Monthly Archives: July 2013

People trust people (heart of the matter)

Posted on July 27, 2013 | Leave a comment

On July 11, 2013, I walked through the campus of my alma mater, The George Washington University. I was on my way to the box office at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I stopped for a minute to look at two buildings that are special to me in Washington because of my past work: the Watergate office building and the Howard Johnson’s across the street which also figured in the break-in that led to the end of the Nixon presidency. A year ago, as a guest of the Washington Post, I attended a reception in the Watergate office building to mark the 40th anniversary of the break-in. I wrote about it in “Never Check Your Personal Integrity at the Door.”

I joined the staff of the then National Archives and Records Service’s Office of Presidential Libraries in 1976 while still in grad school. As a federal employee, then still an archives technician, I helped move the Nixon tapes and files out of the White House in 1977. (They were stored there after Richard Nixon’s resignation until the Supreme Court in June 1977 upheld a law making the official portions of them government property.) Then, as an archivist, I worked on disclosure review of the White House tapes and Special Files. Most of the 3,700 hours of White House tapes were still secret during my employment at the National Archives. It was our job to decide what the public could hear.

I specialized in Watergate “abuses of governmental power” among other topics. I didn’t know during my college years how linked my future would be with Watergate. And the challenges working with Nixon’s tapes would bring, including being “knifed” in a very Washington way! GWU purchased the Howard Johnson’s in 1999 and turned it into a dorm. You see the university’s name on the side of the building, one reason I stopped and took the picture.

Walking through campus could have been bittersweet. My late twin sister, Eva, and I took undergraduate and graduate classes there and received degrees together (1973; 1977). Eva worked at GWU as a Financial Aid Counsellor from 1973 to 1983 before joining me as an employee of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Most of the treatment she received during the last year of her life, 2002, was at GWU medical facilities. But I pushed that aside as I walked through campus earlier this month.

Eva loved her job as a Supervisory Archivist and a team leader in NARA’s records national security declassification division. Even during the last year of her life, 2002, when I sat with her as she spent many hours receiving chemotherapy at GW’s medical facility, she worked from home as she could on unclassified NARA policy and procedural guidance. “As dedicated a NARA employee as can be found….” the Archivist of the United States said in a letter sent after her death.

I miss my sister very much. But as I walked through campus, my mind was on earlier times, when we were students there. Our undergraduate years were quite tumultuous. That wasn’t necessarily bad, however. For me, it was the beginning of awareness that people held diverse and nuanced views on many issues. And that if you listened carefully, you could see subtle differences among individuals who were not easily reducible to lazy stereotypes.

I myself was reduced to a stereotype once, when a passing student sneered at Eva and me, “You must be Republicans, you’re wearing dresses.” Sometimes we did, sometimes not. I ended up as the political Independent I am, of course. My longtime dislike of cartoonish reductionism and putting people in boxes due to presumed knowledge of them due to a few outwards characteristics began while I was a student.

I still remember coming on campus in May 1971 and smelling tear gas used overnight during anti-war demonstrations. In 1970, Eva sketched the audience at a meeting at which student activists spoke in the University Center (room 410-15). I like the lack of judgment in her rendering of her fellow students, she just drew them as the fellow human beings they were.

I also flashed back to the time I was walking through campus in the 1970s after I had started work at the National Archives only to have a student stop me and ask a financial aid question. I replied as politely as I could that I wasn’t the person he thought I was, that he needed to talk to my twin sister in Rice Hall, not me.

You see Eva at her desk in the Student Financial Aid office on campus in the mid-1970s. Yes, that is the same dress I wore to NARA in March 2013 for the reception for the opening of the “Searching for the Seventies” exhibit! We lived together and shared clothes; the commencement day photo above shows me wearing the same black and white dress. I no longer remember if it was hers or mine.

