Capital Letter

Article I wrote for my organization's magazine

2011-04-06T16:22:00.004-04:00

If anybody is still out there and paying attention to this blog, I thought I would share an article I wrote for my organization's magazine (which I am also the editor of). This article shows not only my work and what I do these days (writing articles and editing a magazine, among other communications tasks) but shows the work of my organization - what type of work it does. This article also serves as a bit of a travel journal, telling you about a memorable work trip I took last fall to Mississippi, my first non-tourist trip to the "real" Deep South and my first time in that state.

Like a phoenix from ashes, a town rises from a hurricane’s flood

Mississippi community destroyed by water uses water to rebuild itself

By Stephen Padre

Down in the bayou, along the Gulf Coast, sits the small town of Pearlington, Miss. Moss hangs low from the mighty oak trees in the quiet, still air. The town’s sleepiness today belies what it has been through in the past several years. Part of its quietness is the result of the town losing many of its residents, not by choice but by force of extraordinary circumstances.

Pearlington is one of those places that defines itself by a major event. For this town, it was Hurricane Katrina, which hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in late August 2005 and became the costliest natural disaster in American history. Little Pearlington, sitting on a remote corner of Mississippi’s short panhandle, was slammed by the enormous hurricane. But like other small communities on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, Pearlington was overlooked and forgotten as the nation’s attention focused on the crisis unfolding in New Orleans, less than 40 miles away. Surrounded by major bodies of water—the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain, and a river on one side—the town was flooded and nearly destroyed by Katrina.

Today, Pearlington’s residents speak of the time before Katrina and the time after Katrina. The hurricane did its damage through water. The sea came inland and swept houses away or left debris on property, leaving it uninhabitable.

But the town has another history, both before and after Katrina, that is also all about water. For two periods of a few years before the hurricane and since then, Pearlington has been receiving assistance from Community Resource Group, the Southern RCAP, as the town works to construct new drinking water and wastewater systems.

“I never thought I would spend my entire career [with RCAP] working with this community,” said Tom Johnson, the Senior Operations Management Specialist for CRG who has worked with Pearlington’s leaders for more than 14 years.

This is an unusually long lifecycle for an RCAP project in a community. Most technical assistance providers like Johnson spend three to five years providing technical, managerial or financial assistance for a system before moving on to help other communities in need.

Pearlington’s leaders first contacted CRG in late 1997 because it had an inadequate wastewater collection or disposal system. Many homes were discharging raw sewage directly into the Pearl River or various bayous. The state Department of Environmental Quality had sampled various sites in the area and found the water of the river and bayous contained high levels of fecal coliform bacteria.

From 1997 to 2000, and starting again in May 2005, Johnson worked with leaders to create a water district and secure funding from various sources to install a sewer system. While the area had functioning water wells, it was decided to also install a drinking water system. By July 2005, the district had a fully designed sewer system ready for bids from contractors as well as enough funding from several sources to get the project started.

Then Katrina hit.

Five years later, as Betty Baxter sat near where her home once stood, her eyes welled up with tears as she recounted how Katrina destroyed houses and devastated Pearlington. After she talked about the frightening days of flooding following the storm, she drove visitors around town in her car and stopped at her property. Now it is just an empty lot after the house she and her husband had lived in was razed because it was too damaged in the flooding to rebuild. Only the enormous, moss-draped oak trees sit peacefully around what Baxter said was her living room and dining room.

Tom Johnson and Betty Baxter

“People lost everything they had—everything, except what they had on their backs,” she said.

Baxter was not alone in what she suffered. Prior to the hurricane, there were 871 homes and buildings in Pearlington. Katrina destroyed more than 700 of them and heavily damaged the others.

Baxter is currently the secretary of the water district and since Katrina has taken a key leadership role in pushing for completion of the water and sewer systems. She is 73, and her husband is 80. Since Katrina, they have lived 30 miles away from the coast. She knows they must make a choice. They can return to Pearlington and rebuild their house and their life there, but they are getting too old to start over again. Or they can remain where they are.

Baxter has invested too much time and effort in the water system through her service on the district’s board to leave her work now. She wants to see her town get its water system so it can continue to build itself up from the devastation of Katrina.

“I’m not a quitter. I feel like I am obliged to stick it out and see that they get a water and sewer system,” she said. “I live in Picayune, but my heart is here.”

Johnson said Katrina set the town’s work on its water systems back years. But he has continued his work with the town as well.

“We don’t know where we would have been without Tom,” said Baxter.

As a result of the hurricane, most of the funding that had been lined up with Johnson’s help for Pearlington’s project disappeared. Mississippi’s governor diverted grant funds to rebuild the infrastructure on the coast. Pearlington’s water district had already spent more than $800,000 on designs, easements and other preparations for its water system.

The district had hoped to obtain enough of the post-disaster rebuilding funds as grants to complete its project, but this did not happen. So the district is applying for a $1.5 million loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Rural Development to finish the work.

Nevertheless, 14 years later, the system is beginning to operate, and CRG, through Johnson, will work with the system until all construction ends and the system’s daily operation is running smoothly. Customers’ homes were being hooked up weekly to the system late last year.

“This is truly an example of where CRG/RCAP has worked from the start until today with a project helping them form [a district], secure funding, write manuals and procedures, and everything else,” said Johnson. “I feel that in the last 14 years I have been required to use all the experience I had prior plus educate myself and learn many other things to get this system to where it is.”

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Pearlington hopes to pull itself out of the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina. In addition to installing a new water system, one way it is doing this is with the establishment of a community center. The building was built by a charity as a gift to the town. Betty Baxter, the secretary of the water district, stands by the center’s dedication plaque.

Padre is RCAP’s Director of Communications and editor of Rural Matters. He visited Pearlington in October 2010.

Bulletin for the memorial service of Lora Padre (Stephen's sister)

2010-08-14T12:13:00.004-04:00

Bulletin for the memorial service of Lora Padre

Update on recent happenings

2010-04-27T14:36:00.002-04:00

Rotary Club lunch

Last week I attended the weekly lunch meeting of the Rotary Club that meets up 16th St. a couple of blocks from my office at the University Club. I was investigating hosting an exchange student - if this club brings any foreign students over – and the president of the club had invited me to attend a lunch meeting as his guest so we could meet. My initial contact was made, and that business was taken care of, but I was also thrilled to get inside this exclusive club, which is essentially the in-city “athletic club” or “country club” (without the outdoor parts like tennis courts, pool or golf course).

Well, there wasn’t anything unique inside, at least the parts that I saw – nothing private or exclusive or new to me. It was all just very fancy and upscale. There were many wood-paneled rooms – the various bars and restaurants in the place. Certainly the bathroom had some extra amenities. You could use some mouthwash or a comb or polish your shoes with their little machine. The room the lunch was held in was on the second floor and was like a fancy hotel ballroom set up with round tables and a buffet table at the back – like any banquet at a hotel that you would attend. The source of arrogance for this place isn’t its location (on the water or in an exclusive suburb), but its location. I’m sure many of the city’s powerful businessmen, lobbyists and government workers frequent this place, which is just a few blocks from the White House, although I walk past it regularly and have rarely seen anybody well-known outside (I did pass Tom Ridge nearby one day on my way to work).

Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens

A couple of weekends ago, we took a few hours on a windy but sunny Saturday afternoon to visit the former estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post, which is just a few miles from our house, but which we had not really known about from living here (another hidden gem in the city; ask us about what we’ve discovered when you visit). Post was married and divorced about four times, and some of her husbands were wealthy and/or powerful, and she was also the heiress of C.W. Post of the Post cereal company, which later became General Foods. As a wealthy socialite, she purchased an estate here and set about collecting art – mostly Russian and French – and keeping a lavish garden, all the while entertaining famous guests.

Pictures of our visit are posted here.

All of our photos were taken outside, and most are of the gardens. We visited at exactly the right time for the gardens, which were in full bloom. I don’t think I’ve visited a private garden that had so many flowering plants before. It was simply spectacular. We were not allowed to take photos inside the mansion, which was Post’s house but is now a veritable museum. She expanded the house and added a lot of rooms here and there, many of which were just to show off her various art collections. There was about as much practical living space as there was space for the art and entertaining, like the “pavilion,” which was for showing movies and holding ballroom dances.

The mansion/museum was a bit familiar to us, since it was very much like a palace in Europe, of which we have seen many, only on a smaller scale. Honestly, I don’t know what was more spectacular – the house or gardens. For a private, little-known house-museum, it has something rare: Its centerpieces are a small handful of pieces by Faberge, including two of his famous eggs. The “surprises” in them (when you open them) have been long lost, however. There were several important portraits of Russian royalty throughout the house, and the grand piano in one of the sitting rooms had pictures of people she would entertain regularly. I spotted a framed picture of John and Jackie Kennedy at the end of the piano.

Drama on our block

Yesterday I had left the office at my earlier time, at 5:00. Sarah and Lexi were still not home from their weekend away, but were on their way home. As I approached the intersection where our house is, I crossed one street as usual and heard a fire truck approaching. I looked down the block and saw that it was coming toward me. I didn’t think this was a big deal, since we hear sirens all the time, sometimes even on our street – mostly police cars flying past. I expected it to continue down the street past our house. But then, as I crossed the other street in front of our house, I happened to look down another street and thought it looked foggy. It was odd, I thought, but then remembered that it had been a drizzly day with rain off and on since the night before. But then suddenly I connected the two – the fire truck and what was actually smoke! By then I had crossed in front of the fire truck, which had pulled up across the street but close to our house. A house across the street from our and a few doors down was on fire! I had arrived at precisely the right moment as the first fire truck arrived.

I went in the yard at the end of our house and watched all the fire fighters arrive and as all the other neighbors were coming out of their houses to see what was going on. Some were running out as the smoke billowed up from the roof in the back of a house. More fire trucks arrived, and at the peak of it all, there were a total of eight trucks occupying more than two blocks of the neighborhood, plus other police and fire vehicles and an ambulance at one point.

The trouble with this fire was that it was smack in the middle of an entire long block of row houses, and one could easily see that if they didn’t put it out soon, it would easily spread. So some policemen were going door to door and telling residents to get out. I saw them do this to one house, and the woman seemed unusually calm and left her house with her dog on a leash like she was going to take the dog for a walk anyway. I would have been quite concerned that my house was also going to go up in flames. Yes, I would have taken the dog, but certainly I would have left in a bigger hurry and would have been more visibly concerned. As it happened, the fire did spread to one adjacent house, and fire fighters were scrambling from all sides, breaking windows in the front second story windows to get in and accessing both houses from the roof with two ladder trucks.

One fire truck was there until about 9:00 last night – about three hours total. Today the two houses are boarded up. This was a big reminder of the dangers that we face – from the wiring I did when I installed new lighting fixtures in our dining room and entryway (did I do it correctly?) to living in a row house, where a fire in your neighbor’s house could mean certain destruction in your own house.

A Washington Peeps show

2010-03-22T13:25:00.004-04:00

O, the cheap gimmicks a venerable institution must stoop to.

Most likely in the name of community outreach (i.e., to attract readers), The Washington Post, that newspaper that once brought a president down, the bastion of journalism famed in book and cinema, the former home of that iron lady Katherine Graham, sponsors an annual Peeps contest. The newspaper invites submissions from the public (its readers, residents of the Washington, D.C., area) to design and construct a diorama, a scene using Peeps, those marshmallow Easter candies made in the shapes of chicks and bunnies.

For the last couple of weeks, Sarah and I have been following a group on Facebook that supports of one of the entries and the person/people who created the “Washington National Peepthedral” scene full of a choir and a procession, complete with a miter-wearing bishop Peep and the Darth Vader gargoyle that really does exist at the cathedral.

The 36 finalists are on display for the first part of this week at the Post’s offices, and at lunch today, Sarah and I walked over there to view them. They are allowing the public to vote on its favorite as well.

