Comments & Curiosities:

Did you miss me? I missed you. Well, some more than others. I was in Washington, D.C., our nation’s capitol. Ever wonder why Washington is an independent district instead of a city in one of the states next door like Virginia or Maryland? Because the Founding Fathers may have worn silly clothes, but they were really smart and didn’t want one state to have more influence over the federal government than any other. More on the Founders and their clothes in a moment.

I get back to Washington pretty often. This time it was as part of a delegation from the Orange County Transportation Authority and the Orange County Business Council. For three days, we chug up and down the Hill, urging senators and members of Congress to send back as much of the gazillion dollars we pay in federal taxes as they can so we can do things like dredge Newport Harbor and widen the 91 Freeway, both of which are excellent things to do. But even while I’m chugging, I try to stop and smell the cherry blossoms as much as possible.

Washington is an exciting place to be, anytime, for any reason — the ultimate power center, with images you’ve seen all your life: the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol. Even if you don’t give a gnat’s eyelash about politics, any American who visits Washington and doesn’t feel moved needs to get his or her mover checked.

We were lucky enough to catch the tail end of the cherry blossoms — the yearly fireworks spectacle of white and pink blossoms that look too perfect and too beautiful to be real. So how did all those Japanese cherry trees get to Washington?

It all started with a number of cherry trees that were sent to Washington in 1912 as a gesture of friendship from the mayor of Tokyo. First Lady Helen Taft and Viscountess Chinda, the wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two trees near the Jefferson Memorial on March 27, 1912.

Nearly a century later, there are some 3,700 cherry trees in Washington. They only strut their stuff once a year, usually in mid-April, but once you’ve seen it, you won’t forget it. A nice friends-helping-friends touch to the story is that on a number of occasions, cuttings from the Washington, D.C. trees have been sent back to Japan and replanted there to replace trees that were destroyed in floods or storms.