WASHINGTON — Congress returns from its spring recess, so political theater is not far behind. Skirmishes over the Mueller report and impeachment shall start again.

Life did go on. In an extraordinary 24 hours, I took a winding tour of my time in miniature: in journalism, history and music. Serendipity is not dead.

The White House correspondents' dinner used to be Washington's best imitation of Hollywood. People posed, feinted and jockeyed a lot. Now and then, it's fun to wash the ink off and dress up.

This year, we were more like a tribe under siege, with President Trump's relentless and demoralizing — yet energizing — attacks on the news media. I do not cover the White House. Congress is more my style. But Trump's savage reach is felt on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, too.

Speaker Ron Chernow, celebrated biographer of Alexander Hamilton and Ulysses S. Grant, cheered us up. He captured the present moment in time, as only a historian can. As a former reporter, he knew his audience of two thousand or more. Once a member of the Fourth Estate, always a bit subversive and skeptical.

Chernow told a true anecdote about Trump visiting Mount Vernon, George Washington's Virginia home. He wondered why Washington didn't name the plantation after himself. "The poor man had to settle at the lowly title of 'father of his country,'" Chernow said. He noted how fortunate young Hamilton was that America wasn't "full" when he came ashore as an immigrant.

In naming presidents with constructive relations with the press, Chernow reminded us the list was long. Thomas Jefferson once famously said that he'd rather have newspapers with a government than a government without newspapers. John F. Kennedy enjoyed press conferences and prepared for them. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt met only with women journalists.

In the mixing before and after the dinner, I turned the pages of my career. There was a friendly face from CBS News, also a former bureau chief I've admired since the day I met her. My first job in journalism was at CBS News in London, a breeze from the old days blowin' in my updo.

Wasn't that the poised young man I met on the first day on The Hill, an upstart newspaper? But wait, now he's flecked with gray. "Distinguished," I teased him.

Under the tent, I suddenly saw a man I shared a double byline with on a breaking story on the Washington snipers we wrote past midnight. The Baltimore Sun newsroom, our old paper, owned that story and was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Such moments stay awhile.

Then I ran into a fine former editor, now at the BBC News. He introduced me to his British pals, and I had to repeat, "Did you say, Rupert?" Yes, he did.

"That's the name of my English ex-husband," I said, and we all had a merry laugh.

Earlier, I gave a talk on Abraham Lincoln's fare-thee-well, his last day and tragic murder. A grad school friend came. Ten years had passed, but on a fair day over a Coke at the patisserie, who's counting?

Folk-rock singer Joan Baez gave a Fare-Thee-Well concert Friday night here at the Warner Theatre, a graceful art deco hall. I remember hearing her first record song, "Silver Dagger," which slayed me when I was young. The sound of her voice now, hauntingly bittersweet, was so still there, cutting the air. Her silver locks cut short, she sang four Bob Dylan songs — like "It Ain't Me, Babe" — as if she loved him dearly once. And she did.

She sang her song to Dylan, "Diamonds and Rust." My favorite line in the Baez songbook: "Speaking strictly for me/ we both could have died then and there."

I persuaded my college friend Michele to fly in from Michigan for that night, saying this was the last chance to hear Baez live. Carpe diem. The protest songs and spirituals she sang, along with John Lennon's "Imagine," were once music to my childhood ears. We had balcony seats and were transported back to a time when the civil rights anthem "Oh, Freedom" was in the air.

Freedom of the press is not dead.

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit the website Creators.com