So, I work in a middle school as the school librarian, and kids are hilarious. One day, a pair of students were late coming back from lunch, and they asked me for a hall pass to tell their teacher that they were excused. I didn’t write one, because they shouldn’t have been excused. One of these sweet children took it upon herself to write a pass and forge my name.
I don’t know which kid did this, because she handed it to a substitute teacher, but that sub left it for the regular teacher, who photographed it and sent the picture to me for a laugh. It said:
“Librarian hall pass. -Ms. Dunlap”
Wait, that’s not entirely accurate. It actually said:
“Libaryn hall pass. -Ms. Donelab”
I was so amused that I wasn’t even mad. I took the image of the forged post-it photographed against the background of other papers on the art teacher’s desk and had it printed on canvas with a five dollar Groupon. That piece of art sits behind my desk at work today, and I shall, from here on, refer to myself in my professional capacity as Donelab, Libaryn.
Whelp, yesterday, Donelab, Libaryn went to the LIbrary of Congress. That was the coolest thing, but it was the tail end of a very long day, so once again, let me back up.
The first thing we had scheduled today was a Segway tour. We have done these before- so often, in fact, that they feel kind of routine. New place in the US? See it on a Segway. Look like a giant dork on a Segway? Of course you do- but you don’t live there, so who cares? The same theory applies in DC. Our Segway tour had a great guide and a solid two hours of information. We rolled around and recapped what we had visited at a bunch of different points earlier in the week. You always learn something cool or see something new on a tour, even if you’re touring a place you’ve been before.
Any tour guide you get is an expert in a different thing. It’s really cool. Today’s new statue was the Vietnam War Women’s Memorial. Lots of women served in non-combat roles during that war, including my mother. Several of the women were nurses, and a few of them actually died serving in combat zones. My mother served at Dover Air Force Base, so she was pretty far from the action. That was a cool statue, though. And we saw the US Park police, mounted on their horses. They were riding in formation and doing drills in front of the White House. Presumably, they wanted to be a feature in everyone’s July 6th photo albums.
The Segway tour was supposed to wrap around noon, and with dark clouds gathering while thunderclaps sounded off in the distance, we ended pretty much on time. Cas and I looked at weather forecasts and radar information on the phones, eventually deciding to find a nice lunch before heading to the Museum of African American History and Culture.
Yesterday's tour guide was about the tenth person locally to tell us that particular museum was really, really good. Fine. We relent. Show us your amazing museum. The Museum of African American History and Culture is one of the two for which you’d need a timed entry ticket, but there were still a few for yesterday. The four days after that, though, are all booked up.
This museum goes down a few floors and up several. The idea is to start a the bottom. The events are set up on a timeline. You get crammed into a dark part of the museum with a bunch of other people while you read and learn about the trans-Atlantic slave trade You work through that, up to emancipation, then you wrestle with Jim Crow and move to the current day. It was well constructed, if distressing and upsetting.
For a little pick-me-up, we headed to the top floor after that and looked at the music exhibit. That was really cool, and the soundtrack as we walked through was pretty great. There were spectacular outfits, legendary guitars, trumpets and other artifacts, and the largest object of all, the actual mothership from George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. Actually, now that I think about it, Chuck Berry’s bright red Cadillac Eldorado convertible may have been just a little larger. Either way, it was a very cool museum, and I am glad we made our way through the music portion. It was very cool. It was also just what we needed to once again hide from the storm clouds. There has been a bit of rain while we’ve been in town, but most days, that rain has been avoidable if we just strategically visited museums or stopped somewhere for a snack or a drink. Yesterday was no exception. The thunder was making a lot of racket as we walked from a Metro station to the Museum of African American history and culture, but the actual precipitation waited to fall until we were well inside the building, and it wrapped up all of its action before we hit the front door.
From there, we hit up a wine bar for a glass of Lambrusco. Lambrusco is a sparkling red that is served cold, and the first time we had it was about a year ago in Italy, so when the wine bar we visited had that by the glass, we had to get a glass. That, coupled with a rather unusual “muhammara” dip, which is made with roasted red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate molasses. It was a first for both of us. That was just the right-size snack to tide us over for our scheduled visit to the LIbrary of Congress. We apparently booked our entry on a special evening when they were open late, which was just fine by me. It was a grand building with museum displays, but walking through some of the classic library spaces felt like being on sacred ground. Hey, I am Donelab, libaryn, right?
We got to see Thomas Jefferson’s library- an enormous collection by any day’s standards. We very quietly walked through the main reading room, trying to soak it all in and leave the folks doing actual research undisturbed. The architecture was stunning. The decor was over the top. And remember how I said we landed there on an open-late night? I don’t know what kind of event we managed to crash, but there was a catering table set up selling beer, wine and snacks. Sure, we had seen the P=Funk mothership earlier in the day, but to a librarian, the Library of Congress is the real mothership, so if they were going to let me raise a glass to my own, personal mothership, I was going to do just that.
It was fantastic. While we were in the reading room, Cas was talking to a librarian in a whisper, and she asked if we were librarians. He told her that he was a teacher. She said she could tell. (Librarians are sharp people, you know.) He told her that I was a school librarian. We took the whole conversation as a complement, as I am certain it was.
We really did take time in the Library of Congress to soak it all in. It was pretty great. After that, we realized just what a long day we’d had, and we headed back toward the hotel by way of a restaurant. We needed just a little bit of dinner so we could wrap up the day and get to sleep, and a pair of tacos each sounded about right. With tacos done and a very full day winding down, we headed back to the hotel and reflected on our trip a little. Today is the last day we have in town, so we need to check out and have the hotel stash our bags for a while before it’s time to head to the airport. It’s back to summer in Dallas for us, so that’s this weather plus heat minus humidity. Honestly, as much as the summer heat in Dallas is often miserable, the humidity in DC is almost worse. You look at the weather app on your phone here and see 89. Your brain thinks it will actually be okay- but you fail to account for the fact that the dew point is something like 75. Ugh. In Dallas, when the weather app says 98, I know what to expect. It’s not great, but I get it. Regardless, we won’t have much of a choice. At the end of this day, we’ll be back home, where today’s predicted high is 97. Not great, but not out of the ordinary. Today, I have no idea what final adventures we’ll squeeze in. We each have a few options to present, and we will make a determination from there. We both agreed over dinner last night that we both feel like we saw all of the things we wanted to make sure we saw. Staying in one space for a whole vacation and really getting to see it is a new vacation style for us, and one we could certainly repeat, if a destination is robust and interesting. But for now, it’s time for breakfast and a little pondering about our last hurrah.
Take a gander at our photos, and we’ll see you all soon: https://photos.app.goo.gl/i5YWxcScDLHgbJqLA
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