In That Same Vein...

http://9gag.com/gag/33676/

Notes on a Saturday of Rallies

The first time my parents brought the family to D.C., we visited all the standard Washington attractions: the museums, the cherry blossoms, the White House.  But when we staggered up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the end of tired day of tourism, we ended up wandering into something really special.   I'm not sure what the occasion was exactly, but there was a man with a boombox playing Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech on repeat from the top of the steps.  I vaguely remember trying to read the Emancipation Proclamation on the wall in the building, watching the sun go down, hearing Dr. King's words echo with the tremor in his voice that has inspired millions over the years, and thinking big ideas to myself.

Shortly after getting to D.C., it hit me that I was going to be here in the city for the anniversary of Dr. King's speech. Awesome.  But it didn't take much poking around online before I realized that this year's anniversary of that speech was going to instead be swathed in controversy, courtesy of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party kids.  Beck organized a rally to "Restore Honor" to America, bringing thousands of disaffected right-wing radicals to Lincoln's doorstep to challenge the government to "step off" and bring our nation "closer to God." Obviously, I found this infuriating.  Glenn Beck was re-appropriating one of the most important stands for equality to proclaim the message that "America is ours, NOT theirs." Not mine, he means. 

Putting aside my political disagreements with these crazies as much as I can, I found myself feeling really uncomfortable in their presence.  The crowd that this rally brought out was kinda Southern, largely middle-aged, really angry, extremely religious, and ENTIRELY white.  I walked around D.C. this weekend feeling a little like I'd wandered into some kind of KKK-renewal convention, and I avoided these people the way they probably avoid young black men, crossing streets and averting glances out of fear of assault, because this guy would happily crucify me:

So, despite all this, Andrew and I decide today is our first Saturday here in the city and thus an optimal time to go see the Natural History Museum on the mall.

You might think, "Wow that's a terrible terrible mistake," and at first I thought so too.  I started entertaining visions of myself being tied up on the Metro and repeatedly pistol whipped by some sweet-looking family of four for being the Obama-hugging, homo-sinning wetback that I was.  Never has the sight of so many Old Navy flag T-shirts struck such terror into my heart.  We even decided to get off the Metro early and walk the next two stops to the Smithsonian to avoid all the "patriotism."

THAT ended up being the best decision of my day.  Three blocks down, we ran into a huge march down Pennsylvania avenue.  HUGE march.  There were no "Don't Tread On Me" flags in this march, no handlebars mustaches, no shirts hand-sewn from American flags.  Instead, there were NAACP signs, MLK T-shirts, and chants of "hope not hate!"  My heart grew as big as the Grinch's during his Christmas redemption.  These were my people, people who supported my beliefs, my identity, and wanted to stand up against being bullied.  I've never been more inspired by anything, I don't think. So I dragged Andrew and we followed them. 

This guy was great, so he let me take a picture with him.

We found out that this was a counter-rally run by Rev. Al Sharpton and a bunch of other local leaders, and they were walking down to the proposed site of the Martin Luther King Memorial right near the Lincoln Memorial.  Most of the Tea Party ralliers were long gone, but the few that remained were kind of just silently contemptuous.  We walked to the site, but we didn't stay because it was about 95º and we'd just spontaneously walked two miles.  I have blisters; completely worth it.  They say thousands showed up, but nobody bothered to do a crowd count because the media was way too concerned with all the hicks in lawn chairs. 

This is getting progressively more biased and as I go along.

Anyway, that was absolutely the coolest part of my day, one of the coolest things I've ever had the opportunity to participate in.  If they think the civil rights movement is dead, they haven't met my fucking generation.  But actually, the crowd was really diverse.  We happened to be walking between a middle aged black couple wearing MLK T-shirts and a very elderly white man with his son, all of whom were equally angry.  Point being, even in the bleakest of moments, I think that we might actually be able to count on humanity sometimes.

We eventually did make it to the Natural History Museum, but by that point I was pretty exhausted.  We have to go back soon because we didn't have enough time to see everything (namely, the IMAX movies), but we did manage to get through the dinosaurs and early life on the solar system, as well as an exhibit on called Written In Bone.  All about bones.  Lots of bones.  Within that exhibit there was this cool feature on what kinds of things you can learn from a person's bones, even if they're more than 200 years old, so they had reconstructed what certain bones had looked like as humans, and estimated how they thought they'd died.  More on that maybe when we go back. 

Newseum

Today, I may have possibly just taken the last class trip I will ever go on.   I'm glad I made it to 20 before those stopped though.  At 9:30, I met with Andrew, Ben and Emily (told you all I had new friends!) and we took the Metro into downtown to meet the rest of our class at the Newseum.  

The building is pretty amazing, really modern.  Plus, it has one of the most amazing views of Washington D.C.  that could be had, you take a glass elevator up to the top floor, and there's this huge patio where you end up looking straight out at the Natural History Museum, which is this big domed building, and then to one side you can see the Washington Monument and the other you can see the Capital.  I say this not because I think that people don't know how the mall is laid out, but because there were especially good views of all three things, which is pretty impressive for a building to the side of it.

