Summertime when ice wasn't easy -- July 23, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Of all the momentous issues with which the founding fathers had to grapple, one of the most perplexing was ice.

In his letters, George Washington often expressed his frustrations about being unable to preserve ice, historians at Mount Vernon tell us.

Writing his friend Robert Morris from Mount Vernon on June 2, 1784, Washington confided the ice in his icehouse is “is gone already,” and asked Morris to send a description of the size, manner of building and management of his icehouse in Pennsylvania.

“My house was filled chiefly with Snow,” Washington added, asking Morris if he had tried keeping snow and if he thought snow was key to Washington’s defeat.

Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, quickly obliged. From Philadelphia on June 15, he wrote nearly 600 words of detailed description of his icehouse, which, in case you’re wondering, was 16-feet square and 18-feet deep, with two sets of stone walls, wood and straw above and gravel below.

Morris tells Washington he tried saving snow one year and “lost it in June,” but he can keep ice from winter until the next October or November. If the icehouse were bigger, ice would last until Christmas, he thinks, and if the walls were lined with straw, even longer.

Morris further recommends ice be broken into small pieces and pounded with heavy clubs so it consolidates into a mass so solid it requires a chisel or axe to cut off pieces.

So, Washington had his slaves rebuild his icehouse on Morris’s model and kept tinkering with the design. If you visit Mount Vernon, you can see his icehouse cut into a hillside.

Slaves also did the hard and dangerous work of hauling large blocks of ice from the frigid Potomac River in the dead of winter, pulling the blocks to shore, dragging them to the icehouse and soaking them with water, so they’d freeze into a mound, historians tell us.

And that is how the father of our country and his wife came to enjoy cool drinks and iced cream, as it was then called, long after winter had passed.

“In the warm season, ice is the most agreeable thing we can have,” Martha Washington wrote in 1793. (I’ve updated 18th century spellings and punctuation for clarity.) She loved entertaining women friends at weekly parties with ice cream and lemonade.

Washington’s icehouse was for his personal use as were icehouses built for later presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, but only the very rich could afford their own.

In 1793, an enterprising tavern owner built an ice well in Alexandria, a few miles from Mount Vernon. City Tavern, now known as Gadsby’s Tavern, at the corner of Royal and Cameron streets, offered the finest accommodations of the era, so, of course, it needed ice for guests.

That ice well could store as much as 68 tons of ice, enough for the tavern and local people who wished to buy it. In 1805, tavern owner John Gadsby sold ice for 8 cents a pound.

Magnificently restored a few years ago, the ice well has received several preservation design awards and is a magnet for visitors who peer for free into the subterranean well from the city sidewalk.

Today, we can’t help being struck not only by how much colder winters were in the 18th century but also by the amount of thought, labor and perseverance needed to thwart the process of melting.

In the past, the stories of early achievements of our young country failed to recognize the work of enslaved people. Times have changed, and we now understand much of our celebrated progress was won through the muscle and backs of the enslaved.

Preserving ice enabled the fortunate few to keep fresh meats longer and have more variety in their diet. In time, the treat became an expectation.

Ice is still transitory, of course, but these days we hardly worry about it melting. More cubes are always popping out of the icemaker in the fridge -- until the icemaker stops working and human intervention must once again be employed, in the form of low-tech ice trays.

We moderns worry about many things, but ice isn’t one of them. And for that we all can be grateful in the sizzling summer of 2020.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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A monumental step toward healing -- June 4, 2020 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In a week of peaceful protests, violent riots and widespread looting, the removal Tuesday of a Confederate monument in Alexandria may seem almost inconsequential.

No one was hurt or died, and the “Appomattox” monument – nicknamed “Appy” – wasn’t defaced or toppled. It was scheduled for removal next month, anyway. The Washington Post tucked the news on page B-4 of Wednesday’s paper.

But Appy’s sudden exit was a sign the long-simmering controversy over Confederate symbols had finally boiled over.

Sorrowful Appy depicted not a general in full military regalia on his steed but an unarmed Confederate soldier, standing, head bowed, arms crossed over his chest, hat in hand, facing the battlefields to the South where his comrades had fallen.

The monument at a busy intersection in Old Town commemorated the place where Alexandrians assembled to join the fight against the Union. It was not erected until a quarter century after the Civil War ended, a time many Southerners were eager to glorify the Confederacy.

