Lorna > Recent Status Updates

“One joy scatters a hundred griefs.”

“There is soft happiness in sadness and deep sadness in happiness.”

“In the midst of chaos, there is opportunity,” Auntie Fong recites.

“This held even truer for Chinese women when I was young. No matter what our backgrounds or where we came from, we women were at the mercy of larger historic events.”

“I’ve been so focused on physically escaping this life that it isn’t until this moment that I understand there are other means of escape—with my mind and with my heart. I’m on a different path now—one that leads to light. I envision for myself the four great gifts of happiness, prosperity, longevity, and peace.”

“It can take a lifetime to make a friend, but you can lose one in an hour.”

“He was an impatient and impolite man who refused to surrender even the smallest detail
Of his grand design—qualities that resulted in his failure and in his success. All Major L’Enfant wanted was to be judged by his work, and that work was all-consuming. It was also brilliant.”

“It was one of the greatest favors ever done by one artist for another, an homage and collaboration across a span of more than one hundred years. And it was, in the end, a true and lasting cause of the redemption of Peter Charles L’Enfant.”

“Not only did Rick Olmsted establish himself as L’Enfant’s kindred soul—another artist emerging from under the close tutelage of his father to take his own place on a national stage—but he also knew enough to tie the city’s original designer tightly to George Washington in a one-on-one relationship, the collaboration that L’Enfant had hoped so fervently to see recorded for posterity.”

“With this move of about twenty miles, to a homestead just outside the federal district on its northeast angle, close by the Eastern Branch,
L’Enfant’s list of major patrons was complete: his father, Beaumarchais, Baron von Steuben, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, James Monroe, Thomas Attwood Digges, and, finally, William Dudley Digges.”

“Over the next two decades L’Enfant would submit a new petition to nearly every new seating of Congress. He would recycle text, insert new information, revise or emphasize particular claims, but never would he waver far from the argument or the bitterness embedded in his first one, submitted in December 1800.”

“The plan was published in newspapers and magazines, displayed in statehouses, and printed onto handkerchiefs, but not a single copy bore the name of Peter Charles L’Enfant. No printing of the plan in the next ninety-five years ever would.”

“Though both Madison and Jefferson would soon enough turn against George Washington and later, during their presidencies, show little appreciation for Washington’s conception of the federal city, they were now to attend to the matter of getting the land sold.”

“The birth of the design of the city of Washington, like the birth of L’Enfant, may have occurred in Paris, but its ultimate expression was
wholly American.”

“The Champs-Elysees was a first in the Western world: a public road disappearing over the horizon and leading to an unknown, seemingly infinite place.”

“How Versailles first imprinted itself on the eyes and mind of the future designer of Washington, D.C., can never be known. It’s enough to imagine Pierre Charles walking with his father through one of the chateau’s massive entrance archways and onto its great western plaza. Here he would have seen for the first time in his life a true man-made vista. . . .”

“It was a life of relative anonymity, lived to generate and sustain the mortal fame of king and country. It was a life young Pierre L’Enfant would eventually leave behind, but not until he had taken from it the experiences and training necessary for his later work as a planner of cities.”

“America was a kinetic country, one dominated by hoof and wheel and keel, and its capital would respect this fact. It would have thoroughfares for carriages and wide greenswards for walking, yes, but waterways as well. L’Enfant would create a city, to which all roads, rivers, and oceans would lead.”

“The yacht club was founded after the Civil War, and the stucco Mediterranean-style villa in front of them is newly designed. It’s not only the largest yacht club in the country, it’s an anchor of Detroit society.”

“Our family business is windshields, Marjorie. Glass. An entire fortune built on sand. There’s a deep irony there.”

“The spirit of Washington hovered over the country in the years and decades after his death.”

“He had hoped that by remaining in office he could help calm the partisan passions indulged by his lieutenants. Nothing of the sort occurred. Indeed, the passions raged higher than ever. And Jefferson and Hamilton having left office, he had less influence over them than ever.”

“As much as Jefferson decried the direction of the country under Washington’s presidency, he thought things would get worse if Washington weren’t president. Jefferson judged Washington a check on the more egregious aspects of Hamilton’s federalism, and he did his best to get the president to serve a second term.”

“When the last embrace had been given, Washington left the tavern to catch a ferry to New Jersey and the road to home. . . . . . As soon as he was seated, the barge put off into the river, and when out in the stream, our great and beloved General waved his hat and bid us a silent adieu.”

“The lesson Washington took from Long Island was that he could lose ground but mustn’t lose the army. The British could never occupy all of America. He could retreat and retreat, so long as he had an army to retreat with.”

“. . . Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” — PATRICK HENRY

“Now and then I lifted my eyes to the white strand just four miles below and imagined gardening here with the Atlantic Ocean to sing to. It was a little piece of heaven fallen from the sky.”