More Cherry Blossoms [sic] Trees

The Emancipation Proclamation is nestled in Cherry Blossoms (above).

A dogwalker doing a circuit of the Tidal Basin.

Speaking of Health Care Reform . . .

For at least the past five years 'Patient- and Family-Centered Care' has been a Navy Medicine catchphrase/motto/theme/promise.

The consolidation of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda offers a unique opportunity to embed this principle into the basic configuration of a military treatment facility.

Which patients and families are representing the interests of families like mine, the ones that move every two or three years, on the committees and boards directing this construction project? How can I contact them?

The Surgeon General of the Navy is hosting a symposium this week. Maybe one of the participants will read this and get answers to my questions.

Mystery in Hampton Roads

Katie's friend Rick was walking his dog about a mile from our Norfolk house Sunday night when something went right over their heads. "About 30 seconds later there was a low frequency boom and the ground shook – Murphy froze and started backing. It was wild . . .". Click here to see what others have to say about this phenomenom.

Emma Gets Goose Pimples

Can you guess where they went today? It was 48 degrees when they left the house. Emma was wearing shorts and insisted she wasn't cold. Don't you just love 16-year-olds?

Yesterday they visited the Museum of American History where Mary gleaned lots of valuable information for a looming report on the NAACP. Tomorrow they'll hit the Air and Space Museum.

Emma and Mary's Excellent Adventure

Jane, Jim, and the Spring Break Princesses were incredibly good sports today. Since Mike, Katie, Matt, and I will be spending most of Sunday at Bean's funeral, I wanted to cram as much sightseeing as possible into Saturday.





We decided to check out the new visitors center beneath the Capitol Building.










Many of the statues ringing Emancipation Hall looked hauntingly familiar. Apparently someone decided the visitors center would be a better home than the Capitol Rotunda for all or most of the statues of Native Americans.








The tunnel running under First Street between the visitors center and the Library of Congress is a nice shortcut unless you're the sort of person who has to stop and read every educational/historical tidbit posted on the tunnel walls. (Two members of our party fall into that category.)



















Six of us had never been inside the Library of Congress before. The one who had, AKA Ms. Know-It-All, was in her element. We ogled the ceiling, foyer, and the Gutenberg Bible, peeked into the Reading Room, and wandered through the exhibits, including the new one celebrating the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.


Where Ms. Know-It-All pointed, we looked. Unless, of course, we were the one member of the party suffering from unpleasant childhood flashbacks.








After a relaxing lunch and several pints of Cherry Blossom Ale, we spent the afternoon checking out Union Station and the National Portrait Gallery. The National Portrait Gallery was probably the high point of our day but neither Mike nor I are able to produce any pictorial evidence. The Cherry Blossom Ale might be to blame.

The Importance of Cherry Blossoms [sic] Trees

The 97th annual National Cherry Blossom Festival, a two-week extravaganza, started today. Emma and Mary, with their parents and six suitcases, arrived yesterday for Spring Break. The horticulture experts are saying the blossoms will peak between April 1 and 4; the weather experts are forecasting intermittent rain all week. What's a hostess to do?

As luck would have it, the entire Festival is not taking place out in the elements. We stumbled upon a student art exhibit in Union Station's West Concourse this afternoon. Since several posters were entitled "The Importance of Cherry Blossoms Trees in Your Community," I have a hunch the young artists were assigned this topic by a teacher and/or festival organizer. In other words, some quasi-authority figure has managed to convince an entire generation of budding East Coast artists that there is actually such a thing as a 'Cherry Blossoms Tree.' Help me, Lord.

This is Matt's favorite. "Mom, did you see the phallic one?" Eight hours later, I am still alternately shocked and bemused that a 16-year-old boy, and one of Marcia's grandsons to boot, could actually pose that question to his mother.

You have not seen the last of these posters. Not by a long shot.

Remembering Bean

My friend Bean died unexpectedly today. It's been almost a year since she fell from her second floor balcony to the concrete pool deck below and she'd made a remarkable recovery, once again driving herself to all of her many volunteer activities. But a neighbor found her unconscious yesterday and she passed away this afternoon. Nothing in life prepares you for something like this.

