Writing Life

I couldn’t believe this when I saw the report this morning and then heard about it on WAMU. Three years working in the Eastern Market area of Capitol Hill meant that I hung out at Eastern Market. I bought food there for company BBQs and took home cheeses and produce. The fire has devasted the facility, but Mayor Fenty has said he’ll rebuild. Thankfully, no one was killed in the blaze that started last night. My biggest worry now is for the merchants and for the community that counted on people stopping by other stores when they stopped by the Market.

Eastern Market reminded me of several old-style markets in Philadelphia and Baltimore. I grew up going to Reading Market and the Italian Market in downtown Philly. I remember working in Baltimore and visiting Lexington Market over by Shock Trauma by the University of Maryland Baltimore. I worked for several years in Fells Point where I used to hang out every morning and lunchtime at the Broadway Market. These old cavernous buildings with stalls of meat, produce and fish lining the walls and center areas were the cornerstone of community. You would see people who you lived with, worked with, or just met at the market. These places were always alive when the doors were open; people running in and out, scurrying about, picking up last minute items or stocking up for the week.

[Photos from The Washington Post]

Just two photos from where spend my morning and evening commute…

Here’s a great story that came across the AP wire today. To quote from the first paragraph

“For most people, it’s back to work Tuesday after a holiday weekend with family and friends. And for many, a new study shows, it will be under a bad boss. Nearly two of five bosses don’t keep their word and more than a fourth bad mouth those they supervise to co-workers, the Florida State University study shows.”

I work with some really amazing folks. Here’s a pic of my friend Heather holding my friend Jessica’s kitty cat. We were at Jess’s place, and her kitty Hazel graciously let us run all over the place! Murder mystery, crazy gift swapping/stealing, dancing, tunes, and way too much food.

And not just outside on the streets of America’s capital, but inside our offices too. It’s 93 degrees outside @ 11:25 AM, and the heat advisory doesn’t go into effect until noon. But, it’s already 80 degrees in the hallway outside my office, and I’m sure a few degrees warmer inside it. We have lousy air-conditioning, especially in one of our buildings. Of course, this is the building I just moved to.

So, the office is hot, DC is hot, and the world is in flames. Stay cool if you can.

Strange events at work today. After a good brown-bag talk that Simon, Don, and I did on our Government Relations department, and an hour-long PAC call that went mostly according to plan, I was down talking with Val in the basement. I heard a car alarm, but didn’t think anything about it. Alarms are always going off, as everyone who lives in an urban or suburban area know, and most folks have habituated to them.

But, this time, there really was something going on. I was on my way back to my office, two floors up, when one of our interns asked if I’d heard the accident? I said no, but I’d heard a car alarm but just ignored it. He replied that no, there was an accident, right in front of our building. A car was upside down! I ran upstairs to my boss’s office and looked out the window. Right in front of 418th 7th Street, SE, there was a small car upside down!

A woman was sitting on the curb and lots of bystanders were around. I would find out later that the woman was the driver of the car and she’d wandered out of the flipped car and sat down. She seemed okay and ambulances, fire trucks, and cops were starting to filter into the street.

My friends and I tried to figure out what happened, since 7th St where we are isn’t a big street. Cars are parked on either side and it’s sometimes hard to even get two cars down the street. It seems the car slammed into a parked car with its right tire, just enough to get it moving upwards on that side. It flipped and slid a small way (only a few meters, probably) on its roof. After about 2 hours, the car was on a tow truck, the woman had been taken away in the ambulance, and the street was being swept up. Here’s one picture and click to see the rest. I took them with my cell phone, so quality isn’t the best, but it’s okay.

continue reading…

Today’s the two year anniversary of the beginning of my internship with CGS . I began my internship on 22 March 2004.

Wow, what a long crazy journey it’s been. And, come October 1st, I’ll have been in my Deputy Director position for a year. Post elections, I’ll have had quite a ride since my days as a computer scientist. I work with a great group of individuals who coalesce as one of the best teams I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. Who knows what the future holds but I can always look back with pride at what I’ve accomplished here.

Our regional director sent me this photo from the speech I gave in LA. I was so in the zone during this speech that I don’t even remember anyone taking it!

