Mr. Scott goes to Washington - Act Three, Scene Three: Teddy Roosevelt, We Hardly Knew Ye
Okay, now aren't you proud of me for posting these so close together? This entry is going to detail the period from Monday, Oct. 31 to the present (being Saturday, Nov. 5).
On Monday, Oct. 31, we woke up early, and headed over to the Washington Center for our 10am speaker, only to discover that they had cancelled. So I had some time to run over to the embassy to pick up some of my notes that I'd left there over the weekend, which I wanted to look at before my midterm Monday night. Our second event was a briefing at the Pan-American Health Organization, which was actually kind of interesting - it's this big 1960s era building that looks not unlike a miniature UN.
Monday night we had our midterm, which was possibly the most profoundly stupid exercise of my life. They had given us a list of about 40 terms which we had to know. So we got up in front of this panel of "judges" and drew a term from a hat (in reality, it was more of a porcelain jug), and then had to discuss the term for about 4-5 minutes. It was a very odd examination, I thought, but it went okay.
On Tuesday we had an intern briefing with the head of the embassy's Washington Advocacy secretariat. It was tremendous. He was involved with negotiating NAFTA, and knew all about dealing with the American government, and he and I got into a rather long conversation about what should be done to fix Canada-US relations, and about how Mulroney was a way better PM than Chretien. It was enjoyable to say the least. He also offered to take interns with him when he goes to meet with Senators and Congressmen on the hill, so I've put my name in for that. Claire's already gone with him, and she said it was awesome, so I'm understandably excited at the prospect.
On Wednesday I went to a House Energy Committee meeting, which was long but entertaining. My favourite committee member, Congressman Markey (D - MA) is a really intelligent, eloquent, and rabid socialist. He turned every comment into an attack on Bush, badgered the witnesses from the administration, and ended up pissing off just about every Republican on the committee - especially some guy from New Hampshire who favoured locating offshore Liquid Natural Gas projects off the coast of Massachusetts.
On Thursday I attended the 23rd Annual Monetary Conference at the CATO Institute all day. For those of you who don't know, they're like the most right-wing/libertarian think tank in the universe. I mean, these guys make the American Enterprise Institute look like a bunch of Marxists. They had portraits of famous libertarian thinkers (or, defenders of individual rights) hanging all over the walls, including Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, John Locke, Henry David Thoreau, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Ayn Rand. It was awesome. And they even give out pocket copies of the Constitution!
On Friday morning I put together my notes from Wednesday for the energy counsellor, and started to work on my report for the finance counsellor on the conference from Thursday. At lunch time, the band from the Royal Military College in Kingston played a little concert in the embassy's courtyard, which put me in a really good mood for the afternoon - it felt like I hadn't heard bagpipes in ages. I was quite happy, and sang along quietly when they did a rendition of "Scotland the Brave." They also had this guy who just stood there holding a mace (I'm not sure what else to call it... it was a big stick with a large metal bulb on the end), and during their last song, he stepped forward and started throwing it up in the air and catching it and spinning it around his head and through his legs and stuff with one hand. At one point he threw it (spinning!) like 40 feet up in the air and caught it; it was really impressive. After work I headed home, and like most Friday nights, I was exhausted. Knowing I had to be up early the next morning, I watched some TV and went to bed early.
This morning I awoke ambitiously at 6.15 am to shower and catch the first train into the District. The plan, you see, was to score some tickets to the D.C. Christmas tree lighting ceremony on December 1. After hopping on the train shortly after 7am, I arrived at the Ellipse (it's a big elliptical road and park in front of (or behind?) the White House) around 7.30. I was immediately told by the park ranger to go home - the line had been cut off at 7.10 because more people had already than they had tickets for. So, I was understandably bitter.
But, I figured that since it was an absolutely beautiful morning I would wander around the National Mall taking some artsy photographs of some monuments and sights before things got too busy. I ended up walking down to the WW2 monument and then along the shore of the tidal basin (across from the Jefferson Monument) before heading down the mall to the subway. I've attached a couple of my pictures for your enjoyment:
Since it wasn't even 9, I figured I may as well do something new and exciting, so I took the train out to Rosslyn (in Arlington, Virginia) and I walked along the Potomac to Theodore Roosevelt Island. There's a foot bridge over to the island, which is basically a wilderness preserve in honour of Teddy's history of conservation. There's also a little memorial area in the middle of the island with a statue of the , and a number of Roosevelt's inspirational quotations. I didn't realize how spectacular a man Roosevelt was; in addition to being the youngest person to ever serve as president (he was only 42 when he took over for McKinley, JFK was elected at 43), he was the first American to win a Nobel Prize of any kind (he won the Peace Prize for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese War) and is the only President to win the Congressional Medal of Honor (for leading the cavalry charge on San Juan Hill). He also spearheaded construction of the Panama Canal - arguably the world's best canal - after the French wussed out.