The scenes are fun, clever and creative. Many did what I knew had to be done for a winning entry – pick a current event from the news or pop culture and create a Peep scene around it - and so there are several scenes from our big February snow storms (the enormous snowball fight in Dupont Circle) and a snowy scene from the Olympics. Others borrowed from children’s and adult literature to create Frankenstein, Madeline (Peepaline) and Goodnight, Peep (Goodnight, Moon) scenes. The attention to detail is admirable on some. Another favorite of mine had a bunny Peep as Normal Rockwell in a re-creation of his triple self-portrait scene. Pure genius, that.
Although I've been a Facebook fan of the Peepthedral scene and do think it's clever and well-executed (extra points for its additional "marketing" effort on Facebook), here is the one I voted for:

It's the scene of the White House party crashers. I voted for it because:

It's current (well, barely, but probably was at the time it was conceived)
It's a good setting for use of Peeps as people
The theme is good for a play on the Peeps word
It's well-executed

Sarah was commenting the other day that she missed the scenes we would see a few times a day at this time of year while living in Geneva - the chocolate shop windows that not only made elaborate scenes but made elaborate creations in those scenes of chocolate Easter bunnies in family roles and gender-specific suits. We don't have as much of a chocolate culture here in this country as they do in Switzerland. We do go crazy with other types of Easter candy, however, and I suppose we'll have to settle for the way they have fun with their Easter candy here.

I did not enter the contest this year because I heard about it only about a week before entries were due. But I immediately told my artist brother about it and said that we needed his help for our entry next year.

See The Washington Post's page with photos of all the finalists

Getting walloped with winter weather

2010-02-08T08:18:00.012-05:00

Our house at 4:00 Saturday afternoon

This is our first winter back in the U.S., and boy, are we getting a lot of it!

Sure, we are really noticing the winter weather after living near the Equator for a while. Sarah remarked the other day how she appreciates living in a place with distinct seasons again. Also, Geneva did not get any heavy snows (despite what people think, Geneva is not high in the Alps). So we have returned to the type of cold, wet, snowy winters we knew in Chicago.

First there was the pre-Christmas winter storm. They said that big of a storm was rare - only every 50 years or so. We flew out to Seattle the day after that storm, and we were nervous about the airports being open and getting to the Baltimore airport by road to fly out. But we made it to the airport and to our flight with no problems.

Then, this past weekend, an even bigger storm hit the D.C. area. We were walloped! The snow started falling on Friday morning and did not let up until Saturday at 5:00 p.m. There was so much anticipation around this storm - lots of talk and many things shutting down or letting out early. I felt a bit left out with no scheduled events of my own to cancel, since everybody else was canceling their events. The only thing we had scheduled on Saturday was a birthday party of a friend's son out in the suburbs in Virginia, but we didn't need to worry - this was called off on Friday.

With no flight to catch either, we had no obligations outside the house, so we stayed inside all day Saturday, content to let it snow. I went out in the late morning to start shoveling, and by then, there were 19 inches of snow in our back yard (where it had drifted a bit) and 14 inches on the sidewalk in front of our house. Our car was completely buried by that time. I shoveled part of the sidewalk around our house. Yesterday, I could feel the shoveling I did in my lower back.

A measurement taken at 4:00 Saturday afternoon in our front yard

We managed to get out of the house and go to church yesterday morning. Of course, the usual crowd wasn't there. Many members live out in the suburbs. There were only about 30 people there. We knew we could get there on the subway (only two stops away) but that it would take longer that way than usual. So we just started out early. It took us an hour to get to church. The organist could not make it, so I volunteered to accompany the service on the piano, and people really appreciated it.

By the time we got home from church in the early afternoon, the sun was beating down hard through a clear sky and was doing well to melt most of the snow off our car (I had shoveled most of it off earlier). So we finished digging it out, and now it's clear, although we still don't need to go anywhere with it.

As I said, there was a lot of lead-up to this storm. Everybody started talking about it and preparing for it early. We heard that on Thursday morning, 24 hours before the snow started falling, some grocery stories had been emptied out. But perhaps because the storm was bigger than what we thought was the biggest storm in December, the city was still caught off guard. Many streets are still not plowed, the buses are not running, and only the underground stations on the subway are open. So today, Monday, two days after the storm, on the first workday after it, most of the city is shut down. The federal government is closed. D.C. schools are closed. Sarah's office is closed, as is Lexi's daycare. I didn't get official word about my office being closed, but I decided not to go in today (our boss is on vacation this week and next anyway). So it's a snow day for everybody.

We aren't really unhappy or crabby about what's happening, but the only bummer is that while we are all just trying to cope with a huge amount of snow, another snow storm is on its way tomorrow afternoon. It is due to snow for about 24 hours more and leave us with at least 5 more inches! One little complaint I will air now, however: Since late Friday, the signal for our cable TV has not been coming in clearly. This was the ideal weekend for us, stuck inside, to catch up on all of our taped shows, but we haven't been able to watch any TV - live or recorded - since then because of snow on the lines or something probably snow-related. We do have one TV that is not hooked up to cable, so we've been able to stay caught up on the news.

Not to mention the previous weekend and last week: On Saturday of last weekend, it snowed much of the day as well, and we got about 4 inches. And then it snowed again on Tuesday - just a few inches. That last snow was very pretty. This was when I had family from Seattle (and some from NYC over the weekend) visiting. They managed to get out and fly back home before the big storm on early Thursday morning.

So, needless to say, we've had our share of real winter weather this first winter back in the U.S.

Lets go to the movies....

2009-12-24T16:54:00.002-05:00

Stephen and I went and saw a movie in a theater yesterday afternoon. Only the second one since we have moved back to the States. We walked in the theater and pretty much stopped in our tracks - they had removed a row of seats and put in the table in each row so that people could eat during the movie. Condiments, napkins and the menu were already on these tables and a waiter would bring your food to you if you wanted to order anything. Both of us thought this was a bit weird. Do you really need to eat a hamburger while watching a movie in a theater?? Is this the norm now or just a novelty in Seattle??

(We went to see 'Up in the Air' and thought it was quite good. It doesn't have your typical happy ending so if that is important to you, you might not want to go see it.)

Our 2009 Christmas letter

2009-12-21T23:43:00.004-05:00

Click on each image above to make it larger (so you can read it).

More scenes of the season

2009-12-17T08:50:00.003-05:00

Lexi in front of the Christmas tree at a holiday party we went to

Lexi at the Botanical Garden, all decorated for Christmas

Christmas scenes from Our Nation's Capital

2009-12-14T20:07:00.003-05:00

The Christmas tree at Union Station, a gift from Norway as thanks to the United States for our help in World War II (yes, a few years has passed since then, but they're still very grateful to us).

The Christmas tree on the grounds of the Capitol.

Fondue American-style? We say "Fon-don't!"

2009-12-07T13:47:00.003-05:00

A little while ago, we saw advertisements in the paper for the holiday concert of the Air Force band. We know the son of our former (first) pastor in Chicago (at Ebenezer), who plays saxophone in this band. So we got tickets from him to attend (we’ve learned in D.C. that you don’t have to do things the conventional way like the public does them; it’s all about using your connections to get something).

We decided to make a whole date night out of it, so we got our friend (Michelle) to babysit Lexi and went out to dinner before the concert. We tried one of D.C.’s fondue restaurants, one of our favorite meals from our time in Switzerland, obviously. How does the American version of a fondue meal at a restaurant fare? Herewith our list of rants:

Atmosphere: Granted, this restaurant was in the basement of a building, the same place you would find your Swiss friend’s carnotzet, where you would gather for your fondue meal and wine tasting (next to the cellar). But rather than the cozy, rustic atmosphere of a Swiss lodge with stone walls, they’ve got a modern décor with lots of wood and shiny metals and lots of modern art on the walls. And part of the atmosphere (the fun) of going to a restaurant in Switzerland for fondue is that you’re hit immediately at the door by the heat, humidity and strong, pungent smell of cheese. It’s an oppressive atmosphere, yes, but that helps keep you warm on a cold Swiss day, which is when you’d be eating fondue. This place was quiet well ventilated and didn’t smell at all.
Quantity: The recommendation from the waitress, for the “whole experience,” was to get the multiple-course meal, which started off with a cheese fondue (the only course with cheese), then went to a salad and then the “entrée,” which really was fondue with meat (cooking meat in a broth), and ended with a chocolate fondue dessert. We didn’t want to spend a lot for the entire experience (it’s quite expensive), and all a fondue meal to us is bread and a lot of cheese – that’s it! So we ordered just the salad and cheese course. The pot of cheese was slightly larger than appetizer-sized but still not generous like a real Swiss meal would be (and the Swiss would gladly bring another pot of cheese if you finished the first one).
Ingredients: Our main cheese fondue meal included “fresh” bread and three different types of it. A “real” Swiss fondue meal is just one type of bread – cut-up baguette (or that type), and it’s usually not so fresh and soft (fondue originated with stale, dry bread, and thus the melted cheese to soften it up – it’s what the shepherds carried with them high up in the Alps). Besides bread, we also had a couple of small bowls of apple chunks and chunks of fresh vegetables (celery, carrots and cauliflower). Again, something unheard-of with a real Swiss fondue meal. Our waitress made our fondue at the table in front of us, and it took all of a minute. It was just like all American foods – instant this or that. Real Swiss fondue cheese takes a while to melt and blend slowly. Plus she added nutmeg. We had never seen this before. There was a strange blend of spices in the cheese – pepper and nutmeg – that we weren’t used to.

One of the few redeeming things about the meal was that we were able to get a glass of white wine from Alsace, although there weren’t many choices on the wine menu for imported wines. OK, we’ll admit that we “ruined” the fondue anyway by ordering it with a salad, which we did all the time in Geneva as well (and were called on the carpet for on a number of occasions).

But we were able to get a more authentic Swiss meal even in Nairobi, at Rudy’s, a restaurant not far from our house there. Granted, Rudy was a native Swiss (Swiss-German), and we didn’t see any native Swiss at this restaurant on Saturday. We’ll never go back to there. We felt the way they did fondue was just so wrong.

Blame the baguette

2009-11-30T09:10:00.006-05:00

In early September 2008, I wrote a post ("The end of Geneva - and the world - as we know it?") on our Africa blog (now closed) about how switching on the Hadron Collider, outside our old home of Geneva, was possibly going to spell the end of the entire world. The concern by some scientists was that in trying to replicate the Big Bang - the origins of our universe - with this enormous atom smasher, the process of Creation would end as quickly as it began by creating a giant black hole that would swallow the earth and bring inhalation to humankind. No small thing, mind you. No "Oops, I guess that was the wrong thing to build. Can we try it again differently next time?"

But because I'm still able to write blog entries, that obviously did not happen. Another item for my Thanksgiving list last week of things that I'm thankful for.

However, in early November this year, there was a somewhat humorous story out of CERN, the scientific facility where this large atom smasher is housed. It seems that this machine, among the most complex scientific instruments ever built by humankind, at the cost of many years of work and many billions of dollars, was sidetracked by a small, insignificant object: a piece of bread. Here is a news report about the incident:

Peckish bird briefly downs big atom smasher

(AFP) – Nov 9, 2009

GENEVA — A peckish bird briefly knocked out part of the world's biggest atom smasher by causing a chain reaction with a piece of bread, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said on Monday.

Bits of a French loaf dropped on an external electrical power supply caused a short circuit last week, triggering fail-safe devices that shut down part of the cooling system of the giant experiment to probe the secrets of the universe, CERN said.

The system was restored several hours after the incident last Tuesday while the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider was barely affected, a spokeswoman said.

"The bird escaped unharmed but lost its bread," CERN said in a statement.

"On Tuesday 3 November, a bird carrying a baguette bread caused a short circuit in an electrical outdoor installation that serves sectors 7-8 and 8-1 of the LHC," it added.

"The knock-on effects included an interruption to the operation of the LHC cryogenics system."

The 27 kilometre-long (17 mile) particle collider, which runs in a circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near the city of Geneva, has been plagued by problems since it was briefly started up in September 2008.

However, CERN said the latest incident was minor and did not affect attempts to restart the accelerator later this month following repairs.

"It made for a small warming from absolute zero (minus 273 degrees Celsius, minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit) on the Celsius scale to minus 268 degrees but the machine was not stopped," CERN spokesman Renilde Vanden Broek told AFP.

