[I often will write my articles well in advance, whenever I have time, so this article was written before the events of January 6. It goes out to those, like me, who take refuge in the past, while hoping for a better future] Franklin Delano Roosevelt, by dint of his four elections, managed a number […]

I’m sure that people are interested in what is happening at the Capitol given the events of yesterday afternoon. I went out with my camera to document the – admittedly unsurprising – changes.

Usually, in these pictures, I try to give a sense of what’s going on right now. My history posts are about the past. But these pictures, only about 2 hours old, represent the past. A past where anti-democratic, conspiracy theory-spouting goons had not yet breached the Capitol and attempted to impose their will on the […]

Andrew Jackson would be the first to be sworn in on the East Portico of the Capitol. He was also the first that could have been, as the Capitol was not completed until 1826. While no contemporary picture of this event exists, there is a painting of Chief Justice John Marshall administering the oath of […]

It looks like it will be a quiet New Year’s Eve today on Capitol Hill, and I thought about historic precedents for this. The closest I could come was 1918, the year that the first World War ended, and the country was ravaged by a pandemic. So, what did those celebrations look like? Pretty quiet, […]