Library of Congress Kluge Program Attendance Foiled

We haven’t stepped foot inside the Library of Congress in over two years. I worked at the library for ten years. We always loved to go to in person programming because of the location, the program, but also because it was just an interesting thing to do. When we lived on Capitol Hill it was always easy enough to get there. We just walked a couple of blocks from home. But now we need to leave from northern Virginia at least an hour ahead of time since we no longer have resident parking and traffic is always a pain. It’s always better when the program is at two in the afternoon. This one was at four. So when we registered for Four Threats - our first in person program in such a long time - I was really looking forward to getting back inside the beautiful Jefferson building. Wouldn’t you know that of all the days of the week the threat of rain and storms was looming at the exact time we would be driving and walking to get there on time. The forecast changed to cloudy only, so we took our chances, but we didn’t leave soon enough. Of course the traffic was backed up just about all the way there. What should have been a 20-25 minute ride took almost an hour. Then the sprinkles came and the wind started to howl. We actually found a decent parking space just a couple of blocks away. Since we actually found parking we attempted to walk over. And of course the rain erupted as soon as we stepped out of the car. We got soaked. We were already ten minutes late so we just turned around and headed back to the car. Of course the sun came out as soon as we got back in to the car. It was very disheartening to say the least. So I put the program on the phone via the zoom link and we tried to listen to it during the rush hour traffic jam on our way home. We couldn’t even hear it. So we spent two hours driving to town and back in awful traffic and storms. That was our first attempt at going to a Library of Congress program in over two years. The timing could not have been any worse.