With the Legislature in a somnambulant second special session, the Capitol press corps often has nothing much to do some days but meander the halls of the domed Legislative Building, looking for signs of life and random bits of wisdom.
So it was last Wednesday morning when the Senate was adjourned until Friday but the House was scheduled for a “pro forma.” I hustled over to the House gallery to make sure they didn’t sneak anything in on the public.
There, I encountered a couple of tourists standing in the doorway to the gallery, trying to decide whether it was OK to cross the threshold to such an august establishment. Yes, it’s open to the public, I assured them, and we went in together.
The woman sat on a bench in the back row of the gallery and the man hovered behind her. Their English was a bit limited — he had a heavy Slavic accent and she had an Asian accent — but as they took in the marbled chamber with its Tiffany light fixtures, she fixed on a screen that projected the timing for the next activity on the wall.