So, after walking around the island I followed continued walking down along the Potomac (they have a really great trail set up), planning to go see the Iwo Jima monument that I had missed on my previous trips to Arlington National Cemetary (the monument itself isn't in the cemetary, but is further North - ostensibly on my way in from the island). However, since I didn't really know where I was, I didn't turn down the street I needed to and walked past it without knowing. So I ended up back at the bridge from the Lincoln Monument to the Cemetary, and decided to just head home. So I caught the subway outside the cemetary, and got back to my apartent around 10.30.
It made me realize that it's amazing how much stuff you can do in a day when you wake up before noon. That said, don't expect me to wake up before noon very often.
This afternoon I'm going coat shopping with Claire and Marie in Georgetown, then we're going to meet up with Brendon and Kalan and Jay (two of Marie's friends) to go see Jarhead. I'm cautiously optimistic about the movie, so we'll see.
--
On a sadder note, Claire is moving out of our apartment building. That's right, loyal readers, our heady days of commuting to and from work together are at an end.
The hot water heater located beside her apartment has been leaking into her place on and off for several weeks, and the maintenance people are now concerned that it might burst. So, she and her roommates are going to be shipping out to another apartment building in Arlington tomorrow, which sucks.
On Monday, Oct. 31, we woke up early, and headed over to the Washington Center for our 10am speaker, only to discover that they had cancelled. So I had some time to run over to the embassy to pick up some of my notes that I'd left there over the weekend, which I wanted to look at before my midterm Monday night. Our second event was a briefing at the Pan-American Health Organization, which was actually kind of interesting - it's this big 1960s era building that looks not unlike a miniature UN.
Monday night we had our midterm, which was possibly the most profoundly stupid exercise of my life. They had given us a list of about 40 terms which we had to know. So we got up in front of this panel of "judges" and drew a term from a hat (in reality, it was more of a porcelain jug), and then had to discuss the term for about 4-5 minutes. It was a very odd examination, I thought, but it went okay.
On Tuesday we had an intern briefing with the head of the embassy's Washington Advocacy secretariat. It was tremendous. He was involved with negotiating NAFTA, and knew all about dealing with the American government, and he and I got into a rather long conversation about what should be done to fix Canada-US relations, and about how Mulroney was a way better PM than Chretien. It was enjoyable to say the least. He also offered to take interns with him when he goes to meet with Senators and Congressmen on the hill, so I've put my name in for that. Claire's already gone with him, and she said it was awesome, so I'm understandably excited at the prospect.
On Wednesday I went to a House Energy Committee meeting, which was long but entertaining. My favourite committee member, Congressman Markey (D - MA) is a really intelligent, eloquent, and rabid socialist. He turned every comment into an attack on Bush, badgered the witnesses from the administration, and ended up pissing off just about every Republican on the committee - especially some guy from New Hampshire who favoured locating offshore Liquid Natural Gas projects off the coast of Massachusetts.
On Thursday I attended the 23rd Annual Monetary Conference at the CATO Institute all day. For those of you who don't know, they're like the most right-wing/libertarian think tank in the universe. I mean, these guys make the American Enterprise Institute look like a bunch of Marxists. They had portraits of famous libertarian thinkers (or, defenders of individual rights) hanging all over the walls, including Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, John Locke, Henry David Thoreau, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Ayn Rand. It was awesome. And they even give out pocket copies of the Constitution!