I arrived at my hotel, the Holiday Inn LAX, just before 10 PM and was unpacking my bag by 10:05. I grabbed my speech notes, headed to the lounge, and reviewed my notes and slides over a pint of Sierra Nevada pale ale. Feeling tired, I headed back to my room, checked some web news sites, talked with the front desk to set up a 6:00 AM wake up call, and I drifted off to sleep.

I got up just after my wake-up call and checked my email and news sites. Dammit, the world just changes too fast! I made some quick additions, deletion and modifications to my speech. Showered and raring to go, I headed down to Manhattan Beach, where I would hook up with Wendell and his wonderful wife Madelyn and head off to the LA Friendship Center, where I’d be giving my talk. We picked up Tom Hastings, a friend of the Harter’s on the way. Tom and I talked in the back of the van on the way to the Center. He used to work for Xerox as a software designer and we talked about my previous career plus the fact that Diane, Jim, Barbara and Bob all worked for Xerox at one time or another! Small world. Even cooler was that when he was at MIT, his freshman thesis advisor was the one and only Marvin Minsky. Too cool if you’re an AI geek!

Anyway, we arrived at the Center, set up the stage, my PowerBook, and whatnot and greeted people as they arrived. It was fabulous to meet in person all the CGS leaders and activists who I’d spoken with over the phone since 2004! Most were really great people. The morning was filled by Jim Stewart, who talked about climate change and what individuals could do. I very nice catered lunch (which I got about 2 seconds to visit) happened next. I went on at 12:55 (about 5 minutes later) after a truly wonderful introduction by Wendell. I spoke until about 2:30 and then took questions until 2:40.

I have to tell you, I prepped VERY hard for this speech and covered a great deal of ground. As usual, I do enjoy doing these public speaking events, but I tend to “zone out”. I remember Wendell’s introduction and I remember thanking people after the Q&A ended. But, the rest of it? No clue. Happily, many people came up afterwards to tell me that I gave a great speech, lots of information, well organized, well presented. Wow, it’s amazing my head fit out the door!

Afterwards, we broke down our stuff and headed back to Wendell’s. I had a root beer and chatted with Madelyn and Wendell. Then, I headed back to my hotel, around 5-ish in the afternoon.

I just returned from a work trip to Southern California. I was invited out to give a talk to members of Citizens for Global Solutions, the United Nations Association USA and the Regional Council of Organizations. My talk was entitled “UN in the 21st Century: The Continuing Process of UN Reform, Peacekeeping, Terrorism, and Opportunities for Citizen Action.” Wendell Harter, our California Region director, invited me out. Since I was going to be in Southern California for this talk on Saturday the 18th, I went out two days early to visit some Congressional candidates running in the 50th district. The special election there was to replace disgraced former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham. For more on my talk, see later blog entries.

I left Baltimore on a 7:00 AM flight and flew into LAX. I worked on my Saturday speech for the entire flight. I rented a car at Enterprise near the airport. Little did they know to expect a Clark Kent/Superman experience! After securing the car, I dashed into their restroom and changed from jeans and a casual shirt into a power suit. I walked in a tourist and popped out a businessman. Too funny. You should have seen their faces!

I drove down to San Diego county, where the district is. I met Richard Earnest, a moderate Republican running in the district. I was very impressed with their openness to CGS foreign policy ideas. After a great meeting there, I drove back north to Encinitas, where I stayed for one night in a Holiday Inn Express just off I-5. I checked into my room and hooked up instantly to the wireless internet, searching for more ideas for Saturday. I worked until around 8-ish and then dashed out to find the Passage to India restaurant. After driving around a bit and calling 411 to get their number and location, I ended up having an okay Indian meal. Very filling, but not too much to write home about. I drove back, sated, to my hotel and spent the next four hours (until 1:30 AM) working on my speech notes.

I got up the next morning at 7:30 and worked until checkout at noon. I was able to get my PowerPoint presentation completed before checking out. Now, I also wanted to visit another candidate while I was in the area, Democratic challenger Francine Busby. My research associate hadn’t been able to get me a meeting, due to Francine’s busy schedule. But, I got directions online to her Encinitas satellite office and figured I could drop off our candidate questionnaire at least. I first stopped at FedEx/Kinkos to print out my notes and slides, then drove down near the beach, parked, and popped into the campaign office.

