DC in the springtime

This past April I got the chance to head to DC with a crew of Minnesotans interested in education policy.  It was not nearly as boring as that sentence sounds.  First of all, when I took off from Minnesota in late April, it was snowing.  Snowing.  And it was brown and gray and slushy and depressing.  Within an hour of landing I had stored my stuff in my hotel room and was out for a run around the mall.  It was blindingly green.  And the flowers.  I experienced running with a spring in my step for the first time in my life.  Seriously.  I was skipping for joy.  And all the DC-ites were just plodding along, already accustomed to the beauty that is spring.  Or maybe they are not so sensory deprived as we are here in the mid-west during the winter.

There were other delights beyond the scenery.  First of all, my traveling crew was bright, funny, articulate, and engaging.  What more could I ask for?  So what if the 66 year old leader of our troup misheard me at one point and when I was talking about four co-workers giving birth within a week, he thought I said I was having four 'grandbabies' born within a week.  WHAT???  I can't possibly be that old?  I did the math after sternly correcting him and that would mean that I would have had to had several children in my early 20s, all of whom were reproducing in their early 20s.  Oh.  I guess that is not too odd.  But at least the rest of the crew thought it funny and didn't just accept it as plausible.  God forbid.

The sessions were thought provoking when not down-right entertaining.  At one point we had to work as a team (with strangers) in a simulation where our goal was to get re-elected.  Not to govern well, but to be re-elected.  It was eye-opening.  In another session a long-time DC insider (she could have 4 great grandchildren born within a week for sure) gave a talk that was seriously insightful and interesting, but her delivery brought me to tears of laughter.  She has worked in the House research department for decades and she shared her top two dumb questions by our elected officials.  The runner up was "What are the effects on the body of capital punishment?"  The speaker said her email response read "Death."  Turns out the guy was looking for details of what happens when administered the drug, but that is not what he asked.  The top question of shame was this:  "What did President Lincoln do when his term ended?"  Her response: "Took a long train ride back to Illinois."

Maybe it doesn't translate well- but the way this four foot tall great grandma was shouting from the stage, still, years later, totally perplexed and amused and enraged by the stupidity of our elected officials, did get me laughing.

It always seems like it is too much bother to get away from work and family and life obligations to take part in opportunities like this one, but I feel like I came home refreshed from the brief spring encounter (it was snowing when I landed back in MN) as well as professionally recharged.  I owe my school much gratitude for sending me away.  I'm sure they benefited from the situation as well- a week with out me!