Forth! And fear no darkness!: Learning from Experience. I hope.

Here’s the second blog post of the last 24 hours. Sorry for all the writing, but there are some pictures down at the end of this post too! This post will cover the day (Thursday) I spent scrambling around The Hill for work as well as last weekend. Here goes.

For work on Thursday we executed what we call a “fly-in.” We indeed flew in four or five faith leaders from the Gulf Coast states to meet with their representatives or senators. The goal was, as far as I’m aware, to convince these congressmen that some of the money from BP should be delegated directly to the people in the area or to groups working with them to ensure they would receive the proper amount of relief they need. Otherwise, the fear is that this relief would be lost in the bureaucracy of the state and not make it to where it is needed most. The majority of the people with whom they met was at the very least polite and understood our concerns. One or two weren’t particularly open to any new ideas, and one or two (who had already proposed legislation) just listened and said that if there ended up being any way we could help, they would let us know. Here are a few of the people we flew in:

Rev. Dawn Flowers is a young minister in Mississippi who we heard about through word of mouth. She was mostly just excited to be here and in the middle of all of this, but she was well composed and well spoken. Rev. Stan Wachstetter is an older minister, but he has quite the history. He has served on advisory boards to George W. Bush and met with every president since Reagan. Tom Costanza is head of Catholic Charities in New Orleans and is pretty well connected to Louisiana congressmen. He’s also very good at talking.

I only got to sit in on one actual meeting, but that was interesting enough. The rep we were supposed to meet with was voting on something else at the time, so we meet with a member of the staff. Usually what happened was a few of our guests would meet with a staff member for a bit and then the congressman would come in for a few minutes and say hello and ask a few questions. So it was unfortunate that the one meeting I was in was one of the two meetings in which a congressman didn’t actually join us.

Anyway, my job was mainly to shepherd our guests from building to building as we changed venues for meetings. Dirksen and Rayburn were the two buildings in which we had the most meetings, but we also met with Barbara Boxer in the Capitol building. (I also had to run to a restaurant named Cosí to pick up lunch for everyone.)

Despite not getting to be in the meetings, it was a really cool experience. I got to see a little bit more of how things actually got done. We met with politicians on both sides of the aisle, as our issue was one more of humanitarian concern than actual politics. For the most part I just talked to other interns in the building while I waited during the meetings, but I did have one neat encounter. When I was sitting in Senator Wicker’s office (talking to the interns there who knew Davidson students) a gentleman came in to meet with the senator after our group. It turns out that this man was former Congressman Jim Walsh from New York. He served 20 years and then retired in 2008. At least, he said he retired – that may have been code for “I lost.”

He was kind enough to sit and talk to me about his career and life for most of the time my group spent meeting with the senator. In his retirement he has become a lobbyist, and ironically enough he was there to talk to the senator about fisheries that needed support on the Gulf Coast. Anyway, he really did have an interesting viewpoint on everything that was going on and his journey through politics. Finally, it was 5:15 and all of our meetings were done. When we were sure all of our guests knew where they were headed, I scrambled off and went straight to class.

Ok…on to part two.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about this weekend. Friday night we got a late start and ended up wandering around the Georgetown area for a while before we just decided we were all tired and it wasn’t worth spending any money to go anywhere. Saturday I had a slow start to the day (meaning I slept in longer than I planned to), but in the afternoon I went with Paul, Kellyn, and two other Davidson friends, Keeley and Roxanna, to the Nationals Barbeque Battle on Pennsylvania Avenue. There were dozens of tents set up selling BBQ and a variety of other things. However, you had to pay to get in, so we didn’t really want to pay for food once we were inside.

Thus, we stood in the 90-minute-free-sample-line and got more than we bargained for. There were probably 25-30 tables lined up, and once it was your turn you had to be ready to go. About every third or fourth table there was a small cup of some kind of soda or Gatorade, but every other table was either some kind of BBQ or chips or fries or something of that sort. It was an eating experience unlike anything I have ever done, and by the end we were all quite full. I was just glad I had held everything down.

After wandering around the festival for a while, we eventually parted ways and headed back to our apartments to get ready for the night. One of our friends who lives in Arlington was kind enough to have us over to hang out for the evening, and her house is very nice. It was a lot of fun just to hang out with a bunch of other Davidson kids, though we didn’t receive the most comprehensive directions on how to get back to the metro stop so that took a little bit longer than it should have. Still, it was a fun night.

Sunday afternoon I went back out to the Arlington area to see Ashley Siemers, a friend of mine from abroad who was in town. (She is in the first picture in this post and is described in greater detail in this post.) It was really fun to see her and catch up, plus she was at her cousin’s apartment, which was incredibly nice and had a pool. Sunday evening I went and visited Katie Mixon and her roommate Eve for a bit, but then they decided to watch Black Swan (a “psychological thriller” that I wasn’t particularly in the mood to see) so I left and went home.

As a final wrap up thought, I’ve watch/followed Wimbledon as much as possible, and both the men’s and women’s draws have turned out to be rather intriguing. On the women’s side, there is only one remaining player who has ever won a major, and I don’t think it would surprise anyone if Sharapova cruised to a championship. On the men’s side, however, there is about to be a flurry of great matches. Federer and Nadal are both chasing history, Murray is looking to win his first major in his home country, Djokivic is the hottest player on tour, Mardy Fish is the only remaining American (and at 29 this may be his best and last shot), and there are plenty of other story lines. I’m a little bit sad that I’m going to have to break the streak of 3 (or 4? 5?) years in a row that Sean Favreau has come over to my house to watch the Wimbledon final. Or…at least our streak of being in the same place (one year we were in Colorado and we climbed up the mountain every hour or so to use our cell phones to receive updates). Hopefully it is a great finish though!

I’ll probably try and post again later this week. Last night Paul and I went and studied on the back of the Lincoln Memorial. It was a really pretty night, and we mostly just watched airplane after airplane fly in over the river.