The great staff there welcomed me and I explained who I was and why I was there. I pulled out the CQ and was prepared to leave when one of the women asked me if I wanted to meet with Francine. I told them I thought she wasn’t around, but they said she was on a conference call in the back and they’d check to see if she was free. She took my CQ and card into the back and I sat in the front to chat with the staff. The lady returned and said Francine’d be out in a minute and I should just wait a bit longer.

Francine came out about 5 minutes later and introduced herself. I felt a little uncomfortable since I was wearing khakis, a black t-shirt, and a leather sport coat. Since I assumed she wouldn’t be there, I didn’t wear my suit. Fortunately, she didn’t mind at all and she asked if I wouldn’t mind walking outside to talk since it was a beautiful day and she’d been cooped up in the office all morning. I was totally fine with that and out we went, leaving her staff behind in the office. We walked down to the beach, with my explaining CGS and Global Solutions PAC and her talking about our shared issues. The beach was beautiful and we stayed there a bit looking out from a perch up the cliff. Then, we headed back since she kept worrying that I’d be cold, especially with my shaved head!

We stopped in front of her office and I assumed we were almost finished. She asked me what my plans were for the rest of the day and I told her I wanted to grab some lunch and head out to Orange County to visit a friend and then check into my hotel in LA. She asked where I was going for lunch and I said I had no idea but would wander around. She said that she had time for lunch before doing some radio interviews later in the day and invited me to join her. I thought it was great so she told her staff she was taking her lunch and off we went. She asked what types of food I liked and I said I could do anything, except Thai since I had dinner plans that evening at a Thai place. She said if you want good down and dirty Mexican, we should try this place right by her office. It was called Raul’s Shack and wasn’t much more than an enclosed cooking area and some chairs and tables. I was sold and we placed our order and sat down in one of the enclosed sitting areas to talk DC political figures and politics. I had this amazing shredded pork burrito called the Adobado burrito (I hope that’s right!) that was to die for. After lunch, we walked back to her office, had some nice farewell comments, and off I went.

Here’s a photo from our holiday party of the whole staff (minus two folks who couldn’t be there). It was a great time, hosted at Heather’s house. Down front is my boss Don. The first seated row is Min, Erica, me, Kristin, Fatema, and Sara. Next row up is Sam, Howard (with just his head in the shot), Lisa, Scott, Heather, and Liz. The last row is Simon, Aaron, Val, Charlie, Golzar, and Jessica. The two folks who couldn’t make it for the photo were Marla and Big Scott

The Government Relations team went out to Trattoria Alberto’s for lunch today (over on 8th St. SE). We took Shannon out to thank her for the great work she’s done for us during her fall internship at CGS. Don asked the waiter to take a picture of the four of us. Shannon’s on the left, then my boss Don, my colleague Simon (uber legislative guy), and myself. Good luck to you Shannon!

This is the Cathedral of St. Francis in Santa Fe, New Mexico, up the street from the La Fonda hotel. That’s where I was staying for our second annual conference. We had a fabulous conference with over 350 attendees (some estimates were near 400!). Of that, we had about 1/3 students and almost half of all the participants were locals from New Mexico. It was a great conference, and leaps and bounds beyond the first conference (which I ran) back in 2004.

During the conference, I moderated our panel entitled Local Crisis, Global Challenge: HIV/AIDS in New Mexico and the World. I also co-moderated a panel on our PAC. I also conceived of and helped carry out our Saturday Morning Cartoons, but more on that in another post.

The panel I conceived and put together turned out great on Saturday morning, the 5th, at 10:30 AM. Erica had snagged Jeremy Landau for the panel and I pulled in Wenoah Viekley and Paul Zeitz to round it out. All three had great presentations and we had some good questions afterwards. I was extremely impressed with the work that Wenoah does at the Southwest C.A.R.E. Center. Reminded me of Paul Farmer’s work, i.e. putting her money where her mouth is. Jeremy’s done fabulous work throughout New Mexico and across the nation. Paul’s talk really laid it out without sugar-coating. All three were right were I wanted the discussion to be. More about the conference in some more posts of the next few days. Still trying to recover from conference hangover! In the following photo, it’s Jeremy, Wenoah, Paul, and me.

We will be hosting our 2nd annual conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 4 through 6 November 2005. I helped put together our much smaller scale conference back in 2004. This one is going to be great.

