Marchers for immigration reform on the Mall. Photo by Karen Kortesoja.

It was a big day for the First Amendment at the Capitol today, with what appeared to be more than 200,000 people marching from the Mall through the neighborhood of Capitol Hill urging immigration reform. The Washington Post reported that, perhaps not coincidentally, the INS raided several popular Maryland restaurants recently and detained 29 people for administrative immigration problems.

On a day when most eyes were on the health care bills, the long-scheduled march was almost entirely overshadowed by a much smaller number of Tea Party protesters on the south side of the Capitol urging the House to vote against the health bill.

• My photos on Flickr
• Other Flickr photos of the immigration reform march

Celtic Cross at Clocmacnoise, Ireland. Photo by James Gaddis

St. Peter’s Catholic Church on Capitol Hill is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day a few days early, on Saturday the 13th, with a special Mass and Irish music. The music is “St. Patrick’s Mass,” by Philip Green, at least part of it, and Four Hymns by Vaughan Williams, with guest soloist the acclaimed tenor John Aler. And by “acclaimed,” I mean, “He’s won four Grammys.” Aler is a friend of Music Director Kevin O’Brien, and both are Catholic University alumni.

This is the same choir I wrote about in December, which performed stunning selections of Handel’s Messiah on Dec. Additionally, I’m singing with them, in the mighty alto section. My contributions will be very minor, but it is a lot of fun. Kevin gets some really amazing sound out of a small group, and his high quality of musicianship attracts some very talented singers to this all-volunteer choir. We’re talking a high number of voice major students and semi-professionals.

The music begins at 4 p.m., followed by Mass at 4:30. After Mass, I am told there is quite a party in the Parish Hall, featuring “salmon, salad, soda bread and suds,” with performances by two Irish dance schools and a raffle. So, come take care of your Sunday obligation Saturday night, and hear some lovely music in the bargain.

Arlington National Cemetery, JFK Gravesite

I like visiting cemeteries. They offer history lessons, mortuary monument fashion shows, and countless little poignant stories of long lives and short ones.

Arlington National Cemetery gets 4 million visitors a year. It is a huge place. Unlike the Congressional Cemetery in southeast D.C., it is a solemn place. It’s here where presidents lay a wreath on Memorial Day at the Tomb of the Unknowns. It’s here that John F. Kennedy and Jackie are buried, around the corner from Bobby Kennedy and now Ted. Signs throughout the cemetery point to the JFK gravesite and its eternal flame, which is in a beautiful spot below the Arlington House. There is a guard there shushing people, so it is a somber place. Bobby Kennedy’s memorial around the hill is a still pool, above which are engraved passages from some of his important speeches. If you were alive in 1968, the scene will likely to take you back to that horrible time.

Above the graves of the Kennedys is Arlington House, which has a fascinating history. The House was built by George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Martha Washington, raised from his infancy by Martha and George Washington, as a monument to George Washington. Custis and his wife, Mary Lee Fitzhugh, lived in the house until their deaths in 1853 and 1857, with their married daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, and her husband, Robert E. Lee.

Lee didn’t spend much time at Arlington House, as he was busy fighting the Mexican War and was later superintendent of West Point. After his father-in-law died in 1857, however, he returned to restore the estate to profitability. The Lees lived in Arlington House until 1861, that fateful year. After Virginia seceded, Lee resigned his commission and, well, certainly, you know his next career move. His wife fled, leaving their slaves behind. After the war, the estate was confiscated and turned into a military cemetery for the thousands of Union soldiers. A Freedmen’s Village was created there.

Pierre L’Enfant was also re-interred in front of Arlington House, where he has a splendid view of the Potomac and the city that he planned.

Be sure also to visit the Tomb of the Unknowns and its honor guard and the memorial to women in the military and the WWII Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), who were granted veteran status only in 1977.

