Today the boys rode their coaster bikes in the alley behind the house. No cars came while they cruised up and down. Kate brought out a plate of apple slices, and I showed her the rhododendrons that are starting to bloom and peek through the thick jungle of other flowers. It was getting hot, and soon we were back indoors.
Raj and I got to the end of Stuart Little, and the same day both boys cozied up to me after their baths while I read the last of the seven stories in Fairy Tales for Brave Children. That book contains works from the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, and other folk tale collections. Tonight we read “Vasillisa,” from Russia, which is a Cinderella sort of story, but with a doll who helps the disdained sister to do mountains of work.
I like the illustrations by Scott Plumbe. The one below is of The Selfish Giant, after he repents of his unkindness to children, and is lying in the snow covered in honor with out of season flowers. That tale is by Oscar Wilde.
It’s time for me to leave my dear family and return to California. I was really happy that a thunderstorm descended this evening about dinnertime. Within a few minutes of the loud thunder and lightning flashes, the street out front was a river. A few of us stood on the porch to take in the show; I was amazed at how warm the air was.
But then the rain starting blowing sideways at us, and we went in again. It wasn’t long before the clouds had cleared and the “river” ran into the drains, taking the heat of the earth with it. By 9:00 we were sitting on the porch in 20-degree cooler air, and watching fireflies. What a lovely ending to my East Coast sojourn.
This morning I walked to the neighborhood recreation center with the boys to play with their stomp rocket. We had a lot of fun, until suddenly the grass was itchy and they were hot and/or tired. We headed home to have a cold juice and play in the basement for a while.
After that we made paper fans, played War with a deck of cards, put together a puzzle of the world, played with trains, and made some progress on a large Lego project that is a bit too hard for their ages. Two Lego workers had only one tiny walkie-talkie between them, which didn’t bother the toys, but caused the boys to fight over it. I slipped it into my pocket to make peace.
In the afternoon Tom went out back to tend the little garden, and we all joined him. I identified a few plants with my Seek app — Scarlet Bee Balm is a favorite with the bees, who taste its value deep inside the narrow tubes that are its petals, even though the flowers generally look a little worse for wear. I put my nose down close and found that flower to be the sweetest of the collection. I’ve never grown it in my own garden, but I would like to.
One prickly looking plant was the Carolina Horsenettle, Solanum carolinense, not a true nettle but a member of the nightshade family, which has set fruit that looks like tomatoes. Horsenettles are evidently all toxic.
Carolina Horsenettleanise hyssop
The whole back garden seems to have been planted with bees in mind: anise hyssop and echinacea were attracting three sorts of bees as well, and in the heat, the bees were moving fast. But I managed to take a few pictures!
I had spent five nights with Kate by the time she needed to return to work,
and I was ready to proceed on the next leg of my trip.
Many images of Washington, D.C. had been imprinted on my mind
and recorded by my camera.
The Navy Memorial, showing western North America.
It looked like winter down by the Potomac, where in Georgetown
they were building up the ice rink for skating, “Coming Soon!”
A man was spreading the freezing water around with a sort of push broom.
We had been out for a yummy dinner in that neighborhood,
where I was surprised to see, next to buildings along broad sidewalks,
people bedding down for the night on the red bricks.
Unidentified building with square theme.
My time was up, I had my ticket in hand already, to depart on Train 86 – Northeast Regional Line, to visit my cousins in Philadelphia. Tom drove me to Union Station where I was immediately transported into a compartment of my mind where emotions linked to other train stations throughout my life seem to be stored all together.
My primary experiences of rail travel, thoroughly positive and exciting, were my childhood trips to see my grandmother. Then there was the year that I rode trains from Munich to Istanbul, and back to Amsterdam, young and alone and meeting strangers who were sometimes like angels. That was also my first experience of a huge railway depot like Victoria Station in London, where the first angels appeared.
Mr. Glad and I had a blissful train ride down the coast of California long ago, the day after becoming engaged…and with Pippin I experienced English railways in modern history. God only knows how to sort out all the train events, and speculate about what rivulets of that stream were running through my heart as I entered Union Station gawking. It was early enough that I could wander around a little and feel the vastness of space and excitement — though I think for most people it was routine, and for me the excitement was probably largely drawn from the well of memory.
When I went through to my gate, I had some trouble finding the right queue to get into. I think I was just a little early, and after the earlier 8:10 boarded things were easier to figure out, partly because I asked people for help.
