I have lived in Washington, DC for more than forty years. Washington is a beautiful city with many grand monuments. My favorite is the Jefferson Memorial.
The exterior of the Memorial is simple and elegant. The exterior of the Memorial is a circular, open-air structure featuring a shallow dome supported by a circular colonnade composed of 26 Ionic columns.
The interior is powerful. Thomas Jefferson stands 19 feet tall. He’s holding the Declaration of Independence and peering out to the Tidal Basin. The bronze statue of Jefferson weighs 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg).
A rehabilitation project to replace the Thomas Jefferson Memorial’s three roof systems and clean all of the exterior marble was completed in in 2021. And the statue sculpted by Rudulph Evans has been cleaned. Evans was born in Washington, DC and studied in France. His fellow students in France included Auguste Rodin and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The Memorial was built between 1939 and 1943 .
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an Order on January 12, 2021 requiring proof of a negative COVID-19 test or documentation of having recovered from COVID-19 for all air passengers arriving from a foreign country to the US. This Order will be effective on January 26, 2021.
This Order applies to all air passengers, 2 years of age or older, traveling into the US, including US citizens and legal permanent residents.
Yesterday, I was walking in the Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, DC. I stumbled across one of the many works of art in Washington’s abandoned police and fire call boxes. The project is called “Art on Call.” I have been making photos of these call boxes as I come across them. They have educated me about the city’s rich history.
This call box explains that three chief justices of the United States Supreme Court lived in Sheridan-Kalorama:
William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the United States was appointed Chief Justice by President Harding, after serving as President. Taft is the only person to have served in both of these offices. He lived at 2215 Wyoming Avenue.
Charles Evans Hughes, a U.S. Secretary of State and an unsuccessful candidate for President in 1916, became Chief Justice in 1930 and resided at 2223 R Street.
Harlan Fiske Stone, a U.S. Attorney General, occupied 1919 24th Street. during his tenure.
In addition, other prominent Supreme Court justices have lived in Sheridan-Kalorama including Louis Brandeis, Joseph McKenna and Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice of the Supreme Court.
The rendering of the Supreme Court in the call box is the creation of Peter Waddell, a native of New Zealand who came to Washington in 1992 and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. Waddell’s beautiful paintings focus on America’s history and architecture. Waddell’s view of the United States is inspiring.
The Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood also includes a number of diplomatic residences, including the residence of the French ambassador at 2221 Kalorama Road, shown below.
Stacey Kent is an American jazz singer with a glorious voice. She was born in 1965 in New Jersey and is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. Her paternal grandfather was a Russian who grew up in France. He later moved to the United States where he taught Kent French. Once she learned French, it was the only language she spoke with her grandfather. Kent travelled to England after college to study music in London, where she met saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married in 1991.
Kent has also faced serious health challenges. In a 2004 interview with Robert Kaiser of The Washington Post, Kent recounted that she’s been in comas three times caused by brainstem encephalitis:
Each time, baffled doctors were not certain they could bring her back. The last coma was in 1999, and Tomlinson nursed her through it. On doctors’ advice, he brought records to her hospital room. When she awoke he was playing Mildred Bailey, one of the great jazz singers of the ’30s. “There’s just so much emotion in that voice,” Kent says. “It’s a cry - even when she’s singing a happy song.”
I love Stacey Kent’s music and discovered this marvelous 2018 interview en français with her. The interview is also available as a podcast.
David Enzel 