Incas of Emergency

TSOTC: Monticello Field Trip From Hell

It’s unfortunate that I can’t sleep right now, since I have to be up at the crack of dawn to chaperone my second field trip for the students at the Center, although the word “chaperone” is a rather overinflated term here. Since the students are all adult college students, my only real job as chaperone is to carry around a list of names and make sure nobody gets on the bus who didn’t pay for the trip, with the exception of myself, since I get to go for free. My second job is to make sure that the trip stays on schedule, and to remind the students that since we are a public university without money to spare for bus overtime, anyone who’s late gets to take the train home. I’ve gone on one trip thus far, to Monticello, the tranquil and gracious mountaintop home of Thomas Jefferson, and for awhile afterward I was undecided about chaperoning tomorrow’s trip to Gettysburg, the notorious scene of 3 days’ carnage and mayhem in 1863.

The Monticello trip was several Saturdays ago. I arrived in the lobby to meet the students at 6:45 AM, and things started unraveling immediately. First of all, the trip was to be accompanied by Professor Difficult, a faculty member and general hanger-about the Center who had already deeply endeared himself to me by calling my advisor back home and telling him that I need to work harder on my dissertation. When he arrived in the lobby, the first thing he did was to make a beeline for me and kiss me on the cheek, a sweet and courtly old-man gesture that I particularly and uniformly despise.

As I was shooing away Professor Difficult and checking students off my list, I saw a man board the bus and make what appeared to be a lively speech to the students already on board, waving his arms. Then he got off the bus and came into the lobby. “Well,” he said, apparently to me, “I told ‘em I can’t go on the trip. So you got to talk to the driver, ‘cause he ain’t never been there before.”

His peculiar communication turned out to mean this: this man was the owner of the bus company, who was himself supposed to be driving our bus down to Monticello, a roughly 2-hour drive into Virginia. But, according to various accounts I later heard, it was either his 50th anniversary, or he wanted to go to a baseball game. Either way, he had made other plans. So he had assigned us a replacement driver who combined a maximum of age with a minimum of experience: a palsied octogenarian in a Coast Guard cap who had never driven to Monticello, or to the nearby town of Charlottesville, or to the rather out-of-the-way town of Manassas, or, as I later discovered, anywhere in the Washington DC area. For all I know, this man had flown out from the West Coast to visit his grandchildren and had been shanghaied into driving our bus.

All of this was imparted as I continued to check students onto the bus. In the middle of this, Professor Difficult began barking directions at me, directions which I failed to write down the first several times he yelled them, because I certainly wasn’t going to be driving any bus, and I assumed that he could re-deliver the instructions to the bus driver as and when needed. Except, as he then told me, he was planning to drive down separately. The given reason for this was that he needed to spend the night in Charlottesville. The actual reason for this, of course, was that he was clearly going to have more fun driving his shiny silver convertible than riding on a tour bus with a bunch of college students. So the third time he barked directions at me, I dutifully scribbled them down on a corner of my list of names. The directions I got read, in their entirety:

66 to 250 to 28 to 64E to 20? to Monticello (look for some signs)

Anyone familiar with Washington and Virginia will immediately see what was going to happen. Unfortunately, neither the bus driver nor I had any experience with the area, and so we were unable to identify what was happening even while it was happening. To wit, rather than taking Highway 29 toward Charlottesville, we took Highway 28 to, and well past, Manassas. For those of us educated in the North and/or West, this is where the two famed Battles of Bull Run took place. For those of us on the bus that day, sadly, it was very much not where we needed to be. In short, what should have been a two-hour bus ride took nearly four and a half hours. I took some comfort in the fact that by Hour Three most of the students were asleep on the bus and therefore unable to witness the bus driver repeatedly having to pull over and ask random drivers for directions.

Professor Difficult, who had smuggled a friend of his along for the trip, arrived at Monticello a full two hours ahead of us. Someone in the Center had leaked my cell phone number to him, which he used to call and let me know exactly how remarkable he found it that the completely uninformed bus driver and I had managed to get lost, how pissed he was that we were late, and how generally incredulous he was that I was unable, from my position as a passenger, to cause the bus to move any faster in the right direction. According to my phone’s call log, he called to berate me at:

10:11 AM
10:27 AM
10:33 AM
10:38 AM
10:47 AM
10:58 AM
11:03 AM
11:10 AM
11:13 AM
11:15 AM
11:16 AM

The last call came as the bus was pulling into the parking lot of Monticello’s Visitor Center, which was hailed with cheers by all aboard. I answered the phone and said, “We just got to the Visitor Center. Where are you and your friend waiting?”

“What do you mean you’re at the Visitor Center?” he said. “I mean, I just don’t understand it, Katie. What the hell would possess you to go there?”

