Living It Up Among the Dead

Think a cocktail might raise your spirits? Or any spirits abiding in Congressional Cemetery in Southeast DC? Corpse Reviver #2 was the featured drink served up recently on the historic grounds at an evening reception for Garrett Peck's book THE POTOMAC RIVER.(The cemetery sits along the Anacostia River, once called the Eastern Branch of the Potomac.) Gin, Lillet vermouth,  orange liqueur and a touch of absinthe. (The cemetery always promises some lively if entirely sober and silent company, including  J. Edgar Hoover, John Philip Sousa, Tip O'Neill, and a philanthropic brothel owner named Mary Hall who once conducted business on what is now the Museum of the American Indian at Independence and Maryland Avenues.) I was hoping to meet some of the people with whom I might be buried someday, being a purchaser of space in the Cemetery's so-called Green Section that features a biodegradable finale. (No metals, no chemicals, only a wooden box.) www.congressionalcemetery.org still has openings...and a new book available from Arcadia press.