Planning and events are under way to commemorate next year's 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth in 1809. The celebration began Tuesday (his birthday) at his birthplace in Hodgenville, Ky., about 60 miles south of Louisville.

A federal bicentennial commission is planning events next February in Washington, D.C., which will include rededication of the Lincoln Memorial, a redesign of the 2009 penny and the opening of an interactive exhibit on Lincoln at the Library of Congress. Read about the plans at www.lincolnbicentennial.gov.

The National Historic Site at 511 10th St. N.W. known as Ford's Theatre -- where President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending the theater with wife Mary-- is closed until winter 2009 because of a major renovation. The same goes for the museum on the lower level, in which artifacts relating to the assassination of our 16th president (including the Derringer revolver Booth used to kill Lincoln and Dr. Mudd's medical kit) are displayed.

However, you can still tour -- for free -- the house into which the stricken president was carried after being shot and where he died at 7:22 the next morning. With three rooms open to the public, it takes about five minutes to walk through the Petersen House. But you get to see the period-furnished front parlor where Mary Todd Lincoln spent most of that terrible night, the back parlor where Secretary of War Edwin Stanton began his investigation of the assassination and a replica of the bed on which the 6-foot-4 Lincoln was laid. It's open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Dec. 25. Information: www.nps.gov/foth or 1-202-426-6924.

And don't forget about the Lincoln Memorial, which stands at the western end of the National Mall. This neoclassical monument, which was designed by Henry Bacon after the ancient Greek temples, displays Lincoln in all his contemplative glory: 19 feet 9 inches high and 19 feet wide, carved from 28 blocks of white Georgian marble. One wall is inscribed with words from his famous Gettysburg Address, another the text from his second Inaugural Address. But the script above his head says it best: