Among other things

To be honest, I don't have a great number of musical memories from my childhood. I remember beating on a drum, happily, during an improvisational session in the Ephesus Road elementary school music room, and I remember a class trip - all of us bearing recorders - to a performance by the N.C. Symphony Orchestra. I think that I remember seeing Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger sing 'This Land is My Land,' and, if you're willing to count my 12th year as a part of my childhood, I recall seeing the Beatles' 'Help' on a big screen.

It's against a relatively thin tapestry, then, that I recall, in rather vivid terms, the Schoolhouse Rock musical that focused on the means by which a bill becomes a law. The bebop jazzman Jack Sheldon singing about the legislative process? It's hard to forget, once you've heard it.

And, indeed, the tune crossed my mind the other day, as Cleo and I walked across the National Mall after a good spell at the Air and Space Museum (that's Cleo, above, in the cockpit of a Cessna) and the National Botanical Garden. It was a beautiful day; the capitol building shone brilliantly above the sweet cut grass, and a few tourists walked lazily around the reflecting pool whose surface was pierced only by a few ducks. Inspired, I gestured to the building, and told Cleo something like this: "That's an important building, sweetie. You know how we live in a country called America? In that building, people make decisions about America. They decide things like - and here I paused, suddenly daunted by the task of explaining Medicare to a three-year-old - things like where to build roads, and when to build buildings."

Cleo took it in. She thought for a second. And then she asked, reasonably, "And is that where they decide where to make syrup?"