have any time left over, I'm going to check out the rumor that my Smithsonian docent badge can get me into any U.S. museum at no charge.

Doll(e)y'll Never Go Away . . .

In 1832 Congress authorized $2,600 to build a public vault at Congressional Cemetery. The vault held the remains of people until arrangements could be made for a permanent burial site or in periods of adverse weather that prevented burial. The vault was available to the public at a rate of $5.00 per month but the remains of congressmen were stored at no charge. Had our forefathers nipped this "congressional perquisite" problem in the bud back in 1832, perhaps fewer 21st Century congressmen would be afflicted with delusions of grandeur. But I digress.

The remains of many prominent citizens -- John Quincy Adams and Benjamin Harrison, for instance -- were tucked into that vault, but I think the most interesting story relates to the remains of Dolley Payne Todd Madison. When James Madison completed his second term as President, he and Dolley retired to Montpelier, his family estate in Central Virginia. But then James died and managing the estate was too much for Dolley so she moved back to Washington.

James had assumed Dolley would raise enough money to enjoy a reasonable lifestyle after his demise by selling his personal papers. Unfortunately, James assumed wrong. Dolley was taken in by her beloved niece and adopted daughter Annie Payne Causten and Annie's husband, James H. Causten, Jr. Dolley was 82 when she died on July 12, 1849. Dolley's remains were placed in the public vault four days later, on July 16.



Enter the prodigal son, John Payne Todd. (John was a toddler when his father and three-month old brother both died on the same day during a Yellow Fever epidemic; James Madison was the only father John ever knew and John was the closest to a son James Madison would ever get.) John contested the will his mother had signed three days before her death. Congress had awarded Dolley $20,000 for her husband's papers and she decided to leave half to her son and the other half to her niece. Everyone in Washington knew John was the reason his mother was penniless (not counting the Congressional payout). The court upheld the document as a legal will in March 1850.

Meanwhile, Dolley's remains were still in the public vault. In February 1852, when it became apparent that John had no intention of using any part of his inheritance to bury his mother, someone (my money's on Annie) paid $1.50 to move Dolley's remains to the Causten family tomb. I didn't know that, of course, when I visited the cemetery but it just so happens Mike took a few pictures of the Causten family tomb. He was mesmerized by all the references to "Inexorable Death's Door." So you're in luck.















Dolley's remains rested (one hopes) in the Causten tomb until nearly six years later when she was loaded on a wagon, transported to Montpelier, and at last laid to rest beside her devoted husband.

Quick recap: Dolley Madison's remains were "temporarily stored" at Congressional Cemetery for eight and one-half years. She arrived at Congressional Cemetery on July 16, 1849; she left the cemetery on January 12, 1858.

"It is thought that her son, who was always lacking in filial devotion to his mother and who repaid repeated efforts in his behalf by nearly reducing her to penury in her declining years, lies in an unmourned grave in the Congressional Cemetery."

The Things We Do For Love

For our wedding anniversary in early December, Mr. Romantic popped for a gift certificate to the Inn at Little Washington. The gift certificate came in a fancy box where it is still nestled more than two months later.

The prospect of staying at "the first establishment in the Mobil Travel Guide's history ever to receive 5 stars for its restaurant and 5 stars for its accommodation" struck fear in my heart, borderline terror in fact. It would be just my luck to be numbered among those fortunate guests singled out for welcome by the Dalmatian wearing a string of pearls around its neck. I'm pretty sure being outdressed by a large canine would not do much for my self-esteem.

Besides, none of the entrees on the sample menu remotely resembles anything my mother ever fed me. "Chanterelles" might sound delightful but I'm pretty sure they are mushrooms and the only thing I know to do with mushrooms is pick them off pizza. So I've put Mr. Romantic off by extolling the virtues of deferred gratification. Wouldn't it be a lot more fun to wait until the weather warms up so we can tack on a visit to the newly-renovated Montpelier and/or a Civil War battlefield? Yes, I think so too.


Today I finally scrolled past the sample entrees to the dessert menu. Suddenly I'm rooting through my jewelry box for Mom's pearls and counting the days until the dogwoods are in bloom.

Valentine Surprise

He went out to the porch to grab the newspaper. He returned with the newspaper in one hand, a ProFlowers box cradled in the other arm, and a confused expression on his face. "Look what I found on the porch! It's for you." "Darn it, Mike," she said crossly (not being a Morning Person), "why'd you blow money on flowers when we're going to be celebrating Valentine's Day in New York City next weekend?"

