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Today was an unusual day at work. Every year, Colonial Williamsburg hosts a naturalization ceremony at the Capitol, but I'd never actually been to one in the past because I worked in other departments, and no one's allowed in except the people participating in the ceremony (along with their family members) and the Capitol staff. But now that I'm there full time, I got to watch the ceremony this year, and also benefited from an incredibly slack work day.

Why was it such an easy day? Because, even though the ceremony's less than an hour long and started at 2, the building was closed to the public from 12:30 until 3. So, instead of a schedule with five or six tours during the day, I was only scheduled to do three... and no one showed up for the 10:00 tour. It was one of the easiest days I've had since I started this job. Even better, the weather was unusually warm for December-- it was in the 70's-- so it was actually pleasant being out on the piazza, as opposed to the usual brutal wind-tunnel conditions.

We'd been told to expect the naturalization candidates and their guests to start arriving around noon, but the first few actually showed up around 9:30. This meant they had a long wait, because they weren't scheduled to enter the House of Burgesses for a final interview prior to the ceremony until 12:45. Somewhere around 11:30, most of the families realized they needed to get something to eat, and there was a mass exodus from the courtyard as they dispersed to go to various restaurants. Amazingly, everyone made it back on time.

In past years, there have apparently been a lot of logistical snafus at the last minute-- one year, the judge got stuck in traffic-- but this time, everything went off without a hitch. The judge arrived early, with a security entourage in tow (I also noticed a reserved seating card for Homeland Security, but if they were around they were well disguised); and the ushers, all members of the local chapter of the DAR, got everyone into the building in a timely fashion. There wasn't room enough inside the House of Burgesses for us, but we sat on the staircase in the hall and had a decent enough view of the ceremony, though since there were no microphones for the speakers it was a little hard to hear at times.

Rex Ellis, vice president for the Historic Area, opened the ceremony, and I was amazed that he actually kept his remarks brief-- this is a man who usually rambles on in an infuriatingly circular fashion for what feels like hours, but he limited himself to a few sentences this time. Then the candidates stood up and gave their names and their countries of origin, and this part was damn hard for me to hear, because these were ordinary people, not trained speakers. So I missed what three-fourths of them said, and only heard the ones in the back two rows clearly. The judge then had them say the Pledge of Allegiance and also a much longer oath, the American's Creed, with which I was previously unfamiliar. The latter seemed to place a lot of emphasis on military service, which I found kind of peculiar.

The highlight, for me, was the singing by Jane Hansen, one of CW's best musicians. Her rendition of the national anthem was devoid of that annoying Whitney Houston-inspired move into a shrill high register that practically everyone seems to imitate these days; and she also gave a beautiful rendition of "America The Beautiful". For that, it was worth sitting through a rather tedious speech by a local businessman who was naturalized a few years ago, and whose name escapes me now (I really should've swiped a copy of the program from one of those DAR ladies). I will give him credit, though, for ending his otherwise clichéd and mundane remarks with an extended quote from Dr. Seuss's "Oh, The Places You'll Go!".

At the end of the ceremony, the new citizens were greeted outside the east door of the building by children from Matthew Whaley Elementary School, who gave each one a plant. My co-worker Brenda told me later that these kids spent more than an hour waiting patiently in the courtyard for their part of the ceremony; that makes them a hell of a lot more patient than our average visitors, most of whom find a 15-minute wait for a tour intolerable. But the guests were better than average today as well-- the two tours I took were full of genuinely interested people with lots of good questions. It would be nice to have those sorts of groups every day.