Cities and towns have been taking down Confederate memorials since a white supremacist killed nine black worshippers at a South Carolina church in 2015.

The trend gathered steam in 2017 after white supremacists staged a rally in Charlottesville to protest a plan to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The demonstration led to one person’s death and the injuries of 19 others.

After the killing of George Floyd, who was black, May 25 in Minneapolis while in the custody of a white cop, protesters took to the streets around the country to demand justice and an end to police brutality.

Landmark monuments became a prime destination for protesters to gather and as targets of graffiti and destruction. In Washington, ugly words were inexplicably spray-painted on the Lincoln Memorial and the National World War II Memorial.

In at least half a dozen cities, demonstrators congregating at Confederate memorials painted “BLM” for “Black Lives Matter,” and other slogans and expletives on some memorials and destroyed others.

After demonstrators in Birmingham, Ala., pulled down one Confederate monument and defaced anothe, while attempting to bring it down, the mayor pleaded to be allowed to “finish the job for you.”

The city Tuesday removed the 52-foot Confederate Sailors and Soldiers Monument obelisk.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns Appy, decided to move it  early after protesters last weekend vandalized the group’s headquarters in Richmond and set a fire there. Protesters also covered Richmond’s Confederate monuments with graffiti.

The Daughters notified the city of Alexandria Monday they would take down the statue the next day.

Now, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, who signed a bill in April allowing localities to remove monuments from public property, plans to remove the soaring Lee monument in Richmond.

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, saying the city is no longer the capital of the Confederacy, wants to remove the four other monuments to Confederate leaders along Monument Avenue.

The big news about Richmond’s memorials made the Post’s frontpage Thursday.

Many consider Confederate monuments a symbol of the oppression and subjugation of blacks, while others consider the memorials a part of their history and heritage.

President Donald Trump, allying himself with the latter, tweeted in 2017: “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments.”

Those who find the monuments hurtful and hateful often quote Lee, who favored reconciliation and was no fan of war memorials.

“I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feels it engendered,” Lee wrote.

And so, more than 150 years after the Civil War ended, the battle over Confederate monuments appears to have reached a tipping point.

Future Americans surely will see fewer Confederate symbols on busy city streets. But what will happen to these monuments?

In Alexandria, the Daughters have not said where Appy was taken or what’s planned.

Often there is no plan, and monuments get crated and stored in warehouses.

Authorities should try to find Confederate monuments final resting places in museums and Confederate cemeteries. That would be a monumental step forward.

©2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

This precinct's color is blue, tinged with confusion -- June 14, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

“That’s ridiculous!” the angry voter roared at me. “Who do I complain to?”

It was Primary Day, and I was working as a city Election Officer or poll worker at the City Hall precinct in Alexandria, Va. My job was to greet voters and tell them something I assumed they’d already know.

“We’re having a Democratic primary and a Republican primary today,” I said hundreds of times, smiling. “You can vote in one or the other, but not both.”  

For some voters like this woman, though, that was infuriating news. She wanted to vote in both primaries and wasn’t giving up without a fight.  

The precinct election chief, overhearing her protests – who didn’t? – showed her a sample ballot with the pertinent section of Virginia Code about primaries: “No person shall vote for the candidates of more than one party.”

She redirected her ire toward Richmond and asked for a Democratic ballot.   

It would be easy to dismiss her as dumb, but the story is more nuanced. For one thing, she had plenty of company in her confusion.

By my estimate, about one in 10 voters at my precinct Tuesday either thought there was only a Democratic primary or knew there were two primaries and thought they could vote in both.

Virginia voters don’t register to vote by party and some infrequent voters had forgotten how the open primary system works.

In Alexandria, called “one of Virginia’s most lopsidedly Democratic bastions” by The Washington Post, the Democratic primary is typically the decisive election for local offices. At the City Hall precinct, of 904 ballots cast, 851 were Democratic.

The city of 150,000 residents had hotly contested mayoral and city council races. Democratic candidates flooded voters by mail and phone, knocked on their doors and stopped them at farmer’s markets. Local weeklies carried pages of letters to the editor by neighbors asking neighbors to vote for their favorite candidates.

The perpetual issue is development – how much and where.

Residents of Old Town worry more new hotels and condos along the riverfront will ruin the ambiance of the brick-walked city George Washington frequented. Some voters are also fed up with ever-rising real estate taxes.

