DC By the Book

Excerpt: In the middle of the afternoon, there are two basic types of people on the train: people wearing shorts and baseball caps, who smile and look out the window as if the train is a fun ride at an amusement park (because they're on vacation), and people wearing suits, who view the ride as a tedious journey from one point to another

Excerpt: If you want to think about big, inspirational ideas (for you that might mean a division problem with a really long remainder), just go sit at the foot of the Washington Monument, which is basically a giant arrow pointing up to the sky. It's very uplifting, and you also have the feeling that it just might fall over on top of you since it's so much taller and more important than the antlike people walking around it. (Slight disappointment: Caitlin didn't want to wait in line to ride the elevator up to the top.

Excerpt: The Lincoln Memorial contains a truly giant statue of president Lincoln sitting on a big throne and gazing at the U.S. Capitol building. Something about the sheer giantness should be a word) and the serious look on his face makes even the most sweaty, hyper kids fall silent when they enter the memorial.

Excerpt: First of all, Wendy, the National Mall is NOT a giant shopping mall. ( I know; I was disappointed, too.) It's more like a big open space devoted to monuments of important people and events in American history. It also serves as a running track where portly government employees shuffle their sagging bodies to and fro during their lunch hours.

Excerpt: Caitlin stood behind Gilda on the long, steep escalator descending into the Dupont Circle Metro Station. Gilda didn't respond; she focused on the quelling a feeling of vertigo as she looked down into the underground station. She was also intrigued by a Walt Whitman poem engraved into the granite wall encircling the escalator. "I sit by the restless all the dark night- some are so young; Some suffer so much- I recall the experience sweet and sad..." Gilda wasn't quite sure what the words meant, but she liked the haunting, poignant sound of the words- the eerie feeling of reading a poem while being lowered into the ground. She pulled out her reporter's notebook and jotted a note to capture the feeling: So many buildings and monuments in this city are engraved with poetic messages that make you think about the suffering of people in times past. It reminds me of walking through a graveyard: it's beautiful and interesting but also lonely and a little spooky too.

Excerpt: A guard let Gilda into the Spy Museum lobby, and Gilda was delighted to discover that her new work environment was both stylish and mysterious. Ominoous quotations about espionage were projected onto the walls, and video screens featuring clips from famous spy cases were suspended all around. Flashing neon lights framed the doorway leading into the museum exhibits.

Excerpt: As Gilda ascended the stairs, she passed an enormous, greenish statue of a bearded man that was bound with heavy ropes and suspended from the ceiling. Something about the violent, humiliating manner in which the statue was being hoisted made Gilda think of a lynching. She read a placard explaining that the statue was a replica of a famous statue of a man named Feliks Dzerzhinsky, "the father of the KGB." RUSSIANS TOPPLED THE STATUE WHEN THE SOVIET UNION FELL, the sign explained.

Excerpt: Gilda's ears perked up at the mention of the Spy Museum's "lipstick gun." On the museum's website, she had read about the small silver handgun disguised as a tube of lipstick that could fire a single bullet. Along with objects including an umbrella that shot poison pellets, the lipstick gun was one of the Spy Museum's more whimsical, if deadly examples of Cold War secret weaponry.

Excerpt: "WHO KNEW?" GILDA JOYCE HIGHLIGHTS, FAVORITES & "JUST PLAIN WEIRD" OBJECTS AT THE INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM The Lipstick Gun (the "Kiss of Death"): This was created by the KGB (the intelligence agency for the Soviet Union during the Cold War in case you're clueless.) There's something spooky about looking into what you think is a lipstick and instead seeing a little hole from which a bullet might fire. "Sisterhood of Spies" Exhibit: Listen, there's A LOT they don't teach us in school. Who knew that there were so many female spies throughout history-- women who went around hiding secret notes in their bonnets, sausages curls, petticoats, and china dolls? The Jefferson wheel cipher: Who knew that Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers of our nation, also invented a way to encode and decode messages? (And why is it that presidents don't invent things anymore? I guess they're way too busy to carve things out of wood.) The wheel cipher Jefferson made looks like a little wooden rolling pin, but it's actually made of twenty-six round wooden pieces, each engraved with letters of the alphabet and threaded onto an iron spindle. When you turn the wheels, you can scramble and unscramble words in lots of different ways. Great for passing secret notes during math class!

Excerpt: Russian Embassy- Gilda watched a sleek black car glide into the guarded entrance to the Russian Embassy. "People who live in this neighborhood say they still get bad TV reception because of all the surveillance activity that still goes on around the Russian Embassy," Matthew explained, following her gaze. "Not to mention the tunnel leading from the basement of a house in this neighborhood; the U.S. secretly built it when we were trying to listen in on the Russians' conversations.

Excerpt: Gilda found herself walking past the White House, past rows of sleek black cars, past somber-looking security guards. She thought she saw a shadowy face watching her through a front window.

