Congressional Offices, 9/11 Reflections, and a Little Bit of Country

Hello again! I know it's been a while since I last wrote, but that's because I felt like I hadn't done anything interesting enough to share with you all—until I sat down and remembered everything that's happened over the last two weeks.

Probably one of the most enjoyable things I've done all summer at work happened last week, when one of my offices (Townsend Public Affairs) had clients in town and I was given the opportunity to attend meetings with them at the Department of Education and at two different Congressional offices. The best part about it was that yes, I was there as an intern, but I was a part of the meetings just like my boss and the congressional staffers in the meetings. The most fascinating part of the meetings, however, was not the conversations that took place, it was the offices they took place in.

I'd been in two Congressional offices before that day and both were as you would expect: tidy, slightly cramped, representative of the Rep's district, etc. However, the first office we entered with our clients was one of the most fascinating experiences I've had in DC. It was a disaster!! Never in my life have I had such an urge to go into someone else's space and start cleaning up so badly! This particular Congressman lives in his office (I was told) while he is in DC and he had just returned from his home in California so there were half-unpacked suitcases lying haphazardly around the office, along with dozens of boxes, trinkets, garbage, and other random junk lying on the floor. The walls were another story. The poor guy seriously needs someone with a little interior design savvy to tell him that not every single space on the wall needs to be covered with something. I saw everything from medals to a guitar to a surfboard stuck to the walls of this office. I would've felt bad for the guy because he clearly didn't understand how unprofessional it was to be meeting with constituents in an office as trashed as his, but he was incredibly rude, so I didn't have much sympathy.

Our next meeting was with the office of a freshman Rep from California. Let me tell you, if you thought being a freshman in school sucked, being a freshman Congressman is even worse. This office was located on the fifth floor of the building (the elevator stops on the fourth floor so we had to find a hidden staircase to make it to the fifth floor) and was so small that there was not even enough room for us to meet with the legislative aid we were scheduled to talk with in the office. Instead, we were led across the hall to (literally) a storage closet. They had done their best to make the room seem more like an office with couches, a coffee table and one of those Japanese screens, but there was no hiding the shelves full of boxes, filled with papers and other things that did not fit in the office. Once I got over the shock of the Congressman whose office was so small we had to meet in the storage closet across the hall, I felt bad for him; it's not his fault he's new to Washington! The entire day was an eye opening experience that few Americans actually get to see. Congress definitely isn't all fancy offices and business dinners at the Capitol Hill Club!

In addition to work, I have had some time to finish up my list of tourist destinations I wanted to visit this summer, most recently the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial, which I visited last weekend. Getting off on the Pentagon Metro stop is a little eerie on the weekends, especially as you walk from the Metro to the memorial, around the outside of the Pentagon building. The strangest part about it was that there were barely any people there. I passed by a few uniformed officers on their way in and out of the building, but the silence (especially after being in the city for so long) was slightly unnerving.

The Memorial itself was very well done. It is located on the side of the Pentagon building where the attack took place. I was struck by how stark the color differences were in the old parts of the building and the new parts that were rebuilt. The Memorial was built as a timeline, beginning with the date and time of the attack, going backwards in time. There is a small water feature representing each individual who died, in order of the year they were born. I believe the youngest was born in 1995 or 1997 and the oldest was born in the 30s or 40s. More than anything, the dates signified the senselessness of the aimless killings that took place that day, throughout the country.

I enjoyed having the opportunity to visit the Memorial for a lot of reasons, one being that it was nice to take a moment of silence, with the handful of others who were there, to remember that day in American history. It also meant more to me to visit a Memorial for an event that happened during my lifetime. For my generation, this is the defining political/national event of our lifetime. We didn't live through Vietnam or Korea or WWII and we weren't alive when JFK was killed or the Challenger went down; the moment that changed the way we see the world happened when we woke up on September 11 and went to school and began to understand what had happened. For me, in the fourth grade, it didn't mean much except that we had a moment of silence and went back to learning about the Oregon Trail, but looking back, that was probably one of the moments in my life that altered my innocent view of the world. To have the opportunity to reflect on that was important for me, especially with the two-toned Pentagon building in the background.

In addition to work and being a tourist, last weekend my roommate and another friend and I escaped the city for some much-needed country music at the Blake Shelton concert in Bristow, Virginia, an hour away from the city, by car. I must say, I had a hard time accepting the fact that I was at a country concert in Northern Virginia, but it was fun all the same! Blake is the best and if you haven't had a chance to see him before, you should definitely make an effort to do so at least once. Not only was I comforted by the carefree, easygoing vibe of the concert, it was nice to see some of the surrounding area, from a car as opposed to a metro. Virginia and Maryland really aren't that bad! They're a lot more green than California, at least!

Me and the roommate at Blake Shelton!

Sorry this turned out to be such a long post—concise writing has never been one of my strong points, but I'm trying to work on that! Hopefully I'll have time to update you on my last three weeks in DC before I make it back to the beautiful pacific northwest, but for now, I'll just wish you all a happy monday and say I'll see ya'll soon (as my Texan roommate would say).