Day 3 -- The Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial was Number One on Grandson John Riley's priority list, so Day 3 found us making our way there. Inside is a huge statue honoring our 16th President.

As we face the statue, to our left is inscribed the text of the Gettysburg Address. To the right is his Second Inaugural Address. On March 4, 1865, during the final days of the Civil War and only a month before he was assassinated he ended his address to a war-torn nation with these words:

                         "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness
                          in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to
                          finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to
                          care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow,
                          and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just,
                          and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations." 

Seated, he is 19 feet tall. Given the same proportions, he would be 28 feet tall if he were standing. At 6 feet 4 inches, President Lincoln was indeed tall, but no where near that tall! Considering his character, perhaps 28 feet tall is not too great an exaggeration.

Two of my favorite Lincoln biographies are Carl Sandburg's which is divided into two The Prairie Years and The War Years and Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals which is a more politically in depth focus on his presidency.

While the boys took their time inside the Memorial, I sat near the top of the first set of steps and looked east from the Lincoln Memorial, across the reflecting pool along The Mall toward the Washington Monument.

As I sat there, a teacher talked to her class seated on the bottom three rows of steps. She talked about the building of the Memorial -- how long it took, how much it cost, where the stone came from to build it.


I thought about the Civil War, the bloodiest war in our Nation's history. The war that could have destroyed The United States which by that time had stood as a constitutional democracy only seventy-two years. Enough time to see a person into old age, but as a nation, only as many years as to bring it into adolescence.

We deplore the divisions wracking this country today, but it is nothing compared to that. The Nation survived that. The Constitution survived that and civil rights were nominally expanded to all men. Not enough, but a beginning.

There were scattered groups of people milling about. I met a couple from Switzerland using the Memorial as a landmark, a place well-known and easily identified, to meet friends. There was a tour group of Asians, another of Spanish speakers, another of Middle Eastern people, and more and more -- people from all across the nation and from around the world. There were families and couples and singles scattered about the grounds. But there were spaces between the groups.

I sat just feet away from where Dr. Martin Luther King addressed the nation so many years ago. When Dr. King spoke, there were no spaces between the people gathered on the Mall. It was a sea of people -- so many, so many. As far down the Mall as you could see. In his I Have a Dream speech he gave our Nation his vision: 

                 "I say to you today, my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today
                  and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the
                  American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up,
                  live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident,
                  that all men are created equal.'"

That was August 28th, 1963, in the midst of a nation divided by the same questions of civil rights for all our people. It was less than three months before another president was murdered -- President John F. Kennedy. A difficult time. A difficult time.

Since then, we have made giant strides forward, but there is still a ways to go. We will endure this current setback and advance civil rights still further for all people and "live out the true meaning" of the American Dream.

The Women's March

from the Denver Post

Two weeks ago yesterday people all over the country took to the streets. Denver's 2018 Women's March was more than 50,000 strong and I was one of them.

Last year I couldn't participate, because I was between knee surgeries. This year I could and did. My friend Lou and I caught the light rail at Federal Station, the second to western most stop on the  line. Waiting at the station were people of all ages and genders. A good number of marchers were already on the train. As we got closer to Denver the train filled nicely. My daughter Grace and her fiance Bob joined us at the Sheridan station. Along with many others on the train, Grace and Bob wore pink pussy hats. (Well, technically Bob's was a Pokemon hat, but it was pink with ears. Close enough.)

We stopped for breakfast, then took one of the 16th Street Mall buses to Civic Center Park. The Regional Transit District added cars to all the light rail lines and were running extra buses on 16th Street Mall.

Even so, the buses were packed. There were a few people on the bus who were trying to get to work. You should have seen all the jockying around and stepping off and back on to let them out. (Reminded me of those videos of the Japanese trains where uniformed transportation folk push and shove, packing riders into the train.)

Luckily Lou and I were able to get seats. It was a good thing, too. Even with our new knees the milling around in the park before the walk and then the walk were tough tests of our endurance.

         

                                   Grace and Bob had hats              I didn't, so I wore pink hair!

Early in the week, the weather forecast for The March was, cold and cloudy with snow flurries. By the day before The March, the local meteorologists were promising sunshine and no snow until after dark. It was still pretty chilly, so most everybody was layered up.

We got to Civic Center Park early. As you can see,

we had bluebird skies.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere a sign!

Some determined

   

            Several men and children carried these           And a bit of a tribute to Teddy Roosevelt.
             with their arrows pointing to all of us.

There were signs supporting a grand variety of Civil Rights Issues -- "Women's Rights are Civil Rights," "Girls just want to have fun-damental rights," "Black Lives Matter." Signs supporting DACA. Rainbows to include the LGBTQ members of our community. My favorite was "This is what Trans looks like" (carried by a very tall trans woman.)

 Many were anti-'rump and quite witty.    

   

                                   
 

Some of the anti-Groper-in-Chief signs were in (shall we say) questionable taste and I didn't take pictures of them. There was one I wish I had. It said "Grab him by the mid-terms." And to that end there were people everywhere registering people to vote, though I think that most of us there, who were qualified to vote, were already registered.

There were so many people in the park that once it started, it took us more than an hour to get to the ACTUAL starting line. Grace described The March as more of a Shuffle. Between the sun and all that body heat we were coming out of our jackets.

The ACTUAL starting line.

By then Lou and I were about tuckered out, so we peeled off and headed back toward 16th Street Mall and somewhere for lunch.

All the eating places from sidewalk to upscale indoors dining were crowded with pink hats and signs!

There was no way to get on a bus to make our way back to the light rail. Too crowded. Sooooo, we walked  -- 22 more blocks, to be exact.

Next year, we're not going to wait in the park for The Women's March to begin. We are going directly to the ACTUAL starting line. And you can bet we're going to vote this fall.