Bean was the person who pulled me out of my self-imposed isolation after Mike's father died. She talked me into serving as the president of a Navy spouse club when I'd never even attended a meeting and she supported every single thing I set out to accomplish that year. When I was reluctant to cancel an outing on account of bad weather, she braved the sub-zero temperatures and brought along a spare muffler to wrap around my bare neck. The quintessential Girl Scout, Bean was always prepared.

She was my mentor. I stole my "children are always welcome at the Krentz house" tagline from her. She won Matt's heart by introducing him to creme brulee and his eternal gratitude by handing him the little blow torch and a second helping. He bought me one of those little blow torches for Mother's Day that year.

When President and Mrs. Bush visited the war wounded in Bethesda, Bean and I shared an elevator with a handsome rooftop sniper. She was almost 60 at the time but that young man was flirting extravagantly with her by the time we reached the ground floor.


Bean didn't have many opportunities to travel with her husband when he was Surgeon General of the Navy - their youngest daughter was still in high school at the time - so she was excited at the prospect of visiting Japan in October 2006. She spent two days in Yokosuka and was absolutely thrilled to stay in the VIP Suite (left), to see Darlene's Japanese house and Japanese toilet, to scarf up pottery at the 100 Yen store, and to celebrate Halloween at Admiral Kelly's manse-on-the-mountaintop (where she insisted he let his two Dobermans join the party much to my terror).

Bean was a humble, gentle lady who was exceptionally proud of her daughters and of her service to her country as a Navy nurse for 20 years. She volunteered at a soup kitchen almost every Saturday morning and fed her entire neighborhood during a post-Hurricane power outage by cooking on a homemade solar stove. About the only thing we had in common (other than taking exceptional pride in our children) was that we were both born and raised in the Midwest. I'm having a hard time imagining a world without Bean in it. She was the best possible role model.

Hi-ho, the Derry-o

Laura and her boyfriend took the cat tree off our hands and then headed to another Freecycling household to pick up a television. These twentysomethings who flock to D.C. after college sure must miss their mothers. That's the only way I can explain their cheerful compliance when I demand a photograph in exchange for the freebie.

















First she introduced me to Freecycling, now it's Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). All of these little tidbits about sustainable communities are a side benefit of Kate working on a masters degree in Urban Planning. She's doing all the work - sitting through lectures, reading textbooks, writing papers - but my horizons are definitely expanding.

I'm probably the last person in America except Mike to hear about CSAs but, in case not, this is where you buy a share in a local farm in the spring and get a bag, box, or crate of fresh produce (and, depending on the farm, sometimes eggs and flowers) every week during the growing season, usually from June through October. Other than 'if it's September, it's probably tomatoes and zucchini,' every weekly share comes as a complete surprise.

The surprise factor is what I find most appealing about this concept. I foresee me feeding my family lots more vegetables - and anything more than a 10-oz bag of frozen corn every other week qualifies as 'lots' - when I can approach meal preparation as a series of games: 1) Name that Vegetable, 2) Where's the Cookbook?, and 3) Let's Trick Matt into Eating Healthy.

How does one go about selecting a CSA to join when there are more than 40 serving the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area? Katie, who is taking one-third of our share, liked Clagett Farm because they donate 40 percent of their yield to food banks and shelters but all the Clagett Farm shares were spoken for by the time we contacted them. So I resorted to that old standby, the process of elimination:

• "Shareholders are expected to help harvest crops a minimum of three times during the share period" merited immediate disqualification. And rightly so.


• "Shareholders must pick up their share at the farm every Saturday between 9:oo am and noon" rated a second-round elimination. I'm willing to support agriculture but I'm not in the market for a serious commitment, especially one that requires driving on the same dusty country road every Saturday from June through October.

The remaining CSAs all offer weekly deliveries to locations scattered around the D.C. area. The Fresh and Local CSA, based on a farm in Shepherdstown, WV, makes a drop-off every Tuesday in Arlington, just two blocks from Katie's apartment. Since this whole thing was her idea in the first place, it seems only fair she be responsible for the weekly pick-up.

I'll try to put a link to Local Harvest in the sidebar in case you want to look into Community Supported Agriculture in your neck of the woods. As soon as pastry chefs get on the ball and start selling shares in Community Supported Bakeries (CSB), I will be a totally happy camper. I'd even be willing to help them 'harvest' their cookies, pies, and muffins.

