Swearing-In Day

Today is the day that 94 New Members join, or in some cases, rejoin the marble halls of the Capitol and surrounding Hill life.  It's a day full of people being friends and vowing to overcome partisan lines to function more efficiently then the 112th Congress.  They make promises similar to their campaign speeches that they are well-meaning people who just want to bring common sense back to this crazy place where laws are made.  However in just a few weeks time (or less) the partisanship will return and these new Members will either sink or swim in the fast-paced DC environment.

Here at the library of Congress we are only marginally removed from the chaos.  Since space on the Hill is hard to come by we are event space for a variety of Swearing-In events.  We can provide a number of rooms some of them more beautiful then others but all offering a place where your constituents can gather and talk and clap. 

My day started with an Indiana event, where the request for an Indiana Bible was made for a ceremonial swearing-in.  There aren't really that many famous Hoosiers, especially not ones where we have their family Bibles in our stacks.  After combing through a variety of catalogs, and some wikipedia, my colleague and I came up with squat.  While I was on vacation she started combing through our stacks of Bibles and we found a Bible that was fairly attractive looking that was published in Indiana and we called it good enough.

Other events of the day included a time change that the caterer was unaware of so we came close to having to put linens on the tables ourselves to prep the room for the event.  I had some guest of an event confuse me with the Congressman's staffer and tell me that "there was no way he was waiting this long for the Member" and stormed off angrily.  Another event had a bus of people go to the address in NW instead of SE and therefore were over an hour late trying to figure out where to go, dropping the people off 6 blocks from the building and making them walk uphill - seriously, you can't make this stuff up!

Trying to figure out all the programs for all the events and when the Members themselves would be at the events in order to schedule pictures was a headache and a half, but with the invention of smartphones it was eventually accomplished. 

I have now been at work for +10 hours with no end in sight since we have two more evening events.  One event is for a brand new Member and then the last event of the evening is the Speakers event, in which we try and cram as many people as possible into the Jefferson building and pray the supports hold up.  Since I haven't done Swearing-In before I'm fairly excited to see the chaos that stems from large events.