"Everything returned to normal a few hours later and operations were able to resume in the night of November 5," she added.

Designed to shed light on the origins of the universe, the LHC at CERN took nearly 20 years to complete and cost six billion Swiss francs (3.9 billion euros, 4.9 billion dollars) to build.

The bird was believed to be an owl.

(end)

In other words, the process of discovering the origins of our universe, the most profound question ever asked, was thwarted by a simple French baguette. Moral of the story: Baguettes are bad. Or: Don't feed the birds. What brings down one of the biggest and most complex pieces of science equipment that humankind has ever built? Nature and the humble and common baguette. Remember that it was a nature again - an iceburg - that sunk the Titanic. The real moral of the story: Don't mess with nature. Also, in investigating nature, you just may destroy exactly what you're seeking when you create that black hole that's going to swallow the whole planet in an instant.

Thankfully, however, that group over at CERN is better than rocket scientists, and the other day they were able to fire up this puppy and break a record (whatever that means, i.e., what the significance of this is, I do not know). With a news release from CERN itself, there was a photo, and front and center in that photo was our good friend from church in Geneva, Jeff Steinhagen, one of those brilliant scientists who helps to adjust all the knobs and dials on this machine. Way to go, Jeff! (Apparently breaking this record was big enough that Jeff had to call his wife and wake her up at midnight to tell her the news.) Just don't destroy us all in trying to break new records, okay? And put down that forkful of fondue you're eating - you may cause that machine to malfunction again!

Busy, Busy

2009-11-22T19:49:00.002-05:00

Obviously, we are busy! Too busy to post anything to the blog anyway. What have we been up to?

House projects-weatherizing doors, considering changing thermostats, still unpacking and rearranging furniture, hanging some things up on the walls, buying cabinets/shelving for storage space. We also hung curtains in our room which now really helps to cut out the morning sun. While most of the house faces west, it is still very light in the morning. Plus the usual cleaning, cooking, lawn mowing, car washing, etc.

We have also done some cultural things including concerts and memorials. And did we write about driving through the Shenandoah Valley on Skyline Drive? I can't remember if we did or not - but it was gorgeous. Lots of beautiful leaves and vistas. We would highly recommend it.

Work is also keeping us busy - though maybe me more than Stephen. Our fiscal year ended Sept 30 so we are going through year-end now. It's the quickest close I have ever experienced...and there is still a lot to clean up, I would say. But that means Jan-March should be pretty calm.

We are also starting to get more involved at church. I have joined the choir and am enjoying singing in a group again. Stephen will probably be helping out with their communication stuff - there is a lot that can be improved there. Lexi is going to the nursery during the service and seems to be adjusting to that. She definitely likes coffee hour afterwards.

We are looking forward to Thanksgiving. Lexi is looking forward to the airplane ride and Mom to seeing her family and seeing how the girls interact. Stephen will seek advice from the guys on some of our house projects. We leave Wednesday very early (6:20 AM flight!) to MSP through Detroit. My brother's family has generously agreed to host again. I hope we can convince everyone to come east next year so we can host. We have the room!

Garden Tour - at the White House!

2009-10-19T08:32:00.002-04:00

Sunday afternoon, we went with our friend, Michelle, to the White House and toured the grounds/gardens. Here are some of the pics...(and no, you weren't supposed to go on the grass).

House photos - Upstairs

2009-10-16T08:45:00.003-04:00

Some house photos

2009-10-16T08:39:00.003-04:00

Home sweet home

2009-10-13T07:31:00.002-04:00

We have been in our new house for a couple of weeks now, and we are loving it. The major and best feeling I have isn’t so much a sense of ownership – knowing that the place is ours – but it’s a feeling of space and comfort, being able to spread out and feel truly at home. It’s a feeling of being settled and being able to use a space fully without feeling cramped or that I’m there only temporarily. I love having a lot of space now, room to spread out, having many rooms, each with its own purpose, as well as having all of my belongings together, every little comforting thing that I have and want, all together in one place (especially all of my favorite cooking “toys”).

I have yet to really spend a full weekend in the house. We did start officially living in the house two weekends ago, the second weekend that Sarah’s mother was visiting to help us make the move. But things were chaos inside with boxes coming from so many different places, and we were so busy the whole weekend moving in. Last weekend I went to Seattle to see my family again. This past weekend I was around nearly the whole time, until I left late Sunday afternoon for a business trip to Orlando.

But we are settling in nicely, and we are getting boxes unpacked and finding places for things. One thing that we are having to do is buy and install towel racks in the bathrooms (all 3 ½ of them) and shelving in most of the closets. When we get these necessities taken care of, then we will turn to more cosmetic improvements, such as painting. We are fortunate that the house, built in 1911, has been totally renovated inside and all walls are gleaming white, so the entire house is a blank canvas waiting for our personal touches. We love color, so we will have a lot of fun with our many rooms and walls. Then we can hang our pictures and display the many items we’ve collected on our travels around the world – our cuckoo clock from the Black Forest, my large ebony mask from Malawi, and our photos of the Matterhorn, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Pyramids at Giza, and the Great Wall of China, among many other souvenirs.

One of the greatest pleasures for me on weekends is having the time to cook (i.e., being able to take my time when cooking, unlike on weeknights when we just try to cook dinner as quickly as possible after work). Our house has a large kitchen, so it’s great to have space to cook in. However, we went out on Friday night and tried a pizza place in Columbia Heights, the lively neighborhood just south of ours, where there are lots of stores and shops and restaurants. But Saturday night we made dinner at home, and I was able to resume making a coffee cake for Sunday morning breakfast. With my stuff that was stored in my parents’ basement in the Seattle suburbs (that came in a moving van two weeks ago) was a new Kitchen Aid mixer, and I’m loving it. I’m also thrilled to have my automatic bread machine again. I can start baking a different kind of bread each week for the lunches I take to work. And I can cook as much as I want and have the dishwasher clean everything – I’m still thrilled to have a dishwasher, which my family did not have when I was growing up. We’ve got all new appliances in the kitchen, so they work well (although we’re still trying to figure out the personality of the oven – how it bakes best).

While outside cutting the lawn on Saturday, a new chore for us with a real, single-family home, a neighbor from a few doors down stopped and introduced himself. His name is Banks B. Banks. Seriously. He promptly pulled out one of his business cards and handed it to me, explaining that he does ironwork.

Banks B. Banks
“The Iron Man”

his card reads. I wonder if his middle name is also Banks. If so, I wonder why he didn’t put Banks Banks Banks on his business card. He told me, “Welcome to the neighborhood.” I should have responded with, “Thanks, Banks!”

We’ve met a few other neighbors over the past couple weeks, but none of them seem to have such colorful names (or nicknames).

So, we are settling in and doing quite well with our new digs. We hope you will come soon to visit us (okay, if you’d prefer to wait until spring when the weather will be nice again).

Portion of Ingrid Hovick’s Ashes Scattered in her Former Home of Washington, D.C.

2009-10-06T13:02:00.002-04:00

This is an addendum to an earlier post on this blog - A Tribute to a Great (in More Ways Than One) Aunt.

At the time of her death, Ingrid was living in Edmonds, Wash., where she had moved four years earlier from her longtime home of Washington, D.C. Ingrid had lived in Washington, D.C., for most of her life, for many decades, from the presidential administrations of FDR to George W. Bush, a remarkable span of history in the 20th century.

Following her death, Ingrid’s body was cremated, and her ashes were being kept in Seattle. But because she had spent most of her life in Washington, D.C., I, her great-nephew, and my wife, Sarah, had volunteered to take a portion of her ashes back to the city, where we now live, so part of Ingrid, at least, could be laid to rest in the city she loved so much.

On the night of Saturday, September 26, 2009, Sarah, our daughter Alexandria, Sarah’s mother Paula, who was in town visiting that week, and I gathered to scatter a small portion of Ingrid’s cremated remains on the National Mall. We recited a short liturgy from the service of burial/scattering of ashes from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s worship book, which included two Scripture readings – Psalm 23 (the beautiful language from the King James translation of the Bible) and Mark 7:24-37, the story that includes the account of Jesus healing the deaf man. I had chosen this Gospel reading as a reminder of how Jesus heals us and because of its relevance to Ingrid’s longtime hearing impediment.

The spot I chose for the scattering of Ingrid’s ashes was near the corner of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, just down the grand steps from the Lincoln Memorial, in view of that majestic monument as well as in view of the Washington Monument and near the Vietnam War Memorial, the World War II Memorial and other well-known sites of the capital. These are icons of the city and the nation, and I felt it was appropriate that part of Ingrid came to rest near places that exemplify the greatness of the city that Ingrid so dearly loved. Although it was raining steadily during the short service we held, the backdrop of the monuments lit up at night provided a dramatic backdrop to the occasion.

I later learned that Ingrid enjoyed taking first-time visitors to the city to the Lincoln Memorial at night on the first night of their visit. So my choice of location for scattering her ashes was appropriate but entirely arbitrary outside the reasoning I give above.

Also, my brother Andy had told me about a Chinese tradition in which a deceased person’s hearse brings the body by his/her former houses for one final visit. In a modification of this tradition, on our way to the Mall to scatter Ingrid’s ashes, we drove by her final two homes – two large apartment buildings on Connecticut Ave. And on our way back home, we drove by one of her earlier homes, the Chastleton apartment building on 16th St. NW, several blocks directly north of the White House.

Coincidentally, the day on which we scattered Ingrid’s ashes was the first day we officially began living in our new house, which we purchased in the Petworth neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was a day to mark endings – the coming to rest back in her beloved city for Ingrid – and a day of official beginnings – the establishment of a home for us in the same beloved city, a place I was choosing to live largely because of Ingrid.

As the service for the committing of ashes says:

In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to almighty God our sister Ingrid, and we commit her ashes to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

The Lord bless her and keep her.
The Lord’s face shine on her with grace and mercy.
The Lord look upon her with favor and give her peace.
Amen

Stephen Hovick Padre
September 2009

New House!

2009-09-23T12:51:00.002-04:00

Another thing we haven't had time to report on...our new house! We finally closed on September 4th on a house in DC near the Georgia Avenue/Petworth metro stop. It was a long process getting us to this point. We started looking at the beginning of June, but on only one income, we weren't finding homes in good condition in the neighborhoods that we would like to live in. Our new neighborhood is called Petworth and just blocks north of Columbia Heights which was where Stephen first lived when he came in March and our first choice of neighborhoods. We wanted to be close to a metro stop and have some yard though it didn't need to be large. Being in the city is also important; we want to avoid the suburbs for as long as we can!

The new house is a row house but at the end of the row so it has windows on 3 sides. The entrance is on the side which makes the house appear huge when you approach it. But when you get in, you see that it is not as deep as you might have thought. With all of the windows though, it is very light. No one was living in the house before this; it had been purchased by someone and renovated for the purpose of reselling it. There are 3 floors with 3 bedrooms on the top floor (and two full baths); the main floor with an open kitchen/dining room combination (and a half bath) and the basement with another bedroom and full bath. The house has no towel racks or closet bars so that is the major inside thing that we need to correct. While there are closets in every bedroom, the house doesn't have any other closets - like a linen closet or a coat closet inside the front door. Probably the only other drawback is the fact that because of how the house is situated on the street, there is no private backyard. We will get creative to work around these things.

All of our furniture is in the house which is good. A couple of things couldn't go on the preferred level because they didn't fit up or down the stairs, but otherwise, all of the big things are where we want them. Decorating ideas are being discussed but that is still a little ways off. It is nice to get settled - and we think we really do have too much stuff! I know you don't usually have a yard sale AFTER you move, but we might have to do just that!

Weekend updates

2009-08-31T09:33:00.002-04:00

I have been meaning to update on what we have been up to on the weekends but never seem to find the time. Or I am too tired at the end of the day when I do have time and just want to read my book instead. Now let's see what I can recall.

