Uncovering Writing

I arrived at my hotel, the Holiday Inn LAX, just before 10 PM and was unpacking my bag by 10:05. I grabbed my speech notes, headed to the lounge, and reviewed my notes and slides over a pint of Sierra Nevada pale ale. Feeling tired, I headed back to my room, checked some web news sites, talked with the front desk to set up a 6:00 AM wake up call, and I drifted off to sleep.

I got up just after my wake-up call and checked my email and news sites. Dammit, the world just changes too fast! I made some quick additions, deletion and modifications to my speech. Showered and raring to go, I headed down to Manhattan Beach, where I would hook up with Wendell and his wonderful wife Madelyn and head off to the LA Friendship Center, where I’d be giving my talk. We picked up Tom Hastings, a friend of the Harter’s on the way. Tom and I talked in the back of the van on the way to the Center. He used to work for Xerox as a software designer and we talked about my previous career plus the fact that Diane, Jim, Barbara and Bob all worked for Xerox at one time or another! Small world. Even cooler was that when he was at MIT, his freshman thesis advisor was the one and only Marvin Minsky. Too cool if you’re an AI geek!

Anyway, we arrived at the Center, set up the stage, my PowerBook, and whatnot and greeted people as they arrived. It was fabulous to meet in person all the leaders and activists who I’d spoken with over the phone since 2004! Most were really great people. The morning was filled by Jim Stewart, who talked about climate change and what individuals could do. I very nice catered lunch (which I got about 2 seconds to visit) happened next. I went on at 12:55 (about 5 minutes later) after a truly wonderful introduction by Wendell. I spoke until about 2:30 and then took questions until 2:40.

I have to tell you, I prepped VERY hard for this speech and covered a great deal of ground. As usual, I do enjoy doing these public speaking events, but I tend to “zone out”. I remember Wendell’s introduction and I remember thanking people after the Q&A ended. But, the rest of it? No clue. Happily, many people came up afterwards to tell me that I gave a great speech, lots of information, well organized, well presented. Wow, it’s amazing my head fit out the door!

Afterwards, we broke down our stuff and headed back to Wendell’s. I had a root beer and chatted with Madelyn and Wendell. Then, I headed back to my hotel, around 5-ish in the afternoon.

I just returned from a work trip to Southern California. I was invited out to give a talk to members of Citizens for Global Solutions, the United Nations Association USA and the Regional Council of Organizations. My talk was entitled “UN in the 21st Century: The Continuing Process of UN Reform, Peacekeeping, Terrorism, and Opportunities for Citizen Action.” Wendell Harter, our California Region director, invited me out. Since I was going to be in Southern California for this talk on Saturday the 18th, I went out two days early to visit some Congressional candidates running in the 50th district. The special election there was to replace disgraced former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham. For more on my talk, see later blog entries.

I left Baltimore on a 7:00 AM flight and flew into LAX. I worked on my Saturday speech for the entire flight. I rented a car at Enterprise near the airport. Little did they know to expect a Clark Kent/Superman experience! After securing the car, I dashed into their restroom and changed from jeans and a casual shirt into a power suit. I walked in a tourist and popped out a businessman. Too funny. You should have seen their faces!

I drove down to San Diego county, where the district is. I met Richard Earnest, a moderate Republican running in the district. I was very impressed with their openness to our foreign policy ideas. After a great meeting there, I drove back north to Encinitas, where I stayed for one night in a Holiday Inn Express just off I-5. I checked into my room and hooked up instantly to the wireless internet, searching for more ideas for Saturday. I worked until around 8-ish and then dashed out to find the Passage to India restaurant. After driving around a bit and calling 411 to get their number and location, I ended up having an okay Indian meal. Very filling, but not too much to write home about. I drove back, sated, to my hotel and spent the next four hours (until 1:30 AM) working on my speech notes.

I got up the next morning at 7:30 and worked until checkout at noon. I was able to get my PowerPoint presentation completed before checking out. Now, I also wanted to visit another candidate while I was in the area, Democratic challenger Francine Busby. My research associate hadn’t been able to get me a meeting, due to Francine’s busy schedule. But, I got directions online to her Encinitas satellite office and figured I could drop off our candidate questionnaire at least. I first stopped at FedEx/Kinkos to print out my notes and slides, then drove down near the beach, parked, and popped into the campaign office.