The photo on the wall of Eva’s office in Rice Hall is of the two of us with Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr., in whose office we worked in 1973 during the Watergate hearings. You see the entire picture in the Senator’s office at right, the story of how it came to be taken is here. On the desk? That’s King Richard III! Sis attended grad school while working for GWU, as a University employee, she got tuition benefits. Washington is a great place to do graduate studies. Eva did some of her research at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

I focused on happy times as I looked around the GW campus on my way to the Ken Cen box office. Some of the old buildings still are there, including Lisner Library, where I spent so many hours in the stacks between 1969 and 1977! I sketched the self portrait of my young, introverted, very bookish self in May 1973, my last month as a GWU undergraduate. Very serious, as I was on many of my photos then, too. Nowadays, I smile often, especially when I return to NARA.

If you look at the sign in the picture I snapped as I passed by a couple of weeks ago, you see the old library building now is Lisner Hall. Unpainted brick, as are its neighbor buildings, it was off white in color (as then were nearby Bell and Stewart Halls) when Eva and I were in school there in the 1970s. The photo of Eva across the street from what then was Lisner Library dates to May 1973, She snapped me the same day in 1973 by the Quad. Yes, those are double blossom Washington cherry trees, which I love so much!

Eva had a discerning eye. She sketched rarely as she grew older as she had less leisure time. Reading history, biography, and fiction remained hobbies for us both, however. You see Eva’s eye for catching the essence of those she observed in one of the few sketches she did in later years. Her drawing shows passengers waiting for a train in a Tube station in London, which we visited in 1980. Much the same style she used 10 years earlier in her sketch of her fellow students at the student center.

Eva brought that same keen eye to the workplace as a NARA Supervisory Archivist and as a team leader. She combined the ability to catch details of temperament and character in her subordinates and colleagues with the ability to focus at the micro and macro level on work processes. That’s harder than it seems and requires certain innate skills. Including understanding the role of trust. If you understand tech tools and processes but don’t know how to connect effectively with people, building trust can be a challenge.

After Eva died in December 2002, NARA published a tribute to her in its Staff Bulletin (February 2003). Neil Carmichael, a colleague and friend to us both, described Eva well when he said, “She was always available to her team members and even those who did not belong to her team sought her guidance on declassification issues because of her openness and experience. ” He added that she was “a joy to work with and a great office companion.” Eva’s former colleagues in GW’s Office of Student Financial Aid purchased a book in her memory; the memorial entry is in the Gelman Library’s online catalog.

Openness and experience. I thought of those words as I read a post by an expert on Social Media a few days ago. (Thanks to @jessewilkins for Re-Tweeting the link. When I subscribed to the records management listserv years ago, Jesse’s messages were the ones I occasionally referred to on the archivists’ listserv. Cool, smart dude.) The author made a pitch for organizations using social media, something many already are doing. (I’m at a point myself where I’m yearning to hear, “that’s 2 or 3 years ago, what’s next? What’s next?”) Yes, I’m thirsty.

I have no idea what a strapline is. And I might as well admit that I had to Google “skunk works” when I first read the phrase months ago (paging Cass Sunstein). And I’m not a fan of phrases such as “brand ambassadors” which comes across as pretentious bizspeak to me. But I like the spirit and vibe in a post at Ace Digital Comms called “Your organisation doesn’t need a social media expert, it needs its experts on social media.”

The writer noted that when it comes to “real brand value,” communications work best if you understand that “people trust people.” And recognize and demonstrate what I’ve found has been surprisingly easy for some functionaries to overlook. That an enterprise is made up of experts. Most of the people wouldn’t be working there if they didn’t have skills and knowledge (or the potential to develop) on which the organization relies.

And this part on “PR and Social Media ‘Gurus'” made me go, “oh yes!” Because a “guru” who doesn’t focus on experts instead of his or her own function will have trouble getting people to join the chorus. That’s pretty basic. Buy in (a much better term than “overcoming resistance”) comes down to respect for others, not selling one’s own value. People have to see themselves in the endeavor, not the person selling new tech tools. This is hard to do in organizations that value (or appear to value) “brag” and marketing and PR more than outcomes. It is especially challenging in organizations with complicated, multi-faceted and sometimes competing, even partially hidden, obligations.

The author explained,

“I like to think of myself as being pretty informed and creative when it comes to using social media for my work. So, basically, this post is an argument for why people like me aren’t very important. This post is… possibly putting myself out of work before I’ve even paid off my overdraft!

