Visiting Congress

On Tuesday, June 26, 1984, we also got three visitor’s passes for the USA House of Representatives from Congressman O’Brien’s office, plus three tickets for a USA Capitol Tour. I know that it was a long walk to the Capitol Building, since cars could not park around there. We also rode on the Capitol Subway system. I know that we met a couple of senators. One of them was Barry Goldwater (1909-1998), a Republican from Arizona, who had run against President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. He seemed very nice and congenial. We also saw Democratic Sen Alan Dixon (1927-2004) from Illinois. Margaret had a great talk about South Dakota with Tom Daschle (1947-), who later became the Democratic Senate Majority Leader, but he was still a Congressman from South Dakota, when we met him in 1984. We also got three tickets to the Senate Chamber signed by Illinois Senator Chuck Percy (1919-2011). Thus, we got to sit in the Senate Gallery as they debated whether there should be a national drinking age. Then we went to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing that was part of the Treasury Department as we saw how money was made and printed in Washington DC. They really do print money in DC. It is easier than working for it. Then we walked past the Supreme Court and visited the Library of Congress, the Nation’s Library. The Library of Congress is a research library for the USA Congress and administers copyright law through the USA Copyright Office. Founded in 1800 by Thomas Jefferson, the Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the USA, with approximately 173 million items and employing over 3,000 people. We finished our day and time in DC, when we climbed to the top of the Washington Monument with a beautiful view of the area. The nightcap was a free concert by the USA Army Band playing on the Washington Monument Grounds in Sylvan Theater at 8:00 PM. Dedicated in 1917, it became the nation’s first federally supported indoor or outdoor theater, located at the northwest corner of the 15th Street and Independence Avenue intersection. A wooden stage was set in a graded depression surrounded by a grove of trees, like a natural amphitheater. It was designed to seat over 8,000 people. I have the playbook from that evening. The Army Band played “All the Way,” “Crown Imperial,” “Washington Grays,” Claire de Lune,” “Three Dance Episodes” from the movie Spartacus, “What I Did for Love,” from A Chorus Line, “Stouthearted Men” from The New Moon, “America the Beautiful,” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” It was time to say goodbye to Washington, DC. Have you ever wondered how Washington works?

Our White House visit

On Tuesday, June 26, 1984, we were back in DC for another day of learning about how our federal government works. We had three tickets for a White House Visit at 8:15 AM, signed by Ronald Reagan. I had written to George O’Brien about getting tickets. He sent me this letter dated June 12, 1984:

“I was pleased to hear of your upcoming trip to Washington, DC, and even more pleased to be able to provide with three tickets to tour the White House. Enclosed you will find your tickets with the time and date of your tour printed on them. As for other historic attractions that do not require advance arrangements, I have enclosed some tour information and a map that will help you in deciding what to see and do in Washington. If you are interested, I would be more than happy to give you gallery passes to view the House and Senate. These enable you to sit in while we are in session. Have a wonderful trip and please stop by my office to pick up the gallery passes.” Sincerely, George O’Brien, Member of Congress.

George O’Brien (1917–1986) was a Republican member of the USA House of Representatives, representing Illinois’ 4th district from 1973 until his death from prostate cancer in 1986. I guess that he represented the far south suburbs, since he had an office in Joliet. He was originally from Chicago and went to Northwestern and Yale law school. We went to his office, but he was not there. I do not remember much about the White House tour, but I know that we did not get into the Oval Office, but just into a couple of the other rooms in the White House. The grounds were very nice. I have a booklet from our visit The Presidents of the United State of America, that stopped with Ronald Reagan. Have you ever been to the White House?