But Alexandria faces mounting financial pressure for education and social services in an increasingly diverse city where public school children speak 120 languages and nearly two in three receive free or reduced price meals.

On a day when other women candidates across the state did well, incumbent Mayor Allison Silberberg, a soft-spoken and lonely opponent of development on council, lost to pro-development Vice Mayor Justin Wilson, who said when he announced his candidacy for mayor, “Preservation of the status quo is not a vision.”

Wilson, 39, had strong support among parents in the Del Ray neighborhood, while Silberberg, 55, was popular with well-to-do retirees in Old Town, the Post reported.

There was a strong “throw the rascals out” mood toward city council. A dozen candidates ran for the six seats, and two of four incumbents seeking re-election lost. 

Among the winning newcomers are a 32-year old woman, a Sudanese refugee and a first-generation Mexican American.   

Since the only Republican contest was for the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in November, several self-proclaimed lifelong Republicans reluctantly asked for the Democratic ballot. They wanted a voice in city government, even though it meant not having one in choosing the Senate candidate.   

At least a few asking for both ballots were Democrats who wanted to help Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine in his re-election bid by voting for the weakest Republican. They needn’t have worried.

Virginia Republicans obliged by choosing Corey Stewart, a Trump extremist who supports keeping Confederate monuments in place. 

Turnout in the off-year primary was light around the state. But in Alexandria, about 23 percent of registered voters turned out – up from 16 percent three years ago – even though it was a lovely spring day with a huge parade and celebration just across the Potomac in Washington at midday for the Washington Capitals.

There was no confusion about who won the Stanley Cup.

House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. famously said all politics is local. Sometimes, as in Alexandria on Tuesday, local politics is all.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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My church struggles with Robert E. Lee's legacy -- Nov. 2, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

When my church in Alexandria made the news, I knew it would be a bumpy ride.  

The historic Episcopal church, after months of soul-searching, announced Oct. 26 it would relocate from the sanctuary two marble plaques memorializing George Washington and Robert E. Lee, its most famous members.

It may not surprise you that some media reports overly simplified and exaggerated the turn of events.

Headlines trumpeted: “Cultural terrorism comes to Christ Church in Alexandria” and “George Washington’s church to tear down memorial honoring first president.”  

Blogs referred to “ripping out” the memorial to Washington the church now finds “offensive.”

Asked about the plaques in a TV interview, John Kelly, President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, criticized the decision and praised Lee as an honorable man.   

Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of Supervisors and a Republican candidate for Senate next year, and others decried political correctness.

“The next thing . . . is that they would take the name Christ off the name of this church,” Stewart declared in a news conference outside the church.

Let’s take a breath here.  

After Christ Church opened in 1773, Washington was one of the early worshippers and had a family pew. His adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, gave the church one of Washington’s Bibles after he died.

Lee could walk to church from his boyhood home a few blocks away. He and two of his daughters were confirmed in the church in 1853, and Lee attended Sunday morning services April 21, 1861, after he resigned his commission in the U.S. Army.

His eldest daughter, Mary Custis Lee, left the church $10,000 for its endowment when she died in 1918.

The church installed the two plaques -- “In Memory of George Washington” and “In Memory of Robert Edward Lee” – on either side of the altar two months after Lee died in October 1870.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill saw the plaques when they worshipped on New Year’s Day 1942. Over the years, so did Presidents Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan and both Bushes when they visited.

In the decade I’ve been a member, there’s been a growing uneasiness among the largely white parish that the prominent Lee plaque discourages black people from becoming part of the church.

Then, white nationalist Richard Spencer moved to Old Town Alexandria, and the horrible events in Charlottesville last summer brought the matter to a head.

The vestry unanimously decided “the plaques create a distraction in our worship space and may create an obstacle to our identity as a welcoming church . . . Accordingly the plaques will be relocated no later than the summer of 2018.”

Emily Bryan, senior warden of the church, told parishioners last Sunday: “Today, the legacy of slavery and of the Confederacy is understood differently than it was in 1870. For some, Lee symbolizes the attempt to overthrow the Union and to preserve slavery . . . The plaques in our sanctuary make some in our presence feel unsafe or unwelcome.”

Where my church stumbled was in not having a new location already chosen, so outsiders would see we aren’t trying to hide our history. A committee will decide where on the church campus to put the plaques.

