America's Library - The Library of Congress

One of the most stunning buildings in Washington is the Library of Congress' historic Thomas Jefferson Building. While it can be visited and toured throughout the year, twice annually the Library hosts an open house.  During the open house visitors can also enter the famous Main Reading Room, which otherwise is open only to those with a reader's card. The open houses are held on Columbus Day in October and on Presidents' Day in February. Having first been awed by this amazingly intricate building during a conference last year, I made sure to find time to visit again during the recent fall event.

Built in the 1890s, the Jefferson Building is one of the most ornate public buildings in the U.S., and should be included on most tourists' lists of sights to see in Washington. Free public tours are offered several times a day, and only take an hour. You can also look around on your own in even less time. To celebrate the building's 100th anniversary, an extensive renovation was undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s when the entire structure was restored to its original splendor.

Gold leaf on this hallway ceiling.

During the open house one could wander around several areas, and chat with helpful librarians and volunteers who were happy to answer questions about the building's history, as well as the work of the Library. The members room, for example, is typically off limits to the public, but we could peek into that, which was just as ornate as other areas.

Sorry for poor quality, but I loved this!

The highlight of the day was being able to explore the Main Reading Room, which is impressive in its size and beauty.

An alcove in the Main Reading Room.

This enormous and gorgeous room has many fascinating details. For example, as the Library's website explains: "eight giant marble columns each support 10-foot-high allegorical female figures in plaster representing characteristic features of civilized life and thought: Religion, Commerce, History, Art, Philosophy, Poetry, Law and Science."

Poetry

The rest of the areas open to visitors in the Jefferson Building are also quite photo-worthy and memorable. Because many of the prettiest bits are high up, they are difficult to photograph. The following pictures are of somewhat poor quality, but they were too interesting not too share!

Justice

Such gorgeous colors and patterns!

For my many friends who like to write...

For all of my teacher friends...

And for my artist friends...

After oohing and aahing over the fantastic building, on my way out of the Library I had to stop in the wonderful bookstore and giftshop, which has many fun and educational gifts and souvenirs. My favorite bookcase was this one...

As you can tell, the Library of Congress is well worth a visit!

15th Annual National Book Festival

Occasionally before I go somewhere I think to myself, "This will be a great post for the blog!", but then the place or event or my experiences aren't all that wonderful. That is what happened with the National Book Festival, where I truthfully had hoped to see and hear at least a half-dozen authors, but real life intervened. Thus this post is shorter and less exciting than I had hoped!

From its beginnings on the East Lawn of the Capitol on September 8, 2001, when approximately 30,000 people attended the first National Book Festival hosted by First Lady Laura Bush, the Festival quickly grew and moved to the National Mall, and later begun its close association with the Library of Congress. Since 2014, however, the Festival has relocated to the Washington Convention Center, which - while not as picturesque and iconic as the Mall location - does have some benefits, such as air conditioning and actual restrooms. 

I had attended and enjoyed the festival a number of times when it was located on the Mall, but had not attended in recent years  When I saw the impressive list of 175 authors who would be at this year's festival, I made definitive plans to go.

The Festival is enormous and very well-attended. With the Convention Center being so immense and spread out, and with getting a later start than planned, I was able to see only a couple of authors in whom I was interested, plus spot two famous writers as they were being interviewed by C-SPAN's Book TV (slogan: "Television for Serious Readers").

William McCullough

Tom Brokaw

I also visited the exhibit part of the festival - the Library of Congress and several other organizations had tables full of information and freebies (all the paper bookmarks one would ever need!), and each state had a booth with varying amounts of information.

Hawaii's booth even had musicians!

The local bookstore Politics & Prose was selling books by the many authors appearing at the festival, and most of the authors had designated times for signing books. Lines for the more popular writers formed early and were lengthy.

The only author whose entire presentation I heard was Stephen L. Carter. Interestingly, somewhat recently I had picked up one of his novels - and had not been able to finish reading it, as the writing did not hold my attention. However, I knew a bit about him, and was interested to hear him speak. He is an excellent public speaker, which is not surprising given that he is a lawyer by training, and his "day job" is professor at Yale Law School. Carter is an incredibly accomplished individual: after earning a bachelor's degree from Stanford and a law degree from Yale, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He has written numerous non-fiction books, as well as six novels! It's difficult to comprehend how one person manages all of this, but he does, and he even spoke about writing being tedious - that he has even spent two weeks writing just one sentence!

Stephen L. Carter

One of many stands in the festival's exhibit portion was for Free Little Library, which is a wonderful initiative encouraging individuals and organizations to build and set up tiny libraries on their front lawns. People can both leave and take books from these little repositories. A good friend of mine here in the DC area put up a Free Little Library in her yard, and was kind enough to share a photo of the lovely library she has created - complete with Latvian "ausekli" or morning stars. Note also the gnome who lives underneath, complete with tiny picket fence.

A friend's Little Free Library in the DC suburbs.