I should have put my suitcase in the floor-level storage area at the end of the car, but before thinking very long I just hefted it up, balancing it for a second on my head, and it landed in the overhead bin okay. Then I had two hours to look at the scenery, and to read or pray. I was a little downhearted for the first while – probably because I had left my dear daughter and son-in-law behind. Parting is the uncomfortable side of train-station drama.
Soon I was meeting more family and hugs at the other end of my ride and being taken care of again. And that will be the next happy chapter of my travel story.
The Library of Congress, the Thomas Jefferson Building, was a joy to visit, primarily for its architecture and design – which is not what I had anticipated. Before I had left home, when Kate suggested that we go there, I had naturally thought first of books, and exhibits about books.
We heard a story about how it ended up so beautiful: The first two construction attempts failed at the level of the foundation, and a third person was called in to complete the project. His son, who had recently graduated from the University of Beaux-Arts in Paris, took over the design and completion of the interior ornamentation. Or so our tour guide told us 🙂
When I was trying to review these facts online for this post, I discovered another version of the story in a book about “German Achievements in America.” That story does not mention any failure on the part of the original (German) architects, but rather emphasizes that they spent twenty years perfecting the design and were never given adequate credit for it.
Main Reading Room
This page on the LOC site gives broader detail about the drama of these events — involving “the selection of the proper cement for the foundation” — and eventual completion in 1897 of the main building of the library, which was not named for Jefferson until 1980.
Thomas Jefferson deserved to be honored this way, because he offered to sell his whole personal library to Congress after their collection of books was destroyed by fire in the War of 1812; at that time the library was stored in the Capitol. He said he would accept whatever price they decided upon. Previously they had owned only law books, but Jefferson persuaded them that “…there is, in fact, no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer,” and they bought his 6,487 books for $23,950. That amount was based on the number and sizes of the books.
Jefferson’s generosity was not because he no longer needed what he named “unquestionably the choicest collection of books in the U.S.” He used the money gained to pay some of his debts, and began right away in a “frenzy” to assemble a replacement library for himself, saying, “I cannot live without books….”
(A little part of) Thomas Jefferson’s Library exhibit
Two-thirds of the new Jefferson library was destroyed by another fire in the Capitol, in 1851. In the last decades efforts have been made to restore all the books that were in the original collection bought from Jefferson, and by 2008 replacements had been found for all but 300 of the original books; together with the volumes not destroyed by fire, these all comprise the exhibit of Thomas Jefferson’s Library which has been on display since then. Though we wandered through a couple of other exhibits in the building, this one is where Kate and I spent the most time. I had been to Jefferson’s home at Monticello ten years ago, but through this unhurried perusal of his books I felt more connection to him than ever before.
Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Rand Spofford, an appointee of Abraham Lincoln, had wanted the Library of Congress to be not just a resource for legislators but a library for the whole nation, and he was responsible for the copyright law of 1870, which required every author of any copyrighted map, book, piece of music, etc., to deposit two copies in the Library. This method of acquiring materials worked very well, and soon Spofford was pressuring Congress to approve a separate building dedicated to housing the collection, and to do it quickly, because books “were being piled on the floor” and he could see that his job would soon devolve into “presiding over the greatest chaos in America.” Though it took 25 more years before the new building was ready to store the books in a more orderly fashion, Librarian Spofford stayed on all that time, presumably presiding over chaos with hope.
In order to fully appreciate all of the art and architecture of the Library, someone who knows as little as I of fine arts and literature would need days of viewing and background studies. Many short quotes decorate the walls, without reference to the work quoted, and I was curious about these. I did look up this one that I liked (below), and found that it is from a Shakespeare play. Though it is a statement about what we can learn not from books but from nature, I will close with it, as I myself must leave the Library and go now to explore some other good things.
Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones,
and good in everything.
Raj and I got to the end of Stuart Little, and the same day both boys cozied up to me after their baths while I read the last of the seven stories in Fairy Tales for Brave Children. That book contains works from the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, and other folk tale collections. Tonight we read “Vasillisa,” from Russia, which is a Cinderella sort of story, but with a doll who helps the disdained sister to do mountains of work.
together a puzzle of the world, played with trains, and made some progress on a large Lego project that is a bit too hard for their ages. Two Lego workers had only one tiny walkie-talkie between them, which didn’t bother the toys, but caused the boys to fight over it. I slipped it into my pocket to make peace.
Gladsome Lights 