"They're not from me." Oh. A secret admirer. How thrilling.

She climbed up on the counter to extract a vase from the upper regions of the totally impractical cupboards while he ripped, gnawed, and cut the box open. The ProFlowers packaging manager is apparently related to the guy who invented CD packaging.

Tulips! The promise of spring! How enchanting!

He read the note before passing it to her. His sigh of relief suggested the flowers had not been sent by any of the security guards at the museum.


She read the note and smiled. Then she read the note again and frowned. "Do you think s/he [select one] is being sarcastic?"

Look Mom, No Cavities!

Thanks to this poignant gravestone, I'm ready to sign on as the Calhoun family genealogist. Mike and Katie don't think this story is the least bit interesting but I'm sharing it anyway so I'll have something to show for my three hours of research. Ridiculous. Yes, I know.

John C. Calhoun and his wife, Floride Colhoun Calhoun (an antebellum precursor of Roseanne Roseanadana no doubt), had 10 children but three, including Elizabeth, died in infancy. You remember that John Calhoun represented South Carolina in the House of Representatives before joining James Madison's cabinet as Secretary of War. He served as vice president under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson but resigned (along with the rest of Jackson's cabinet) in the aftermath of the 'Peggy Eaton Affair'. Next he was elected to the Senate where, except for a brief stint as John Tyler's Secretary of State, he served until his death in 1850.

What you might not remember -- I sure didn't -- is that Floride Calhoun ignited the 'Peggy Eaton Affair' by refusing to return Mrs. Eaton's courtesy call. You also might not know that John and Floride were first cousins once-removed; her side of the family spelled the name Colhoun.

Floride outlived her husband, passed the family plantation along to her oldest son, Andrew, and moved into town. When Andrew died, she found herself back in the business of running a plantation. By the time Floride died, only one of her 10 children was still alive, Anna Calhoun Clemson. Anna inherited the family homestead and willed it to South Carolina for use as an agricultural college. The family manse still stands today in the center of Clemson University.

We're almost done. Anna and Mr. Clemson had four children but she outlived all of them. Sadly, her daughter Floride (let's call her Floride II) died at the age of 28 a year after giving birth to Anna's only grandchild, Floride III. Why did Anna not bequeath her estate to Floride III? Was it too soon after the Civil War to feel a connection with a child raised in New York by a father and stepmother? Such is life.

Here's my favorite part. Floride III, the great-granddaughter of John C. Calhoun, married Andrew Calhoun II, a great-grandson of John C. Calhoun. Do you remember Andrew, Calhoun's oldest son who inherited the plantation but passed away while his mother was still alive? Well, that Andrew was Andrew II's grandfather and Anna Calhoun Clemson's big brother.

This would be like my daughter marrying one of my cousin Danny's sons. Except, of course, her name is Katie and not Floride. For which she ought to thank me every day of her life.

A Quiet Evening at Home

Hey! Put that book down for a minute and come look out the front window!

Holy cow! What's going on? Where's your camera?

What are you doing? Get back in the house!

I'm just going to lean over the porch railing to snap a picture. Go find your doctor bag in case I fall off the porch or get shot or something.

You aren't going to post this on your blog are you?

Why not? Jim and Jane already bought their plane tickets. Plus, my family tends to look at life from the bright side. While you might look at this picture and assume there's a dead body just beyond the stop sign, we see a whole lot of police cars and assume the parking lot is full at the pizza joint across the road.

It's too bad you had to crop three police cars out of the picture to make it fit.

I think they'll get the general idea.

Being Leonard Matlovich

Jeff got a gleam in his eye when he heard me wittering* on about Congressional Cemetery one recent morning. It turns out he volunteered at the cemetery and designed the first guided tour shortly after he arrived in D.C., before he landed his job at the National Postal Museum. Jeff is going to share his knowledge and insights with his receptive docents during a field trip at the end of this month. Before I go back to the cemetery, I want to share a few more pictures from our first visit.

