Let the receptions begin

This has been a busy week of receptions. We get so many invites it’s hard to stay on top of them all..

On Tuesday, Janelle and I went to the Natural Products Day reception. Because of votes, we couldn’t break away to make it right when the reception started, so we missed out on the free goodie bag. But they still had hors d’oeuvres and wine and beer. And cat food. Random, I know. But it was fun. And Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) was there speaking. He seems like a pretty decent guy despite his party affiliation. :) His son was with him too.

Last night, we went to another reception. One of Janelle’s friends is the Federal Relations Assistant for the State University of New York (SUNY) and they were having a reception in the Cannon Caucus room. It’s one of those things to showcase the university system and how awesome it is. They had an open bar, which is always a big draw for hill staffers, and excellent beef brisket from NY cows and some other hors d’oeuvres. It was a nice little event. Little tidbit: Renee Fleming did her undergrad at SUNY Potsdam. Don’t ask me how I know that, but I do.

Tonight, we’re going to the Women in Government Relations Spring Gala. It’s at Union Station with live music, a raffle for a super cool vaca in Jamaica, good food, dancing, and good times.

Rigoletto at the Kennedy Center (3/27)

Torrey knows a friend – I use the word ‘knows’ loosely because he can’t remember who the person is or how he knows them – who works at the Kennedy Center. The friend works specifically for the Washington National Opera as the Manager of External Relations. Once politics is out of my system, it is my dream to utilize my public relations degree and work for an opera company/house doing PR in some shape or form. So this person is already cool in my book. This friend invited him and a guest to an event that was being headlined by a former secretary of Veteran’s Affairs. After that, guests were invited to stick around and watch the dress rehearsal of Verdi’s Rigoletto starring Joseph Calleja. I’m still unsure what the event was for/about and why it was at the Kennedy Center. But I love opera and veterans so I’m not complaining.

We arrive late because Torrey couldn’t get off work, but that gave me some time to switch out of jeans and into more respectable attire so I didn’t complain. We get to the KC and make it up to the event. Torrey’s first question to me is “where is the bar?” He's got his priorities in order. :) We step into the room where the event was taking place and some dude was speaking about the KC and how cool opera is and how these are exciting times. Then, he mentions Placido Domingo. Even if you don’t love opera, you should know who Placido Domingo is. Geeze! He’s one of the three tenors! Come on people! :) So I hear Domingo’s name (he’s the general director of the WNO) and my eyes start darting across the room in search of the famous tenor. Could this be? Him? Here? Is he going to speak? No way! Well, just no. I got my hopes up. But the ex-secretary of the VA got up and spoke.

About fifteen minutes into the speech, Torrey leans in and says, “Gee, I love listening to myself speak as much as anyone else, but this is ridiculous.” We stepped outside so he could smoke a cig and then headed back in to grab a quick cocktail and dinner roll, picked up our tickets, and headed to the opera hall.

This was only my second live opera, the first being Otello at the Met with my fave Renee Fleming, so I was looking forward to the evening. I had heard good things about Rigoletto, but didn’t have time to familiarize myself with the plot or music. But it’s Verdi and I love Verdi who also composed Otello and another favorite La Traviata. The KC opera house was a lot smaller than the Met, but I think it added intimacy and closeness to the performance.

Here’s the gist of the opera as posted on the WNO’s website: “As the libertine Duke of Mantua’s jaded jester, Rigoletto is known for sparing no one his biting and often vicious sarcasm. But when courtiers abduct Rigoletto’s beloved daughter, Gilda, for the Duke’s enjoyment, a curse and misdirected revenge bring tragedy and are Rigoletto’s undoing.” So the courtiers thought that Gilda was Rig’s ‘lady friend’ and not daughter. Rigoletto hired some dude to off the Duke out of revenge. Gilda doesn’t want the Duke to die, so dressed as a man, she takes the place of the Duke and is stabbed and eventually dies in the arms of her dad. Rediculous? Yes. Melodramatic? Of course! Amazingly awesome? You bet!!