I work in PR though, there’s a great need for PR. But it can’t be about polishing turds, smartening up text to make press releases and pushing out stories on Facebook and Twitter. That’s old news. PR should be helping our experts to communicate well.

PR people are expert communicators, that doesn’t mean doing everything. It means helping, advising and providing intelligence for the organisation and to staff to help them do their jobs better.

To borrow a phrase from the splendid Dan Slee – we need to share the sweets. Let’s give experts the tools they need to show off their work.”

The money phrase in that for me? “Providing intelligence.” If you don’t understand the people with whom you are partnering (or the concept that you are there to serve and partner with them, not lord it over them), you can’t reach their hearts. Which is as important as reaching their minds. People trust people. It works internally as much as externally. Trust. It matters. And I trust the present Archivist of the United States (AOTUS).

So where would Eva be, if she still were working at NARA in what now is the National Declassification Center? I’ve come to know and trust and admire the Big Dude, aka AOTUS David S. Ferriero. David and I are pictured at the NARA Social Media fair in November 2011. I admire his capacity, he is sui generis. But there are people out at Archives II who never have met him. That often is the case with heads of federal agencies such as Ferriero.

I asked here earlier this year, “Would a young Ferriero succeed at NARA now?” Yes, I can ask that. Absolutely. My conclusion was that it was complicated. I explained in my post the technology and communications issues and how different people represent.

If she still were alive and working in Declass at NARA, Eva would be higher in grade than she was when she died in 2002. But I don’t know if she would know David. I told Ferriero in May that I think she would be ambivalent about the National Archives’ ongoing Transformation effort.

Eva was tech forward, she listened closely to her computer expert friends at NARA (such as Chuck Hughes), then spread knowledge to me and others. She definitely was an expert. She understood the declassification process and the context of the classified documents with which she worked. Eva read a lot of 20th century history, including about World War II. And she was as interested in people issues as I am. I used to talk to her about Total Quality Management in the early 1990s, what the ideals were, what it was like for organizations that tried to put it into practice in Washington.

And, of course, Eva and I often talked about leadership. Some of the ideas I formed due to my experiences working with the Nixon tapes and then taking a beating when I was called as a federal witness came from talks we had as we walked after work. I spelled out some of the leadership and managerial lessons in an early post here, “Avoiding Embarrassment” (December 29, 2010). I aimed my conclusions generally at NARA, little realizing then that David Ferriero read my blog. I wouldn’t get to know the Big Dude until May 2011 or meet David Ferriero until June 29, 2011.

NARA’s present use of Social Media? I’ve been thinking about it as I’ve looked at the Social Media presence of other archives. I like what GWU has done with its @GWUarchives Twitter feed. A lot of good historical knowledge shared with a sensible, engaging tone.

I rarely @ USNatArchives, I like to keep its feed clear for followers who have questions for it. When I mention the National Archives on Twitter, I go out of my way not to @ it but instead say NARA, or A1, or A2. And I don’t use hashtags for NARA events because I’m mostly just sharing my own profound joy these days at being at them. But once in a while I do engage with the agency’s Social Media staff.

Interestingly, most NARA employees steer clear of the public feed of the agency. I rarely see them tweet corrections or advice. From what I hear, the reasons vary. Some people do keep an eye on what is going on. There are many contributors to what goes out. It take a lot of staff expertise to put together some of what NARA blogs about or shares on Tumblrs.

Other employees and officials are too busy to look at what the PR side of NARA is doing. Some view Social Media and digital issues as internally “third rail” at NARA and best avoided so as not to get on the wrong side of the Powers That Be. Still others look at the feed and think “nothing to do with me.”

NARA faces challenges in Social Media because its potential audience is so diverse and large. It ranges from K-12 students and their teachers to journalists to scholars to advocacy groups. I thought about that Friday morning when I saw @USNatArchives tweet about a GIF of the Berlin Airlift and apply the hashtag #WWII. But World War II was long over by then. Eva wouldn’t have let that go, I decided. To her, the hashtag would have made NARA seem uncaring and distant from its core mission, one dependent on historical accuracy.

