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Big-wigs and Small Sandwiches

I’m back on track! Today I’ve adventured out to Old Town Alexandria. It’s a town in northern VA that George Washington considered his home town. It’s got lots of cool local shops and coffee spots, so naturally, I’ve landed at Bruegger’s!

I mentioned in my last post that we were preparing an exhibit about the Marshall plan for an EU convention on Tuesday. It went well, but it was a sprint to the finish! We were working on captions, bios, and a bibliography for the exhibit until 3 pm on Tuesday. The event started at 4, so we walk/jogged with the materials to a room adjacent to the conference room to set up the display. We were also showing an episode from “Today with Mrs. Roosevelt”: a weekly program where Elanor Roosevelt interviewed politicians about the issues of the day. This episode was about the renewal of the Marshall plan, which was going up for a Congressional vote at its half-way mark. Anyway, it was a cool piece, and I had done a bit of research about the guests, so I was disappointed when the audio on the display malfunctioned! We had gotten everything else set up in time, but people were streaming in while we were trying to fix the TV, so we just turned it off. Other than that, though, the exhibit went well! We had a lot of people come in, and they all got a kick out of the political cartoons and posters about the Marshall plan. We were standing behind the tables to answer any questions they might have. There were ambassadors to the US from almost all of the European countries (Except for Britain!). It was pretty cool to have these big-wig politicians reading my writing; I hope they didn’t spot any typos! They milled around in the exhibit for about an hour before going into the meeting.

This is one side of exhibit, we had promotional posters, photos, and cartoons from the period.

 

The meeting featured two US senators in a town-hall Q-A session. The senators’ primary job was to assure the European ambassadors that, despite the craziness of the current administration, America still values the international trade fostered through the EU and UN. We were able to sit in on the meeting for a bit, and we saw the Bulgarian ambassador ask a question, who we had met a couple of weeks ago! And of course, I stopped by the refreshments table for a tiny sandwich on the way out. After the meeting we manned the exhibit for another hour or so answering questions, and then we packed up!

Yesterday was back to normal, I was able to catch up on some of the stuff I’d pushed to the side on Monday and Tuesday!