Slavery and Virginia

Between 1790 and 1860, the number of slaves in Virginia rose from around 290,000 to over 490,000 thousand, roughly one-third of the state population. The the number of slave owners also rose to over 50,000, the most in the USA. The boom in Southern cotton production using cotton gins increased the amount of labor needed for harvesting raw cotton, but new federal laws prohibited the importation of slaves. Virginia plantations increasingly turned to exporting slaves, which broke up countless families and made the breeding of slaves, often through rape, a profitable business. The failed slave uprisings of Gabriel Prosser in 1800, George Boxley in 1815, and Nat Turner in 1831, however, marked the growing resistance to slavery. Afraid of further uprisings, Virginia’s government in the 1830s encouraged free Blacks to migrate to Liberia. On October 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown led a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, to start a slave revolt across the southern states. The polarized national response to his raid, capture, trial, and execution, marked a tipping point for many who believed slavery would need to be ended by force. Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 election further convinced many southern supporters of slavery that his opposition to its expansion would ultimately mean the end of slavery across the country. The seizure of Fort Sumter by Confederate forces on April 14, 1861, prompted Lincoln to call for a federal army of 75,000 men from state militias. The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 voted on April 17 to secede, and join the Confederacy, which named Richmond its capital on May 20 until April 1865, when they abandoned the city and set fire to its downtown. Instead, representatives from 27 of the northwestern Virginia counties held the Wheeling Convention, which organized a government loyal to the Union and led to the separation of West Virginia as a new state. The armies of the Union and Confederacy first met on July 21, 1861, in the Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia, a bloody Confederate victory. Union General George B. McClellan organized the Army of the Potomac, which landed on the Virginia Peninsula in March 1862 and reached the outskirts of Richmond that June. Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia that invaded Union territory. During the next three years of war, more battles were fought in Virginia than anywhere else. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865, in Virginia. Virginia was formally restored to the United States in 1870, due to the work of the Committee of Nine. Virginia adopted a constitution in 1868 which guaranteed political, civil, and voting rights, and provided for free public schools. However, white supremacists seized political power through voter suppression, and segregationists in the Democratic Party that won the legislature that year and maintained control for decades. They passed Jim Crow laws that established a racially segregated society. In 1902, they rewrote the state constitution to include a poll tax and other voter registration measures that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites. After WWI, a homecoming parade to honor African-American troops was attacked in July 1919 by the city’s police as part of a renewed white-supremacy movement, known as Red Summer. Federal passage of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965), and their later enforcement by the Justice Department, helped end racial segregation in Virginia and overturn Jim Crow laws. The 1971 new Virigina Constitution banned discrimination and removed articles that violated federal law. What do you know about segregated Virginia?

Virginia and the American Revolution

Like Massachusetts, Virginia was another leading colony or state in the American Revolution. From the colony’s start, residents agitated for greater local control, and in 1619, certain male colonists began electing representatives to an assembly, later called the House of Burgesses, that negotiated issues with the governing council appointed by the London Company. In 1635, colonists arrested a governor who ignored the assembly and sent him back to England against his will. In 1765, Patrick Henry led a protest of the unpopular Stamp Act in the House of Burgesses, with his famous speech, “Give me liberty or give me death.” In the decade following the French and Indian War, the British Parliament passed new taxes which were deeply unpopular in the colonies. In the House of Burgesses, opposition to taxation without representation was led by Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, among others. Virginians began to coordinate their actions with other colonies in 1773 and sent delegates to the Continental Congress the following year. After the House of Burgesses was dissolved in 1774 by the royal governor, Virginia’s revolutionary leaders continued to govern via the Virginia Conventions. On May 15, 1776, the Convention declared Virginia’s independence and adopted George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was then included in a new constitution that designated Virginia as a commonwealth. Another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, drew upon Mason’s work in drafting the national Declaration of Independence. After the American Revolutionary War began, Virginian George Washington was selected by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia to head the Continental Army, and many Virginians joined the army and revolutionary militias. Virginia was the first colony to ratify the Articles of Confederation in December 1777. In April 1780, the capital was moved to Richmond at the urging of Governor Thomas Jefferson, who feared that Williamsburg’s coastal location would make it vulnerable to British attacks. Around 16,000 soldiers under George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau quickly converged there and defeated Cornwallis in the siege of Yorktown with his surrender on October 19, 1781, that led to the peace negotiations in Paris and secured the independence of the colonies. Virginians were instrumental in writing the United States Constitution. James Madison drafted the Virginia Plan in 1787 and the Bill of Rights in 1789. Virginia ratified the Constitution on June 25, 1788. The three-fifths compromise ensured that Virginia, with its large number of slaves, initially had the largest bloc in the House of Representatives. Together with the Virginia dynasty of presidents, four of the first five were from Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia had an important national importance. Virginia was called the “Mother of States” because of its role in being carved into states such as Kentucky, and for the number of American pioneers born in Virginia. Should we have been called the United States of Virginia?