Two Saturdays ago we went down to Mt. Vernon. I had never been there before. It was a nice outing. Lexi seemed to enjoy it as well though she was a little antsy during the house tour. It would have been a wonderful place to leave in Washington's time, I think. They show a movie at the beginning of your visit that really only focuses on Washington as a soldier. Then in the museum part, we looked at wax recreations of Washington through out his life - as well as saw his dentures! Stephen remembers going there on Christmas in 1984 (think I got the year right) and it was 75 degrees out.

We tried to go hear the Air Force Band one Friday night and got there to find that the main band was packing up because it looked like it might rain and only a woodwind quartet was going to play. Well, three songs into it, the sky off to the west was purplish looking so everyone just left.

This Saturday we went to Chesapeake Beach and went to the waterpark there. It was my kind of waterpark - very tame compared to what you find at Wisconsin Dells. Stephen and I had a good time though Lexi didn't think it was much fun. It was also nice to walk along the bay. Sunday, we went to Arlington Cemetery to pay our respects at Ted Kennedy's grave. There was a long line of people there doing the same thing.

In a nutshell, that is what we have been up to. There is probably more to add, but I don't want to go on too long.

A Tribute to a Great (in More Ways Than One) Aunt

2009-08-23T16:25:00.007-04:00

Ingrid Alice Hovick died on the same day the Church, on its liturgical calendar, commemorates Mary, Mother of Our Lord. In no way am I trying to compare Ingrid to the unrivaled greatness of Mary, a revered saint who has gone down in Christian history as having a central role in Jesus’ life and a towering figure in the Church. But if earthly families were able to bestow sainthood on certain members, Ingrid would deserve recognition like Mary as a towering figure in the Hovick family. Both were women with humble roots who got caught up in extraordinary circumstances in special places during exhilarating times. Today, however, as one of God’s children, Ingrid has gone home and joins Mary and all the saints in heaven. She became a saint herself and joins that great cloud of witnesses gathered at the river that flows by the throne of God.

I am a person who likes rituals and acknowledging occasions with appropriate actions and words (such as the commemoration on the liturgical calendar of Mary). So when I learned of Ingrid’s impending death, I started thinking of what way I might have to acknowledge her passing while here in Washington, D.C., away from the rest of the Hovicks who would probably be going through some ritual together in order to mark her passing.

This city, the nation’s capital, is my new home, a place my family and I chose to relocate to in the past few months. Although I have claimed it as my home now and have started to put down roots by buying a house and car and starting a job here, I have and always will think of this city as Ingrid’s city. I am here mostly because of Ingrid. Because this, to me, is her city, it should not be difficult for me to find something here – somewhere in the city – to do to remember and memorialize her. The trouble is, Ingrid spent most of her life in this city, and her presence here is so pervasive. I tell people that I chose to come to Washington, D.C., to live because I spent many of my growing-up years visiting Ingrid, my great aunt, flying across the country from Seattle for several days, attending a couple of presidential inaugurations, or taking the train down from Boston for Thanksgiving or other breaks in college. I came to love the city – its monuments, the atmosphere, its prominence, the politics, the importance of its government functions – on these visits. And I had an aunt I could stay with and who would dote on me.

Even after being in Washington, D.C., for a few months, I still don’t feel like a resident. I still feel like a visitor. And I still feel strange being here, because it was only and always a place I would visit temporarily and a place to go to visit Ingrid. Every time I move around the city, I see a building, monument, museum or landmark, and I say to Sarah, “Ingrid got us in there once,” or, “Ingrid managed to get tickets for us to take a tour there.” So my trouble in finding a ritual – a single thing I can do here in her city – to remember her by on her death is that there are too many possibilities. There is not one place in this city that I associate with Ingrid or one place that I know of that was her favorite. This entire city was hers. She knew it well, and when I visited her, I came to know it as well and love it like her. So I am still thinking of an action to take as a ritual, but at least I can start with my thanks to Ingrid for helping me get to know and love this city, and thanks for getting me here today, where I am now a resident. I am here because of you, Ingrid.

I have many memories of Ingrid, nearly all from my visits to her in Washington, D.C. I cannot and will not attempt to write down all of them. To me, the sweetness and beauty of some memories is that they are best when they stay inside your mind, and something happens to them – they are changed somewhat – when they are written down. I will certainly cherish all the memories I have of her. I came to Washington, D.C., once on my own for a week or so when I was a sophomore in high school to attend the inauguration of George H.W. Bush, and she got tickets for me and others and took us (Lynn, Andy, and one of Andy’s friends) to many of the inaugural events. That was truly a thrill being in the city for an event like that. Four years later, I came down to D.C. from Boston as a sophomore in college for Bill Clinton’s inauguration, and that time it was just the two of us trotting around town for the events. These were special times. Of course I loved the attention and doting that I got. At other times, I struggled to relate to her – me as a teenager or 20-something and her as an elderly woman. There was a big generational gap. She was my grandfather’s sister, and of course I believed that my grandfather and his generation were horribly out of date and did not understand me as a young person. One memory I have of this is coming back to her apartment after a long day of site seeing on one visit during my college years. She offered to stop at a pizza restaurant a few doors down from her place. I was a bit surprised that she was willing to do this, but I was happy to have a more typical, college-type, informal meal after the many formal meals she had made me on that visit (which, as it turned out, were often Stouffer’s frozen meals). I gladly ordered two slices of pizza to go and expected that we would just take them up to her apartment and I would eat them with a can of Coke and she would eat something more traditional, more old-lady-like. Well, as it turned out, she nicely placed one slice of pizza each on two china plates and poured us each a tall glass of milk, and we ate the pizza with a knife and fork at her dining room table as a formal meal. Again, she reminded me so much of my grandparents.

Despite some instances like this, I know she loved treating me to meals and events and paying for tickets. We had many full days of site seeing on my visits, and some would end with concerts in the evening at the Kennedy Center or a museum or plays at Ford’s Theater. This was her way of showing her love to me. She had done this to my parents’ generation, with her nieces and nephews on their visits to D.C. and when some of them lived here. I know she adored all of her nieces and nephews and me, her great-nephew.

Four generations of Hovicks, October 2007

Ingrid’s death is also the passing of a generation. Never have I known a Hovick to live so long. She was healthy, active and energetic late into her life, and all Hovicks who knew her and spent time with her were fortunate to have a family member like her. Even from the time I was young, she was always old to me. On one of my first visits to Washington, D.C., she took my family and me to the National Air and Space Museum, and she pointed out a short, cigar-shaped propeller plane in a shiny, polished aluminum hanging from the ceiling. “That’s the same model of plane that I flew out here on from Minnesota.” I’ll never forget that. I remember thinking – and still do – “Man, lady, you must be really old if planes you flew on are already in a museum!” She was the institutional memory of the Hovicks. But in a way, having lived so far from most of the Hovicks for decades, much of Ingrid’s memory bank was built from other places and things away from where the Hovicks lived and were centered. In a way, it was exotic to have a relative from the extended family living in a far-away place, perhaps not a strange or exotic, per se, place, but one that was exciting and only for select few who could really handle the excitement and demands of an important, high-profile city like D.C. She was a novelty, a strange connection we had to a big, important city. She obviously had had an independent streak to move at a young age from rural Minnesota to a city that was building itself up during World War II. And so all that she lived through in Washington, D.C., from the administration of FDR to that of George W. Bush, she was an institution, a long-surviving memory bank and a connection to our past.

Ingrid Hovick, born early in the 1900s, and Alexandria Padre, born 90 years later in another millennium (photo from October 2007, when Lexi was 2 months old)

Ingrid was the lone surviving member of my grandparents’ generation. She outlived my grandparents by many years, and in a way was a bit of an anomaly in this regard. But I consider myself fortunate to live in a family that had four generations in it at one point. I’m most pleased that Ingrid, someone I was close to, someone whom I knew enjoyed watching me grow up, lived long enough to see me have a child and to meet Lexi. The second thing I’m most pleased about is that she lived long enough to see me and know that I had finally fulfilled a long-standing dream to move to Washington, D.C., to live and work here. I say that I’ve had this dream since my last year of college, when I took a job with a fixed term in Chicago before graduation and had planned to return somewhere to the East Coast after that year or so. After eight years in Chicago, followed by four years in Geneva and a year and a half in Nairobi, I was finally in a position to choose where in the U.S. I could live and could choose Washington, D.C. But I could say my dream went back further than college – or was planted well before that – because my dream started to develop on those trips out east when I would come here to stay with her and see the great monuments of the city and country. So, with Ingrid’s passing is the end of that oldest generation in my family, and all of us move up a rung on the ladder, and time marches on.

In this thinking about death and lives passing, I have a different perspective now as a father. I have a young girl to raise and care for. At one point in her life, Ingrid was a little girl, and she had parents who cared for her and wondered, as I do, what would become of her life. Certainly her parents or none of her peers as children could have imagined the changes she would live through or witness – World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, JFK’s assassination, the Vietnam War, the end of the Cold War, the Jet Age, the dawn of the Information Age and being able to speak to my daughter, a country and three generations away, on a webcam. Certainly Ingrid, as a single woman with no family obligations, could take advantage of a lot that was going on in the world and travel and see many places. The world has opened up for my generation, and I have been able to travel as much, if not more, as Ingrid did. And certainly my daughter will find a more open – and smaller – world than Ingrid or I did. But what a connection that was between Ingrid and Lexi, born 90 years apart – how Ingrid’s life reached back to the beginning years of the 1900s, and how Lexi’s life began on a different continent (Europe, where the Hovicks originated just a generation before Ingrid’s) nearly a century later in a different millennium.

I know Ingrid could not live forever – no one can. But it almost seemed like she would. I knew her for a long time, and she knew me for all of my 36 ½ years. I will miss her, of course. I was having a lot of fun telling her about “her” city after I had moved here and started discovering new and fun places. And I know she was having a lot of fun reading my regular e-mail updates. She had told me she was even a little jealous that I was living here and she wasn’t.

So, I offer these words as a tribute to Ingrid, and perhaps this is the ritual I was looking for. I am a writer at heart, and I wrote down these words as a way to remember her. Writing is often a ritual for me, a personal expression, so this can be one ritual I do in Ingrid’s memory. One way that people often memorialize someone who has died is by giving a gift to a charity they liked or supported themselves. I thought about causes that Ingrid liked, and the one she was most staunchly a supporter of was the Republican Party. Another part of Ingrid’s personality was her very conservative views. But in all those years of visiting Ingrid in D.C. and developing for myself a taste for national politics and presidential campaigns, I became a staunch Democrat, the opposite of her. Ingrid knew this, but she didn’t share her political views with me very often. One thing I could probably not do, however, is to give a monetary gift to the Republican Party! As much as Ingrid might be delighted in knowing that I did this, I would have to be just as staunch a supporter of my own party as she was of hers.

One last note about Ingrid: Everybody knew her as being hard of hearing or being deaf all together. Certainly she was a real communicator, however. She may have missed out on much of the world and its sounds, but she kept her mind sharp and engaged by reading voraciously, keeping up on current events and foreign affairs, and writing letters and keeping in touch with friends and family around the world. She may have wished she could hear again in her last decades of life, but in a way, her hearing impairment was part of her personality. It was very much a part of who she was. But today, the day after her death, I am pleased to know that her body is restored. She is no longer old and frail, and I know that she has her hearing back. As she entered heaven, I know she heard the voice of Jesus say, loudly and clearly, “Welcome home, Ingrid Alice.”

Stephen Padre
Washington, D.C.
August 16, 2009

Hearing Sousa's very own band play

2009-08-08T21:36:00.005-04:00

Last night we trekked down to the Marine barracks in the southeastern quadrant of Washington, D.C., for a military parade and music - think an extended changing of the guard ceremony with a lot of music. Here's how the website describes it:

A one hour and fifteen minute performance of music and precision marching, the Evening Parade features "The President's Own" United States Marine Band, "The Commandant's Own" The United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps, the Marine Corps Color Guard, the Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon, Ceremonial Marchers...

The ceremony starts at 8:45 p.m., beginning with a concert by the United States Marine Band. The Evening Parade, held every Friday evening during the summer, has become a universal symbol of the professionalism, discipline, and Esprit de Corps of the United States Marines.

You are most likely aware that there is a U.S. Marine Band, and you've no doubt heard of John Phillip Sousa, but what you're probably not aware of is that this is the very band, in this very place, that Sousa directed (and played for) for many years and for which he wrote his famous marches.

They played Sousa's most famous march - "Stars and Stripes Forever." Despite the concert starting after Lexi's bedtime, she stayed awake for the whole thing (until shortly after 10:00 p.m.), and she really enjoyed the music, especially this march. Here she is moving to the music:

The special guest of honor last night was former Secretary of State George Schultz. The week before, Barack Obama and family showed up and attended.

It was a fun evening. It was another one of those hidden gems of the city that we discovered.

My birthday weekend

2009-08-05T21:27:00.002-04:00

My birthday was on a Friday and because of traffic, we decided to leave on Saturday morning for Lancaster, PA, which is where I was born. (We did go out for Mexican food at a neighborhood restaurant Friday evening which I enjoyed.) It was a nice drive north and we arrived in Lancaster before lunch and went to the Central Market. It is an indoor food market with some craft items and we did buy a few things including some yummy apple butter. After lunch, we walked a little more around Lancaster before setting out into the countryside. We wanted to check out a corn maze but decided the cost wasn't worth it. We did go on a buggy ride in Amish country and learned more about the lifestyle of the Amish people.

Our hotel had an indoor and outdoor pool so we enjoyed swimming before dinner at a family smorgasboard restaurant. Stephen had shoefly pie for dessert which is a specialty of the area (I had had shoefly cake as a 12 year old and knew I didn't like it, so I passed on that). Sunday it was pouring rain, but we braved the weather and went to the church where my dad had spent his pastoral internship year (which was why I was born in PA). We even met someone who remembered my parents, particularly the fact that Dad had played on the Lutheran softball team and sported one of their 'glamorous' uniforms. Stephen also had a connection with the pastor of the church.

After a drive in another part of the countryside to see some of the covered bridges that are still in existance, we had a quick lunch and then headed back to DC.

Thank you to all who sent birthday wishes - either electronically or by snail mail or by phone.

Some thoughts on my new job

2009-08-05T21:16:00.002-04:00

I have now completed 3 days on my new job. I feel a bit like I am orientating myself - not a lot of direction from my boss but I am asking lots of questions of my coworkers. I am learning a lot but that also leads to more questions! It's interesting though.

The people in the office come from a wide variety of backgrounds: everything from Australians to Eastern Europe to Central/South America. So its a wide variety of accents again and some interpretation on my part. And that also makes it harder to remember everyone's name.

The office decor itself is very nice. They have only been in this location for about 6 months. I am not sure if it was newly decorated but it seems like it. It is open plan and so I am in a cube with a window that only really has a view of another part of the building.

There is certainly lots of work to do but I feel as if I am approaching it rather inefficiently at the moment. There are several clean up activities that need to be done and my goal is to get through that by the end of the calendar year.

So far, so good.

This is a strange place

2009-07-27T21:16:00.000-04:00

As our time in Kenya was drawing to a close, we made the decision to move to Washington, D.C., and we did so for many reasons. We had wanted to move to the East Coast for some time, even during the time we had lived in Chicago, and we wanted to be close to the excitement that happens in the federal government. I am interested in politics and eagerly followed the presidential campaign from Kenya.

When I arrived here and began searching for a job, I continued to dream about working in some place in the government, either for an agency or on Capitol Hill. But I knew I wasn't likely to get a government job after I learned that agency jobs are so specialized and one often needs obscure knowledge or skills, such as knowledge of government printing regulations for the type of jobs that I was looking for, or that one needs previous Capitol Hill or legislative experience to work in the House or Senate. Still, I ended up getting a job working for a government contractor, a nonprofit that receives all of its funding from the federal government and that is influenced a bit by the whims of Congress. Plus my office ended up being just two blocks from America's most powerful address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. At least two times a day, and more if I leave the office at lunch, I cross 16th St. and catch a glimpse of the White House at the end of the street.

A funny thought struck me the other day, in the midst of all the hubbub of the hearings for Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Here we are living in the city, a place we've chosen to live, unlike so many people who move to the area and choose to live in the suburbs, where some of the country's biggest news stories take place. We know that when the president holds a news conference, it's taking place mere miles from us. The biggest story lately, the Sotomayor hearings, has taken place in our home city. What makes the national news is essentially the same as our local news. So, given all that, it struck me as strange that I'm probably not following any of these happenings, events or news stories any more closely than I did when I lived outside D.C. or the country. During the Sotomayor hearings, I was sitting a mere mile or so at work from where the hearings were taking place, yet they didn't affect me personally or in my work at all. I did not see in person any sign of any disruption or the excitement surrounding the hearings.

It has also been strange to move from Geneva to Nairobi to Washington, D.C. In both of our jobs in Geneva, working for international organizations, we spent a lot of time worrying and thinking about places all over the world, from Indonesia to Colombia, from Sudan to China. We were internationally minded. In Nairobi, we were still concerned with many of the same issues from our jobs in Geneva - refugees, hunger, poverty - but still on a fairly large - a regional - scale. We expected to have much of the same mentality here in D.C. when we moved here. It's not only the country's capital, but it's the world's capital in many ways. One of the reasons we wanted to live here is because it's fun to be near the center of the excitement, where big, important decisions that affect the whole world are made all the time, much like Geneva. Yet what type of news am I reading more about and am I more concerned about? I read the Yahoo discussion group for Brookland, our neighborhood, and I am reminded that all politics is local. Even though politics in this city is the main industry and is something that everybody across the country knows about, what people in the capital city often seem more concerned about is if their representative to the city council is behaving well or not, or if the police are doing their job fighting crime. We have gone from such global concerns, such as worries if hundreds of people will be helped next week in a disaster or through a new well, to worries about cars being stolen on the block north of us. I'm not really following the international news much anymore, which is harder to get in the U.S. anyway. It's funny how our mentality and outlook has changed - and how quickly.

I still have a desire to be connected to more of the world in the ways we once were. I am working for an organization that works nationally, which I appreciate. Maybe in a future job in this city I can return to the international arena or get into more government-type work where big decisions are made that affect people far away. But for now, we're sort of caught and wrapped up in this city that's got a strange mixture of local, national and international concerns.

A Wet Wolftrap

2009-07-26T14:40:00.002-04:00

Last night we packed a picnic lunch, took our lawn chairs and headed to Wolftrap which is a national park/concert venue in Virginia. We had tickets to sit on the lawn. This place is a similar concept to Ravinia outside Chicago. The lawn tickets here are more expensive and there is actually less lawn to sit on. All of the lawn seating is on a slop above the stage and indoor seating; you can probably see the action on stage from all points of the lawn. Therefore, people sit rather close together, lawn chairs can only be used in the upper areas and people want to see what is going on on stage.

The gates open 90 minutes before the performance starts and we were there early enough to stand in the throng of people waiting to get in. You have to have a tickets for kids - no matter what age - so there weren't a lot of other kids there. But it was cheaper to take Lexi than to get a babysitter. We keep an umbrella in the car and were so glad that we had taken it with us as about 15 minutes after we got set up on the lawn (with our picnic out, chairs set up, etc), it started downpouring. The sky had been getting darker and we hoped it would clear up, but it didn't. Stephen stayed with the tipped over chairs under the umbrella while Lexi and I ducked under the eave of one of the surrounding buildings.

It finally let up and we did manage to finish eating but about the time the music was ready to start, it started up raining again. We ended up fairly wet. The program was music by John Williams and there were people dressed up as characters from Star Wars and at one point, a light saber fight among the audience. Lexi seemed to enjoy it all - including the rain but Stephen and I would have appreciated it more if it was dry! Comparing Wolftrap to Ravinia, I would say that I like Ravinia better - cheaper and less crowded in terms of not sitting on top of each other on the lawn.

A Job and the weekend news

2009-07-20T12:22:00.003-04:00

I am happy to announce that I have a new job! I start on August 3rd as the Senior Finance Officer for PACT, an international development organization based in DC. Their website is pactworld.org if you want to check it out. I am excited to 1) be done looking for a job, 2) to start something new and 3) to interact with more adults. This job is very similar to the job I did in Geneva and I think has some of the same challenges. Hopefully, the frustrations will be minimal. The office is near to Stephen's so we will be getting off at the same Metro stop.

Lexi and I went back to the day care today that will work best for us in terms of location (and has no waiting list) to get the application material. I will hopefully get her paperwork submitted tomorrow and see if she can go for a couple of half days next week before having to go the full day the first day on my new job. I think she will enjoy being with the other kids.

This weekend, we took a tour of the Capitol Building. This tour was ticketed through the B.U. Alumni Society but we didn't even meet up with any of them. Lexi loved the echoey sounds in the big halls and the rotunda and wanted to keep shouting - not the best tour behavior but we made it through. I had been in it before but couldn't remember what all we had seen. After that, we had lunch at the National Art Gallery and then saw a silent film they were showing. It was 'The Raven', a biography of Edgar Allan Poe and accompanied by a pianst. Lexi made it through about half of the film before she and I went out to a different part of the museum and looked around.

Sunday we went to church at the Rock Creek Parish Church (Episcopal) which is surrounded by a very large cemetary. The church was established in 1712 (think I got that right) and was rather small. After lunch, we hit several open houses. We saw one place we like - it has everything we want. The only thing is that it is not in the first choice neighborhood and we haven't seen much in the preferred neighborhood yet because price was a factor. With my additional income, we can look at some more places there but this might mean losing a chance at the place we saw on Sunday.

Job Interview

2009-07-10T13:34:00.002-04:00

I have a second interview for the job I interviewed for on the last day of June. This interview is on Monday; I know that they have narrowed it down to 2 candidates from 10 that they had interviewed. This is a public forum so I will leave it at that but let you know what happens. Lexi will go to another child's house for the morning. I think she will enjoying playing with a new set of toys.

This weekend, we are going to drive up to Pennsylvania to visit one of Stephen's friends from Chicago and her family that now live there. Weird to think that this is the closest that I have ever lived to by birth state (PA) since I was born. Hard to imagine that it is so close that we can drive there in about 2 hours.

The weather has been really nice this week. Warm but not really humid and we have spent a lot of time outdoors. It truly feels like summer.

A little Jerusalem, right here in our neighborhood

2009-07-06T20:34:00.008-04:00

We are currently renting the first floor of a house in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Because we are only a few blocks from The Catholic University of America and many other Catholic institutions, the neighborhood is also known as "Little Rome." Our neighborhood is also home to a Franciscan monastery, which is only a few blocks from our house. It is designed to be a re-creation of Jerusalem. In fact, its full name is the Franciscan Monestary of the Holy Land in America.

Similar to Epcot, the monastery grounds are a re-creation of many of the famous buildings and sites in Jerusalem (and a few other places). In general, it is a beautiful place to visit because the gardens are immaculate and peaceful.

The rose garden is well-known in D.C., and they have an annual garden sale every year.

It is a quiet retreat in the middle of the city. But it's an especially fun place to visit because we have been to Jerusalem and have seen many of the sites that they re-create. Only it's kind of odd to see them in a quiet and peaceful setting and modern iterations of them. Jerusalem's Old City, where most of these sites are, is a crazy place to visit. It truly shows its 2,000-plus year age. (Many parts of Jerusalem are clean and modern, but stepping into the Old City is like visiting a Third World country.) The Old City is old and dusty and dirty, with many narrow streets and alleys at various levels. You're always going up and down and climbing uneven steps and walking over dirty and unven pavement and through sometimes smelly, bustling, crowded and noisy market areas. Or you're being shouted at by the owner of a store who wants you to come inside and browse. Or it's a certain time of day for prayer for one religious group or sect, and funny-costumed people are rushing past you to get to the synagogue or the mosque. Plus all of these buildings are extremely old and crumbling and are dark and smoky inside. Regardless, it's a fascinating, wonderful, deeply meaningful place to visit, since it's where Jesus himself trod. But to visit these re-created buildings in Washington, D.C., that are modern, all fixed up, restored, bright and clean is almost amusing.

