Your Friday Awesome: How To Be Alone

I was a Congressional intern during the summer of 2000. I was the only underage student without a fake ID at AU so it was the first time in my life I had to learn to be alone once in a while. It helped that I was also a member of the District's teeming masses of summer interns studying for the LSAT which necessitates being alone sometimes. But besides learning that I did not want to go to law school, the best lesson I learned was how to enjoy being alone. A town full of amazing free museums and cozy coffee shops helped, but it is pretty awesome to be okay with just being awesome on your own once in a while.

via Feministing.

Your Friday Awesome

Posting has been light (or rather, nonexistent) this week since I've been in DC for work. Unfortunately I missed the National Equality March by two days. 200,000 people marched on DC alone.

Photo via Yahoo News.

To Whom Much Is Given, Much Is Required

I was in the same room with Ted Kennedy twice.

During the summer of 2000, I was an intern for the Hon. Juanita Millender-McDonald in Washington, DC. As a member of the House, her office was in the Cannon House Office Building, a building which induced excited taking-part-in-democracy-living-within-history chills every time I entered it. The office held four interns (including myself), a receptionist, scheduler, three legislative assistants, a legislative director, a chief-of-staff, and the Member herself. All of these desks were crammed into two rooms about the size of my dorm room at American University, except for the Member, who had an office to herself. I thought the cramped quarters were kind of exciting - Democracy at work, and all.

The house didn't use Congressional Pages for much (at least our office didn't). It was nice to leave the office and explore the halls of Congress and the catacombs beneath it, so whenever something needed to be delivered somewhere the interns would volunteer. One day, our LD asked myself and another intern to deliver a piece of legislation to Kennedy's office since it was about to be considered before the Senate. So, we took the elevator to the basement, walked through the catacombs past 19 year-olds with blazers and loafers that cost more than our tuition and very serious people with wires in their ears, took the tiny subway (only the Senate got one) and then went up to Kennedy's office.

When we entered we tried not to be dumbfounded. There, in all its Federalist glory, was a giant expansive office filled with strong jawed east coasters. And lo and behold, there he was. He came out of his office, said hello to us (besides the looks on our faces, our orange INTERN badges were blazing around our necks), and continued into the hall with a gaggle of suits and pearls.

The second time was when I attended a health care briefing. Unfortunately I can't remember exactly what the topic was (I attended A LOT of them) but, Ted Kennedy was there. As he spoke his face became so red that it almost matched the velvet curtains behind him. Sure, this is a family that knows how to enjoy a good cocktail, but it was also because he was so animated about the subject. For a nineteen year-old who had just spent a summer being disillusioned by the players in the "democratic process," it was refreshing.

I am not one to give in to moving eulogies about public figures while denying that they are people - often deeply flawed people. Which is why I was really glad to read Melissa's post:

The terrible bargain we all seem to have made with Teddy is that we overlooked the occasions when he invoked his privilege as a powerful and well-connected man from a prominent family, because of the career he made using that same privilege to try to make the world a better place for the people dealt a different lot.

It could not have been easy to be the only living member of a legacy that everyone expected to change the country, if not the world. But, in many ways he did not rest on the family's laurels. Jezebel put together a list of his legislative accomplishments and it is impressive. Amplify also has the text of Kennedy's speech to the Senate in 1993 on the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act which, sadly, continues to ring true.

So while I won't forget the flaws the public knew about, I am also thankful for work he did.

The Austin Chronicles: Duck and Cover

I'm a drought baby.

That makes is sound like I was born during the dustbowl, but really it just means I was born in California. California is always in a drought - or, at least has been since I was born. I've never seen a full reservoir. I thought those stair-stepped lines of earth around all "lakes" in California were normal.


It wasn't until El Nino came that I saw an honest-to-goodness downpour. At twelve I sat in the back yard with my mom, sister and a few family friends as the moms tried to talk down the kids under ten who were sure it was the end of the world.

Only that wasn't really a downpour, at least not what people in the rest of the country would call a downpour. It was really just enough rain to actually use an umbrella, with some thunder and lightning to send the cats under the bed.

