Lincoln Memorial

It was a day that combined inspiring political rhetoric with the very best of pop culture. Tens of thousands of citizens, a throng more than a mile long on the National Mall, braved frigid weather and long security lines to attend a historic concert celebrating the country's first black president -- held at the feet of the monument honoring the country's great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.

During Bill Clinton's presidency, he frequently mentioned that he could look out the window of the Oval Office and enjoy a straight-line view of the Jefferson Memorial on the Tidal Basin. But where, I wondered as a biographer of that man from Monticello, was Jefferson looking? I recently toured the National Mall, which allowed me to answer that question. Jefferson, in his ring of white marble columns, is looking across the waters of the Tidal Basin at the newly installed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, which was dedicated Sunday.

Don Mischer is Hollywood's go-to-guy for high-energy, classical spectacles -- four Super Bowl halftime extravaganzas, the opening and closing ceremonies for the Winter and Summer Olympic Games, enough televised award shows to fill a freight train with swag bags. But even he is a bit awed by the setting of his latest project: the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Mischer is orchestrating today's concert and opening ceremony for this week's inauguration of the first African American president.

After years of public squabbling over how many memorials is too many, a 7-acre homage to World War II was plunked in the middle of the National Mall in 2004. Congress then declared the cherished space known as America's Front Yard an "essentially finished work of art. " In other words, no more building. Even so, a memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will open this month on 4 acres near the Tidal Basin where the cherry blossoms bloom. As well as a tribute to the slain civil rights leader, it is evidence that the mall, like America's story, is a work in progress that might never be "finished.

Authorities briefly closed the Lincoln Memorial after finding suspicious containers and a note reading, "Do you know what anthrax is?" and "Do you know what a bomb is?" After evacuating the area, U.S. Park Police investigated a travelers' coffee mug near the note on the steps and a Gatorade bottle in a women's restroom, said Wayne Benson, a battalion chief with the District of Columbia fire department. Neither of the objects was found to be a threat, Benson said.

Beginning Monday and for the next three to five years, parts of the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials will be shadowed by scaffolding and fencing while the National Park Service undertakes a massive project to inspect, document and repair the two structures.

The House of Representatives, touched by the plight of a federal worker who died caring for the Lincoln Memorial but had no job benefits, Thursday voted to give the family of James Hudson almost $40,000. Hudson, 43, spent eight years maintaining the memorial but was classified as a temporary employee ineligible for benefits granted permanent workers, including life insurance.

They gathered at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on Tuesday morning, the people who didn't feel the need to be up close. The Lincoln Memorial, two miles west of where the new president took his oath, was as far as you could get from the swearing-in and still feel part of things. For many, the location was more meaningful than almost anywhere else: It was Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and it was here 45 years ago that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In Washington these days, conventional wisdom has it that the ill-conceived plan to build a $100-million World War II Memorial on the grounds of the existing Lincoln Memorial is a done deal. Groundbreaking will take place on Veteran's Day (Nov. 11), the Lincoln Memorial's Rainbow Pool will be demolished, and architect Friedrich St. Florian's Imperial Kitsch design will rise on the National Mall. Conventional wisdom may--or may not--be right on this matter.

Last week, the Clinton inaugural committee was promising "the most open, accessible and free inaugural in history." But many angry Americans hoping to tune into Sunday's splashy concert at the Lincoln Memorial found themselves shut out, unless they were subscribers to pay cable. That is because the inaugural committee sold the rights to its much-touted "Call for Reunion" concert to Home Box Office for a reported $1.

Already the repository of several monuments of national significance, the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is set to become home to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial -- the first monument at the Mall to honor “a man of hope, a man of peace, and a man of color,” according to the foundation that built it. The official dedication takes place Aug. 28 on the 48 th anniversary of the historic “I Have a Dream” speech delivered...

In the belly of the Nokia Theatre a week ago Saturday, the hours were ticking down toward the American Music Awards telecast amid the usual frenzy of sound checks and lighting cues. Harried technicians scampered to and fro while VIPs in color-coded wristbands sat sipping bottled water on the sidelines. Everyone was waiting for the petite woman with the pre-Raphaelite blond curls to emerge with her entourage. And from the moment Shakira stepped onstage in stiletto boots, skin-tight pants and jacket and a long gray muffler, it was clear who was running the show.

For nearly a century, the Anti-Defamation League has stared unflinchingly into the dark corners of America's social psyche -- the places where combustible tendencies such as hatred and paranoia pool and, sometimes, burst into flame. As a Jewish organization, the ADL's first preoccupation naturally is anti-Semitism, but in the last few decades it has extended its scrutiny to the whole range of bigoted malevolence -- white supremacy, the militia movement, neo-nativism and conspiratorial fantasies in all of their improbable permutations.

As a tourist in Washington, D.C., you can do a lot of walking. I repeat, a lot of walking and on pavement. Then couple that with some of Washington's famous heat and humidity. It's mostly a sweaty haze of a memory at this point, but I seem to recall both my sons -- ages 10 and 7 -- asking to be carried (who says kids don't have a sense of humor?) after a day of walking around the museums on the Mall. Meanwhile, even my hike-happy wife looked longingly at air-conditioned taxi cabs as they whizzed by, but maybe that's because she was giving me a piggyback ride.

The Lincoln Anthology Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now Harold Holzer Library of America: 800 pp., $40 -- The Best American History Essays on Lincoln Edited by Sean Wilentz for the Organization of American Historians Palgrave Macmillan: 252 pp., $16.95 paper -- A. Lincoln A Biography Ronald C. White Jr. Random House: 798 pp., $35 -- Giants The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln John Stauffer Twelve: 448 pp., $30 -- Abraham Lincoln James M.

They gathered at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on Tuesday morning, the people who didn't feel the need to be up close. The Lincoln Memorial, two miles west of where the new president took his oath, was as far as you could get from the swearing-in and still feel part of things. For many, the location was more meaningful than almost anywhere else: It was Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and it was here 45 years ago that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

The controversial plan to build a World War II memorial on the National Mall in Washington took an unexpected turn Monday, as opponents of the project revealed previously unreleased National Park Service studies showing that the proposed site is part of the historic grounds of the Lincoln Memorial. Final design review for the $100-million tribute to veterans of the war is scheduled for Thursday, when the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts will hold a public hearing.

Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of an arts event that rocked a nation grappling with racial segregation. On April 9, 1939--Easter Sunday--black contralto Marian Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial after she was refused use of Constitution Hall. An internationally renowned opera singer, Anderson had performed in Europe, the Soviet Union, South American and across the United States, including a White House show for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But the Daughters of the American Revolution, which owned Constitution Hall, banned Anderson from performing in the auditorium.

It was a day that combined inspiring political rhetoric with the very best of pop culture. Tens of thousands of citizens, a throng more than a mile long on the National Mall, braved frigid weather and long security lines to attend a historic concert celebrating the country's first black president -- held at the feet of the monument honoring the country's great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.

Don Mischer is Hollywood's go-to-guy for high-energy, classical spectacles -- four Super Bowl halftime extravaganzas, the opening and closing ceremonies for the Winter and Summer Olympic Games, enough televised award shows to fill a freight train with swag bags. But even he is a bit awed by the setting of his latest project: the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Mischer is orchestrating today's concert and opening ceremony for this week's inauguration of the first African American president.