Mike and I were drawn to Leonard Matlovich's grave because the color, amount, and comparatively recent vintage of the granite stood in stark contrast to the other graves. A bench fashioned from the same granite sits under a shade tree next to the grave. It's a contemplative setting but not serene. Whoever designed this memorial, whether Matlovich himself or his family and/or friends, wanted to provoke thoughts and -- in my case at least -- succeeded. I could not sleep that night until I had read everything the internet had to offer on the topic of Leonard Matlovich (1943-1988). The following is paraphrased from Wikipedia.

The only son of a career Air Force sergeant, Matlovich grew up on military bases and then enlisted in the Air Force shortly before the United States increased military action in Vietnam. He volunteered for service in Vietnam where he served three tours of duty before stepping on a land mine in Da Nang. Matlovich earned the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for his service in Vietnam.

He began to frequent gay bars in Pensacola while teaching race relations classes near there from 1972 until he was assigned to Langley AFB in 1975. At Langley he told his military superiors he was gay. To Matlovich, his test of the military's sexual orientation tolerance was equivalent to Brown v. The Board of Education, the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

Six months after his declaration, despite his exemplary military record, tours of duty in Vietnam, and high performance evaluations, a military panel deemed Matlovich unfit for service. He sued for reinstatement, a lengthy process; when a government attorney offered to let Matlovich return to the Air Force in exchange for signing a pledge to "never practice homosexuality again," Matlovich declined. A federal judge eventually ordered his reinstatement with retroactive back pay. In 1980 Matlovich agreed to settle the case without returning to the Air Force. He won an upgraded honorable discharge and a cash settlement of $160,000.

Matlovich's photograph appeared on the cover of Time magazine (Sept. 8, 1975), making him a symbol for [reportedly] thousands of gay and lesbian service members.

* Wittering: A Scottish word that does not appear in my Webster's New World College Dictionary. The closest American word might be blathering, a propensity of mine which I will henceforth be dubbing wittering since I am enormously fond of the connotations of that first syllable.

U Lah Lah

February is a busy month at the National Postal Museum. All my Thursdays are booked and last week I went in on Wednesday as well when Jeff asked me to docent a sixth grade special needs class. My training didn't cover special needs, or interacting with anyone over the age of eight for that matter, but those kids seemed perfectly normal to me. In fact, they were such a delightful group and asked such probing questions I stretched the tour out an extra 30 minutes. I thought, "I must be getting the hang of this because I feel like I'm wandering around the museum with my own children." Later Jeff explained that the kids in my group have all been diagnosed as having ADHD which the D.C. Public Schools classifies as "special needs." No wonder I felt like I was wandering around the museum with my own children.

Today Debbie, Mokoto, and I hosted 60 suburban kindergarteners. (That's Debbie and Mokoto in the picture; I'll let you figure out which is which.) The child-to-chaperone ratio was nearly 2:1 and there were almost as many fathers as mothers. Fathers always seem to have as much fun as the children, lapping up every little nugget of trivia I toss out, and they never fail to thank me when the tour ends. Mothers are nice too, of course, but they tend to take their responsibilities seriously (like actually paying attention to how the children are behaving) and a few of them stand in the back with arms crossed and hips cocked in a way that fairly shouts, "Docent Lady, I would be SO much better at this than you." Or maybe I've misconstrued what they are thinking based on thoughts I've harbored while standing with my own arms crossed and hip cocked during my various chaperoning stints over the years.

We've enjoyed a streak of glorious weather in the past week. Last Wednesday morning we had snow, the wind-chill factor was zero degrees when I sprinted to the museum on Thursday, then Friday Mr. Mercury pole-vaulted into the 50s. Yesterday he reached the 70s before starting a slow descent back to reality. Under similar circumstances our ancestors said, "Let's make hay while the sun shines." Being modern sorts, we said, "Let's try new restaurants while we don't have to wear stocking caps and mittens." We discovered a wonderful Vietnamese restaurant just two blocks from our house (if Matt and Kathy think Vietnamese food tastes good, EVERYONE will like Vietnamese food), a not-so-wonderful French cafe near Eastern Market, and a nice place for brunch, Ulah Cafe, across from the Lincoln Theater on U Street. I can personally recommend the Ulah's Bloody Mary, garnished with the obligatory celery stalk plus a lime wedge plus two olives.

Stage of Dreams

I spotted the guitar in the back corner of a thrift store near Atsugi, Japan. "If you buy me," it whispered, "he will play." I forked over a wad of 1,000-yen notes, gave Matt the guitar for Christmas, and waited. Two years, thousands of miles, and about $80 later, my hazy dream is starting to come into focus. Matt is taking Beginning Guitar as an elective this semester. If he earns a decent grade, we've promised to spring for an electric guitar when his birthday rolls around in June.