I also had in mind a friend at NARA who once tweeted that David Ferriero just wants to be hip. And another who said AOTUS doesn’t care what NARA puts out, just as long as NARA is demonstrating use of Social Media. In both cases, I argued that such perceptions are unwarranted, even unfair. I get why people may think that but it just isn’t so. Such perceptions certainly don’t come from David!

So I tweeted a correction as gently as I could.

@USNatArchives 6:55 AM – 26 Jul 13

Candy bombs away! Some #gifs celebrating “Operation Little Vittles” http://ow.ly/nkJhO #kids #food #WWII @usairforce

MK‏–@NixoNARA26 Jul

@USNatArchives @usairforce Rather than hashtag #wwII, how about #coldwar?

Are we supposed to let these things go? Suggest changes? To what extent can we be ourselves in interacting with NARA on Twitter? Should we factor in the Washington need to save face? (Despite assertions that “we all speak,” this really is complicated.)

If we focus on historical accuracy, are we at risk of being dismissed as old fashioned, “resistant to change?” I decided, Social Media use is important to NARA still but that doesn’t mean I can’t speak up.

What most influenced me was the fact that I trust David Ferriero and others in NARA leadership positions whom I know — in person. If I hesitate to Tweet to @USNatArchives, I’m telling those in the agency who wave me off and say “third rail!” that they are right. And I don’t believe they are. And you shouldn’t trust the man in charge but worry that his subordinates are not open to engagement and learning. At least, not until you try it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I tweeted. No reply but the right hashtag that I suggested was used in later tweets by the agency.

But I also thought about the article I had just read. How we represent in Social Media matters a lot. People trust people. As true now as when Eva worked at NARA. And when I did from 1976 to 1990. Comms tools change. But behind them still are human beings. Which means getting to the heart of the matter is less complicated than it seems. A good heart, a discerning eye, the ability to sort through what you see and focus on the core is as important now as then.

Some things change, some things never will.

Challenges, opportunities, and beauty

Posted on July 14, 2013 | Leave a comment

Saturday evening as I stood at a red light across the street from the Watergate hotel and office building I saw a near cripple who wasn’t crippled. I was on my way to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Violin virtuoso Joshua Bell, who had changed his summer plans to do this, was performing with the National Youth Orchestra of the United States.

I’m a big fan of Bell, whom I never had seen perform in person until Saturday. My mother had. She was hurrying through L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station the morning in January 2007 when Bell, in the guise of a street musician instead of an artistic super star, played in an experiment Gene Weingarten chronicled in the Washington Post. As you see in the video at the link he played exquisite melodies that few stopped to listen to or to note by giving him money.

When Mom read Weingarten’s story about Bell and Metro,”Pearls Before Breakfast,” she realized who had been playing in a station she rushed through to make her appointment. She regretted not paying more attention or stopping to hear him play, as a video included in the link above showed a few passersby doing.

Mom herself played the violin in her younger days. She’s pictured below in 1938 playing with her high school orchestra in the Estonia Theater in Tallinn, Estonia, which two years later would fall under totalitarian rule that it would not escape until 1991. Mom escaped in 1944 and made her way to the United States but she had to leave her Mother, Father, and brother behind. She is the second violinist in the first row of violinists. I, too, played the violin in school.

As I waited at the traffic light Saturday evening, I saw two women standing side by side, holding hands. As they walked across the street (against the red light), I shook my head over why they would do that because I noticed that one of them had trouble walking. A driver who had the green light had to slow down as they walked across his lane.

Curtain was at 8:00 p.m. and I was early. So I waited for the light to change to green, then crossed and strode briskly past the Watergate hotel the remaining block to Kennedy Center. I easily passed the two women, as did every one else walking toward the theater. But as I did, I took a moment to take in what was happening.

The woman on the right was a young teenager, perhaps 15 or 16. Since they were walking to Kennedy Center, I assume the two were going to see Bell and the National Youth Orchestra. The teen was wearing platform shoes with stylishly exaggerated high heels, perhaps 4 or 5 inches with the platform, of the type you see some Hollywood starlets wear. But she couldn’t walk in them. She hobbled along, barely. The woman next to her appeared to be her mother. They walked slowly.

The two held hands tightly and walked along quietly. I didn’t hear any kvetching or berating from the Mom. Her young daughter had made a poorly considered choice for what surely was a special event for her (as for me, I was so excited to see Bell), perhaps due to inexperience.

