Wine from these grapes

Dear mainstream media,

Both major American political parties now have a man named Joe Wilson (or Joseph, if you really want to split hairs) who has called a sitting American president a liar.  Please try to be clear about which one you mean. 

Love,
Me

Well, I find myself back in Boston, suddenly in the midst of another whirlwind semester at Fletcher.  This is the first week of classes, which means I'm simultaneously doing five things:

Choosing classes is both a more satisfying and more frustrating experience this fall than it was last year.  It's satisfying because I think I've figured out what I'm doing at Fletcher, which means that I can choose classes by a rubric more useful than "Ooo! International stuff! Shiny!"  I'm enjoying the intellectual exercise of putting each of my potential classes into the big picture that hopefully someone will one day title "My Life;" it's as if I've been in the process of putting together a giant puzzle, and I've just gotten to the part where I can definitively identify pieces as part of the sky, or the ocean, or the blue boat.  On the other hand, it's more frustrating because I know that this is my last fall at Fletcher, and every class I decide not to take now is a class I'm deciding not to take forever.  And, as you all know, I'm not good at saying no.

That said, I think I've got my schedule set.  This semester, I'll be taking:

Theoretically, I'll also be taking the LSAT, applying to law school, serving on the student council, dancing for Med Night and Asia Night, taking an actual dance class, editing the school's humor publication...and oh yes, writing my thesis.  All of which is to say that if you don't hear from me after mid-October or so, assume that I'm either dead or fled to a different solar system.

For anyone who's ever wondered how my mind works...

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(From the excellent webcomic Wondermark, by David Malki.)

In fact, I should either be studying for the LSAT, learning to read Chinese, or shopping for a washing machine, but here I am, trying to plan out my classes for the fall semester, an act which will inevitably be made futile by the hop-skip-shuffle the class schedule always performs during the first week of the term.  In fact, all my previous (procrastinatory) planning from last spring is already made moot.  Apparently, when the course catalog says a class is offered once a year in the spring/fall/both, what it really means is it will be offered once a year except for the year in which I plan to take it.  I ask you Fletcher, is this strictly necessary?

I'm back in the West for a month, and I have never been so pleased to wake up to 68 degrees and drizzle in August in my life.  I spent my first weekend back in Portland driving to Steens Mountain in the most distant corner of Oregon where, I kid you not, I frolicked through a meadow catching butterflies.  A friend of mine is doing her senior thesis on populations of a certain kind of butterfly and needs samples from several different (but equally remote) locales, so she's been running butterfly-collecting expeditions to little-visited corners of the state for the past couple of weeks.  I think we took the prize for Most Desolate Collection Site, but since it was excruciatingly beautiful, I can hardly complain. 

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A view down one of the many dramatic glacier valleys.

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One of the most compelling things about Steens is the way the clouds build up on one side of the mountain, then spill over to the other side.  We were always getting these views of half-ridge-half-cloud-bank, which made it look like the edge of the world.

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You can see how steep this mountain is, and how Eastern Oregon stretches out around it, thousands of feet below.

I head down to California at the end of this week, and then to Ashland for my Shakespeare fix.  After that, it's back to Portland for a last gasp of home, before I succumb to the dual realities of the LSAT and my thesis.

Okay folks, this is an interactive post:

I have 10 days left in DC, and I want to make the most of it!  I've been pretty good at keeping my resolution to make the most of my time in Our Nation's Capital, and I've seen and done many excellent things.  But before I hop in my car and head West like a blockbuster science fiction movie plot just descended on the East Coast, I want to get in a few more good times.  Here's where I hope you can help me.  If you've been to DC, are from DC, or just know lots of cool stuff to do everywhere (I'm looking at you, Master Geographer), send me your suggestions for my Last Chance List!  (I know, I know, I'll probably be back again, but it's much more fun if I treat it like The Very End of The World).

