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We went to Mount Vernon in Virginia a few weeks ago. It was the first time I’d been to George Washington’s family estate since a whirlwind day tour of Washington, DC, when I was a high school freshman. Our guide then was a fast-talking cabdriver who interlaced his rapid-fire wisecracks with an impressive command of facts and figures, many of which may even have been correct.

Today, the Washington plantation, once in sorry shape, has been beautifully restored, from mansion to slave quarters. At two, state-of-the-art visitor and education centers, sightseers can learn all about the great man’s life and times, including a sound and light presentation on battles of the American Revolution that features howling wind and falling “snowflakes” — tiny bits of soapsuds pumped into the theater — when Washington crosses the Delaware.

The whole thing isn’t run by the National Park Service, as you might have expected, but by a private, nonprofit organization, the genteelly named Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (MVLA), which raises money from ticket sales, food, souvenirs and money from individuals, foundations and corporations.

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By Michael Winship
Former senior writer at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS

The Detroit Tigers are retiring the great baseball manager Sparky Anderson’s number 11 this season. “It’s a wonderful gesture,” Detroit Free Press columnist Michael Rosenberg wrote. “I just wish Sparky could see it.”

Anderson won three World Series — one managing the Tigers, two with the Cincinnati Reds — and passed away this past November. Rosenberg said, “Retiring his number now is the baseball version of waiting until a relative dies to say thank you.”

That’s because it comes sixteen years after Anderson left the Tigers in a bitter feud with owner Mike Ilitch. Yet as Sparky once said, “I’ve got my faults, but living in the past is not one of them. There’s no future in it.”

I wish I could say the same, let bygones be bygones and the rest, but when it comes to two other baseball devotees, the Presidents Bush, it’s tough. Father and especially son left behind a heap of wreckage. (more…)