The mother’s role? She was there to make sure her daughter didn’t trip and fall. Some might have found the scene comical. I found it poignant, even beautiful in its quiet way. The two looked so out of place among the rest of us, better equipped to go where we were going. But there was a sense of fortitude about them as they made their way along. Perhaps the mother understood her daughter’s fear and embarrassment and wanted to keep her calm. I didn’t snap a photo but I sketched them from memory this evening, very roughly, to show the scene as they paused at the traffic light.

I thought back to a librarian I know in the virtual world who works with children, tweens and teens in Brooklyn. That’s a challenging environment and I admire those who tackle it. One of the most vivid accounts of the library world in my Twitter feed comes from New York City through the vibrant Tweets of @screwydecimal. Very real life, with people doing things that make you shake your head, sigh, laugh, or smile. Last Thursday, two tweets caught my eye.

@screwydecimal:

Little girl just laid out a washcloth on the floor. Then she lovingly placed a stuffed penguin on top of it and wrapped it up like a baby.

@screwydecimal:

Then she skipped out of the library after her family. There was some sort of strange magic in that moment.

I was out talking a walk after getting home from work in Fedland when I saw them in my feed around 7:30 p.m. on Thursday. I tweeted back, “@screwydecimal Thank you so much you just added some magic to my day in Washington with that story. Much needed and much thanks…”

I was listening to Valery Gergiev conducting a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 as I walked. I often listen to Tchaikovsky during my lunch time and evening outings.

But the way the week had gone, I would have had an intense reaction to the story of the little girl no matter what. Why? I’m thirsty for beauty. I work in Washington. And because it’s so easy to miss small moments of beauty. That @screwydecimal did not meant we who read her Twitter feed were able to share in a small, yet not small, moment in New York City.

Are all days in the library, archives, and history world like that? No, far from it! A thoughtful recent post by Rita Meade at Book Riot points to just some of the challenges of being a public librarian and working with students. But the ability to stop and recognize small magical moments surely helps. I perked up after a day at work in Washington when I read those tweets.

In January 2012, the Big Dude, aka Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero, spoke to the Association for Library and Information Science Education. He used a phrase that has stayed with me ever since I first read the speech and then blogged about it. David said:

“With just over two years as a Federal bureaucrat, I could regale you this morning with ‘what they didn’t teach me in library school’ anecdotes, or I could depress you with tales of intrigue and stupidity in the theft and destruction of the records of Government, or I could bring you into the fold on the Digital Public Library of America front. All worthy of your time, I think, and happy to hit on any one of them in the Q&A.

Instead, I’d like to share with you what, in broad strokes, I have been up to since leaving my—what now looks like—cushy job at the New York Public Library—and how it impacts what you do, preparing the next generation of information professionals. And ask you in the spirit of the theme of this conference to expand your horizons.”

I especially liked the part about continual learning in David’s speech:

“The ability to embrace continual learning. Seeking opportunities to expand knowledge and skills through formal and informal training and feedback. Identifying and levering own strengths and developmental needs and striving to improve own skills. Demonstrating and supporting continual learning and sharing knowledge and expertise with others.”

I greatly respect David, whom I’ve come to admire, for the way he worded a note he sent me in 2010. He thanked me for something I had posted on the Archives & Archivists Listserv, then added of himself, “Still on a steep learning curve” in his then first months as AOTUS.

More and more, I’ve come to believe in unstructured learning through observation, conversation (in person or virtual), and connecting the dots in quiet thinking time. Yeah, I know, we don’t have enough opportunities for that! Sometimes, I feel as if I’m taking in so much, I need to step back, unplug, and think it through. I’m nearly tethered to my Smartphone but sometimes I just walk with my pink iPod and listen to music.

Saturday’s concert was great fun for me. I loved seeing the youthful musicians perform under Valery Gergiev’s direction. There were many young people in the audience. At the end, instead of the usual “bravos,” some members of the audience let loose with shouts and hollers of appreciation. Yeah, I did, too.

I so enjoyed Joshua Bell’s beautiful, rich performance in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35. After the concert, he signed autographs of his CDs in the Grand Foyer.