I didn't see a real thunderstorm until I spent a summer in Washington, DC. As I was sitting in my dorm room, laying on top of the air conditioner, wondering if I would ever stop sweating, the sky started to turn a funny shade of green. My parents had lived in Michigan for a bit until they couldn't handle not being able to barbecue all year long, so my mom had told me about when the sky turns green. It meant run to the basement. To the south....south-something corner.

But, I was in the third day of living on fourth floor of a dorm. I could barely find the bathroom, let alone the south-something corner of the basement. So I called my mom.

Mom: Hello.

Me (barely concealed panic): The sky is turning green.

Mom: Oh, well what are the clouds doing?

Me: I don't know, I'm in a building surrounded by buildings and the fullest, lushest trees I've ever seen, I can't see the sky!

Mom: Turn on the television. Is there a read ticker on the bottom of the screen?

Me: No.

Mom: Oh, okay.

Me: Oh my god. Its started raining...no its pouring...I can barely see outside the window!

Mom: Oh, yeah. That's weather.

Me: Oh, my god! Lightening just struck the tree!

Mom: Hang up the phone.

Me: Why?!?!

Mom: Because there's lightning. It can go through the phone.

This was during the Clinton administration, when we still had land lines, kids. And, yes, it's true.

Me: What?!?! Oh crap.

So I hung up the phone. And I watched the rain pour down. Then it dawned on me. This was the mid-Atlantic. Rain didn't mean cold, it was still warm outside. I ran next door and was officially given the title of The Crazy Californian.

I knocked on the door of the girls from North Carolina and Texas. And screamed: "Who wants to go jump in puddles!" And we did. Or I did, and the rest looked at me like I was, well, The Crazy Californian.

So, when I moved to Texas in August, I figured I knew what I was in for. I had spent a summer in DC so I knew about humidity and thunderstorms and hot nights and feeling like you'd been slathered in grease for three months.

Yeah...nope.

That cute little clapboard house built in 1922 had survived 80 years of Texas weather, but the first night I spent alone in the house I wasn't so sure.

I was awoken by a horror movie thunderclap shaking the windows and lightning flashing through the curtains. I shot out out of bed and into the living room. I was sure the world was coming to an end. The living room had nine windows all of which were shaking as the thunder and lightening continued and the rain whipped branches against the house.

I turned on the television. And there it was. The red ticker.

TORNADO WARNING: TRAVIS, HAYS and WILLIAMSON COUNTIES UNTIL 3:00AM.

We did not have a basement and I still didn't know what south-something corner to go to. And besides, all those windows weren't going to do much to help. So, I decided that the best plan of action would simply be to continue to watch the news until 3 am. The ticker was going, but the weather wasn't breaking through the one o'clock infomercials, so it couldn't be that bad, right? And if they did break through, they would tell me what to do, right?

At 2:57 the warning was cut off. I peeked out the front door to make sure Armageddon had not hit (it hadn't). And went to bed.

The next day I woke up to Grace the landlady knocking on the door. Evidently the storm had been mentionable enough to take a branch or two off the trees in the yard and she was overseeing the handyman.

Grace: Quite the storm!

Me: Oh my gosh! Yes! I thought I was just being a baby since I'm from California. There was a tornado warning and everything, I didn't know what to do!

Grace: Oh, honey. That is what the bathroom's for. We put that in when that one touched down downtown.

Me: - - -

Grace: Yeah, that's why its got no windows. You go in there and get in the tub with your mattress over your head. Those pipes should hold up.

Me: - - -

Grace patted me on the shoulder and went back to overseeing the handyman, as I stood there. That was why the shower had no windows? Because somehow I'd transplanted myself to tornado country?

I went back in the house and tried to figure out how I would be able to fit my mattress into the bathroom. Then I called my mom.

Me: THEY HAVE TORNADOES HERE!!!

Mom: Yeah, the rest of the country has weather.

Me: I like earthquakes better.