To aid you in your list contributions, here are a few of the awesome things I've done:

• Played with adorable pandas at the Zoo (okay, by 'played' I mean 'looked at'...geez, no need to be so nitpicky);
• Listened to rock music at Jazz in the Sculpture Garden (go figure)
• Avoided Certain Death at the hands (fins?) of the giant koi in the National Arboretum;
• Poked about the Museum of American History, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, the Air and Space Museum out by Dulles (with the space shuttle!) and tried my damndest to get into the Museum of Jewish Military History (which is never open);
• Explored the Shenandoah and discovered Buried Treasure (okay, not actual treasure, and not actual buried, more like a cool campsite and a crawdad, but seriously, can't a person embroider the truth once in a while for the public good?);
• Attended Screen on the Green and been absolutely befuddled by the non-sequitor-fueled acid trip that is "Close Encounters of the Third Kind;"
• Eaten cupcakes at Hello Cupcake, gelato at Pitango, half smokes at Ben's Chili Bowl, and brunch wherever they'd let me in;
• Danced to Israeli music at the MJCC, Welsh music at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, and my own tune whenever my true friends couldn't save me from myself;
• Discovered Lost Maps of Ancient Lands at Eastern Market; and
  
• Endured not one, but two Nationals baseball games.

What should I definitely, without question, do-not-stop-to-collect-$200, absolutely not miss before I go?  Inquiring mind(s) want to know!

I get asked fairly frequently what it is exactly that NDI does, and what I do myself at NDI. (To be fair, the simpler form of the question "What the hell are you doing?!" also features fairly frequently in my life.)  There's not really a short answer; NDI does a whole bunch of things including but not limited to working with political parties to improve their electoral practices, teaching legislative committees how to conduct public hearings, training women who want to run for office, connecting civil society groups with members of parliament, advocating for transparency around extrative industries, and being yelled at by the President of Moldova (no, really).  And because all of this work happens of necessity in complex and often chaotic environments, it's hard to come up with a pat, streamlined answer to the question "what do you do all day?"

However, I think that this video, which circulated among the interns this week, does a good job of simulating what it's like working in an emerging democracy.  NDI, alas, has nothing to do with DJ Trexx or this video, but we're very big on learning from others' successes (we call it best practices and turn it into manuals).  Without further ado:

We have Rock the Vote.  The EU has...DJ Trexx.

I went camping in the Shenandoah this weekend with a number of Fletcher friends, including the indominatable duo of j.evans and Smiz, and it's entirely possible that I will even relate some of our hilarious adventures on this very blog later this week.

I've been getting to know the other interns at NDI over the past couple of weeks, which is a harder task than it sounds since I work in a cave on the third floor, where nobody ever comes unless we lure them with baked goods (cake is good, brownies and strawberries seem to attract a wider and more desperate population.  Although this summer's intern class is significantly younger than usual (goodness me, we have freshmen in college and even a high schooler!), and somewhat tilted toward the Ivies (a Princeton, a Yale and a brace of Harvards) and Boston (several Tufts grads, some BU and another one from a school I haven't heard of but am assured is in Boston somewhere), they're fun and excited about democracy.  I will admit that it's a bit odd to feel like the Grandma Intern of the bunch, because for once, I'm one of the oldest ones there (with all appropriate apologies to Her Highness the Princess of Aparnia if it seems that I have in any way impuned her wisdom and experience).

My Rule of Law cohorts will find one of my fellow interns particularly interesting, however.  It appears that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, because I'm strengthening democracy this summer with the son of Tom Carothers, who you might remember from such great works as Aiding Democracy Abroad and Why Everything About Democracy Promotion Is Wrong, Wrong Wrong (my interpretation).  He's a nice kid, even if he is at Harvard and can't keep Secret Chocolate Cake secret to save his life, and so far I've been very good at pretending that I don't know anything about his family.  Every time he mentions his dad in a normal, fatherly context, however, I get a little twitchy.

My brother and my friend The Chemist from Seattle came to visit me over the 4th, and I will share some stories (with pictures!) of our adventures as soon as my camera and my computer can negotiate a favorable peace agreement.  In the meantime, I am anxiously awaiting my new computer (!!!), which should arrive at the end of the month and, unlike my current elderly machine, perform basic tasks faster than a two-legged turtle crawling up a mountain of tar.