Yikes! If you've ever seen the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in person in the heart of Jerusalem's Old City, you might not recognize this stand-alone, cleaned-up, restored version of it in America.

The gardens of the monastery are a wonderful place to visit. In the garden is a re-creation of the tomb where Jesus was buried (a place you can visit just outside Jerusalem's Old City). The fake stone kind of ruins the atmosphere of the place, however.

There are beautiful flowers and plants everywhere at the monastery. These are outside the pavilion like the one that's built over the spot where Jesus ascended into heaven on the ridge of the Mount of Olives. I visited the original site of the Ascension early one morning in Jerusalem, and I tell ya, the neighborhood around this pavilion wasn't as beautiful and flowery as the one in Washington, D.C., is!

Monticello

2009-07-06T09:14:00.002-04:00

Friday morning, we drove southwest into Virginia to Charlottesville where the University of Virginia is and where Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, is located just outside of the city. Traffic on the interstate was really slow but the drive through the countryside was beautiful - rolling green hills and a lots of trees. We ate lunch at the 'tavern' near Monticello where they had a buffet with more traditional foods. We drank our apple cider out of tankards and the servers were dressed in period costumes.

Our tickets to visit the inside of Monticello weren't until later in the afternoon so we headed into town to check out the U of V campus. We went inside the rotunda that Jefferson had designed. It was a neat space; he was certainly an inventive man. The campus was lovely and felt very southern. Edgar Allen Poe had attended school there for a semester so we also got to look inside the room he stayed in. Kind of funny that they would put a stuffed raven in a room that he barely lived in..but they did.

Back at Monticello, we arrived at the house a few minutes before our tour. It was a beautiful home and really reminded me of places in Europe. Which makes sense when you consider that Jefferson was really influenced by Paris; he even had his cook go to France to learn French cooking. Lexi managed to stay fairly calm on the tour so that was good as well. The grounds of the house were well maintained and we walked around them a bit before heading back towards the car. The views from the terraces looking over the landscape were more of the rolling green hills; quite picturesque. On the walk down the 'mountain' (they called it a mountain but it didn't seem that tall to me), we saw Jefferson's grave. There is a small sized cemetery not far from the house with several family members buried there.

We stayed overnight in Charlottesville and left early the next morning to drive back to DC to attend an organ concert with an Independence theme at the National Cathedral. Going to Monticello was a nice 4th of July weekend activity; it seemed quite appropriate considering that Jefferson died on the 4th of July.

Introducing the newest member of our family

2009-07-04T14:27:00.004-04:00

We are delighted to introduce "Ladybird," our new car. She is a 2010 Toyota Prius II (a hybrid). And as you can see, she is bright red, hence the name. (In case you didn't know, a ladybird is what European English speakers call ladybugs.) She also got the name because the first time we got into her, Sarah spotted a ladybird on her. We figure it's also an appropriate name because the car's namesake, Mrs. LBJ, was also a resident of Washington, D.C.

We've already broken her in well. We just returned from a one-day, one-night trip down to Charlottesville, Va., to visit Monticello. More about that trip later.

We went to the dealership in Silver Spring, Md., on Monday after work and purchased her. It was the first time Sarah had ever bought a new car (all her other cars had been used ones), and it was the first new car I had bought in ten years (we did have a car in Geneva, but we bought it used, and the car we drove in Nairobi was a "company" car). It was also the first new car of our marriage (I brought Lyla, the Saturn I bought in 1999, into the relationship). It is also the first time we've gone into debt since we sold our condo and moved to Geneva.

Saturns are fairly easy to buy, since the process does not involve haggling on the price. We didn't end up doing that for this car either. Since Priuses are very popular, the dealers can afford to sell them at their asking price. Nevertheless, the buying process was pretty painful, lasting more than three hours.

But we're pleased with Ladybird. At least we've passed that major hurdle in our resettlement process back here in the U.S., and now we can concentrate more on that house purchase!

Update on my new job

2009-07-04T14:24:00.003-04:00

I have been on my job for a little over a month now. As I wrote earlier, in the first couple of weeks, I really did not know if or how I would learn everything I needed to know about the areas the organization works in (drinking and waste water systems in rural areas, which is all new to me) and how the organization operated. Many times I had thoughts of despair and even just considered literally running away from the job and the office suddenly, hoping that nobody would say anything about me just abandoning the job. (If you know my story from kindergarten about me jumping up and shouting “Mrs. Tartar!” in the middle of a classroom-wide project, this is the same feeling of panic I was experiencing.)

I still have a lot to learn, and I am still trying to get straight what has been told to me so far. But I seem to have reached a basic understanding, which feels good. It was just a matter of time – not so much forcing more and more information into my mind and pushing my brain to understand it. My mind just needed several days to absorb and organize it. I am pausing a bit at this place to let this much information sink in and while I concentrate not so much on learning the next level of information but more on learning my duties and what in the communications area I can contribute to the organization.

By my fourth week in my position, I passed one milestone and was feeling a lot better about the work – not so bewildered by how I was going to get settled and how I would find my place. For the entire third week on the job, my three other coworkers in the office were away in San Diego attending a conference. So I was all alone for five long days in the office (I didn’t mind it a bit). I spent a lot of time reading back issues of the magazine that I am now the editor for. So that helped me understand what types of stories I needed to be looking out for to put into future issues and how topics were written about (or how I could help improve the coverage of topics). It also helped me learn about the subject matter, but in quite a non-linear way, which isn’t exactly the best way for me, a linear thinker, to learn. So I didn’t retain much from my reading about the subject matter, but still, this was a valuable exercise.

After a lot of reading, I needed to get into the editing of articles for the upcoming issue of the magazine. All feature articles, in theory, are supposed to be written by staff in the organization’s regions (or someone they designate, such as a freelance writer, which happens in some cases). At first I was afraid to start editing these articles because I felt I didn’t understand the subject matter well enough. But once I started the editing, I realized editing them was exactly the best way to start learning the subject matter. I’m taking a fresh approach to how articles are appearing in the magazine. While there’s not a lot I can do about their content, I can at least put interesting and sometimes funny headlines on them. Just because the subject matter is technical and on water and waste water doesn’t mean articles have to be boring, does it?

I’m also feeling more comfortable with my place in the office and my duties. I’m learning what decisions I can just make and implement on my own. I’m gathering information from my coworkers and then using that to make proposals about new things that can be done and how things can be improved. A lot of my new comfort level has to do with the fact that I also have a lot of work to do now. I have three major projects to work on at the moment:

Editing the summer issue of the magazine
Re-establishing the organization’s web presence, which essentially means overseeing the redesign of the web site. For this, I am the overall project manager, and I have hired a freelance web designer for that part, who happens to be Sarah’s cousin (Pam, in California), which is, well, by design. When I started in the job, two other web designers with some connection to the organization had submitted bids for this project, and I went to Pam, whom I knew did this type of work, and asked for a bid from her. She was proposing the best tool for what I wanted the new website to do, so I went with her.
Being in charge of logistics for the organization’s annual conference, which will be held in Rosslyn (across the river from D.C.) in mid-September. I am working with Joy, the coworker who lives and works in Colorado. Although these duties largely aren’t communications-related, there is still a lot I can take the lead on in the planning and implementation of this conference. I am doing a lot of the work and am taking a leading role in establishing a set of five new employee awards for the organization. So this area is a good chance to show how I pay attention to detail, can take the lead and that I can get things done.

I feel a lot of pressure now, mostly from myself, to show what I’m made of, to prove myself, and to show how I’m worthy of the title “Communications Director.” After two or three weeks on the job, I really felt like I should have been producing – having something tangible (as communications staff) to show. I couldn’t quite do that right away with the magazine or the website. With the website, I could put a temporary site up (currently there is essentially no site up), but I am deciding to do the thorough redesign first and launch the site after it’s all done later in the proper way. But I am finding a few areas, such as the conference, to show some tangible results.

NYC for the weekend

2009-06-30T16:11:00.002-04:00

Friday night we took Amtrak to NYC for the weekend. I hadn't ridden on Amtrak before and was pleased that it was close to European train travel. We didn't get seats together right away and had to wait until one of our seat mates departed before we could sit together. Lexi was pretty by the train ride as well. She kept popping up to look over the seat or around it; played with the tray table and enjoyed looking out the window. You pass through Maryland, Philadelphia, Delaware and New Jersey to get to NYC from here. The train going arrived on time though the train coming home was about 10 minutes late.

The reason for the visit was to see Stephen's brother and partner who live there as well as Stephen's parents who flew in for a long weekend. I figured out that I hadn't been to NYC since our engagement in late 2001. This was Lexi's first trip there but I doubt she will remember much. We spent most of the time playing in the park and hanging out with the family. Stephen and I also went and saw a movie (which I thought was expensive for 1PM) while the others watched Lexi. It was a really nice weekend.

About noon on Friday, I received a telephone call from the car dealership that we were dealing with that the car we had wanted had arrived - it came about 1.5 weeks earlier than expected. After several telephone calls, we decided that we just couldn't go in then to complete the paperwork. If they sold it over the weekend, we would just have to keep waiting. But Monday morning, the dealership called again and the car was still there. So after work we headed out to the suburbs and completed the transaction. I had never purchased a brand new car before - I was surprised at how long it took (over 3 hours) and how many pieces of paper there were to deal with. But we finally got it home tired and happy. The car we got was a Toyota Prius. I really wanted a Hybrid and Stephen didn't take too much convincing.

In other news, I had a job interview this morning...I thought it went pretty well. I will let you more if the news is positive.

Food

2009-06-23T09:12:00.002-04:00

I have been meaning to write about this for a while.

Of the almost 7 years that Stephen and I have been married, over 80% of it we have lived out of the country. We have a variety of U.S. cookbooks and try to use those recipes. Doing that overseas was a bit of a challenge - the types of things in the cookbooks were hard to find or not in the same quantity or just not quite the same. Since being back, we have made several dishes in the originally intended way - and boy, were they good! Having Italian dressing made one recipe change a lot; it was hard to believe.

We also had take out Chinese recently, the first time in ages. Fortune cookies came with it - haven't had those in years. Lexi enjoyed them as well though she didn't understand about getting the paper out first before you bit into it.

World's largest refugee camp

2009-06-17T21:50:00.004-04:00

The video below should go on The Middle Bulge, our Kenya/Africa blog, but that is officially shut down and no one is checking it, so no one would see it there.

I stumbled upon this video on CNN of Dadaab Refugee Camp, which is run by the Lutheran World Federation - Kenya, which Sarah worked for, and which I visited to gather stories and information for LWF Kenya's annual report for 2008.

The Weekend

2009-06-15T09:33:00.002-04:00

We spent a fair part of the weekend running around though Stephen felt really lethargic on Saturday morning (we think it was because of his allergy medicine) so we didn't get to go to one of the planned activities. Mid-afternoon, we headed downtown and saw the people on the Naked Bike Ride go by. There were about 20 people riding in protest of use of cars, etc - for more details you can look on the web. In case you are wondering, the DC law is that it is not indecent exposure unless your genitals are showing so that gives you an idea of how 'naked' is 'naked'.

We headed over to the Mall to listen to the free Jazz for a while. It was good but there wasn't a shady spot to sit in so we soon left and went over to the American History Museum where we saw the Star Spangled Banner. We also looked at a couple of other exhibits but stayed away from the ones that Stephen really wanted to see because it was quite crowded and a bit hard to get through with Lexi's stroller.

After grabbing a quick dinner, we headed north and watched the Gay Pride Parade. Lexi had a good time waving at the people and receiving bead necklaces. She came home with quite a collection of them and they are still entertaining her. Stephen and I thought it was a rather tame parade though particularly compared to Chicago's but we didn't stay for the whole thing.

Sunday we did some house hunting. There was an open house at a house in our neighborhood that we both thought looked good. We also looked at a couple of houses with our relator. This seems like such hard decision. There are so many factors to consider. I guess nothing has struck us as 'perfect' quite yet. Our landlord is enamored with Lexi so we can pretty much stay here as long as we want. It would be nice to wrap this up sooner rather than later so we can just get settled. Plus, we could take advantage of the tax credit.

