They say you should always dress for the job you want, not
necessarily the job you have. If this is true, then the job I want is a 19th
century southern plantation owner.
I was told
I had to look nice for my orientation today (after all, this is the friggin’
Library of Congress were talking about here, not your granddaddy’s library), so
I had no choice but to break out the seersucker suit. In my opinion, there’s no
such thing as being too snazzy. Going into my orientation, I found I was almost
the only one there in a suit, let alone one of the seersucker variety. The only
other people wearing suits looked like congressional interns, and their suits
could hardly be described as well tailored for them. They’ll learn eventually.
All this to
say, I am now officially an employee of the Library of Congress. The past few
days have been such a whirlwind that I can barely keep my head screwed on. Just
a little over 50 hours ago, I was back in Charlotte, in surroundings I had been
used to for 16 years. Since that time, I drove up to Virginia, moved into a
house with three other employees from the Library of Congress (all of whom are
movie geeks, and all of whom I think I’ll get along with quite well), sampled
various eateries in downtown Culpeper (despite its size, Culpeper is quite the
culinary hotspot; pretty much every restaurant I’ve been to has been
delicious), went to the Packard Campus Theater and got a brief glimpse of where
I’ll be working the next few months, then packed up everything, went up to
Silver Springs and saw a movie at the AFI Silver, which brings us all to today,
where I spent the entire day in hot Washington D.C. in a full suit.
Firstly, I
cannot recommend the Packard Campus Theater or the AFI Silver highly enough.
The AFI Silver has some wonderful things on display as you walk in (including
scripts from Pennies from Heaven and The Third Man, in honor of their Steve
Martin and Orson Welles retrospectives), and the main theater where I saw House
of Wax in 3D was absolutely gorgeous. On top of that, it was my first time
seeing House of Wax, and it was an absolute blast, providing equal amounts of
laughs and legitimate scares after all these years (and really REALLY good 3D,
amazingly enough).
But the Packard
Campus Theater was something special. It has a gorgeous red velvet interior,
with a wonderful curtain over the screen. The ceiling is painted with a starry
nighttime background, and there’s an organ at the front to provide live musical
accompaniment for silent film screenings. The best part is every screening here
is FREE (and a great deal of them are on actual film). Even if I wasn’t working
on the Campus for the next few months, I would still make an effort to return
to this theater any time I was in Culpeper.
But oh
yeah, the job, that’s why I’m here. I took the Oath of Office this morning, so
I am an official Library Aid in the Moving Pictures section of the National
Audiovisual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA. It’s a mouthful, and very
vague as to what my actual duties will entail, but that’s not what orientation
is about. Orientation is about getting you pumped up to work at such a place. I
don’t know why you need to get people pumped up about working at the Library of
Congress, though. It’s one of the closest things we have to a real palace in
America, rivaling some of the great art galleries and museums in the world. On
the tour we took today, every room was filled with incredible and intricate
architecture that just boggled the mind.
And the
tour was easily the best part of the day, as the rest of the day was spent in a
conference room hearing various aspects about the Library of Congress that were
not applicable to my job. Unfortunately, even in that one conference room, and
despite the “Stay-Cool” fabric of my seersucker suit, I was still sweating like
a dog, and by the end of the day, my suit was soaked. As wonderful as suits
are, there’s nothing quite like taking them off at the end of the day and
remembering what cool air feels like.
But hey, I gots a badge! And that’s
a good start, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment