Today is the official opening of the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial (postponed from its earlier date due to Hurricane Irene). However, my son and I got up very early one weekday morning a couple of weeks ago and biked down through Rock Creek Park to see it sans crowds, and, indeed, our only companions were uniformed park service staff.
I realize that this monument has been somewhat controversial, what with complaints about the determinedly literal concept and the outsourcing to China and the misleading engraved quotation. But as I walked along reading King’s words and beheld his sunlit figure gazing intently across the Tidal Basin—and pondered the changes of the last fifty years, for much of which this man, so far ahead of his time, was responsible—I could only be moved. I look forward to returning in all seasons of the year.
Today is also the birthday of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980), whom we can thank for the preservation and restoration of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal as a park, with hiking trails and bike paths, thus averting its transformation into a highway. This is where you go in Washington, DC if you want to see hometown bald eagles, or the first bluebells. For sketches and a mini-bio, please see Justice of the Peace.
Aunt Bett
