BetweentheBookends

A Blog about Connecticut libraries and librarians

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Not Just Another Day in the District



It was just another day in D.C., but oh what it seemed to me! Not only is Washington several weeks further into springtime than the cold rainy Connecticut to which we returned, but the District is beautiful. Years ago a friend of mine who worked for the National Park Service told me that they spend 90% of their entire budget in the district, and I’m here to tell you, we get our money’s worth. Except for the major construction site (of a new visitors’ center) around the Capitol, the city begs to be walked, and Tuesday was a day that would inspire e.e.cummings:
“Thank you God, for most his amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of a sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

But the real inspiration was not from the May flowers or the way the marble buildings gleam in the sunshine. (It just seems a little more important now that I’m back in the drizzle.) It was not just from meeting with Rosa DeLauro and John Larson. The thrill was from having a real conversation with both of them. I’ve been on this annual appeal before, when librarians from all over the country descend on Congress for the American Library Association’s annual Legislative Day in May. Often we delegates from the Connecticut Library Association end up discussing library legislation in the hallway with congressional aides. I am always star struck when we meet with actual members of Congress in their Capitol hill digs, which get more elaborate as the members gain more seniority. Both DeLauro and Larson have always supported not only library funding, but also intellectual freedom concerns like the Patriot Act, and federal funding for libraries is faring pretty well these days with a librarian as chief spouse.

So we didn’t have to lobby either of them. Instead we got to talk—-about Rosa’s “Rosa’s Readers” program to reward kids between the first and second grades who have read 20 books, about how funding for the arts is not “not our business” as some of her colleagues think, about how much her immigrant parents valued both reading and learning the English language, and finally about Rosa’s fabulous clothes. (OK, that was only me, but this is a woman who has found her style!)

We got to congratulate John Larson for his courageous vote against the war in Iraq and he got to show off a new book of which this former history teacher is justifiably proud--The House, a History of the House of Representatives by historian Robert Remini. The first bill that Larson ever introduced was to commission an historian to write a history of the House of Representatives. Tom Geoffino, the president-elect of CLA, knew of Remini right away, having read his biographies of Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, and so he was as excited as Larson.

These are good people, Rosa DeLauro and John Larson, and it was an amazing day to have a chance to talk with them, not just about supporting increased federal funding for libraries, but about things that we all care about.