So we started the bus back up and followed the directions that Professor Difficult had barked at me over the phone, which led us up the hill to a community college. Then we turned the bus precariously around, went back down the hill, then up another hill to a gated community. Then we turned the bus around, went back down that hill, and randomly picked another uphill route, not the one Professor Difficult had prescribed but which nevertheless got us to Monticello itself, or at least to its parking lot, whence one takes a shuttle up to the house at the top of the hill.

Only 2 ½ hours late for our tour, and in one piece, which I thought was pretty good. Students made a beeline for the restrooms and the food concession, and I got on the phone with the Center’s events coordinator to let her know what was going on. While we were on the phone, I watched in total horror as Professor Difficult started pulling my students out of line and ordering them onto the shuttles. “This man is insane,” I told the events coordinator. “I am going to beat him to death with a replica colonial butter churn.”

When I pointed out to Professor Difficult that I wanted to make sure the students got a chance to grab water and food, he punched me in the arm. “Oh, relax,” he said.

I was beyond words. Opening and closing my mouth like a fish, I followed him onto the shuttle. My friend Michele, who I had smuggled along on the trip for my own comfort and sanity, punched my arm. “Relax,” she hissed, and snickered.

Thomas Jefferson’s house is graceful and stately, overlooking a beautiful valley filled with greenery and slowly droning bumblebees. The house is magnificently filled with amazing objects of not-exactly his invention, and the grounds are beautifully maintained. I feel confident that it is the ideal sort of place for a convivial group to spend a relaxed afternoon, wandering the grounds and exploring at leisure. Unfortunately for that group, which on this particular day consisted of several dozen cheerful senior citizens, the 54 members of our group were marched through at grim speed, trailing thunderclouds in our wake. Tour completed, we stood at the top of the hill waiting for the shuttles back to the parking lot. Several students raised, not for the first time since we’d arrived, a plaintive chorus in favor of exploring the colonial-esque tavern at the bottom of the hill. The senior citizens beamed at the fresh-faced young college students. And Professor Difficult huffed and stamped.

At least, that’s how it went for the first ten or so minutes, while the senior citizens stood graciously aside in the sticky heat and allowed strapping young university students to completely fill the first two parking lot shuttles. But when the third shuttle arrived, an elderly man, leaning on his wife’s arm, tried to board. And then something happened which I have never seen before in my life: Professor Difficult came up behind the old man, took him by the shoulders, and pulled him off the shuttle. “We need our students to stay together,” he barked. “You can go on the next one.”

The next part of our itinerary was meant to include a leisurely lunch hour in Charlottesville before our afternoon’s architectural tour at University of Virginia. I had checked this with the events director because of the strict injunctions about keeping to the schedule. “Don’t you worry about that,” she told me. “It’s not our fault the bus driver didn’t know where to go and made you late. They can cover the overtime. You let the students have their day.”

But Professor Difficult overrode that immediately. “If we hurry we can make it to the university in time for the tour,” he said.

“Look,” my friend Michele said. “We need to make sure that the students get a chance to eat something.”

“And somebody’s got to tell me where to go,” the bus driver quavered. “And how you want me to get there.”

“The colonial tavern –" said one of my students, but he stopped when Professor Difficult, the ancient bus driver, and I all gave him The Look at the same time.

Finally, it was decided that the easiest thing would be for the bus to follow Professor Difficult’s car to the university, where there would be half an hour or so for the students to grab food and drinks before the architectural tour that, by this point, exactly none of them wanted to go on. I insisted on doing a head count on the bus, which evidently took longer than Professor Difficult wanted to wait, because he sat in his car honking until the bus pulled out behind him.

And then the Beautiful Thing happened. As we were pulling out of Monticello onto the main road, the bus slammed into the back of Professor Difficult’s shiny silver convertible. Hard. Leaving a big dent.

And that was the moment that the antique bus driver became my new best friend. Forget the rest of the day – forget getting lost again on the way to the university, Professor Difficult having to pull over and ask directions several times, the laborious and repeated turning-around of the bus, the inane architectural tour, the numbing neoclassical blandness of UVA, the fights over a final water and bathroom break , the fact that we ended up in Alexandria rather than Washington (easily remedied). It is true that after the accident the bus door didn’t close right, and that we eventually drove the two hours back to Washington with air whistling in around the door. It is also true that the bus driver subsequently ran several red lights, and while I did not choose to turn around and look at the students, Michele did, and in her face I clearly saw reflected 54 pairs of very large eyes. The bus driver and I, cemented forever in our new bond, looked at each other and chuckled. “Oops,” he said, lifting a hand to his mouth.

I punched Michele in the arm. “Hey, relax,” I said, and frankly, I sniggered.

TSOTC: What Our Heroine is Doing With Her Tax Refund

The glare on the picture kind of sucks, but can't you just smell the A&D ointment?

We're about 2/3 done. I'm so pleased.

TSOTC Comparative Review: Library of Congress vs. Georgetown University Library

Let’s just make sure that I never get a job at Georgetown or with the federal government, shall we?

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Borrowing privileges: Virtually unlimited with visiting scholar temporary library card.