I pitched and helped put together one of the panels for Saturday the 5th (10:30 AM – 12:00 PM) called “Local Crisis, Global Challenge: HIV/AIDS in New Mexico and the world.” For this panel, we’ll have health experts discuss the local, national, and global impact of HIV/AIDS and other health issues.

Many thanks to Erica and friends in Santa Fe for getting Jeremy Landau on the panel. Jeremy’s the program manager at the New Mexico Community AIDS Partnership. Prior to that, he worked with the National Rural AIDS Network.

I recruited Dr. Paul Zeitz, the co-founder and executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance in DC. I also helped get Wenoah Veekley, the co-founder of the Global AIDS Project at the Southwest Care Center in Santa Fe.

In addition to the health panel, I’ll also be working our PAC brown bag lunch on Saturday. From the conference schedule, this event asks: “Is political money where the rubber hits the road?” I’ll be co-hosting this with my boss and our PAC chair.

As of today, I’m transition into being a full-time member of the Government Relations Team. I’m now the Deputy Director, Government Relations. In this position, I coordinate all election-related activities including our PAC, manage candidates we’ve endorsed or supported, work on linking global issues to local concerns, and devote a portion of my time to working on global health issues. So, I have now formalized the work I’ve been doing since I was an intern at CGS back in early 2004.

Last week was just a long, long week. Work was going crazy with a new phone system, a new internet provider, Hyde’s UN Reform bill being introduced and voted out of HIRC, helping to plan our November conference, ramping up our PAC , and working on our membership database. Additionally, I continued work around our Congressional Report Card and the Bolton nomination. I worked with our members across the country, especially our Partners, to mobilize against this sledgehammer bill. I wrote the software that displays our Report Card information, but also wrote some beta software to allow our members to find the foreign policy staffer for their Senators and Representatives (this link might not last forever).

On top of all that, we had two of our staff leave this week. On Tuesday, Joy left for a fantastic job in DC to work in her areas of interest and expertise: international economic issues and Italy. My dear friend Pin Athwal also left. She’s got a fantastic job where she’ll be the special assistant to the Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Very cool job for her! Sadly, I’ll miss her both professional and personally. We helped send her off on Friday down at Sonomo, a new trendy wine bar right near the Capitol. Nice place, but horrible service. I’m hoping this will get better as they get up to speed in their new spaces.

Wow, today marks one year in my position as Grassroots Program Manager. I can’t believe it’s really been that long. It seems like only yesterday I was talking with Don on the street corner after a PEP meeting. Now, I’m sitting in my office, organizing our members, coordinating our PAC, and writing copy for our website and action alerts. It’s been a long, crazy ride! I’ve worked with some fantastic people and seen great folks come and go. Shout outs to Angela, Becca, Brian, and Stuart! And soon to Pin.

As part of a strategic planning exercise this morning, we did a great activity. With no preparation, the facilitator, Pin, handed out 3×5 index cards. We had about 2-3 minutes to write down, by ourselves, the 2 main program areas we’d like to work on as an organization. When done, you folded it up and tossed it onto the floor in the center of the circle we were sitting in. After a few minutes, each person in the circle got up and picked a random piece of paper, reading aloud what they picked up. We wrote down all the items noted on a board.

There were two cool things about this exercise. On a group dynamic level, it was great to allow those who might not want to express their opinions to be able to do it in semi-privacy. Also, the lack of preparation and short time frame allowed folks to write from their gut, not their pre-arranged work framework. Items that came up were also not always framed in the current program areas we had. Some saw “Law and Justice” as the same thing as “International Law & Justice”. What was cool, though, was pointing out that this is what they thought of the areas. Was it international justice like the International Criminal Court (ICC) or building strong democratic justice mechanisms within states. Exploring these differences of understanding was important to me and we had a good conversation about that over the course of the exercise.

On a personal level, this exercise was useful to me. The two items I wrote down were Global Health and US Global Engagement. This was my 15-second gut reaction to what I thought the organization should work on. But, since this is the place where I work, it is what I felt I should be working on. It was very revealing, and was much more useful to me than when someone asks me (or I ask myself) what I want to do. My interest in global health has been confirmed by several friends and colleagues as well. So, this could be a new avenue to explore.