On the one hand, I'm trying not to get my hopes up; we still have the keyboard he abandoned in 1998 minutes after mastering "Yankee Doodle" and we still have memories of the saxophone we rented very briefly for him in 2003. On the other hand, I'm spending an inordinate amount of time these days checking out evening attire on eBay. I want to look fetching when I'm sitting front and center at the Grammy Awards a couple of years from now. "Oh, Eric, I'm sure Matt would be happy to teach you that new technique he invented!"

Carillon My Wayward Friends

He wasn't wearing comfortable shoes but he humored me anyway when I proposed walking home from Gallery Place last weekend. If I outlive him, the epitaph on his tombstone will say "He Humored Her" because, of all his hobbies, it's my personal favorite.

We were at Gallery Place to see Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, one of those rare movies I wouldn't mind watching a second, third, or even fourth time, so I hope you will see it at least once. Since the film let out at the same time as a hockey game at the adjacent arena, "our" plans to slip into the ice cream parlor for a taste of Peppermint Bark and then loiter in Chinatown to watch the five-story firecracker explode collided with the plans of thousands of red-jerseyed Capitals fans. Walking offered the quickest escape from the crowds.

Our house is two miles southeast of Gallery Place. After we'd hiked about half the distance, we cut across a little park due north of the Capitol to check out this monument to Robert A Taft. Above the 10-foot bronze statue is inscribed: This Memorial to Robert A. Taft, presented by the people to the Congress of the United States, stands as a tribute to the honesty, indomitable courage, and high principles of free government symbolized by his life.

Me: I'm having a hard time remembering who he was.

HHH: Same here but the name sounds really familiar.

Me: That's probably because we keep meaning to go out to dinner with Camille and Rob Taft.

HHH: I talked with him earlier this week. As much as Rob deserves to be remembered with a monument this size, I think Congress would probably wait until after he dies.

If we, the People, are going to pour money into monuments like this, we ought to be smart enough to leave a few clues for future generations of the People.

As it turns out, Robert A. Taft was a Senator from Ohio. He served from 1938 until his death in 1953. The memorial was dedicated by former President Herbert Hoover in April 1959. Senator Taft was the son of William Howard Taft, the only person to serve as both President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Where in the world is his monument? Ohio, perhaps?

What makes the Taft Memorial special is that it was built as a carillon. The twenty-seven bells in the upper part of the tower strike the hour and sound on the quarter hour; they can also be played manually. It's worth checking out when you're wandering near the Capitol.

Sexagenarian's Sister Sees Red

Today we celebrate another family milestone: my oldest brother has become a sexagenarian. Isn't sexagenarian an interesting word? I mean, it almost sounds like I'm accusing him of joining a cult or of being a connoisseur of . . . something titillating (speaking of interesting words).

I intended to post a birthday message before I went to bed last night but, the fact is, I am finding it hard to think straight, see straight, and write straight this week. I look in the mirror and see an idiot, an imbecile, a moron, a dolt, and a schmuck. In other words, a U.S. taxpayer. Apparently I am supposed to believe Tom Daschle has "seen the light" because he took a taxi to the Capitol yesterday to be interviewed by his pals on the Senate Finance Committee. Instead, I'm wondering why he asked that cab driver to wait when he could have easily hailed another cab after the hearing ended. When did our public servants start thinking of themselves as royalty?

Emily Yoffe, a contributing writer to Slate.com, made an interesting observation. "We will all end up finding out more than will ever be useful to us about the tax implications of gifts of luxury cars and chauffeurs. And the really interesting question that arises from all this -- What in the world did Tom Daschle do to earn all that money? -- will probably be left unanswered."

Yes, Emily, and I have a couple more questions I'd like to see answered: 1) How often has Tom Daschle accessed the American health care system in the past, say, 20 years? 2) Where has he received medical care and who is his primary care physician? and 3) Could I be allowed to peek at his cancelled checks? Because, gosh darn it, I could use a little reassurance that the "experts" who are going to be cracking the whip on health care reform have some firsthand knowledge of how our current health care system works, and all too frequently does not work. Barring that, I'd settle for someone who knows the difference between "health care" and "health insurance."