Packing and loading is what's new, plus a lot of other things. It's been a while. Sandy has been the superintendent of packing, and she's gotten us well ahead of the game. There's still a few odds and ends to tend to, but we were pretty ready when we picked up the truck in Durango yesterday and brought if back for three neighbors to help load yesterday afternoon. I should really say they loaded the truck, because I wasn't much help. Thank goodness for three strong backs, with one of them having a pretty good idea how to load a truck! We intend to finish off the project this afternoon ... there's a real possibility that not everything will go in the 26-foot truck, leaving us with a decision what to leave and where to put it, so the house can be rented (he says hopefully). We'll probably have to come back up, rent a U-Haul trailer and move the rest of the stuff down. That'll work out well in one way; we'll have had a chance to gnaw away at the first load before we bring down the rest. I have visions of a large pile of boxes in the garage for a while!
While Sandy was slaving away at packing, I went off to Washington, D.C., for the annual meeting of the general committee of Friends Committee on National Legislation. Most of the time was spent inside one hotel in 14-hour days of meetings.
I did walk up Massachusetts Avenue one evening to have a quiet supper. On the way, I was reminded of how interesting DC can be, beyond the famous attractions ... little plaques and statues and shops and offices, etc. It's also an architectural hodge-podge, with strange juxtapositions of building styles. The quaint old structure in the bottom picture is one such, and then I noticed the sign ... it's an "I Am" sanctuary. I first met the I Am folks in San Antonio in 1959, when I was in the Army at Ft. Sam Houston. I was curious and met one of the folks ... they are the consequence of an experience in 1930, when a mining engineer met the ascended master, Saint Germain, on the slopes of Mount Shasta (www.saintgermainfoundation.org/).
Anyway, life went on and I didn't encounter them again till the Harmonic Convergence at Chaco Canyon in 1987, which an I Am leader from southern California attended. She wore a long white robe, drove a huge white Mercedes sedan (not commonplace at Chaco!) and was accompanied by a big white standard poodle.
And now I run across them again in DC! Seems like they enter my life every couple of decades. Let's see, the next encounter will be when I'm in my 90s!
Back to business. We honored our departing executive secretary, Joe Volk, who served us for 20 years, and greeting Diane Randall, who will be growing into his shoes.
Sunday afternoon we had a workshop on lobbying (our issue this year was the New START treaty, which looks dicey right now as far as Senate ratification) and Monday we went to the offices of our elected Congress persons. I walked the 2.5 miles from the Washington Plaza Hotel to Capitol Hill both days and enjoyed seeing Massachusetts Avenue up-close.
One of the incongruous sights, for me, was the "For Sale" sign on this tiny little dump, squeezed between two multi-storied buildings. It can't be more than 20 feet wide ... what in the world could you build in that space that would be cost-effective?!
Monday morning, on my way from the Cannon House Office Building to the Hart Senate Office Building, I ran across a rally in its formative stages. So, I stuck around to watch democracy in action! It was organized by Americans For Prosperity and there were about 100 participants, who had come from near and far to give the deficit and tax message to Congress. I thought it interesting that, while the recent election was supposedly about "jobs, jobs, jobs," none of the signs were about that subject. It also seemed unusual to see a hundred people in DC that included only one dark-skinned participant ... they didn't "look like America."
While many of my neighbors in the group were talking about hoping Michele Bachmann would come and address the group (she didn't arrive while I was there), they did get to hear from Sen. Jim DeMint (pictured) and Rep. Mike Pence and several newly-elected Representatives. DeMint said "no earmarks" and Pence said "no compromise."
One thing I found offensive ... the little girl perched on her daddy's shoulders to the right of and behind DeMint, holding a sign that says "Obama's bad" and on the sign is a picture of Obama with red horns pencilled on the top of his head. Enlisting one's little kids in demonizing the President is beyond the pale for me! tv
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