Today the weather was especially dramatic, so the clouds loomed particularly ominously over the capital building (hmm, maybe the world is into symbolism?).  This picture really doesn't do it much justice.

And we took a class photo.  We are all white (except I'm half), which is actually somewhat upsetting.  The demographic is more normal in other classes.  Apparently, POCs are not interested in American Politics so much as they are in trying to work around American Politics to make change.  Probably smart - I probably would have been in a different program if I thought Tufts would give me credit for it.  Not that there aren't SUCH nice people in my class, I really like a lot of people here, but it's just, everyone's white.  Or directly from Europe.

The Newseum was pretty amazing, especially after working for the SAMOHI (so legit) and the Daily.  We saw this 3D (or 4D, as they billed it, because we were traveling through time) film about some journalism history, which was a cool attraction.  The woman who played Nellie Bly was kind of scary though, because she looked like what pictures of my Mom look like in her 20s and 30s, so watching her be investigative reporting in a women's asylum in Blackwell Island actually hit way way way too close to home, and was a little terrifying.   Also, when she's throwing a rat off her blanket, she throws the rat into the audience, and he runs by our feet, and that scared the shit out of me too.

Anyway, so then we left our 3D magic to go into the museum.  They had these two incredible exhibits, one on the Hurricane Katrina disaster and one on 9/11.  Parts of the Katrina one were under construction, so we didn't get to see everything, but the coverage on it was really interesting.  There were some off-kilter racial dynamics at play in some of the coverage, and I sort of wish some of it were more hard-hitting on that front, but a lot of it was really well done.  And the September 11th stuff...that was really just incredible.  We sat and watched a film they put together based on the experiences of the journalists in the immediate area, who were literally running towards the towers to try to give America a clearer picture.  Completely jarring.  This is a piece of the buildings they had on display, behind which is a wall of all the covers of newspapers across the country/world.

Aaaand, then we walked next door to see an exhibit about Elvis. Little lighter.

Anyway, it was cool.  They had tons and tons of front pages of newspapers from various historical events.  I really got into the civil-rights era ones, it was cool to see the coverage people saw during the Freedom Rides and March on Washington (who's 47th anniversary is this Saturday, actually).  When RFK was shot, the image they used on his front page headline was actually like a picture of him, dead.  His face, after being shot.  Freaked the shit out of me. And in the gift shop, the only front page they were selling to the public was the one that said "Nixon Resigns," so I think they really understand yuppie Boomers.  This is one of them that Ben took a photo of and stuck on Facebook:

Anyway, that was my day.  Obviously I was pretty inspired by it, kind of wondering if I should look harder at journalism as a career path, but I suck at deadlines and punctuality, so maybe not.  The rest of the day was just spent napping and writing cover letters for jobs I probably won't get. 

One Week Now!

So I haven't been here exactly a week, but almost.  I wish I had a camera here, because I'd love to post pictures of all the cool people and things I've done so far, but I don't exactly have one, so I'm sort of relying on Google Images and other photos people have taken and put on Facebook (which I almost just spelled Phacebook) here.

ANYWAY.  It's actually been kind of crazy, I've been pretty much running at full speed since I got here.  My mom was here for the weekend, it was REALLY nice to see her.  I only got home for about one second this summer, which happened to be the particular second that my mom was working overtime trying to get school closed, so we didn't see a whole lot of each other.  I didn't see as much of her as I might have liked, being that school was just starting and all the orientation BS was happening, but we did get to hang out a couple of days, and we had some good dinners together.  Plus, both of my parents spent a lot of time in Washington D.C. as young adults, so it was cool to have her show me some of the things that they talk about as being very central to their lives before children.  Kind of wish the whole fam bam could have come out, but my father is saying he'll be out here some time in late September, and my brother...well if I ever heard from him, that would be great.

(this is from a few years ago. you can tilt your head)

So Day 1, they have all the Washington Semester students meet in the National Presbyterian Church chapel, which is apparently just down the street.  That looked like this:

Then the Dean of the program talked for about two centuries.  It's his last year working here, so I guess he decided to impart every last bit of knowledge and every anecdote he'd saved up over the last 30 some years and share it with us.  But it was cool to see how many kids are in the program, and hear about all the cool things people have done over the years. 

By the time he finished, I didn't have enough time to grab lunch, so I went with Andrew to 7/11 and got a cheeseburger hot dog, which was actually too awful to show an image of.  After that though, we went to the first meeting of my American Politics seminar, which is effectively the only class I'm taking this semester.  The way it works is that the class meets 3 days a week for roughly 3 hours every day, they bring in new Washington-savvy speakers every day or so, and sometimes we get lecture provided by the professor.  That class accounts for 2 course credits.  With that, we take a research course, in which we essentially do our own research on a Washington-based topic with guidance from the professor, and an internship course, where we do an internship and submit field notes and such to prove that we're learning something. 

