After dinner, Nicky, Miles, and I went back downtown to pay respects to Rosa Parks who died this week and who was to lie in the Capitol Rotunda, the first woman to do so. It was the least we could do for this woman from the Deep South who had given us so much. We found the end of the line on the Mall at 6:30 and got into the Rotunda at around 12:30AM. It was a long walk, snaking back and forth in prescribed "lanes" defined with saw horses and police tape, inching along, stopping, waiting, later, resting a bit before going on. But it wasn't Montgomery and it wasn't Selma, and there were no dogs or fire hoses, or tear gas. There was just a lot, a whole lot, of people from DC and from Virginia, and from Maryland, and from New Jersey, and from New York, and even from Chicago, and probably a lot of other places too. We were all ages and colors and faiths. There were a surprising number of school age kids, including my own 8th grader, and I thought that was good. There were a lot of people, mostly women I'd guess, who were close in age to Sister Rose and everyone tried to help them make it over the long hours to see the coffin and to say "Thank You." That's what we wanted to do: just to say "Thank You".

Stumble It!