The line was long (luckily I was in the first half) but I didn’t mind waiting. We were told Bell wouldn’t have time to pose for pictures but that we could stand to his right and take pictures after we had walked by the table where he was signing. So I got one where you see me and Bell signing autographs behind me. But the best picture was this one, below. Bell stopped signing to pose with a young girl who beamed with delight. I’m glad I caught that wonderful moment, it is a picture that says so much about an oft photographed celebrity’s kindness!

As I waited in line, I thought back on all the joyous visits my late twin sister, Eva, and I had made to Kennedy Center since the 1970s. On that same exact day, July 13, in 1975, Eva and I had gotten autographs from Rudolf Nureyev (who came to a concert and sat a few rows ahead of us), from soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, and maestro Mstislav Rostropovich. I recounted the story of how that came about in my blog in June 2011. My late sister would have loved seeing Saturday’s performance!

Before the concert, I thought about communications and change as I sipped wine on the Terrace. As I looked to my right, I saw the Watergate Hotel and Office Building. So many prominent Washingtonians have made the residence portion of the Watergate their home over the decades! As I drank my wine, I thought about what they don’t teach in library school. Or in any school (my undergraduate and graduate academic degrees are in history). The answer? A lot!

As I’ve chronicled here at Nixonara, the wide eyed n00b who started my employment as an archives technician learned so much on the job. I was proud of being promoted to archivist soon after starting at the National Archives in 1976 but I never represented myself as an archivist when I was a tech, why should I? No shame in that job–or that of library shelver!

Some of what I learned was tough–tangling with former president Nixon’s lawyers over the Watergate tapes we had screened in disclosure review certainly taught me some real world lessons about human beings. And seeing what my colleagues in the federal government did when we were attacked by Nixon’s advocates taught me even more. Yes, it was painful to be “knifed” in Washington in 1992. Not something I ever expected when I started federal service 40 years ago.

Because my archival cohort was attacked the way we were, I had to deconstruct myself. I had no choice but to do that! That led me to let go of some things but to hold on more strongly to others. It taught me valuable lessons I’ve been adding to ever since. One is to cherish small moments of beauty, magic, joy.

Much of what we don’t learn in school we end up figuring out ourselves–or life experiences teach us! So much trial and error. And more and more, I’ve come to understand, capacity and adaptiveness affect how we handle the lifelong (yes, still ongoing for me at 62) challenge of identifying one’s “own strengths and developmental needs and striving to improve own skills.”

That’s why on Twitter I’m drawn to people who are brave and honest and authentic. Among those in my feed, @screwydecimal is going to be all right, I know it. But there are others I don’t know about. Among others I follow, I occasionally see some who posture, proclaim their own superiority, show grandiosity, or “can only be somebody” by considering others to be “nobody.”

I mostly steer clear of the latter although I occasionally tangle with them! What can you do when someone proclaims archivists superior to librarians. Nothing! Not if you do not think in terms of zero sum games. You read it, register what it tells you, and keep your eyes and ears open. And the moments of magic, beauty, joy? You note those, too, and cherish them amidst the rest.

After I read @screwydecimal’s tweets on Thursday, I tweeted, “There is so much beauty out there among the other stuff if you are open to seeing it…..” And followed it up with, “Yeah I know, the other stuff….it is there, too but, well, freedom….we each choose.”

So, what did I tell Joshua Bell during the minute I had to say something? “Thank you so much for bringing so much beauty in to our lives, I appreciate that in Washington.” I’m sure the violinist has heard a million variations of that. But he nodded and said, “Oh, thank you!”

And in those moments, I was so very happy!

The changing sky

Posted on July 4, 2013 | 1 comment

As I walked to a breakfast reception at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) shortly after 8 a.m. on Independence Day, 2013, I looked up. The sky was overcast, and it looked as if it might rain. That it was cloudy kept the temperatures down–the forecast was for a typically humid, hot Washington summer day. But I knew many spectators would line up on Constitution Avenue to watch the speeches and parade. I hoped it wouldn’t rain.

By the time the Archivist of the United States, David S. Ferriero, spoke to the crowd around 10:25 a.m., the sun was peeking out from a clearing sky. That’s the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to the right.