The professor is this guy named Richard Semiatin, he's been there for ages and ages.  He's really intriguing, very quirky, moves like he's not quite in control of his body, but seems very knowledgeable.  Today, I hiccuped in class, and without skipping a beat he goes, "Drunk agaaaiiinn. I warned you about hitting the bottle before class."  Laughter ensued. 

So since then, I've gotten to do a bit of exploring around the city and such.  The area around the Tenleytown stop, which is where I live, is a bit like Davis Square, except a little less gay and without the 20 minute walk to get there.  When my Mom was in town, we hung around the Mall mostly, saw some of the gardens and the American History Museum, and had an awesome dinner at this place called Oyamel near the Convention Center, courtesy of restaurant week.  Also, we spent a fair amount of time around the Farragut North stop, where a lot of the advocacy groups are stationed (and got a sick tour of the NCLR building, which is where my Mom used to work).  

As for other types of exploring, I might as well mentioned the Amazing Race scavenger hunt across D.C. that our team won.  OWNED, I might say.  It was ridiculous.  Talk about on point, we managed to beat 15 other teams to win a $10 Metro card, a bookbag that says "Washington Semester Program" on it, and access to a sexy black-tie event at the Costa Rican embassy.  Not too bad. 

Also, it was fun, and I made some friends. 

So mostly that's what I've been up to.  I've watched some Veronica Mars, applied for a few jobs, vidchatted with Nina, and slept.  This bed is like in the middle of the bed, much preferable to the desk, and so I tend to fall asleep a lot (and fairly early).  I think I might be getting sick. 

Looking Like You've Been Beaten...

...probably not the best way to make friends.

Dear Tufts Conference Bureau,

Just gonna stand there
And watch me burn
But that's alright
Because I like
The way it hurts
Just gonna stand there
And hear me cry
But that's alright
Because I love
The way you lie

(That's not me, that's from Google Images, but with more smaller bruising)
Thanks for the 21 bruises and the domestic abuse suspicion.  Love you.
Gabrielle

Beginnings

So today, I spent the first full day in Washington since getting here.  Actually, lets go back and recap some things...

This summer was probably one of my favorite summers so far (although, it's really not that hard to beat out years of summer school classes taken for funsies and band camp...).  I spent all of June at home in LA, hung out with the fam bam, walked the dog, you know, good times.  My dad hooked me up with a dude he knows who does gay rights work, who then found me a pretty sick internship with this group called HONOR Fund, which does advocacy for Latino LGBT rights and community outreach to try to get Latino communities to like gay people better (and to try to get white gay people to like Latinos better and stuff).  Anyway, so that was really cool.  Also, we went to Minnesota for a family reunion in Iowa...

No, no, it was fun.  Family is nice.

Anyway, so after that, CB happened to me.  And the Walker Street kids took me in.  Tufts is a good place to be in the summers.  I'm trying to figure out how to sum up summer in Boston properly, but I really just can't.  It was probably the most fun I've had during summer maybe ever. Plus I made the cash monies, which my parents were excited about.

But then August 18th rolled around, and I had to store my stuff in the house I'm living in during the spring in the morning and then run out to the train station to grab Amtrak out to Washington at 11.  Morning was hectic and sweaty, but I've never taken the train before, so I really enjoyed that.  I slept through most of Connecticut, but looking out the window from about Stamford to Washington was pretty beautiful.  I spent most of the 8 hours watching Veronica Mars and reading Wikipedia articles I had loaded the night before, so it was a good time overall.

About 7:30, got into Union Station.  Awesome. Here's what it looks like.

Well, I mean, it sort of looks like that.  There are a lot of shops inside.  So then from there, I considered taking a cab, but I'm cheap as hell (as most know), so I took the Metro.  It was actually kind of sweet, but I had a couple of large awkward shaped bags, so I got a lot of funny looks and required a fair amount of help getting on and off the train.  Similarly, I had trouble finding campus once I got off the Metro, but Andrew came and helped me find my way. 

Our stop is off the Metro Red Line at Tenleytown.  There's a really long escalator with an undetermined number of steps, but it's kind of scary descending.

So both Andrew and I are living in Tenley housing in Capital Hall, which houses both a gym and an auditorium.  Tenley housing is an off-shoot of the American University campus, but there are shuttles to get you quickly to and from campus, and it's much closer to the Metro and a lot of the local dining. 

Anyway, so my Mom came out to help me move in and hang out in the city with me, so we spent some time today on the mall, which was so impressive.  I didn't realize how cool it would be to see touristy things like the Capitol building and the Washington Monument and the White House in person, but it makes me feel really excited about the semester.  And we went to dinner with her crazy friends who are super intelligent radical Latino rights people (all white, interesting...).  We'll see, I'm kind of thinking this is going to be awesome.