An afternoon of love & nonviolence at the theater

Happy Monday, DMV*! It’s March 30.

Mosaic Theater invited me to see a musical about the late civil rights leader and lawmaker John Lewis. I went yesterday. It was remarkable. The songs. The choreography. The musicians and actors. The story they told.

“Young John Lewis: Prodigy of Protest” focuses on his formative years — from his teens, when Emmett Till was lynched, to his late 20s, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

I’d learned decades ago about these dark moments in U.S. history. But the musical laid them out for me again in a tight timeline: so much happened, so many killed in those formative years of Lewis’s life. Through the racism, hatred and so many murders, how did he keep his focus on love and nonviolence?

It made me wonder: How will all that we’re living through today shape our young people? And how do we all move toward love and nonviolence?

I spent 100 minutes of a beautiful Sunday afternoon going through this history. I left feeling hopeful … and, truth be told, wanting to dance. It’s a powerful, uplifting work of art.

“Young John Lewis: Prodigy of Protest” is at Mosaic Theater through May 3.

The Franciscan Monastery Garden Guild tells me their tulips are beginning to bloom now, though they’ve not peaked. “The next few weeks will be the prime time to come visit,” they said.

I also asked reader Sam Freund, who lives near the monastery, to let me know when the tulips were in bloom. He sent me this note on Saturday: “the tulips are in bloom! usually they all pop out at once but this year they seem to be coming in batches, even now they're not all out yet. but the cherry blossoms there are an added bonus for the next few days.”

Here are details about the monastery’s garden tours and hours.

We have just another few days of cherry blossoms — with the green leaves already peeking through behind the pink petals. Here are more sakura photos to celebrate this fleeting moment.

Jocelyn Arthun, 42, who lives in the West End neighborhood of D.C., snapped this pic last Thursday after completing a lap around the Tidal Basin to see peak bloom of the cherry blossoms.

“The south side of the Basin, near the Jefferson Memorial, was crowded with tourists,” Jocelyn wrote in her submission.

“As I completed my lap, near the floral library, I stopped in my tracks at what looked like mostly locals, emerging from winter, picnicking together in a rare 80 degree day with no humidity, enjoying peak bloom — it was peak DC.”

Megan Weeks, 34, of Bowie, Maryland, snapped this pic during a family outing at Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in D.C.

“Wow wow wow. I've lived in the DMV my whole life, and this spring is the first time I've heard of the place. It's incredible!” she wrote.

“Even with much of the garden still waking up, the place is gorgeous. In addition to the beautiful plants, there's a ton of art — mosaics, sculptures, a wrought iron bench with foxes in the design. The place is brimming with personality. Right now the cherry blossoms, forsythia, hellebores, daffodils, and other early bulbs are in bloom.”

Tamara Fucile, 53, a resident of Capitol Hill: “My friends and I went for an early morning run along the Tidal Basin on Thursday … I snapped this picture from in front of the Washington Monument as the sun was rising over the Capitol.”

Share your photos of spring in the DMV here.

* For those of you wondering: The DMV is how residents here call the D.C. region, which includes Maryland and Virginia. I’d get emails from people asking about this every few weeks. Now you know. 😉