I don’t have a time stamp set on my camera. But metadata on Twitter as I tweeted about sitting on the Portico watching the festivities tells me what time I snapped the picture.

And in one of those moments that remind you that multiple views tell a story better than just one perspective, the best part of the speech was not visible to the speaker. Behind David and next to me as I sat on the base of a pillar sat a boy at another pillar, listening with rapt attention.

As I tweeted live (there’s an art to that, I haven’t learned it totally yet!), it was wonderful to see so many kids at NARA. As David spoke, and “the Founding Fathers” (and Ned Hector and Abigail Adams!) read the Declaration of Independence, I watched them on the Portico. Some children ran around, some sat and watched, and in an image I missed capturing on camera, three little girls danced and pranced to the left of the pillar nearest to the speakers’ chairs. Wonderful reminders in the day of the past, the present, and the future!

Unlike when I was young, and so nose-in-a-book I plunged in to reading books as I walked home from the local Atlantic Street public library in Congress Heights (Southeast Washington, DC), children now can explore the thoughts of the Founding Fathers online. A wonderful initiative, funded by NARA’s grant making unit. Seeing George Washington “in person” (as Flat Stanley did when Ferriero took him on a tour of Washington recently!) is just one way of making history come alive!

I smiled at the symbolism of the skies clearing for Ferriero’s speech. Change! How different things were than they had been four years ago in 2009. I felt far away from official NARA then. This year, I was sitting a few feet away from AOTUS as he spoke, smiling broadly. Peace. Happiness. Joy. Those words describe what I felt on Independence Day 2013 at NARA. Even before the sun came out, the day was beautifully bright for me.

But as I heard the words in the Declaration of Independence read on the steps of the National Archives, I also thought about how change happens. And I thought about visionaries. And boldness. And courage. Not just of the revolutionaries of 1776, but of people I know in my own life.

The keynote speaker at the Independence Day ceremonies at NARA in 2009 was Tim Naftali, then director of NARA’s Nixon Presidential Library. I supported Tim in his efforts to administer a credible, professional Federal archives and museum at the government-run library. It was, after all, the successor unit to the NARA Nixon Presidential Materials Project at which I had worked for 14 years. And for which, in addition to being the first Nixon Presidential Library director, Tim was the last director before it became part of the system of NARA administered presidential libraries.

I didn’t know Tim was speaking at NARA on July 4, 2009. We hadn’t met yet, our friendship was forming from afar then. The beautiful moments of “Meeting Tim Naftali” and then sitting next to Ferriero (for whom my nickname is the Big Dude) were yet to come. I would first meet David on June 29, 2011, when I came to NARA at his invitation to hear Tim speak at a history forum (pictured). In 2009, Adrienne Thomas was Acting Archivist of the United States. David Ferriero was nominated by President Barack Obama to be Archivist in July but would not be confirmed by the Senate and take office until November 2009.

In July 2009, I had quiet ties to NARA, friends with whom I socialized and interacted. But I didn’t look at its website closely except occasionally to look up federal records management guidance and issuances. It then was 17 years since I had had to draw on my reserves of courage just to walk in to the Archivist’s Reception Room in 1992, after testifying as a federal witness in Kutler v. Wilson, the Nixon tapes lawsuit. It would be a long time before I came back to Room 105, near the office of the Archivist of the United States. I never could have imagined then that a fabulous spontaneous gesture by David Ferriero would lead me to sit on the Portico on July 4, 2011.

In 2009, while I cared deeply about its mission, official NARA seemed very remote to me. I didn’t even know Tim was the keynote speaker. I only heard about his speech later. Friends told me of how Tim talked about how he personally had benefited from expanded civil liberties for LGBT citizens in the United States.

Although Tim spoke that in public, unless you were there or heard through the grapevine about the speech, you wouldn’t know he had said that on Independence Day 2009. Ironic to consider, in light of recent decisions by the Supreme Court on Proposition 8 and on DOMA, just days before Independence Day 2013.