Virginia

Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The state’s capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach. Its most populous subdivision is Fairfax County, part of Northern Virginia, where slightly over a third of Virginia’s population of more than 8.8 million live. Virginia is shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay. The fertile Shenandoah Valley fosters the state’s most productive agricultural counties, while the economy in Northern Virginia is driven by technology companies and USA federal government agencies. Hampton Roads is also the site of the region’s main seaport. The Naval Station at Norfolk is the world’s largest naval base. In 1607, the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent English colony in the New World, leading to Virginia’s nickname as the Old Dominion. Slaves from Africa and land from displaced native tribes fueled the growing plantation economy, but also fueled conflicts both inside and outside the colony. Virginians fought for the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolution, and helped establish the new national government. During the American Civil War, the state government in Richmond joined the Confederacy, while many northwestern counties remained loyal to the Union, which led to the separation of West Virginia in 1863 as a separate state. Virginia’s state legislature is the Virginia General Assembly, which was established in 1619, making it the oldest current law-making body in North America. It is the only state where governors are prohibited from serving consecutive terms. To help counter Spain’s colonies in the Caribbean, Queen Elizabeth I of England supported Walter Raleigh’s 1584 expedition to the Atlantic coast of North America. The name “Virginia” was used by Captain Arthur Barlowe in the expedition’s report, and may have been suggested by Raleigh or Elizabeth, perhaps noting her status as the “Virgin Queen.” The name initially applied to the entire coastal region from South Carolina in the south to Maine in the north, along with the island of Bermuda. Raleigh’s colony failed, but the potential financial and strategic gains still captivated many English policymakers. In 1606, King James I issued a charter for a new colony to the Virginia Company of London that established a settlement named Jamestown in 1607. By the end of the colony’s first fourteen years, over 80% of the roughly 8,000 settlers had died. However, demand for exported tobacco fueled the need for more workers. Starting in 1618, the colonists were granted free farmland for their help attracting indentured servants. Today, the expansion of federal government offices into Northern Virginia’s suburbs during each war has led to a large diverse population there. As of 2020, non-Hispanic whites were 62%, African American were 20%, Hispanics were 10%, and Asians were 8%. English was passed as the Commonwealth’s official language by statutes in 1981 and again in 1996. Various forms of Protestantism make up 46%, Unaffiliated are at 29%, while Catholics are 16%. Virginia enshrined religious freedom in a 1786 statute. However, 55% of Virginians either seldom or never attend religious services. Virginia has a median household income of $96,490, as of 2023, 8th-highest nationwide. What do you know about Virginia?

Happy New Year -2026!

A new year is about to begin, 2026. I hope that it will be better than 2025. This was a tough year for financial markets, as we heard a lot about tariffs. Every new year brings new hope. We all want to do better this coming year than we did the previous year. Rarely, do we keep all the promises that we make to ourselves, but at least for a little while, we try. Calendar years remind us that time moves on whether we want to or not. It seems like only yesterday, we were all excited about the new millennium, 2000, and Y2K. Guess what! That was 26 years ago. Most 30-year-old people do not remember that. The last five years have brought a pandemic, inflation, recession, and wild tariff wars. What will 2026 bring? The unknown future is full of hope. Due to age and the ability for others to see this, I have enlarged the print starting here on January 1, 2026. Did the past make you despair?