My photos on Flickr

Candy Holmes and Darlene Garner got their marriage license yesterday. Photo by Matt Dunn

Woo hoo! Same-sex couples could apply for marriage licenses in the District of Columbia beginning yesterday, and about 100 of them did, according to the
DC Agenda. The first weddings should be March 9.

The Superior Courts of DC site has more information, including the revised a marriage license application form, a form to request a civil wedding at the courthouse (10 to 15 guests will fit in the marriage ceremony room), and an application to celebrate marriages within D.C.

Matt Dunn has a great photo set on Flickr.

The front porch at Mount Vernon

People here talk about George Washington as if he’s still around. “He’s like George Washington,” I overheard, “he walks into a room and he’s the leader.” In contrast, what I remember about George Washington from U.S. History is a collection of factoids: he’s the father of our country, he was tall, he had ill-fitting wooden teeth, he was commander in the American Revolution. He sounds more like a saint than a person. I wondered: What was it about him that so led people to trust and revere him so?

A visit to Mount Vernon (free today only!) helps fill out his portrait. It is a stately mansion by even modern standards, with a gorgeous view of the Potomac. The grounds and gardens are extensive, and a small village of blacksmiths, workers and slaves kept it running for him. He was an entrepreneur, who built a grist mill and found whiskey a high-profit way to store the surplus grain he was producing. Each spring, he netted thousands of pounds of herring that passed through the Potomac and preserved the fish in barrels of salt to feed his staff all winter. (”Salted herring again?”) He and Martha, the tiny, wealthy, beautiful widow he married when he was 26 and she was 27, had no children of their own, but he raised her two children.

The attached museum is even more instructive, with several wax figures created by forensics experts to reconstruct how Washington looked as a young man, up through the time of his death at age 62. It is highly interactive, with maps and quizzes meant to engage schoolchildren (Q. Who started the French and Indian War? A. George Washington). Other displays show the wretched conditions of Revolutionary soldiers.

The museum also touched on the Newburgh conspiracy, an episode of near-mutiny among the Continental Army explained in more detail in an op-ed in today’s New York Times by historian John R. Miller. Congress had failed to give soldiers their back pay and pensions, and there was talk among the Army of marching on Philadelphia to seize the government. General Washington showed up at the meeting of 500 angry officers and moved them to tears with his own commitment to the new government, stopping the rebellion in its tracks, and, as Miller noted, setting a path for the young republic to be led by civilians, not military leaders.

More::

• The Library of Congress has scanned copies of many of Washington’s papers and journals online.
• My photos on Flickr

Saturday, the temperature hovered around 30 degrees. There was three feet of powder on the ground. It was the beginning of a three-day weekend. Perfect for skiing!

The Whitetail Ski Resort is just 90 minutes from D.C. and had received good reviews from colleagues. “In the history of Whitetail Resort, the skiing, snowboarding and snow tubing conditions have never been better. We have received over 4 feet of snow in the past week,” its web site gushed. So we headed to Whitetail, just outside of Clear Spring, Pa., and arrived about noon Saturday.

Too bad thousands of other skiers had the same idea. There were only a few parking spaces left, and a sign at the registration window warned there were no rental skis left in sizes 150 or 160 cm. But we found one pair of skis to rent, and the three of us hit the slopes. The conditions were great, the view from the top was lovely, and despite the multitudes on the hills, it wasn’t until late in the day that the intermediate slopes developed icy patches. It wasn’t a big resort, however, and it was pretty much at maximum capacity — and then some. The lift to the easy slopes, even though it was a quad and the workers made sure each chair had four people on it, moved agonizingly slowly…

Whitetail was having its own Big Olympic Games, complete with a giant elevated copper torch at the bottom of the main lifts. The BOG race announcer noted that as it was 50 degrees in Vancouver, we had much better conditions than the Olympians. At home that evening, as we watched the women plowing through slush in the Olympics freestyle mogul competition, we had to agree.

I failed to bring my camera, but other skiers/sliders have posted on Flickr, like these.