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Belated Blogs and Marshall Madness

I’m late!

Sorry about this belated post; last Thursday, my usual writing day, was crazy! My brother and his wife came up to DC, so we were tourists all day, and I didn’t have time to chillax and write at a coffeeshop.

I had an awesome time showing them around DC! I feel like a local nowadays, so I could suggest cool spots to eat, etc. We started out Wednesday night with a whirlwind tour of the monuments. We stopped by all the ones around the mall, and finished up at the Jefferson memorial. On Thursday, my day off work, we had time to sleep in, and stop by two museums. We first went to the Folger Shakespeare Library, which is right behind the Library of Congress. It had an exhibit showing artwork inspired by Shakespeare’s works, and the “First Folio”: a collection of Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623. Then we headed to the Newseum, a museum celebrating the history and profession of journalism. It was my favorite museum I’ve been to so far; there was an awesome exhibit featuring five sections of the Berlin wall, one with a part of the South tower’s antenna from 9/11, and lots of other well-organized exhibits. We finished the day with Thai food and gelato on 14^th street. And then on Friday I walked them around the Library! I took them by the personal libraries of Woodrow Wilson and Ralph Ellison, and to all the other “behind the scenes” spots. A great visit all around!

Work has cranked back up! I’m still locating 5 or so periodicals from my last project, so that is still in progress. But tomorrow a delegation from the EU is coming by to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the “Marshall Plan”, so we have been working on displays and arrangements for that! The Marshall Plan was an aid program organized by the US to rebuild the economy of Europe after the devastation of WWII. The aid package was offered to all affected European countries, but was rejected by the Soviet Union and its Eastern European counterparts (Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc). Over its four years, the Marshal plan doled out 13.3 billion dollars to set Europe back on track.

For the anniversary celebration, our librarians have pulled out books from the period that describe the plan in a variety of languages to show the international impact of the program. They’ve also picked out photos, posters, and a television episode from that era that discuss the Marshall plan. Today I was responsible for researching one of those photos, and condensing what I found: who was featured, what they were doing, etc., into a short caption for the display. I also worked with the television episode. It was from a TV show, “Tea with Mrs. Roosevelt”, produced by NBC, that featured Eleanor Roosevelt and her conversations with political leaders of the day. In this episode, she was talking with the head organizer of the Marshall plan and European politicians to discuss the positive impact of the plan. I had to write 2/3 sentence bios about each of the guests to add to the display.

All in all, it’s been a crazy couple of days! But I really enjoy working with exhibits and doing this kind of research, so I’m happy for the craziness! I’ll post again this Thursday to fill you guys in on the anniversary celebration!