The history of the current city of Williamsburg, Virginia

Williamsburg today is a city in Virginia. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 15,425, on 9 acres on the Virginia Peninsula. English settlers founded Williamsburg in 1632 as a Middle Plantation, a fortified settlement on high ground between the James River and the York River, farther inland than their headquarters at Jamestown. This city functioned as the capital of the Colony and Commonwealth of Virginia from 1699 to 1780, as it became the center of political events in Virginia leading to the American Revolution. Between 1630 and 1633, after the war that followed the Indian massacre of 1622, English colonists constructed a defensive palisade across the peninsula and a settlement named Middle Plantation as a primary guard-station. Jamestown, the original capital of Virginia Colony, burned down during the events of Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. Once Governor William Berkeley had regained control, temporary government headquarters were established about 12 miles away on the high ground at Middle Plantation, pending the rebuilding of the Statehouse at Jamestown. The members of the House of Burgesses discovered that the temporary location was both safer and more pleasant than Jamestown, which was humid and plagued with mosquitoes. This Middle Plantation was renamed Williamsburg by Governor Francis Nicholson in honor of William III (1650-1702) of England. The main street was named Duke of Gloucester after the eldest son of Queen Anne. For 81 years of the 18th century, Williamsburg was the center of government, education, and culture in the Colony of Virginia. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Monroe, James Madison, George Wythe, Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, and others furthered the forms of British government in the Commonwealth of Virginia and later helped adapt its preferred features to the needs of the new USA. The government moved to Richmond on the James River in 1780, under the leadership of Governor Thomas Jefferson, to be more central and accessible from western counties and less susceptible to British attack, where it still is today. Modern Williamsburg is also a college town, inhabited by the College of William & Mary students, faculty, and staff. This 1693 college is the second-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, the only colonial college located in the American South. Its alumni include three USA presidents as well as many other important figures in the nation’s early history. The College of William and Mary was named for King William III of Orange, and his wife Queen Mary (1662-1694) of England, who ruled from 1689-1702. On July 25, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed at Williamsburg. At the outset of the American Civil War (1861–1865), enlistments in the Confederate Army depleted the College of William & Mary’s student body and on May 10, 1861, the faculty voted to close the college for the duration of the war. At the Battle of Williamsburg on May 5, 1862, the defenders succeeded in delaying the Union forces long enough for the retreating Confederates to reach the outer defenses of Richmond. On October 22, 1976, the third of three debates between Republican President Gerald Ford and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election was held at the College of William & Mary. The 9th G7 summit took place in Williamsburg in 1983. What do you know about King William of Orange?

Sunday and Monday at Historic Williamsburg, Virginia

On Sunday, June 25, 1984, we went to Mass at St. Bernadette’s Church in Springfield, Virginia, on the Feast of Corpus Christi. I always remember the lady that I met on a cruise, who as a young lady was “Miss Corpus Christi,” the town in Texas. However, for me she would always be “Miss Body of Christ.” Then we headed out to historic Williamsburg, Virginia, about 150 miles away, a two-and half hour trip. We stayed Sunday overnight at the Williamsburg Inn, that is still there, but now its rates are about $650 per night. I know it was a lot less than that back then. This Inn gave us three guest tickets for all the indoor events. Colonial Williamsburg is the city’s restored Historic Area. Along with nearby Jamestown and Yorktown, Williamsburg forms part of the Historic Triangle, which annually attracts more than four million tourists. Today, Colonial Williamsburg is Virginia’s largest tourist attraction by attendance, a living-history museum, funded by a private foundation, on 300 acres. There are over 500 hundred restored or recreated buildings from the 18th century, when this city served as the capital of the colonial era Colony of Virginia. The historic area includes three main thoroughfares and their connecting side streets, which were designed to represent how Williamsburg existed in the 18th century. Costumed employees work and dress as people did during the colonial era, sometimes using colonial grammar and diction. In the late 1920s, the restoration of colonial Williamsburg was championed to celebrate patriots and the early history of the United States. Colonial Williamsburg was the brainchild of the Reverend William Archer Rutherfoord Goodwin (1869-1939), an Episcopal priest, historian, and author. In 1924, he approached the philanthropist and oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874-1960) with the idea of restoring parts of the town. Rockefeller agreed, and with cloak-and-dagger secrecy, began purchasing run-down properties using Goodwin as his agent. Colonial Williamsburg officially opened in 1938. In 1960, it was designated a National Historic Landmark District. A century after Goodwin’s work began, Colonial Williamsburg still is a work in progress. Unlike other living history museums, Colonial Williamsburg allows anyone to walk through the historic district free of charge, at any hour of the day. Charges apply only to those visitors who wish to enter the historic buildings to see arts and crafts demonstrations during daylight hours, or attend scheduled outdoor performances, such as the Revolutionary City programs. The Visitor Center near the Colonial Parkway features a short film, Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot, which debuted in 1957. Visitors can park at the Visitor’s Center, as automobiles are restricted from the restored area. Some anthropologists have discussed Colonial Williamsburg as an attraction that catered to America’s upper/middle to affluent socioeconomic classes, a Republican Disneyland. I liked it, since I got a better feel for upper class Virginia plantation owners who founded our country. To be authentic they had to have segregation for the black workers, which they did. Obviously, parts of this town have appeared in various TV and film productions. I have over twenty postcards and two or three booklets. Have you ever been to Williamsburg?