Remaining unchanged in the sanctuary will be Washington’s box pew, the plaque marking his funeral, silver markers for Washington and Lee on the pews and communion rail, and other references to the two men.  

In the churchyard, Confederate soldiers in a mass grave will remain undisturbed.

So, maybe you’re saying, OK, I get why they’re moving the Lee plaque – but why Washington too?

Because the two plaques were installed at the same time and “visually balance each other, maintaining the symmetry of our sanctuary,” church leaders decided they should move together.

I hope the new location balances respect for history with modern -- and timeless -- values.  

I like the way Noelle York-Simmons, Christ Church rector, explained the situation to reporters the other day.

“We are the church of George Washington, of Robert E. Lee, but most importantly we are the church of Jesus Christ,” she said. Amen.

 ©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

A new era of monument men and women in the South -- July 23, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Walking in the Old Town section of Alexandria, Va., last week, I passed two young men, probably in their 20s.

“They’re talking about taking that down,” one said, pointing to a statue in the middle of the busy intersection of Prince and South Washington streets. The other fellow squinted into the morning sun at the bronze figure.

“Who is it – Eisenhower?” he asked.

I laughed. It’s worth remembering that not everyone follows the news closely.  

Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever suggested removing a statue of Dwight D.  Eisenhower. People may argue about what the national Eisenhower memorial in Washington should look like, but we all agree that our 34^th president is monument-worthy.

The American appetite for war memorials and monuments to presidents and generals seemed boundless -- until the killings last month of nine black church members in Charleston, S.C., prompted a reappraisal of Confederate symbols and monuments.

The prominent statue in Alexandria whose future is in question is a Confederate monument, but it’s not a tribute to a general. “Appomattox” – nicknamed “Appy” -- shows an unarmed Confederate soldier, head bowed, arms crossed over his chest, hat in hand, facing the battlefields to the South where his comrades fell.

Appy has lent its sorrowful presence to the intersection since 1889. Drivers occasionally crash into the statue, but Appy has always been restored to his perch.

As in countless other communities in the South, though, Alexandria is weighing whether to move the Confederate sculpture to a museum. City Council is expected to take up the issue in the fall.

Such decisions evoke strong emotions and protests. Vandals in several states have spray-painted the slogan, “Black Lives Matter,” on monuments, action that further divides communities when they need to be united.

My guess is that a year from now we’ll see fewer Confederate monuments on Southern streets, squares and parks and more in museums. That’s a step in the right direction, but we should do more.

Communities will miss the moment if they put Confederates in the attic, figuratively, but fail to think of all that’s happened in the 150 years since the end of the Civil War. Surely, we can find more recent heroes and stories to pass to future generations.    

Americans traditionally have focused on presidents, generals and victims of disasters for our memorials and monuments. We’ve slighted our rich and diverse cultural history – the artists, athletes, composers, explorers, inventors, musicians, scientists, writers and others who have contributed to the American spirit.

I read recently that there are 94 statues in Russia to literary giant Alexander Pushkin -- 94! Russians are not content with promoting Pushkin in Russia alone. A full-length statue of Pushkin is on the campus of The George Washington University – a gift in 2000 from the city of Moscow to the city of Washington.

You probably can count the statues to Mark Twain in this country on one hand.

The South has a strong literary history, and some cities have immortalized authors. In downtown Jackson, Miss., are statues of Eudora Welty, Richard Wright and William Faulkner. 

We can and should do more to recognize the contributions of women. The Virginia Women’s Monument Commission is raising money and seeking names of Virginia women for a monument on Capitol Square in Richmond. A dozen figures will be cast in bronze and names of other notable Virginia women will be inscribed on a Wall of Honor.

Farther afield, so to speak, few of us might think an agricultural pest worthy of tribute, but the Boll Weevil Statue in downtown Enterprise, Ala., tells the story of the community’s resilience.

Local cotton farmers, their crops devastated by the boll weevil in 1915, turned to growing peanuts and thrived. The monument, dedicated in 1919, is a thank you to the pest for the lessons it taught.

Rather than focusing on the Civil War, Southern communities can use the opportunity of moving Confederate statues to tap the imagination of residents and find new heroes and stories to immortalize. It’s time we moved on.  

To whom -- or what -- would you like to see a monument in your community? Send me your ideas. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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