D.C. March for Life Trip

I've been trying to think of a nice well-written opening to this post and, having utterly failed, I shall proceed to make my point in as few words as possible....

I'm in D.C.! Having no internet access readily available, I shall confine myself to a fairly short post, however, when I get back home I will try to write a long (or several) and probably boring post. So for now, I'm merely checking in and providing a brief list of our activities.

Scenery in Maryland and Virginia
Although I unfortunately have no pictures of the scenery through which we drove on the first couple of days, it was gorgeous. Thanks to the audio book "Mount Vernon Love Story", my mind was already in a revolutionary war mentality and the forests, hills and fields that surrounded us, under the light of a setting sun, made a perfect backdrop for imagining scenes from that time. It was incredibly easy to see a band of revolutionary soldiers walking through that field, or hiding in that wood, fighting on that hill. Unfortunately my writing skills are such that you can have no idea of how cool is was, unless you have gone there yourself.

Mt. Vernon


The Franciscan Monastery (in D.C.)

Bus Tour of the City

For an hour-long bus tour of the city, we joined our Pro-Life Wisconsin Group. Among other things, we saw the Iwo Jima statue and the Lincoln Memorial (we got to get off the bus and walk around at both places). Also, we saw the Ford Theatre (in passing) and the National Air Force Memorial.

Pro-Life Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

Funny Story...

While ordering breakfast at a restaurant this morning, we ran into my mom's roommate from college! Surprisingly, she recognized ME because I look like my mom and she's probably seen me in Christmas photos. Wow!

The March for Life itself

It was cold, but it was also cool. We began with walking to a preparatory rally at which a number of people (including presidential candidate Ron Paul) gave brief speeches. Unfortunately, due to our distance from the stage and the many distractions by which we were surrounded, I was not able to listen properly to the speeches. Luckily, EWTN offers post-march replays of the rally, so I hope to see it later. Before many of the speeches were over, our group (Pro-Life Wisconsin) departed in order to get an early place in the march. After standing on the sidewalk for about an hour, the march finally began. During that time, we prayed the rosary and my cousin sang a lot of ridiculous songs. There were a lot of groups around us and our group was standing with Rock for Life (with which we have been doing many activities).

Many people chanted: "Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Roe v. Wade has got to go!"

The number of people was astoundingly large. I've heard several different numbers on how many - somebody said half a million, somebody said a quarter of a million, somebody said 200,000, so I don't know, there were a lot! It was a somewhat squishy day in D.C. :)

The vast majority of them were young people - all very enthusiastic - smiling, jumping, chanting. It was fun being part of the group. I found it inspiring and hopeful, to put it mildly. Once we reached the Supreme Court, many people gathered around to hear testimonies of women and men (belonging to the group "Silent No More") who had had an abortion and since greatly regretted it. The stories were sad and bittersweet.

After that we went back to our motel room and rested. We were outside and on our feet for about five hours.

More details to be added later. I'm off to dinner...