The great staff there welcomed me and I explained who I was and why I was there. I pulled out the CQ and was prepared to leave when one of the women asked me if I wanted to meet with Francine. I told them I thought she wasn’t around, but they said she was on a conference call in the back and they’d check to see if she was free. She took my CQ and card into the back and I sat in the front to chat with the staff. The lady returned and said Francine’d be out in a minute and I should just wait a bit longer.

Francine came out about 5 minutes later and introduced herself. I felt a little uncomfortable since I was wearing khakis, a black t-shirt, and a leather sport coat. Since I assumed she wouldn’t be there, I didn’t wear my suit. Fortunately, she didn’t mind at all and she asked if I wouldn’t mind walking outside to talk since it was a beautiful day and she’d been cooped up in the office all morning. I was totally fine with that and out we went, leaving her staff behind in the office. We walked down to the beach, with my explaining my organization and our affiliated PAC, and her talking about our shared issues. The beach was beautiful and we stayed there a bit looking out from a perch up the cliff. Then, we headed back since she kept worrying that I’d be cold, especially with my shaved head!

We stopped in front of her office and I assumed we were almost finished. She asked me what my plans were for the rest of the day and I told her I wanted to grab some lunch and head out to Orange County to visit a friend and then check into my hotel in LA. She asked where I was going for lunch and I said I had no idea but would wander around. She said that she had time for lunch before doing some radio interviews later in the day and invited me to join her. I thought it was great so she told her staff she was taking her lunch and off we went. She asked what types of food I liked and I said I could do anything, except Thai since I had dinner plans that evening at a Thai place. She said if you want good down and dirty Mexican, we should try this place right by her office. It was called Raul’s Shack and wasn’t much more than an enclosed cooking area and some chairs and tables. I was sold and we placed our order and sat down in one of the enclosed sitting areas to talk DC political figures and politics. I had this amazing shredded pork burrito called the Adobado burrito (I hope that’s right!) that was to die for. After lunch, we walked back to her office, had some nice farewell comments, and off I went.

This is the Cathedral of St. Francis in Santa Fe, New Mexico, up the street from the La Fonda hotel. That’s where I was staying for our second annual conference. We had a fabulous conference with over 350 attendees (some estimates were near 400!). Of that, we had about 1/3 students and almost half of all the participants were locals from New Mexico. It was a great conference, and leaps and bounds beyond the first conference (which I ran) back in 2004.

During the conference, I moderated our panel entitled Local Crisis, Global Challenge: HIV/AIDS in New Mexico and the World. I also co-moderated a panel on our PAC. I also conceived of and helped carry out our Saturday Morning Cartoons, but more on that in another post.

The panel I conceived and put together turned out great on Saturday morning, the 5th, at 10:30 AM. Erica had snagged Jeremy Landau for the panel and I pulled in Wenoah Viekley and Paul Zeitz to round it out. All three had great presentations and we had some good questions afterwards. I was extremely impressed with the work that Wenoah does at the Southwest C.A.R.E. Center. Reminded me of Paul Farmer’s work, i.e. putting her money where her mouth is. Jeremy’s done fabulous work throughout New Mexico and across the nation. Paul’s talk really laid it out without sugar-coating. All three were right were I wanted the discussion to be. More about the conference in some more posts of the next few days. Still trying to recover from conference hangover! In the following photo, it’s Jeremy, Wenoah, Paul, and me.

We will be hosting our 2nd annual conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 4 through 6 November 2005. I helped put together our much smaller scale conference back in 2004. This one is going to be great.

I pitched and helped put together one of the panels for Saturday the 5th (10:30 AM - 12:00 PM) called “Local Crisis, Global Challenge: HIV/AIDS in New Mexico and the world.” For this panel, we’ll have health experts discuss the local, national, and global impact of HIV/AIDS and other health issues.

Many thanks to Erica and friends in Santa Fe for getting Jeremy Landau on the panel. Jeremy’s the program manager at the New Mexico Community AIDS Partnership. Prior to that, he worked with the National Rural AIDS Network.

I recruited Dr. Paul Zeitz, the co-founder and executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance in DC. I also helped get Wenoah Veekley, the co-founder of the Global AIDS Project at the Southwest Care Center in Santa Fe.

In addition to the health panel, I’ll also be working our PAC brown bag lunch on Saturday. From the conference schedule, this event asks: “Is political money where the rubber hits the road?" I’ll be co-hosting this with my boss and our PAC chair.