Now I have a list of things to try and accomplish this week - if Lexi cooperates!

An exciting day in Washington

2009-06-10T20:46:00.005-04:00

It’s been quite a day in Our Nation’s Capital, both for me and with happenings in the city.

There was a shooting inside the Holocaust Museum, and a security guard was killed. This happened during the lunch hour, and I was out and about but at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. on Capitol Hill.

I found out that I was accepted into American University’s School of Communications master’s degree program in public communication. Returning to school to get my master’s degree was plan A when I wasn’t getting any job interviews. Now that I have a job, it’s plan B. I will now consider attending part time, but I will have to see what sort of financial aid I can get.

I attended a House subcommittee hearing this morning. It was held in a committee hearing room on a floor of offices in one of the House office buildings. The room was regally decorated, and the windows to the outside framed the Capitol dome. One of our regional program managers from Ohio had been invited to be a witness at this hearing, so three of us from the office attended to support her. Amazingly, I understood the testimony of the witnesses, but it was the questions the committee members asked of them and the conversation around the hearing that I could not follow. Aaron, one of my coworkers, knows many people on the Hill, and so he was having these conversations with people he ran into. I did meet the highest-ranking member of the Executive Branch in the room – an Undersecretary of USDA. I doubted I would find a job on the Hill when I arrived here, but I still wanted to be close to the government and see it at work in whatever job I found. So I guess I am doing what I wanted when getting into places and meetings like this, plus I had lunch with Michelle, a friend who works for a senator on the Hill, and I saw him and think I passed Chuck Schumer on my way to her office. I’ve been waiting to have some “celebrity” (politician) sightings since moving here. But the hearing really confirmed for me that our entire government, practically, is run by middle-aged white men. So sad. Let’s support the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor.

Here’s the press release on the hearing I attended so you can read what it was about:

Subcommittee Reviews Rural Development Programs

WASHINGTON - Today, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Rural Development, Biotechnology, Specialty Crops and Foreign Agriculture held a hearing to review the U.S. Department of Agriculture's rural development programs and the status of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for these programs. Congressman Mike McIntyre of North Carolina is Chairman of the subcommittee.

"USDA rural development policies and programs are critical to the success of our small towns and communities," Chairman McIntyre said. "From key infrastructure and housing to broadband and business loans, federal funds are playing a critical role in helping communities move forward, and it is critical that these dollars are spent wisely and appropriately. This subcommittee will continue to do all we can to support Rural America and ensure that the taxpayers' dollars are being spent in the most efficient manner."

"We are taking a very close look at the coordination of projects, strategic infrastructure planning, and distribution of funding obligations," said Subcommittee Ranking Member Michael Conaway of Texas.

"Today's testimony highlighted several critical barriers to getting funding to where it is most needed in rural America, and we hope USDA will be able to address those problems quickly."

The Subcommittee heard testimony from two panels of witnesses, including Under Secretary for Rural Development Dallas Tonsager, who spoke about USDA's rural development programs as well as American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds targeted for those programs.
Signed into law earlier this year, the recovery legislation authorizes $4.36 billion for rural development loan and grant programs.

The Subcommittee also heard from the Department's Inspector General charged with overseeing recovery legislation funds, as well as representatives from rural communities.

The opening statements of all witnesses are available on the House Agriculture Committee website at http://agriculture.house.gov/hearings/index.html. A full transcript of the hearing will be posted on the Committee website at a later date.

Witnesses:

Panel I

Mr. Dallas P. Tonsager, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Rural Development, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
Ms. Phyllis Fong, Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.

Panel II

Mr. Franklin Rivenbark, Commissioner, Pender County, on behalf of the National Association of Counties, Willard, North Carolina
Ms. Debra Martin, Director, Great Lakes Rural Community Assistance Partnership, Fremont, Ohio
Governor Chandler Sanchez, on behalf of the Pueblo of Acoma and the National Congress of American Indians, Acoma, New Mexico
Mr. Doug Anderton, General Manager, Dade County Water and Sewer Authority, on behalf of the National Rural Water Association, Trenton, Georgia
Mr. Tommy Duck, Executive Director Texas Rural Water Association,Austin, Texas

Finally, Virginia, my birth state, held its gubernatorial primary for governor yesterday. A candidate who was way behind in the polls a few weeks ago pulled off a stunning upset. It should be interesting to see which party wins this first general statewide election since the presidential election, when the state turned from red to blue. The winner of yesterday’s election is from a rural area and not northern Virginia, which is more liberal and was responsible for the state’s color change.

Looking for work and road work

2009-06-10T13:15:00.000-04:00

Lexi and I walked to the largest grocery store within walking distance. It shares a parking lot with a Home Depot and several small stores. In this parking lot, in the morning in particular, there always seems to be quite a few men hanging around. I assume that they are looking for casual labor jobs - that this parking lot is an area where they can be picked up to do a day's work. I am quite thankful that is not my circumstance or the way I would have to find a job. Today, it seemed like the number of men there was larger than usual. Does that mean that they were all laid off from something else recently or is there really no reason for it? It's hard to know.

I have met with a recruiter and continue to look for jobs on various websites. No interviews yet, but it is still early. It seems like it will be easier for me to stay in the non-profit arena that to try to go back to working for a profit company which I am disappointed about. I had hoped to get away from non-profit for a little while at least. This might mean that I am locked into this arena for the rest of my working life.

I have to admit, I thought that in Kenya they were behind in technology when it came to infrastructure. I think I even remarked in one of my blog posts about how they were painting the lines on the street by hand. Well, I guess they weren't all that behind as right here in our neighborhood, they were doing the same thing. They have just repaved a portion of the street and 4 guys were out there with a measuring tape, a string and paint, painting on the crosswalk lines. I guess I was wrong about Kenya being behind the times.

A ReCAP of my first week at RCAP

2009-06-07T16:58:00.004-04:00

A note about the title: The organization of my new job is called RCAP, Inc., which is the Rural Community Assistance Partnership.

I had an intense first week on my new job. I had told my new boss on Tuesday the previous week when I accepted the offer of the position that I was willing to start the following Monday, which was June 1 – the first of the month, a good day to start something new, I thought. But it was a busy week for the office that included a board meeting (one full day) and a program managers meeting (another full day two days later). So I tried my best to do some reading on my own and orienting myself in order to stay out of the boss’s hair as much as I could on those days he was in the office, since he was busy doing things for those meetings.

I confess that I did have parts of some days last week in which I was full of despair, doubt and anxiety as well as feelings that I had gotten into something that was over my head, mostly with the subject matter of the organization but a bit over worrying that I didn’t have the right level of communications skills. On the other hand, by the end of the week, I felt it was a good beginning to a new job. I attended the full-day program managers meeting, and after talking at length to the other two full-time employees in the office, at least I was able to define what I need to know about the organization and how it operates, even if I won’t know it and understand it for many more weeks or months. I was able to frame for myself and figure out the scope of what I’ll need to learn, and to me, that is often half the battle.

I also must say that this was an easier transition to make than those of past new jobs. It was like the transition we made when we moved from Geneva to Nairobi. For that, I knew what to expect when making an overseas move – or at least I knew how disorienting it was going to be. I knew what I would have to do when making that move from Europe to Africa, unlike the move from Chicago to Geneva, which was a huge adjustment, or the transition to my job with the ELCA World Hunger Appeal in Chicago. With this job, I had much more of the prepared mindset that I had when we moved from Geneva to Nairobi. I started by knowing beforehand how I would attack the learning curve – what questions I should ask and of whom and how I should gather information to get myself comfortable with my duties and the organization.

The biggest adjustment to this position is the type of organization and the office it’s in. My coworkers are:

Robert, my boss, RCAP’s executive director, who is a former Navy man, from Texas, and a political liberal (not a typical combination, I know). He’s very laid back and easy-going.
Aaron, a high-strung, ADHD-type, intense, driven, take-charge director in his late 30s who manages a couple of the government grants that the organization gets. Before he came to RCAP, he worked on Capitol Hill for Tom Daschle when he was majority leader, and his roots are on a farm in South Dakota.
Dave, who is from West Virginia, a fairly ordinary bear of a guy who is your best meat-loving drinking buddy. He manages some of the organization’s other government contracts.
Joy, a mid-50s registered member of the Green Party. She is the training director and lives and works from Boulder, so she’s not in the office here in D.C. She has a doctorate in water systems or something and has worked for the Peace Corps. She’s also a vegetarian and is the sort of Birkenstock-wearing, recycling-type of liberal that are numerous in that city and state.

So it’s just us four guys in the office. There is normally a part-time accountant, but that position is currently vacant and will be filled soon (and no, Sarah’s not interested in it at all). It’s a big change from my previous two full-time positions in which I was one of a dozen or so staffers in Geneva (and working in a building with a couple of hundred people) and on a staff of about 29 in Chicago (and in a building where I regularly interacted with many others in a building where a few hundred people worked). In a way, this will be a nice change, since I am the (topmost) director of communications (except for the executive director, we’re all directors, but we don’t direct any staff) and don’t have another communicator over me (a refreshing change from Geneva, where I had a demanding, insecure and downright mean communicator over me as my boss). On the other hand, there’s absolutely no hiding during political squabbles in the office or relying on other communications experts to help me with my specific duties or getting the work in my area done.

I have an office of my own again with a door I can close, although it’s on the inside of the building, and so I have no windows. I despise the office building we’re in. The entrance area is decent and modern enough, but the rest of the building is so nondescript, ordinary, plain, boring and almost run down that it’s just awful. It has absolutely no personality or character. There is another organization on our floor, but I’ve never seen anybody else on our floor other than our staff and the mail and courier delivery people. The only thing that makes up for this is that the building is right around the corner from the White House (it’s at 16th & K NW). Every time I cross 16th St., I turn and look down at the White House and marvel at where I’m working and living, knowing that so many important things are happening so close to me.

The program managers meeting that was held last week was for our main contacts in the organization’s regional offices (a term that’s used loosely, since these regional offices are basically autonomous organizations that agree to work together and have our office in D.C. that doesn’t really have any authority over them). There are six regions, and my boss wants me to travel to each within my first year. These regional offices are “community action organizations,” which is a type of entity I’m still trying to understand.

My first and urgent priority is to get the organization’s website up and running again. It has basically a web page only that is just a place holder. Rather than just replacing and re-creating the old site, I will oversee the whole redesign of the site and overhaul the content, which will means I will have to go through it all carefully, and this will give me a chance to learn about the organization and force me to communicate about it well on a public space. I will also be the editor of the organization’s quarterly magazine. A major part of my responsibilities from now until September will be to oversee the logistics and organizing of the annual conference of technical assistance providers (people like water and sewer experts in the regions who work on the ground in rural areas helping communities) that will be held in Rosslyn.

This job is also a new beginning for me in many ways. This is really the very first job I have gotten without using or having any previous connections to the organization or people who worked for it. Recall that I beat out 300 people who sent their resumes in for the position and the nine others who were interviewed for it. After my bad work experience in Geneva and struggling for many months from Geneva and Nairobi to find work in Nairobi and D.C., getting this job is proof for me, in a way, that I have recovered from my bad Geneva experience and a long period in which I felt my career had fallen off the rails. I am also consciously trying to make a new start in this job. I still may be the baby, the youngest one, in the office, but I have decided that I am not going to play that role or allow myself to be treated like the “young, inexperienced one” who needs to be taken under someone’s wing and mentored and taught down to. I may come to the organization not knowing much about the type of work it does, but still I believe (and have been told by many of you who are familiar with my skills and the organizations I have worked for) that I bring a considerable amount of skills, experience and a good sense, having worked and traveled internationally, of how the world works (or an appreciation of its complexity). Again, I’m really pleased that I am the sole communicator in this position and am not working under another communicator whose ways I will be expected to follow and who will have veto power over me. This position has been vacant for three years, so I will have a lot of room to define how my duties are carried out and how communications in the organization is done. And because there has been this vacancy, the organization has fallen behind a bit with how it does its communications. It has not stayed current with doing things electronically, etc. My skills are slightly behind in this area as well, so I can grow and catch up with the current ways of communicating as the organization does too.

