In Washington, DC, we interviewed a law librarian as she walked passed the White House to dinner.

A printable version of the following can be found here.


June 10th, 2005

"So, where are you off to right now?"

"Meeting some friends who just retired from the government and taking them to dinner."

"A celebration?"

"Absolutely."

"And what branch of the government do they work in?"

"One worked for the Department of Justice and her husband worked for Social Security."

"And what do you do?"

"A librarian at the Department of Commerce."

"And where are you taking them?"

"[name ommitted]--a great restaurant, expensive, not for undergrads--gotta wait for the cash flow to increase significantly."

"And you have a family? Children?"

"Yes, one child--he will be 13 this month."

"7th grade?"

"Yes, 7th grade."

"What do you do with either your son or alone to have some fun, to pass the free time?"

"We love going to the movies, both of us are big baseball fans--we've been going to the O's [Orioles] games for a long, long time."

"What about the Nationals?"

"We want to do the nationals, but we haven't visited them yet--but we will."

"Orioles are doing great this year."

"Not quite as good as Boston. Well, we're beating Boston now and we're going to get our Series again before Boston get its Series."

"Does your son have a favorite player?"

"He doesn't. He doesn't watch it that much, he and I just enjoy being together--and how do we get across [referring to street blockade], oh well, that's just so kooky; why didn't you guys tell us that? We have to go this way?"

"So it looks like they're cracking down."

"Yeah, we have to go through this execise a few times a day--it's pretty stupid."

"So I take it Washington has changed a bit over the years."

"Oh, it has--it used to be a very beautiful city without all this fence stuff."

"Kind of a bummer."

"It is."

"So, have you lived in DC for your whole life?"

"No, I was born in Nebraska, I was a military brat, raised in Florida and New York City for 10 years and been here almost 20."

"Do you go home to Nebraska a lot to see your family?"

"I haven't been there in 7 or 8 years--it's a long time. I still have relatives there and in Colorado."

"What were you doing in New York when you used to live there?"

"I worked in the insurance industry--life insurance--and it was great fun."

"Would you be able to walk us through a typical day?"

"Like a typical day now?"

"Yes."

"I get up, take the subway to work, um, work in the library and do lots of fun things--I'm a law librarian so I help my attorneys locate laws, I work in the legislative history area, which is great fun, um, and meet friends for lunch or do errands for lunch and then leave work at 4:30 and take the train home. Depending on what I want to do for dinner--my husband usually cooks dinner for me--I make sure my son has done all of his homework or is working on it, I go execise for about an hour and then come back home, have dinner, and then my husband and son go downstairs and watch Spongebob and I go upstairs and watch the baseball game [laugh]."

"So what do you do with or without your husband for fun when you don't have to take car of your son when he's gone with friends or gone for the weekend?"

"We just meet friends for dinner or we do sight-seeing, we have a cabin out in the Shenandoahs so some weekends we go there-we were gonna try to go there this weekend but didn't make it."

"Sounds beautiful."

"It's gorgeous down there."

"What do you do there? Do you take hikes or go fishing?"

"We go hiking, there's canoeing, we have a friendly, what I call "rent-a-dog"--our neighbors have a dog and he goes for walks in the woods with us, then we do some cleaning up around the cabin to keep the brush and stuff away so the critters don't get in and we usually cook out down there."

"So, lived in a military base in Nebraska?"

"Well, I moved all over out west."

"Pretty interesting."

"Yeah, it was great fun. Not for my Mom, but it was great for the three of us kids."

"Did you ever go abroad or travel like that with the forces?"

"Daddy was overseas a number of times, but my Mom and sister and brother and I stayed here--but I did go to Germany and lived there for a couple of years 'cause I wanted to."

"What'd you do there?"

"Worked for a newspaper."

"Great, which newspaper?"

"The OverSeas Weekly--a real rag, it was awful!"

"It must've been fun though."

"It was fun."

"And you decided not to go with Journalism for the long run?"

"No, no."

"So throughout the day what makes you smile the widest?"

"I think finding an answer."

"Yeah? Can you tell us about the last time you found an answer?"

"Well, one of the more fun ones was when one of my interns--a law student--had been looking for hours on appropriations laws and appropriations are pretty weird and have gotten more weird the last few years. So, I talked him into coming down to the library and getting offline, that everything isn't on Lexus [Nexus] and WestFly and the internet, and we found it in about 20 minutes and he was just really happy 'cause he had spent all day looking for it and that made me feel good."

"Ah, satisfaction."

"So, what about you guys, what makes you happy?"

"People like you--you're great, all smiling and..."

"The only time I don't smile is when I have to deal with security [laughs]."

"Yeah, that much be a real drag, day-in and day-out."

"It really is, it's silly."

"But you don't seem to let it get you down too much."

"You just kinda have to live with it--but at least we don't have the code oranges and stuff like that anymore for the moment."

"So what's the best thing to do in Washington? Avoid security?"

"[laughs] Avoid security. I think Washington is one of the most beautiful cities--I really do. Boston is nice, I'd live there if they could straighten up their weather--as we're sweltering right now--the parks and, you know, to walk around, I love to notice the plaques on the buildings, and, you know, you're walking down the street and there's a plaque: "Mary Serrot lived here." Woah! You know, it is just so neat to be living history."

"We're surrounded by history."

"And they're making it right now, as we talk, [points to building] something's going on here that--this is the White House and this is Blair House, the red building, and a lot of the dignitaries stay there."

"What kind of perspective do you think it gives you to live here as opposed to Montana or New Orleans? You're just at the heart, the capital of America."

"I think we're much more aware of how much influence Congress really has on our day-to-day-lives. I think everyone in this area--it's a really well educated area, you'll find a lot of people with advanced degrees--and everyone is just attuned to what is going on in the world. And having lived in other places, and I talk to relatives, I am always surprised by some of the things that they say. We went out west last year to Yellowstone and I was just boggled that nobody watches the news--and we have the news channels on all the time."

"Just saturated."

"Yeah, so..there you are [right in front of the White House] , there it is..I'm gonna run..."

"Sure, thanks very much..."