Washington, Day 1

I’m going to do a three-part series on my trip to Washington. Day 1, I’ll do Thursday, Day 2, Friday, and Day 3, Saturday.

On Thursday I left on an American Airlines flight and arrived an hour later in DC without incident. At that point, I checked my messages on my phone and found something from Karl Stark, who arranged the meeting with the Agriculture person. It turned out that, although the meeting was scheduled for 1:30, I needed to be at the Roosevelt offices by 12:00 or 12:30. This was not cool, as I arrived at Reagan International a bit after 11:00. After taking the blue Metro line to Foggy Bottom station, I walked a few blocks through Washington with a rolling suitcase. Thankfully, I wasn’t wearing my suit, so that at least didn’t get sweaty.

I took a cab to the USDA building, which is near the Smithsonian. It is a large building, and fairly old. I met with was Doug McKalip, a man with the resources branch whose job involves telling congressmen about what the Department does. I sat down with him and discussed the water policy my center had worked on (though I’m afraid I did a poor job at that). He had several suggestions for working on the policy. After the meeting, I returned to the Roosevelt offices for a debriefing.

I should note here that there was a bit of an assumption by others, to some extent, that I would continue on with the water policy. To be honest, I really hadn’t intended to - I guess I figured that I was done with it. However, I assented, to some extent, to continue working on it and to get it into place (not in Orange County, of course, where such a system is already used), and I think I might well try to do so before I head for Japan. This issue will pop up again this blog.

Next, I went to my host’s residence. I was unable to reach her by phone, which was a bit problematic considering that I was supposed to contact her before arriving. Regardless of that, I took a taxi to her place and went inside her townhouse to find that she was not there. It was a rather awkward situation, but it turned out all right in the end.

In the evening, there was a reception/office warming party in the Roosevelt offices. The walls, as was pointed out in a speech the next day, are a bizarre shade of green, and there is little space - particularly for the purpose of holding a large number of students for an event. Hanging on the walls were poster-board print-outs of some of the 25 Ideas; I later noticed (with pleasure) that ours was the one facing the entrance to the office. There was wine, sparkling grape juice, sparkling apple cider, and hors d’oeuvres for consumption. I met a number of people there, including the people involved with the student-run sustainability journal at Columbia.

I left the reception with Elise, my hostess, and two other guests of hers, Brenden and Olivia. Olivia goes to Michigan State, Brenden goes to Columbia, and Elise goes to Harvard. Brenden was also an author featured in one of the 25 Ideas publications. (There are actually multiple 25i publications this year - one on equal justice, one on democratic reform, and one on community development (in which my center was published).) Olivia herself had participated in (and, I think, been published as a result of) a conference on the Great Lakes. Later, a student named Lateisha joined us from CSB-SJU. There is no Roosevelt chapter at her school, but she would like to start one.

I went to bed too late that night, but I managed not to fall asleep at the expo the next day. I will talk about Friday in my next post.