The opera was Ah-MAZING! Joseph Calleja is pretty darn hot and sang extremely well as the Duke. Andrea Silverstrelli was the dude hired to kill the Duke. I was totally captivated by this Italian bass. It was a very interesting and unique voice with so much power behind it. I was also pleasantly surprised because I had heard two of the songs and never knew they came from this opera – “Caro Nome” and “La Donna e mobile” (many of you have probably heard La donna e mobile before – google it). The sets were huge, but conveyed well the various locals.

The performance was a dress rehearsal and it was fully staged and the singers were fully costumed. The only major thing that might be different in a dress rehearsal as opposed to the real deal is that some of the singers might choose to cover. This just means that they don’t sing full voiced to save up for the opening night. In some instances, the orchestration might overpower the singer making them a little more difficult to hear. I think I only picked up on this a few times, mostly from the soprano who sang Gilda, and I think Rigoletto and the Duke. But I’m no expert so who really knows?

Well, my second opera experience was most enjoyable. The small crowd, including myself thoroughly enjoyed it. I think Torrey had a good time too. He left the house whistling the tune for La Donna and was mesmerized by the enormity and awesomeness of the stage settings. Maybe I have a convert who can join me at future productions. Handel’s Tamerlano is up next with Placido Domingo.

Stepping Up

The saga continued at work. Without divulging too many details, I’m the new Health Care Legislative Assistant in the office. I’m so thrilled! And this is kind of a big deal! It will definitely help in the job searching department when the time comes in ’09. Before, I was just a floater in the office doing whatever needed to be done. Now I have my own issue and I’ll have my own meetings to sit on, my own memos to write, my own legislation to suggest. I have a real purpose in this office!!!

Appropriations are also keeping us busy in the office. They need to be finished before the March recess in two weeks. Our two approps gurus are off to Germany for a week, and they have to be finished before they take off. Otherwise, their trip is cancelled (not really, but our LD can be very dramatic sometimes). I’m not sure what the whole process entails, but I’ll give an update once approps are due if there is anything interesting to report back on.

The boss gave us a pep talk later in the morning. We now refer to it as the “Come to Jesus” talk. And one of our legislative assistants is now lovingly known as the golden goose, a name given by the boss. The talk was much needed and helped to lay things on the table and clear the air.

After work, the schmooze training continued. Torrey works for BNSF and they were a large contributor to an organization that brings awareness to train suicides. I couldn’t turn this event down. Obviously free food is always a luring feature of the reception, but this event was featuring Academy Award winning actress Marcia Gay Harden from Welcome to Mooseport and Pollock. She recently starred in a film called Rails and Ties that addressed the issue about train suicides.

I really enjoyed this event. Torrey, not so much, because they didn’t serve free alcohol. But I got to meet a couple of his colleagues who were pretty interesting. One works in their press office, but she’s soon moving to Israel because her husband works for the World Bank. I had a great conversation with her about the PR field and how she broke into the biz. She actually doesn’t have her masters, which I thought was interesting, but she said that you don’t really need it for PR. Especially if you have Hill experience, agencies and other organizations really look at that.

There was this other lady who worked for Union Pacific who was a pistol! I’m glad we ran into her, because I was having a hard time going up to meet MG Harden. What was I supposed to say to her? “I loved you in Welcome to Mooseport. I have no idea why you’re here but thanks for being involved.” Lame! So the pistol lady went up to Marcia (we’re best friends now) and introduced herself and then introduced us. I would like to say that I was very surprised at how well spoken and intelligent Marcia comes off, but that’s nothing new. She has always come across that way in the roles she plays and the way she carries herself in the limelight. She’s a very articulate person, and also very beautiful. She was sporting a pretty rockin short do.