The first few weeks and months of a new job are always the hardest and most awkward. Part of my bad feelings last week were just frustration and impatience – not being able to get into the real work quickly because I’ve waited so long to have a regular job. But with this job I’m determined to get past all this as quickly as possible and settle in.

And here we are at the Capitol!

2009-06-05T15:00:00.003-04:00

Last Sunday after church, we took a picnic lunch and ate in sight of the Capitol building. It was another warm day. Then we popped into the Air and Space Museum which Lexi really enjoyed. She likes to say and point out airplanes. We ended our day with a walking tour in Penn Quarter which is an area around Pennsylvania Avenue - though I can't tell you the boundaries. The guide was really good and as Lexi fell asleep for most of it, I even got to learn a few things myself.

After a nice Monday, rains and thunderstorms came and now it has been cool and wet for most of the week. It's after nap time and we still haven't been outside yet. Even though it is still drizzly, we are probably going to go out anyway! Getting a little bit stir crazy inside.

The weekend is supposed to be nicer - we certainly hope so!

Escalators and Elevators

2009-06-04T13:58:00.002-04:00

Stephen pointed this out to me and then I have noticed it several times: in many of the Metro stations the escalators leading DOWN to the station - to the part where you get on the train - is exposed to the elements. Therefore, leaving them vulnerable to rain, snow, falling leaves, etc. Now whose bright idea was that?? Didn't someone realize that this particular design feature would result in escalators breaking down a lot as they are electrical equipment?? I guess some are now being covered to stop this from happening. At the Dupont Circle Station, I had to walk down what is probably one of the longest escalators in the city. It's HARD to walk up or down a non-functioning escalator.

For the elevators connected to the Metro stations, they do have announcements all over every station telling you which stops elevators are not working and giving you the stop you should get out at instead where they will provide a shuttle bus. Still seems like a hassle if you have to use the elevator but at least you know in advance!

Typical D.C.?

2009-05-30T20:07:00.005-04:00

Today we were down near the White House (how cool is that??) on a walking tour. There was a lot going on: protesters on Pennsylvania Avenue: "Free the Tamil Tigers" (but we think Obama is out of the country), a woman across the street who has lived in a tent for years protesting nuclear war (or maybe it was weapons); thousands of tour groups - on foot, going in and out of tour buses; people sitting in the park enjoying the nice weather; guys playing street hockey on skates on Pennsylvania Avenue where the cars can no longer go.

In addition to Sri Lankans protesting about the Tamil Tigers, Stephen donned his "Free the donuts!" t-shirt and demanded that Obama use his power and influence to stop the oppression in this vital area of national security (only after realizing that the U.N. had been totally ineffective in this area).

Stephen learned lots of things on both tours we went on. The one near the White House was on Lafayette Park and White House architecture. We had gone on one in the morning at Rock Creek Cemetery. It is a beautiful place - very peaceful. The first person buried there was buried before 1776. We have to go back and explore it further. Lexi and I didn't learn as much as Stephen. She was more interested in running around in the cemetery where we also found a small pond with lily pads, 1 live raccoon and 1 dead raccoon. Down near the White House, Lexi was more interested in crying that she wanted OUT of the stroller and watching the various people around us.

The grave markers at the cemetary were extremely varied and ranged from Celtic crosses to a Japanese lantern, and from its 95 mausoleums to flat-on-the-ground headstones.

The cemetary's most famous attraction is the memorial by Gaudens nicknamed "Grief." It was a place that Eleanor Roosevelt visited on occasion.

Little in the way of clothing

2009-05-29T18:23:00.002-04:00

It has been an adjustment for me to just wear shorts out of the house and not think that I am going to stand out. At least compared to Europe and Kenya, Americans wear a lot less clothing - and show a lot more skin. Short (very!) dresses, short skirts, short shorts, short sleeves, no sleeves, low cut blouses....I feel like I haven't seen this much skin in years! But I think it is VERY nice to be able to wear shorts in this hotter weather and not feel that I standing out or likely to offend anyone (don't worry, my shorts aren't all that short!). In Kenya, you would still see people in sweaters, even when it was quite warm and we would be in short sleeves.

In general, I would say people are more casual in their dress than Europeans in particular. Jeans are common, many people wear sandals and I have seen few suits (though maybe I haven't been to the right part of town). You still see a fair number of interesting outfits: there was a woman at the DMV wearing a baby blue felt cowboy hat and the other day, we saw a woman with a very short dress that reminded me of a pumpkin in shape and color.

My job hunt by the numbers

2009-05-26T13:37:00.004-04:00

My long journey of looking for a new job has finally reached its end. Last week I was offered a full-time position, and today I accepted it. On Monday, June 1, I will start as the Communications Specialist for the Rural Community Assistance Partnership, Inc. The posting for the position describes the organization like this:

RCAP, Inc. is a federally-funded nonprofit nationwide network comprised of a national office and six regional partners that provide direct technical assistance, training, and financial assistance to water and wastewater systems in small rural communities, many of which are economically disadvantaged. Through its work, RCAP strives to improve environmental and community health; help rural communities comply with federal and state regulations and operate their infrastructure in a sustainable manner; and increase the capability of rural people to undertake other community development activities.

As someone who is a paid communications professional, one of my philosophies is that there is more than one way to tell a story. So, as an account of my job hunt, I will give you many numbers. You may draw your own conclusions from them, although certainly by my choice of numbers (and a few other facts) that I am including here, I am obviously trying to paint a picture.

Months I was unemployed/underemployed until I received a job offer (from the time I quit my full-time job in Geneva): 28
Months before I actually quit my job in Geneva that I had been applying for jobs: 26
Weeks I had been in D.C. before receiving a job offer: 10 (to the day)
Weeks I left Nairobi in advance of Sarah and Lexi in order to get a head start on finding a job: 9 1/2
Nationwide unemployment rate: 8.5 percent (March, unadjusted)
D.C. unemployment rate: 9.9 percent (April)
Jobs I applied for since arriving in D.C.: 56
Career fairs I attended: 1
Networking events I attended: 1
University programs that I considered before the job offer – to attend full-time in place of working: 3 (I still may enroll in one part-time now)
Job boards/listing services I checked regularly for openings: 7
Interviews I was granted for jobs I applied for strictly from D.C. before I received an offer: 1
Job listing area I discovered late in the game and expected to be the least likely to contain good jobs: craigslist
Place where I found the position listed that I got an offer for: craigslist
Place where I found both of my/our temporary apartments in D.C.: craigslist
Only classifieds known to have an alleged serial killer: craigslist
University of the alleged craigslist killer: Boston University
My alma mater: Boston University
Applicants who saw the ad on craigslist for the job and sent in their resumes: 300
Applicants who sent in their resumes who were granted interviews: 10
Amount over the high end of my desired salary range that my new salary will be: $3,000 (with the possibility of getting $2,000 more after 6 months)
Vacation days I will get: 15
Standard vacation days Americans get when new to a job: 10
Vacation days I got when employed in Switzerland: 24 (plus the week between Christmas and New Year’s off)
Blocks from the White House of my new workplace: 2

I would give you the website of the organization I am going to be working for if you'd like to learn more about it, but really it's just a web page. This should tell you how much this organization needs a person like me. In addition to creating a whole new website for this organization, I'll be producing a bimonthly magazine and maybe later doing some media relations.

Thanks to all of you who offered your encouragement, support and prayers along the way. It has truly been a long, long process and one of the most difficult of my life – not only in the unknown of a job search, but in the very challenging and unpleasant environment where I worked in Geneva. Now I look forward to moving onward and upward with my career again!

Memorial Day activities

2009-05-25T21:26:00.002-04:00

Today was the first Memorial Day that I ever remember doing anything patriotic. There was a parade in downtown D.C. (I don't remember any other place I have lived having a parade on this day) and so after joining a friend and her friends for a picnic lunch on the Washington Mall in view of the Lincoln Memorial, we walked over to Constitution Avenue and sat on a curb to view the parade. Lexi had never been to a parade before that she can remember and she seemed to think it was a lot of fun. Especially after U-Haul (don't ask me what U-Haul was doing in the parade - advertising, I think) handed out flags. Our family ended up with two and she happily waved them, sometimes at the same time. She also enjoyed pointing out the horses (which she called donkeys at first) and waving in general.

The parade had a lot of marching bands in it from all over the U.S. I was surprised that so many of them came all that way and that they couldn't march in straight lines! My high school band director would have had a fit! I also couldn't believe that the band uniforms hadn't changed much - you would think that they would become a bit more modernized.

We also saw the WWII memorial which is new since the last time I was in D.C. sometime in the late 90s. It was quite impressive and had lots of granite and water.

Getting stuff out of storage

2009-05-25T10:11:00.003-04:00

We rented a pick up truck for a few hours and went out to the place in the suburbs where our stuff from Geneva is being stored. We got there successfully without getting lost and looked through many of the boxes. It was quite a job. When the movers loaded the stuff into the storage unit, I guess that they had to try three times to get everything to fit. The space was jam packed. We moved a lot of boxes out but didn't look in all of them by far. And we didn't find everything we were looking for but that was to be expected. The one thing Stephen really wanted to find was the bread machine and we didn't find that.

Lexi thought it was fun at first but did grow tired of it after a while.

Flea Markets and Yard Sales

2009-05-23T18:44:00.003-04:00

I don't remember that people in Kenya had much in the way of yard or garage sales and we didn't go to any in Switzerland. Today, we went to a flea market - basically, 'vendors' paid $10 to set up a table in the yard of an elementary school and try to sell their items. The $10/table went to the school and the proceeds of anything that was sold by the people they got to keep for themselves. The signs we saw said '9-1' and since we had other things planned, we got there about 9:15. To find about 6 people in the process of setting up/already set up. We were told we were 'early' - I asked what time it was - nope, we weren't early, they just weren't organized enough. We didn't see anything we needed and weren't going to stick around to see what else showed up. In the midwest, if you show up late, all of the good stuff is gone.

On the way home, we saw a sign for a yard sale so we cut over 1 block to find the smallest yard sale I had ever experienced. It was mostly toys and games; from a distance, Stephen asked 'Is that it? It looks like a lemonade stand." Yup, that was it and a mighty small pile too.

'Plastic Society'

2009-05-22T13:31:00.002-04:00

I have been struggling with the idea that I do not have to have cash on me. It's amazing what I can pay for with some type of plastic here. To not have to be carrying bills seems like a relief but at the same time, I feel a bit like I am missing something.

I have also noticed how many food items are pre-packacked/prepared/cooked. There was an advertisement for chicken breasts that came individually wrapped AND pre-seasoned so you could just put them on a grill. Have we truly lost the ability to season our own meat??

Public Transportation

2009-05-22T10:06:00.002-04:00

It is so nice to be back in a country - and a city - with public transportation that I can understand. We can check the schedules online, the fares are set, things run mostly on time. They aren't on Swiss time but the schedules are closely kept, if not exactly. Lexi was scared the first time that we went on the Metro but now she is very excited to see the train. Her arms start flapping and she is screaming at the top of her lungs "Train, Train". She is also quite happy to go on the bus. Unlike in Switzerland, we have to fold up the stroller on the bus which is a bit of a hassle, especially since our stroller isn't small when it folds up - smaller, but not small.

Our Neighborhood

2009-05-20T17:26:00.002-04:00

We are currently living in a furnished sublet in the Brookland neighborhood. For those of you who know D.C., the nearest Metro stop is the CUA-Brookland stop on the Red line. This neighborhood has lots of large houses and most have a fairly large lawn as well. While you don't see a lot of kids out and about, after going to play group twice, I would say there are a lot of kids in the 0-4 year-old bracket. It is nice to be able to see the houses again after not being able to see them from the street in Kenya. There are lots of trees and other green foliage. The street we live on is fairly busy with a number of cars passing each day. There is a bus that runs on our street as well.

The post office is within easy walking distance and we can walk to a larger shopping area in about 25 minutes. There are also take-out restaurants and a CVS around the block.

People out walking greet us as they pass about half the time, I would say. Overall, people seem friendly and willing to help you. It seems like a pretty nice neighborhood.