Washington DC at night

That Saturday evening of June 23, 1984, we went sightseeing in the twilight and dark in Washington DC. We visited the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial, besides the Washington Monument. I liked the round Jefferson Memorial, plus the simplicity of the Washington Monument. The imposing Lincoln on his seat was impressive when you stand next to it. However, the Vietnam Memorial was more meaningful. I knew that people I went to school with had died there. I also remembered that I my brother Jerry had died in a boating accident, one week after he returned from a year’s tour of duty in Vietnam, so that his name was not there on this memorial. We also drove by the Washington National Episcopal Cathedral that was paid for by Congress in 1893. We ended our evening in DC with a dinner in Georgetown. Have you ever seen Washington DC at night?

Arlington National Cemetery

That Saturday afternoon of June 23, 1984, we drove to Arlington National Cemetery and got tickets to see the John F Kennedy Gravesite, the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Arlington House Custis Lee Mansion. Arlington National Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the United States National Cemetery System, with more than 400,000 people buried in its 639 acres in Arlington County, Virginia. This cemetery was established in 1864, during the American Civil War. The USA federal union government confiscated this Arlington Estate, the land on which the cemetery was built, from the private ownership of Confederate States Army General Robert E. Lee’s family, following a tax dispute over the property. Today, it conducts approximately 27 to 30 funerals each weekday and between 6-8 services on Saturday. I was surprised to learn that the Arlington Cemetery land was owned by Robert E. Lee, the General of the Confederacy. I knew about the Unknown Soldier and the Kennedy grave site. Somehow, I never put Robert E Lee and the Arlington Cemetery together. In 1802, George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of George Washington’s wife Martha began building Arlington House, that he inherited from his natural father. John Custis had four children, but only one, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, survived. She married future Confederate States Army General Robert E. Lee in 1831. Thus, Lee got the house of George Washington’s grandson, with his marriage. Once Virginia succeeded from the Union, Robert E. Lee, resigned his USA Army commission to lead Virginia’s separatist armed forces, as he was appointed commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederate Army’s primary military force. Prior to the Civil War, American military personnel were buried in Alexandria, Virginia. With Confederate forces occupying the high ground of Arlington, the neighboring national capital in Washington, DC, was left vulnerable to a Confederate Army attack. In 1862, the USA Congress passed legislation authorizing the U.S. federal government to purchase land for national cemeteries for the purpose of burying military dead. In May 1864, the Union acquired Arlington Cemetery for $26,800, after the property was placed for tax sale. In 1874, George Washington Custis Lee sued the USA federal government, and won at the Supreme Court ruled 5–4. He then sold the land back to the USA governments for $150,000. In 2014, the cemetery celebrated the 150th anniversary of its founding. The unknown soldiers are from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, that has been perpetually guarded since July, 1937. There have been a few problems in supervising this cemetery. It was a great site to see how many people have given their lives to save the USA. Have you ever been to Arlington National Cemetery?