Torrey and I had a great conversation with Marcia. We talked about trains and how suicides by trains are underreported because they’re generally classified as an accident. I mentioned that Torrey and I went to school in a town where the train crossed a very busy and heavily pedestrian trafficked area. I know someone died on the tracks while I was at school, but I don’t know if it was on purpose, or if it was a drunk kid on his way home and just didn’t make it across.

Anyways, we had a lovely conversation with Marcia. Asked her about Mooseport, to which she commented that she preferred Gene Hackman to Ray Romano because Hackman is more of a man’s man. We wished her well in the upcoming films she has and thanked her for being apart of the cause. Then we took off and got a cocktail.

Director and cast from Rails and Ties.

Eastwood, Bacon, Harden, and a young John Doe.

Fixing Schools and Rubbing Elbows

Apparently I missed a lot of drama at the office on Friday. I was actually kind of glad. I had received several emails and phone calls on Friday and throughout the weekend. Thankfully, the opera was too all consuming for me that I just ignored my cell all weekend long. A wise decision, I think.

Monday was definitely interesting, but everyone at work is taking the situation in strides, and the boss is in good spirits. Things also started to pick up with meetings and such. I’m sure that has to do with the fact that appropriations are due by the end of this month, and organizations are making their last ditch attempts to lobby for funds.

Here’s a great story on how we deal with our constituents and what we do for them. We have a large Native American population in our district. It’s a pretty poor area, and the Congressman has worked hard to bring them much needed funding. There are quite a few schools out on the reservation that probably should have been demolished decades ago. Some of them are fortunate enough to be on the Bureau of Indian Affair’s (BIA) list of schools to receive funds for complete overhauls. This one school in particular was supposed to receive funding back in ’06 and begin construction on a new school. However, due to budget cuts, it was postponed, but BIA has assured that they will get it in the ’09 budget.

So a group from the Native American school wanted to meet with us and BIA to discuss their concerns regarding how long the process is taking. From my understanding, this meeting was three months in the making. The group from the NA school scheduled and rescheduled several times, even in the district so they wouldn’t have to travel to DC. But our scheduler finally got a time they could agree on, and BIA signed on to the meeting as well, which I learned, BIA can be quite the slow moving agency.

The NA group was scheduled to be in our office at 3 to meet with the Congressman. BIA was scheduled to join in at 3:30. Congress ended up having votes that afternoon, so the 3:00 meeting would just be cancelled and the member would meet with everyone when he got back from votes…in a perfect world. BIA showed up at 3:20. The NA’s were a no show. Our scheduler tried calling several times to no avail. The member shows up at around 3:40-ish, talks to BIA and apologizes profusely. BIA leaves around 3:45. The NA’s come waltzing through the door at 3:50. Of course we have to be the diplomats, so we apologized for sending BIA back home because we couldn’t just make them sit there not knowing when they’d show up. The leader of the group, Katherine, tried talking her way out of it by saying that she had talked to our scheduler and they agreed on 3:30 and not 3:00. To which our scheduler said that it was now 20 minutes past 3:30 and they were late regardless.

So we met with the NA group, and they had a ton of questions for us. But the BIA really would have been the best resource for giving them answers, and since they were late, BIA went home and we couldn’t give them answers. Now we have to try and schedule a conference call with BIA and the NA group. I don’t think this will be an easy task for us considering our history with the two groups. But I’m learning a ton of random stuff about Native American policy and all that other jazz.

After work, I went with my buddy Torrey to an Arizona State Society event that hosted people from the three major Arizona Universities that were prominent in the bioscience field. We talked to the new vice president of biosciences at NAU. It was good to talk to someone from Flagstaff after being here in DC for a month. Going to this event made me realize that I have a lot to learn about the art of schmoozing. Thank God Torrey is a pro! The event was small, but good. Can’t complain about free wine and good hors d’oeuvres. We also ran into a guy that Torrey knew who worked in Flake’s office for a while. All in all, a good event.