Back then, before Ferriero’s tenure, NARA edited the passage where Tim spoke about civil liberties and the LGBT community out of the version of the speech it shared on its website for Thomas era speeches. If you look at the record released by the nation’s record keeper, such words were never spoken–but they were! I later learned that Tim had wanted to include a passage where he said that gay marriage was the civil rights issue of the day and that recognition of it was inevitable. NARA officials refused in 2009 to let him say that. Tim negotiated with the officials to be able to say that he had benefited from increased civil liberties for LGBT citizens. But they shied away from including that in the record they shared with the public.

In 2009, Andrew Sullivan still was writing The Daily Dish at The Atlantic. He later switched to the Daily Beast, then launched his own hosted blog. Sullivan wrote of debates over advocacy and change. He described how some people he knew believed that change in acceptance of gay marriage would come about over time as more and more people interacted with friends and family members who had come out. The idea was that comfort zones would expand on their own.

Even Richard Nixon, whose tapes and files Naftali then was in charge of at NARA, reportedly understood that. As one of his former White House counselors, John D. Ehrlichman wrote in Witness to Power, Nixon said in 1970 that he couldn’t support same sex marriage (“I can’t go that far”) but that it would come (“that’s the year 2000.”) Nixon’s former chief of staff in retirement, John H. Taylor, wrote in 2008 about voting on Prop 8 in California. “In the end, I voted against Prop. 8, especially for the sake of the gay and lesbian people I care about, including mentors and partners in Christian ministry.” And yes, he pointed to what his former boss, Richard Nixon, had said.

Father John’s post was thoughtful and respectful of various views on the issue of marriage. Taylor observed that “The explanation for a paradox is usually in the heart, wrapped in people’s ideals and fears as well their foundational experiences.” His gentle, thoughtful blog post impressed me because he looked at different sides of the same sex marriage debate. We all know people (well, most of us who don’t believe in The Big Sort do) whose views differ on one issue or another. The reasons are many.

NARA should not have redacted the public version of a speech Tim Naftali gave on Independence Day, 2009. But I’m not surprised that this happened, given the old, risk averse, message controlling bureaucracy at the agency, one I understood all too well. Oh, how well I understood that culture, I had certainly felt its impact back in the day! Painfully at times. I learned so very much about human nature in those experiences.

Since 2010, the National Archives has been undergoing Transformation. Thanks to the Big Dude, with whom I enjoyed chatting briefly before he gave his welcomig remarks at the Independence Day breakfast reception, I’ve reconnected with the agency that once employed me to do disclosure review of Nixon’s tapes and files.

And you know I held up hand on Thursday to show Ferriero my red, white, and blue finger nails, right? Why not? I may be a bureaucrat and a scholar (yeah, some combination, that!) but my inner child remains close to the surface! The children weren’t the only ones photographed wearing tricorn hats yesterday, heh. My joy shows in the wide eyed way I savor, drink in thirstily, my experiences in visiting NARA these days. And in my childlike beaming smile. Inside, when I come to the National Archives, I’m dancing just like those little girls I enjoyed seeing on the Portico!

Change is difficult. It requires insight as well as the ability to look ahead. I admire David Ferriero’s vision for the Transformation effort at NARA. That doesn’t mean I always agree with everything his subordinate officials do. But I have no fears, at all, about blogging about how I see things at the National Archives.

My own experiences tell me that how people act, who they are in their essential character, matters more than public relations output. I cherish knowing good people of all ranks at NARA now. Remote advocacy and marketing can only take an enterprise so far. Knowing people, seeing them as human beings, respecting them and what they can contribute, whether inside the NARA family or outside it, that’s what leads to effective change. So, too, understanding that not everyone is the same. And that perspectives vary. There are early adopters, there are those who slowly come to see the need for change, and there are people who never accept it. The important thing is to keep the doors open, not just in words, but the hard way, in deeds.

As I walked in Washington at lunchtime on July 3, 2013, I looked over at the National Archives building from the Mall. I was so excited knowing I would be coming there on July 4. There’s a reason I call the agency “my beloved NARA” these days. John Russell Pope’s beautiful building looks imposing, solid, unshakeable. But inside, the agency is being shaken up. It needs it. I hope the new growth gets the nutrition and knowledgeable care it needs, establishes strong roots, and flourishes. For the past, the present, and the future!