The Running Coach

Charlie flew up from Norfolk to run the National Half-Marathon with Mike Saturday morning. He flew back to Norfolk Saturday afternoon to run the Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach today. Charlie is a serious runner who does not run seriously. He is a generous runner, one who is more concerned with helping others achieve their goals than setting new records himself.

Running the National Half-Marathon meant a lot to Mike because it's the first time he's earned a spot in a race by completing a previous race within a certain length of time. In other words, Mike had to 'qualify' for the National (although I think a better expression would be 'quantify.') Mike has always looked more like a Clydesdale than a thoroughbred when he runs; he can run for incredibly (at least to me) long distances but at speeds that look a lot more like slow motion than fast forward. He was so tickled to qualify for this race and even more tickled when Charlie offered to keep him company on the course.

Thanks to Charlie, Mike set a new personal best by running 13.1 miles in two hours and 20 minutes. If he ever stops strutting around like a cocky 18-year-old, he'll probably start checking dates and locations for Olympic trials.

Between Mike's half-marathon, Kathleen Jr's 10K in Tokyo, and Amy and Ann pounding the hills of Atlanta to raise money for prosthetic limbs, I almost feel guilty about lolling on the couch all weekend watching Lost: Season One. Emphasis on 'almost.'

The Eagles Have Landed

This lovely sight stopped me in my tracks halfway between the Capitol South Metro escalator and the Postal Museum this morning. Spring has arrived, weatherman and plummeting thermometer notwithstanding. This makes me very happy.

My plan had me checking out the Lincoln exhibit at the Library of Congress after wrapping up docent duty (more Fort Belvoir kindergarteners), but a sudden steady downpour coupled with no umbrella sent me to Union Station instead. I chatted up a Vietnam veteran then polished off the Conroy book (Hallelujah) and three sushi rolls before heading home.















Remember Friday's Hitleresque eagles near the Arlington Cemetery entrance? I spotted another terrifying twosome over Union Station's west entrance this afternoon. How do you suppose we came to have such a fierce-looking national mascot?

And who do you suppose chose the quote etched on the wall between the eagles?


It struck me as profound the first time I skimmed it. At second reading, though, it seemed obviously obvious. By the third time through, I was thoroughly confused. Maybe it's a Mensa logic problem.

The Something-for-Everyone College Tour

You have just spent more time looking at these college brochures than the addressee has. Note that most of the envelopes have not been opened. Matt and his parents are heavily into denial these days and doing some major bonding watching "Lost." We have six and a half seasons to cover between now and June 2010.

Matt and I have denial etched into our DNA but Mike's behavior is coming as something of a surprise. This is a man who has made a hobby of putting young adults through college - five so far - and I'm thinking "Patron of Higher Education" would be a fitting epitaph for his tombstone. Every time I hand a dollar to a homeless person, Mike socks $20 into each of the three college funds he's currently nurturing, one for Matt and two for grandchildren.

Have no fear. Sometime between Season One and Season Two of "Lost" we will get around to planning college visits. Since Katie didn't even apply to any of the umpteen colleges we visited the summer before her senior year, I'm lobbying for practical this time around. By practical I mean killing two birds with one stone. Surely there are some good schools in the vicinity of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Baseball of Hall of Fame, and Louisa May Alcott's house.

Fallen Women

The Women in the Military Museum has an impressive facade but the interior disappointed me. The exhibits seemed amateurish, leading me to suspect they were created by actual Women in the Military as opposed to People with Degrees in Museum Design and Management. Which is unfortunate since there is a surfeit of the latter in this town. I just hope no one was glancing in my direction when my face registered the title on the quilt exhibit.

Lincoln Bicentennial

Museum curators and park rangers from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, D.C. are working extra hard this year to mark the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. A special exhibition of Lincoln stamps opened at the National Postal Museum last month. Although those stamps aren't covered in the tours we offer to school-age children, I was not about to miss a field trip when Jeff offered his docents the chance to spend a Saturday morning learning more about the images on the Lincoln stamps. There's nothing like spending a couple of hours in the company of the quirky characters who specialize in adult tours to make me feel like a refreshingly normal human being.

