Not Quite Mile High Club

I've long said that you can't count yourself a real Richmonder if you haven't had a picnic on top of city hall.

The observation deck situated on the 18th floor offers, hands down, the best view of our city in every direction.

So on this beautiful sunny afternoon with a picnic lunch in hand, I took the elevator to the top.

But which direction to face for enjoying my meal? I finally settled on east although given the views, there's really no bad choice.

At the beginning, it was just me and the birds.

And while I never actually saw them, they never stopped cheeping, so I guessed they were just under the eaves - and a lot of them.

And as good as my lunch was, the visual treats began with my walk around the deck afterwards.

Cumulus clouds were stacked up along the horizon in every direction.

Looking south, the river was viewable in small segments only, but looking east, I got the same bend in the river view that had given Richmond its name.

A guy joined me on the deck, eagerly snapping photos from all sides as we wound our way around again and again.

He told me he'd been at the credit union downstairs and made a crack about the view only to be informed about the observation deck, which he'd never even heard of.

Looking out with me, we marveled at our vantage point for admiring old city hall and the state capital, both magnificent from above.

He told me he'd once lunched on the top floor of the Federal Reserve building, but that the view wasn't nearly as impressive.

We watched a crane in action just north of the Altria building.

A couple of worker bees joined us for a cigarette break, undoubtedly the most scenic smoking lounge anywhere.

I could see west on Broad Street all the way to the WTVR tower, but no further, which is fine considering that Broad goes all the way to god-forsaken Short Pump.

We laughed at the Coliseum, deciding that it resembled a rusty 1950s-era notion of a space ship.

I tried to point out my beloved Clay Street, but it was barely visible given our location two blocks south and eighteen floors up.

By the time I was ready to go, he must have taken twenty or more pictures and was still crowing about having finally discovered the deck.

For the record, I did not welcome him to the real Richmonder club.

But I did make him promise that next time he comes up there, he has to bring lunch.

We Shall Overcome

I went to see history reenacted and instead became a participant in something greater and all on the steps of Richmond's City Hall.

Arriving about 12:20, there were barely thirty people gathered, but it quickly grew to many, many more to hear actor Tony Cosby do Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

At the original March on Washington, Mahalia Jackson had sung "How I Got Over" and today local singer Roz Christian did the honors. She started to sing and the mic immediately went out, which didn't matter given the strength and beauty of her voice.It wasn't long before people were clapping and testifying as she sang.

Then Cosby as MLK was introduced and he, too, discovered the lack of amplification. Shrugging it off, he launched into what is considered one of the top speeches of the 20th century.

It was mesmerizing to be standing in front of City Hall in the cold hearing such powerful words first delivered on a hot August day. If I'd had my camera with me, it would have been the faces of the children, black and white, staring enraptured at Cosby as he spoke, that I would have documented.

The crowd was respectfully silent (and 10th Street closed off to help the sound carry) except when urged by Cosby to clap, as in after the line, "America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds'."

Being one of the few white people in the audience, I appreciated MLK's line, "The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny..."

Most satisfyingly, this got a lot of applause and smiles in our direction. "We cannot walk alone," MLK said.

I was also struck by the line, "We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways or the hotels of the cities," not remembering how late such segregation was still the norm.

At the end of the speech, Cosby instructed the crowd to join him in singing "We Shall Overcome" as we walked away from the steps. All around me, I heard beautiful voices soaring in unison singing that gospel-based classic.

Feeling very caught up in the moment as I walked up 10th Street, an older black man fell into step with me. I smiled and commented about how emotional the whole experience had made me because I'd never heard the speech performed live before.

"I was at the March on Washington," he said simply. "I was eleven years old and I'll never forget a minute of it."

I felt like I was in the presence of greatness walking the streets of Richmond with this witness to history. We talked about the changes in race relations the two of us have seen in our lifetime.

I mentioned how I'd been struck by as basic a change since the 1963 speech as the hotel/motel restrictions. "So at least we've made some progress," I said.

"It's progress," he acknowledged. "But it's slow progress."

"We're a slow-moving people in some respects," I said.

"Not all of you," he said, about to cross the street. "It was my pleasure talking to you."

No, sir. It was my distinct honor to have spoken with you. It gave an even deeper meaning to what had already been a moving experience in the bitter cold on the steps of Richmond City Hall.

Overcoming, one small step at a time.

Admiring the Wind from Above

Like mailmen, neither snow nor rain nor heat usually keep me from my daily walk, but today's 20+ mile-per-hour wind was seriously discouraging, to say the least. I kept putting it off and finally mid-afternoon realized that if I didn't go soon, I wasn't going.

So I went, but walked east instead of my usual west. As I was waiting at the corner of Seventh and Marshall, a guy looked at me and nodded. Not entirely sure what he meant, I said, "This wind couldn't be much worse!"

Pulling aside his scarf, he grinned and pointed to nearby City Hall. "Sure it could," he said. ""Bet it's a whole lot worse up there."

So don't you just know I had to march myself up there to find out? I took the elevator to the Observation Deck, along with a couple of city employees who must have wanted to escape their offices pretty badly because they didn't have coats on.

And it was incredibly cold and windy up there and I'm saying that as someone who was dressed for the weather. But it was beautiful, too; every rooftop flag was at full attention, plumes of smoke made horizontal white lines across the sky and the river looked one step removed from a sheet of ice.

The gift of it was that when I got back down to the street, the wind felt as gentle as a summer breeze in comparison. And as the handsome Martin taught me a few years back, perception is reality.

It was a lovely walk home. I don't know why it took me so long to get going in the first place.