Another road trip, more random thoughts

We are on the road again, right now in our nation’s capital. In the next week or so, we’ll talk about some of the food we ate, the cocktails we drank. But for now, just a few thoughts about one place we visit every time we come to Washington, D.C.

For us, the Lincoln Memorial represents what is right about America, our nation at its best in its toughest times. It celebrates Abraham Lincoln, the president who held us together as a country when we were being torn apart, showed us we were more alike than we were different and that we were stronger together.

And the memorial itself has gone on to stand for the equality Lincoln fought for. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow Marian Anderson—an African American contralto, one of the most renowned voices of her time—to perform for an integrated audience at Constitution Hall. So Eleanor Roosevelt arranged for her to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech on those same steps.

When we visit the Lincoln Memorial now, one thing that never fails to move us is represented in the photograph above. Anytime you are there, you will see an endless stream of people photographing one another in front of Lincoln’s seated figure. Groups of people, couples, families, individuals. All ages, all races, all nationalities. And unfailingly, all smiling, proud to be there in the presence of what our country can be and should be. And what, on its best days, it is.