Our first stop was the National Portrait Gallery for a private viewing of "One Life: The Mask of Lincoln." The National Portrait Gallery was originally the U.S. Patent Office, the largest public building in D.C. at the time of the Civil War. Clara Barton worked for the Patent Office and got her start caring for wounded soldiers when the building was tranformed into a hospital during the war. The Patent Office was also the the site of the 1864 Inaugural Ball. President Eisenhower is credited with rescuing this historic building from the wrecking ball in the late 1950s.

Our tour guide pointed out that Abraham Lincoln was the first American president to be photographed regularly. The special exhibit, due to close July 5, shows the face Lincoln presented to the world from the time he was deemed a viable candidate for office until his death. The signs of rapid aging were very much in evidence and a focus of the tour guide's comments, of course, but I was more intrigued by Abe's efforts to control his disheveled locks. I had no idea until today that he tried a modified crew cut at the beginning of his second term. This photograph strikes me as poignantly punky but apparently most historians consider it "unLincolny" so it rarely appears in print.

We headed to the National Gallery of Art (NGA) next for a glimpse of their new exhibit, "Designing the Lincoln Memorial: Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon." Bacon was the architect who designed the Lincoln Memorial; French was the sculptor Bacon selected to design the statue. Our NGA guide shared many interesting background details on the history of "monumental art" in post-Revolutionary America. I can imagine spending a few weeks or even a month wandering around New England, checking out 200-year old foundries, quarries, and sculptors' studios. Mike will be very excited to read this.

The Metro was surprisingly packed when I headed home at 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon. I became slightly intoxicated inhaling the beer fumes emanating off a couple hundred college kids crammed into the last car with me. Most of them were wearing green hats, green shirts, and/or green Vulcan ears (oh, I want some of those!) so I assume we start celebrating St. Patrick's Day three days early in this part of the world.

Back on G Street, I spotted cherry blossoms starting to open on the tree next to our driveway. What a treat! I love spring, especially the first spring after a move when every day brings new surprises.

Two Inches x 2.2 Miles = 26 Minutes

Snow flurries in the morning foiled my plan to roam Arlington Cemetery; a body on the subway tracks just north of the White House foiled my plan to take the Metro to Nancy Lescavage's retirement ceremony. The day was not a total waste, however. I invented a new sport: High Heel Race-Walking.

Necessity really is the Mother of Invention. Although neither Admiral Lescavage nor Senator Inouye, the guest speaker, would have mourned - let alone noticed - my absence, I had taken the time to paint my face for the first time in 2009 and there was no way I was going to turn around and head for home when the train ground to a halt.

Clippety-clop, clippety-clop, there's the Washington Monument on my right and a half dozen cab drivers ignoring the $20 bill I'm waving in the air. Clippety-clop, clippety-clop, when did they drain the Reflecting Pool? Oh, look! Those are little buds on the cherry trees! Clippety-clop, clippety-clop, past the Korean War Memorial and around the Lincoln Memorial to Memorial Bridge.

Clippety-clop, clippety-clop, the eagles on the Virginia side of the bridge look like something from the Third Reich. I'll snap a couple pictures while I figure out how to get across the George Washington Parkway.


Clippety, clippety, clippety, clippety, clippety - Whew! Talk about rude drivers! Almost there now though. What's that statue over there on the left?



The Hiker! Erected by the Veterans of the Spanish-American War. He's going to be my new mascot.

Kathy Loses It . . . Yet Again

This is a picture of the Women in the Military Memorial at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. I downloaded the picture from the Voice of America website in case there isn't any room left in my camera by the time I get to the memorial for our friend's retirement ceremony this afternoon. If the weather is halfway decent, I'm going to spend the morning wandering around the cemetery and then hook up with Mike at the Women in the Military Memorial a few minutes before the ceremony begins. Picking Mike out in a crowd of 50 identically dressed middle-aged men always reminds me of the "Find the Hidden Objects" page in Highlights magazine.

Yesterday nearly 60 kindergarteners from Fort Belvoir descended on the museum. My group included a legally blind albino boy and two little girls in wheelchairs. Debbie and Tabitha didn't have any special needs children in their groups, leading me to believe the teachers who divide the children between docents equate age with maturity. There's a giggle for you.

As I was giving my little welcome spiel to this knot of attentive 5-year olds, I started thinking about all the hurdles these children will face and the heartbreaks they are bound to suffer during the course of their parents' military careers. How many of them have fathers or mothers who are currently serving in Afghanistan or Iraq? I had to wipe a few tears from my eyes before we could get on with the show. From now on I'll have to remember to stick some Kleenex in my pocket before I leave the house on Thursday mornings.