Excerpt: Surrounded by a quiet Georgetown neighborhood on R Street, Oak Hill Cemetery is a historic and atmospheric destination in Washington, D.C. You will find many graves from the Civil War era, including a family mausoleum where President Lincoln's son Willie was buried during Lincoln's presidency-until the president himself was assassinated, after which time both bodies were laid to rest in Springfield, Illinois. During his term in office, the president was known to spend hours sitting by his son's tomb in Oak Hill Cemetery.

Excerpt: She made her way down Wisconsin Avenue, past the rumbling of idling delivery trucks parked outside businesses, past the high wall of the Russian Embassy with its security gates and wary guards, and past Guy Mason Park, where toddlers played in the sand as bored nannies watched. As she neared Georgetown, the air filled with the smoky aroma of Rockland's Barbeque and an assortment of Thai and Italian restaurants where people sat at little tables along the sidewalks, fanning themselves in the heat.

Excerpt: Gilda felt immediately happy when she entered the cathedral-like Great Hall of the Library of Congress. Gilda loved libraries of all kinds, and this was quite simply the most spectacular library she had ever visited. She was surrounded by high ceilings, marble arches, pillars, marble mosaics, and murals. Everywhere she looked, sculptures and paintings portrayed images of freedom and knowledge. Gilda had paused to view a series of paintings depicting the long journey of progress from cavemen scribbling on cave walls through the development of the written word and printed books when she heard Caitlin's breathless voice calling her name.

Excerpt: The atmosphere in the city was languid and sleepy as Gilda exited the Union Station Metro stop and headed toward the Library of Congress, where she planned to meet Caitlin. The warm, musky scent of black-eyed Susans and marigolds permeated the air, and idling tour buses parked along the streets filled the air with a low, rumbling sound. Gilda walked through a quiet park where trees were labeled with little plaques to identify their species. Here and there, office workers wearing high-heeled pumps sat on benches talking on cell phones or munching on sandwiches.

Excerpt: Inside Union Station, a parade of people streamed from the trains, dragging suitcases and talking on cell phones as they converged on shops selling ice cream and coffee. Gilda followed a crowd of people down the escalator to the underground train. She waited on the platform, sensing the fuming impatience of weary people staring silently at each other across the tracks.

Excerpt: Gilda jumped up from her table and headed down 10th Street toward Ford's Theatre and Petersen House. The street simmered in the late afternoon sun: everyone walked slowly and silently, as if any speech or extra movement would make things hotter. It's funny, Gilda thought, that the place where Abraham Lincoln was shot is now surrounded by the Hard Rock Cafe and the Lincoln Bar & Grill. She saw a crowd of tourists heading into Petersen House for a tour, so she followed them inside. On the night of April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot while watching a play at Ford's Theatre-- the theatre was across the street from this house. Theatregoers carried the president into the Petersen House, where he died the next day. This home has been preserved to look just as it was at the time of the president's death. Gilda felt claustrophobic in the dimly lit house as she followed slow-moving tourists into a sitting room where black-and-white pictures hung on the walls, then back to a bedroom filled with antique toiletry bottles, books, and mirrors. The short narrow bed seemed too small for Lincoln's tall stature.

Excerpt: She left Petersen House and crossed the street to Ford's Theatre. A tour guide pointed her toward the basement of the theatre, now a museum filled with an assortment of eerie objects: the clothes Lincoln wore on the evening he was assassinated, bottles of embalming fluid used to prepare Lincoln for burial, the drumsticks that played "Hail to the Chief" shortly before his death, and a dark hood worn by Mary Surratt-- the only woman in the group of four people who were executed for conspiring to assassinate the president.

Excerpt: Caitlin leaned forward and whispered, as if she and Gilda were plotting something. "If I were a mole in the D.C. intelligence community, I think the Alley of the Russian Poets would be the perfect signal site. It's a walkway lined with stones that look like little tombstones with the names of Russian poets-- and there's a tree planted for each poet. I'm almost positive I've seen a stone engraved with this poet's name-- Anna Akhmatova. It's perfect! It's walking distance from Oak Hill Cemetery; it's just down the street from the Russian Embassy, next to Guy Mason Park."

Excerpt: "You'll find this place interesting," said Balthazar, punching in a secret code that gave him access to the Mansion on O Street-- a group of interlinked Victorian houses near Dupont Circle. "It's a very unique hotel because it's also an art gallery, a restaurant, and an antiques emporium all mixed up together. It's the perfect place to stay when you're working on something covert because the owner never reveals the names of her guests.".... They entered a banquet room in which chandeliers dripping with crystal hung from gilded ceilings. Elegant little tables with white linen cloths and roses were set for dinner, but the room was virtually empty except for a couple seated in a corner who spoke in hushed tones. As Gilda took in the details of the large, dim room, she realized the atmosphere was overwhelming because it was at once elegant and so totally zany and cluttered, it was hard to know where to focus her attention. Everywhere she looked, Gilda's eye rested on something unexpected: amid Victorian lamps and enormous bouquets of silk roses were sculptures and paintings of angels, ridiculous marionettes that hung from the ceiling and walls, and knick-knacks and figurines featuring everything from fat ladies to elves and fairies. Hundreds of paintings and books on every topic imaginable were stacked in precarious towers and stuffed into nooks and crannies.