On Friday morning I put together my notes from Wednesday for the energy counsellor, and started to work on my report for the finance counsellor on the conference from Thursday. At lunch time, the band from the Royal Military College in Kingston played a little concert in the embassy's courtyard, which put me in a really good mood for the afternoon - it felt like I hadn't heard bagpipes in ages. I was quite happy, and sang along quietly when they did a rendition of "Scotland the Brave." They also had this guy who just stood there holding a mace (I'm not sure what else to call it... it was a big stick with a large metal bulb on the end), and during their last song, he stepped forward and started throwing it up in the air and catching it and spinning it around his head and through his legs and stuff with one hand. At one point he threw it (spinning!) like 40 feet up in the air and caught it; it was really impressive. After work I headed home, and like most Friday nights, I was exhausted. Knowing I had to be up early the next morning, I watched some TV and went to bed early.
This morning I awoke ambitiously at 6.15 am to shower and catch the first train into the District. The plan, you see, was to score some tickets to the D.C. Christmas tree lighting ceremony on December 1. After hopping on the train shortly after 7am, I arrived at the Ellipse (it's a big elliptical road and park in front of (or behind?) the White House) around 7.30. I was immediately told by the park ranger to go home - the line had been cut off at 7.10 because more people had already than they had tickets for. So, I was understandably bitter.
But, I figured that since it was an absolutely beautiful morning I would wander around the National Mall taking some artsy photographs of some monuments and sights before things got too busy. I ended up walking down to the WW2 monument and then along the shore of the tidal basin (across from the Jefferson Monument) before heading down the mall to the subway. I've attached a couple of my pictures for your enjoyment:
Since it wasn't even 9, I figured I may as well do something new and exciting, so I took the train out to Rosslyn (in Arlington, Virginia) and I walked along the Potomac to Theodore Roosevelt Island. There's a foot bridge over to the island, which is basically a wilderness preserve in honour of Teddy's history of conservation. There's also a little memorial area in the middle of the island with a statue of the , and a number of Roosevelt's inspirational quotations. I didn't realize how spectacular a man Roosevelt was; in addition to being the youngest person to ever serve as president (he was only 42 when he took over for McKinley, JFK was elected at 43), he was the first American to win a Nobel Prize of any kind (he won the Peace Prize for mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese War) and is the only President to win the Congressional Medal of Honor (for leading the cavalry charge on San Juan Hill). He also spearheaded construction of the Panama Canal - arguably the world's best canal - after the French wussed out.
So, after walking around the island I followed continued walking down along the Potomac (they have a really great trail set up), planning to go see the Iwo Jima monument that I had missed on my previous trips to Arlington National Cemetary (the monument itself isn't in the cemetary, but is further North - ostensibly on my way in from the island). However, since I didn't really know where I was, I didn't turn down the street I needed to and walked past it without knowing. So I ended up back at the bridge from the Lincoln Monument to the Cemetary, and decided to just head home. So I caught the subway outside the cemetary, and got back to my apartent around 10.30.
It made me realize that it's amazing how much stuff you can do in a day when you wake up before noon. That said, don't expect me to wake up before noon very often.
This afternoon I'm going coat shopping with Claire and Marie in Georgetown, then we're going to meet up with Brendon and Kalan and Jay (two of Marie's friends) to go see Jarhead. I'm cautiously optimistic about the movie, so we'll see.
--
On a sadder note, Claire is moving out of our apartment building. That's right, loyal readers, our heady days of commuting to and from work together are at an end.
The hot water heater located beside her apartment has been leaking into her place on and off for several weeks, and the maintenance people are now concerned that it might burst. So, she and her roommates are going to be shipping out to another apartment building in Arlington tomorrow, which sucks.
posted by Scoops at 12:15 p.m.
3 Comments:
wow, those are actually some pretty good photos. nice to know if an actual career falls through, you can always be an amateur photographer (though i don't know how you would pay for film. or, you know, food.)
Hey Scotty,
Rosanne Rosannadanna and I are writing this comment on board MS Ryndam as we sail to Cabo San Lucas. We certainly expect to be up well before noon so that we can enjoy all of the 9 meals that we will be served tomorrow. Having a great time, except for your mom's snoring that keeps me awake all night. Tonight the Ryndam cast is grovin' to the "motion of the ocean".
Love ya
Interesting blog Scoops. Those pictures are indeed quite nice... you actually have some talent.
I was hoping your next post would include something about the dissolution of parliament. I'm really thinking the conservatives have a slim to none chance of getting into power. I fear another minority government, which will be sad. This country desperately needs flatter taxes and freer markets. Anyways, your thoughts and opinions would be enjoyed thoroughly.
Mustafa
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