Tilting at Bureaucrazies

Bureaucracy and I don't get along well. This is what is commonly referred to as an 'understatement.'

I know I've encountered bureaucracy when I feel like I'm driving the wrong way down a one-way street with no exit in sight, when my surroundings and situation are absurdly out of kilter yet vaguely familiar. Franz Kafka's ghost delivers a sharp elbow to my ribs. "See what I mean?" Yes, Franz, I do. Absolutely.

According to my research, the word was coined by a French economist, Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-59), who must have been quite ze busy bee since he also helped invent the laissez-faire economic philosophy (the one the U.S. Congress is detonating as I write). Jean Claude got bureaucratie by combining bureau (for 'office' or, literally, 'desk') and the Greek suffix -kratia (denoting "power of). The word floated across the English Channel by 1818. Had the anonymous Brit or Yank who first translated bureaucratie to English possessed a sense of humor, perhaps today I would be railing against bureaucrazy. Which I think would be fitting.

Are you wondering what set this off? A letter from the Department of Defense (D0D). Addressed to me. Let us be perfectly clear in case you missed that: the letter from the DoD was addressed to me. The letter contained instructions for establishing a Self-Service Logon (sic) account and described some benefits of doing so. I folded the letter into an airplane and lofted it toward the trashcan. Retrieving it, Mike said in that soothing, rational voice of his, "This is a good thing. I think you ought to do it."

So, as Mike is my witness, on a Friday evening when you were sipping wine/slugging down beers or heading out to dinner and a movie, I pasted the link into my browser, followed the remaining five steps, received an error message, fixed the problem, received a second error message, fixed that problem, and received yet another error message: Kathryn Krentz is not authorized to establish a Self-Service Logon account. I had already wasted 20 minutes on this 5-minute exercise. (Identifying an appropriate number of 'challenge questions' to which I could be reasonably certain of remembering the answer was problematic. You might have a favorite color or book or actor or song; good for you; I'm fickle.) Seeking closure, I punched in the telephone number provided at the top of my computer screen and eventually bumped into a genuine human being - a very polite human being I might add - who verified that Kathryn Krentz is not authorized to establish a Self-Service Logon account. My sponsor (Mike), who is not mentioned anywhere in the letter I received, must establish the account on my behalf. Which I'm sure he'll find time to do within a couple of years of the arbitrary (I presume) deadline printed in the letter.

There's a sands-through-the-hourglass thing going on here. With each passing year I am increasingly irked when I waste 30 minutes of my life thanks to a mistake by some nonapologetic bureaucrat. It's been four years since a major medical center put me on hold for 47 minutes when I called to schedule a mammogram, yet I'm still carting around the wrinkled Post-It note on which I ticked off (pun intended) those wasted minutes. I couldn't do anything else during those 47 minutes because it was impossible to concentrate on a book or anything else when every 60 seconds the much-too-loud background music was interrupted by a voice that assured me my call was important.

Incredibly, I had tried to avoid this entire scene by going to the mammogram clinic in person to schedule an appointment; there was no one at the desk so I took a seat; after 10 minutes, another person in the waiting area told me it might be a while because the staff was having a little party. In the middle of a hospital. In the middle of a weekday. So I stuck my head into the party room. I said, "Thanks for your exceptional customer service!" then turned and marched out the door. Was I proud of myself? No, but I wasn't ashamed either.

This mammogram story has at least three more plot twists but I'm going to have to leave you hanging. Because it suddenly dawns on me that I forgot to fetch my mammogram records from the Radiology file room in Yokosuka. The last time something like this happened, the bureaucrazies insisted I drive eight hours to retrieve my records. I should start checking flights to Tokyo.

bu-reau-crat n. an official in a bureaucracy, esp. one who follows a routine in a mechanical, unimaginative way, insisting on proper forms, petty rules, etc.

Question Hypothetique

Q. Is it appropriate for a museum docent to say "Bonjour" when greeting first graders from the French International School?
A. Oui, but only if the docent is able to (a) hear, (b) comprehend, and (c) withstand the barrage of rapid-fire responses delivered in flawless (one presumes) French by a clutch of six-year olds.