It's been a busy week here in Our Fair Capital.  We've spent most of the week at work talking about, analyzing, re-analyzing, and doing desperate last-minute research for the final report on the legislative standards survey.  For those of you lucky enough to not have been subjected to my long rant on legislative standards, the short version is as follows:

Right now, when we say "that country has a democratic legislature," we don't actually know what that means.  This is because once a country manages to get through a free and fair election, the international community tends to melt away and ignore it until the next crisis.  There's a lot of emphasis on making sure that people are elected in a democratic manner, but little support for those people to govern democratically once they're in office.  Providing support and doing capacity-building in this regard makes up a lot of the work I'm involved in at NDI. 

The legislative standards NDI developed are a way of assessing what powers and responsibilities an individual legislature has, and the survey is a tool for establishing the discrepancies between powers and practice.  It's the first concerted attempt that has been made to understand how and whether representative governments use their power in emerging democracies, and (for me at least) it's fascinating.  The survey has been conducted in four countries so far, and it's my understanding that it will be conducted in several more in the future, so perhaps someday when we talk about the quality of a democracy, we'll actually have some idea about what we mean.

In other, less exciting news, I've begun studying for the LSAT.  This included my first foray into both the world of Kaplan and that of online classes, when I took a practice test online Tuesday night.  The test itself doesn't seem too bad, although apparently I need to get a hell of a lot faster with logic games.  My fellow students, however, convinced me that actually registering for the class would be hazardous both to my LSAT score and my status as a free woman.  An actual sample of conversation from the class chatroom, for your general approbation:

PRESENTER: There are five parts to this test.  We won't be taking the writing portion tonight, since it doesn't contribute to your score.  Now, the directions...
IRRITATING CHATTER #1: omg this test is gonna be so hard
IRRITATING CHATTER #2: wait how long is it?
IRRITATING CHATTERS #3-#6: 4 hours
IRRITATING CHATTER #2: what? shit! now i have to TiVo my shows
[approximately 3 minutes later]
IRRITATING CHATTER #5:is there a writing section?
IRRITATING CHATTER #3: yes but we aren't taking it tonight
IRRITATING CHATTER #5: why not?
IRRITATING CHATTER #1: because they don't grade it. The presenter jsut said that.
IRRITATING CHATTER #5: I wasnt paying attention the phillies game is on
IRRITATING CHATTER #4: fuck the phillies go red sox!
PRESENTER: As I was saying...
ME: Well, I might kill them all, but suddenly I'm feeling much better about my law school competition.

I have been very down on law school applicants for the past couple of days.  However, my Intern-y Partner in Crime cheered me right up today.  She gave me the best thank-you card ever! (It was her birthday on Sunday, so of course I brought her a cake on Monday.)  You can see the picture below (whoa there, technology!) - the theme of the card is "Breaking Bad News with Baby Animals."

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Who couldn't be cheered up by a baby bunny announcing impending doom?  Here's hoping you all have a cute, fluffy messenger to bring word of your darkest moments.

...your organization acquires a book called The Handbook of National Legislatures and you immediately start plotting ways to have it all to yourself. 

But seriously, it's the most awesome book ever! It has every single legislature and parliament in the world, with a description of their various powers and abilities, in accordance with Fish and Kroenig's Parliamentary Powers Index--

What's that you say? Refer to the title of this post?  ...oh. Oh.

Yes, well.

The Cambodians have all gone home (except for the one I saw hanging out in the 5th floor lobby yesterday, but my superiors assured me that he was allowed to be there), and the world is a quieter place.  Now it's on to Turkey, which wants (me) to start thinking about parliamentary reform, and Thailand, which is still trying to figure out how to get off this crazy train called People Powered Democracy.

On another note: if you are in a country with movie theatres (and you can get to them), go see "Up," the new Pixar movie.  It's both hilarious and adorable and, if you can believe it from me, a cute movie that doesn't dissolve into unabashed heart-string-tugging sappiness.