Ease of access: Medium. Circulator bus to Georgetown area,then walk uphill on slippery bricks to campus. Or, lie and cheat your way onto the shuttle from Dupont Circle, then get lost on campus.

Hours: Claims to be open until 2 AM. Seriously!

Surrounding area: Ranges from swanky to student.

Building: Hideous. Almost as hideous as partially demolished McHenry Library at UCSC.

View from building: Impressive. These nearby buildings are very nice. But they’re not the library.

Religiosity: Jesuit. Pbbbbtht!

Holdings: Small, strangely conservative. Distinct gaps in Lukacs and Marxist criticism.

Staff: Patronizing, intrusive. Likely to lecture you about proper copier use. Likely to interrupt you repeatedly to ask why you’re enlarging things.

Things you’re not allowed to bring in: Snotty visiting scholar attitude; desire to Xerox without consultation.

Substantive work accomplished there so far: I’ve got the reader for my summer course 99% assembled. Most of the work took one marathon day.

Need to leave the building at some point: High. Virtually deserted; easy to spend twelve hours there; will drive you insane.

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Borrowing privileges: Not as such. The books you’re allowed to touch are delivered via conveyor belt to my study shelf, where I can keep them as long as I need them. I can take digital pictures of prints, photographs, and maps. I can pay for someone else to photocopy the things I’m not allowed to touch.

Ease of access: Farragut West to Capitol South. Piece of cake.

Hours: Limited, extremely punctual. Surprisingly variable between buildings, reading rooms, and days of the week.

Surrounding area: Government center. Opulent, impressive, purposeful. Also, perpetually under construction/renovation.

Building: Gorgeous. There are three buildings, of which the Jefferson Building is the main and the most beautiful.

View from building: To your right, the Supreme Court. Straight ahead, that’s the Capitol.

Religiosity: Separation of church and state, baby!

Holdings: More than 500 miles of books and other print materials. 10,000 new materials acquired per working day. Holy shit.

Staff: Patient, capable, helpful, friendly, welcoming. Deliver armloads of materials to you without you having to lift a finger. The one guy in the map room gets kind of annoyed when you don't know what you are looking for and are evidently fucking around, though.

Things you’re not allowed to bring in: Weapons, musical instruments, camping equipment.

Substantive work accomplished there so far: Unclear. I’ve looked at political cartoons and spent several hours locating funny place-names on 1890s survey maps. Oh, and I discovered that the San Fernando Valley, in which I grew up, used to have a slightly more desolate and Old-Westy name.

Need to leave the building at some point: None whatsoever. Large chunks of Capitol Hill are connected by a series of underground tunnels. The cafeteria on the 6th floor of the Madison building has better food than a lot of restaurants in Santa Cruz. It has its own credit union. The Library is basically a citadel. Oh, except they will kick you out at 5.

TSOTC: Photoblah.

I finally got my pictures back from CVS and discovered, a week and $14.28 later, that they’re horrible prints of terrible pictures. So much for an update about my gorgeous nighttime monument tour, for waxing rhapsodic about the daunting beauty of the Library of Congress, or for remembering what the heck else I did that’s supposedly captured in these pictures.

It may help you to appreciate the following if I stress that these represent the MOST worthwhile and decipherable pictures on the roll.

I got a halfway OK picture of the Washington Monument surrounded by kites. This was last weekend, when I was desperately sick, and went to the cherry blossom festival/ kite-flying competition with a couple of friends.

Then I got tired and had them point me toward the nearest Metro station so I could head back to the Center and sleep. On the way I apparently encountered a group of nuclear refugees – perhaps appropriate for a cherry blossom festival celebrating the history of “friendship” between the US and Japan.

The next night we went out for a nighttime tour of monuments. The White House is a lot smaller than I would have expected from the movies, but you’ll have to take my word for it because the beautiful set of size-comparison shots I thought I took of the little White House and its neighbor the enormous Treasury building didn’t come out at all. But that night wasn’t a total loss – I managed to capture evidence of the supernatural. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Ghost of the Lincoln Memorial!

This next one took me quite a long time to figure out, because it appears to be a shot of a taxicab. I know I live in a smallish town back in California, but it’s not like I’ve never seen a cab before, so what the fuck? I had to stare at the picture for a really long time before I finally realized why I took it, which, because it was from before I had a camera with zoom, you won’t be able to see. Inside the building behind the cab, there’s a sign that reads “United States Mint.” The sign on the outside of the window is offering the building for lease. I’m taking this as a bad sign, folks – you might not want to lag on converting those dollars into Euros.

However, lastly, there’s this one. Even with my cold, even with my shitty disposable camera, I managed to take an absolutely lovely, jigsaw-puzzle, picture-postcard photograph of the Washington Monument framed by cherry blossoms.

No, really, go back and take a long look, because I want you to get $14.28 worth of enjoyment out of that picture.

From now on, it’s OK, it’s all digital.