When they paused to inhale, I owned up to my language deficiency. But I simply could not resist directing them to place their coats in le rouge bin and starting my spiel with my favorite French word, "Aujourd'hui" (today). "Aujourd'hui we will write a letter to a dog, learn about post office jobs, and make stamp collections." It's my favorite French word because it's the only one I remember that has more than two syllables.

Right about then le jeune garcon with the 'tude rolled his eyes and muttered in the most disparaging tone I've ever heard exit a six-year old's mouth, "baby stuff." Big mistake on his part. Had he dropped that 'tude, I might have overlooked the two stamps he tried to purloin and I probably would have let him sit in the stagecoach for an extra minute or two.

One little girl could not speak or understand English so I don't think she got much out of the tour but I let her be the Postmaster (a no brainer, really, since she was still standing - with a bewildered look on her face - after I asked the children to please sit down). I assume that little girl has a parent attached to the French Embassy but the others were American kids whose parents have decided for some reason or other to send their children to a school where all the instruction is conducted in French. This intrigues me. The Francophile children were definitely behind their public school peers (D.C. and suburban) on some basic concepts ("alike and different," for instance) but I suppose they will catch up later once they get the language thing figured out.

Mike Considers New Hobbies

Egad, it's his birthday again and I have about five hours to come up with a suitable gift for the man who just last week bought himself a contraption that allows him (and houseguests) to ride a bike indoors on cold and/or rainy days. It folds up (sort of) and slides under a bed (almost).

And you won't have to worry about pulling the orange tarp off the bike and dragging it inside every time you feel like exercising. Oh, no. Because he went that extra mile for you. Or more like three miles. Yup, he went over to the storage locker and dragged home another bike for indoor use.

I'm sort of thinking it's time he started collecting stamps. Which would be quite convenient since I'm on my way to the Postal Museum and there are lots of little starter sets in the gift shop there.

Foggy Bottom Blues

A veritable cornucopia of topics present themselves today. Pick me! cries the weather. No, it's my turn! whines gravestone iconography. Don't bother with me, mutters the Unabomber, since no one wants to hear my almost-but-not-totally insane prophesies. Um, it is my 40th birthday, suggests Hank. What about our new amenity for houseguests? offers Mike.

One of the Navy doctors from Yokosuka was in town today. I might have never left the house otherwise. I might have been content to spend the entire day watching the stalactite and stalagmite under the deck unite in holy iciclehood. Which they eventually did. But by then I had more pictures for you. Because John was in town. And I got off my duff, climbed into a skirt, rode the Metro to Foggy Bottom, and walked five blocks downhill to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.

Well, I didn't exactly walk. I hopped primly (credit the skirt) over mounds of slush and executed several quite graceful (if I do say so myself) jetes over puddles so wide they might easily have been mistaken for the Potomac River. I made it through the pedestrian turnstile without gouging either heel (no small feet, I mean feat) and flashed my ID at the security guard.

The Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery surrounds the original Naval Observatory (right), the one built on low, swampy land that afforded minimal visibility and was the worst possible location for an observatory. Which is why a new Naval Observatory was built several miles away a century ago. That's where the Vice President's family lives. The historic homes adjacent to the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery are occupied these days by the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (I'm not quite sure how a civilian cabinet member managed to snag military housing - they didn't consult with me -but I'm going to assume he reimburses the government appropriately.) Until about 10 years ago, the Navy Surgeon General lived in one of these houses which I guess made way too much sense because now the Navy Surgeon General lives in Bethesda, in the house previously assigned to the Navy hospital commanding officer, and commutes 45 minutes to work.

That's about all I can say about that without getting arrested.

Looking Death in the Eye (Sort Of)

Jeff pulled out an old iron skeleton (!) key as we approached the Public Vault. What's that sound? Oh, I think it's me, hyperventilating.


The door creaked open.











Those cemetery people are such cards. Joan's son examines the fake (I hope) skull at the rear of the vault.


I went all the way to the back of the vault, turned, and took a bad picture of Lawrence and his wife standing at the entrance. This is my only proof that I really entered the temporary tomb of Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison.

Surely the group trying to preserve the cemetery doesn't need me to tell them they ought to charge for candlelight tours during the tourist season, and charge double on Halloween.