Day 2 In DC, part one: Jefferson’s Library

It seems we’re all warmed up to this touring thing now... we were actually out the door by 9:30 this morning! Not to say we got to bed at a decent East Coast time... that may be tonight. 

So...we started our tour today at the Most Incredible Building in the city...the Thomas Jefferson Library. 

I’ve always wondered if we could build a building as beautiful as Euopeans...the answer is a resounding YES!

The library of Congress, of which this is the largest building of, houses more than 167,000,000 items in 470 languages: it includes 38,000,000 books (Tammy...I thought of you the whole time), 3,600,000 recordings,  14,000,000 photographs, 5,500,000 maps, 8,100,000 pieces of sheet music, and 70,000,000 manuscripts! That’s a LOT of zeros, and employs a small army of archivers, scientists, etc. i won’t bore with the entire history of the library, but it started with a mear 740 books, which were burned by the British in 1814. It was restarted when Thomas Jefferson, then retired and living at Monticello, sold his entire library of 6487 books to the library for $24,000. From those humble beginnings.... 

The current building was opened in 1897.

It’s magnificent, and dedicated to knowledge, the search for truth, and the availability of all of this material not only to congress, but to all. 

It has, of course, some VERY rare material, like this Gutenburg Bible!

The most amazing artwork to my eye was a mosaic of Minerva-

This is all Murano glass and Gold leaf. She stands ready to defend civilized society. She’s illuminated by light, and holds her spear down in peace rather than raised. The scroll is not yet fully unrolled, as knowlede is still unfolding. 

So, all in all, surrounded by all of this beauty, so intentionally designed and painstaking built, I’m hugely encouraged that we will survive this time when ...”things go not well” for truth and knowlege.