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DEAN'S QUARTERLY NEWLETTER, Vol. 7, No. 4, 06/01/2004
HIGHLIGHTS OF SPRING 2004:
This has been a
very active spring for me, traveling, receiving out-of-town guests, doing
activist things, and preparing for a move to a new location. The following touches upon the more notable
events:
Trip to Europe – 2004: Ten
countries were visited by train in twenty days, focusing on four – Italy, Switzerland, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Moldova (the 109th
country I’ve visited).
Geneological Eureka! My
mother and I spent eight days in early April traveling in Italy and Switzerland, including Venice, Rome and a visit to the Swiss
towns of Glarus and Engi, home to 300 years of our heritage, ending when my
great, great, great grandparents Fridolin Luchsinger and Elsbeth Marti
immigrated to the United States in the 1860s. We also met Luchsingers
whose names I randomly drew from the local telephone book – Christian,
Ruth, Rosa and Verena Luchsinger
– folks who kindly put us in contact with the local archives and with a
gentleman who does family trees for people from the area. As it turned out, the man verified that we
were distantly related to Verena, seven generations
back. Verena
kindly showed us around the town of Engi, population +/- 600, a
spectacularly beautiful place that makes one wonder why our great, great, great
grandparents would leave and settle in the frozen flatlands of Minnesota.
Email from Eastern
Europe: This was sent from Budapest, Hungary April
14th 2004.
The March for
Women’s Lives on April 25th, a gathering principally to show support for abortion
rights, was the largest demonstration I’ve seen in 15 years in DC. The crowd knew they had outdone themselves
and seemed truly exuberant from the knowledge of their numbers, which
organizers and various media organizations reported as being in excess of one
million -- probably an overstatement.
Police speculated the number at around three-quarters of a million. Even if a half-million is closer to the
truth, no other demonstration I’ve seen remotely compares – and
I’ve seen a lot of demonstrations representing various sides of various
issues. It was especially gratifying for
my companions and me, having spent the last few months volunteering in
preparation for the march. I got up
early the morning of the march and handed out signs to marchers at a subway
stop.
My cousin Lauri’s daughter Misty and her companion
Holly, who were
staying at my place, had come all the way from Minnesota by Greyhound bus to
attend the march. They said they felt
very inspired and empowered by the event.
It’s great to get some young blood into the movement. In addition to the march, they spent a week
enjoying the sights and closing down the nightclubs … well beyond my
bedtime.
The Million Mom
March, by
contrast, greatly overstated its name.
This demonstration on Mother’s Day in favor of extending the ban
against assault weapons, otherwise set to expire soon, had perhaps only a
couple thousand in attendance, though I suspect the organizers hope the
snowball grows over the coming months as the march
moves to various cities across the U.S.
My cousins Mike
and Mitch spent
a week with me in Washington and New York City. It was their first visit to the east coast
and they seemed to enjoy everything, except perhaps some of my food
preferences. It was great having them
here and fun taking in the sights together, although it may have involved a
little more walking than they bargained for.
By contrast to Misty and Holly, who went to bed each night at about the
time that Mike and Mitch would get up, we had a tendency to poop out pretty
early in the evening. They’re not
about to abandon their fishing spots on Minnesota lakes to move to the East
Coast megalopolis, but their vacation came and went quickly, and spending a
little more time here might have suited them … and me.
Relocation Bummer: Well, they did it. They are putting me out to pasture, literally
and figuratively. It appears that
I’ll soon be shifted from my downtown Washington, DC office location to an
office in the DC suburbs in Beltsville, Maryland. The literal pasture is the National
Agricultural Research Station to which the new office is adjacent. The figurative pasture is the feeling that I’ll
be out of the loop from the main activity of our division, in some isolated corner
cubicle, gone and forgotten. Lots of
people in the National Resources Conservation Service, an agency of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, where I’ve worked for 15 years, are being relocated, ostensively to become a
better organized more efficient and productive agency. However, many including myself are pretty
certain that things are driven by other motives. Our management is pleasing the people that
they want to keep while aggravating the people that they want to leave,
particularly those approaching retirement age.
Clearly, the overall agency goal – and for that matter the goal of
the Bush Administration -- is to trim the ranks, either be getting people to
leave or by outsourcing Federal employees to the private sector. I too am on the short end of the stick. So far, they haven’t attempted the
latter, but there’s a good chance that it’s coming next.
My new office is
on the other side of town from where I am currently, but it may as well be the
other side of the planet. I’ve
grown spoiled from my relatively short 20-minute commute, and if I tried to
commute to the new office from my current apartment, it would triple or
quadruple my commute time. Consequently,
since convenience is important to me, I’ll be moving from my Arlington,
Virginia location, either to the Maryland outer suburbs where I’ll be
bored as hell, or to someplace in the District of Columbia that keeps my
commute time to a reasonable length (though twice as long as now) but possibly puts
me in neighborhoods where gang violence has sometimes been a problem.
I really like my
current location, so much so that I’ve remained here for 15 years –
longer than I’ve been anywhere else in my life. I hate the thought of relocating to the new
office, but I have no other immediate option. The only up side is that, given the potential
attraction of terrorists to targets in the center of DC, the move to the other
location may just save my life – but who cares about that.
COMING UP NEXT QUARTER: Toronto, Minnesota, San Diego
Check in and let me know what's up with you.
You can contact me by clicking on this E-mail
address: mail@deanoman.com.
Review previous newsletters:
Spring
04 – Dean’s News Vol 7, No. 3, 03/01/04
– Barbados, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, Arizona
Autumn 03 -- Dean's News Vol 7, No. 2, 12/01/03 -- Minnesota
Summer 03 -- Dean's News Vol 7, No. 1, 09/01/03 -- California and Toronto
Spring 03 -- Dean's News Vol 6, No. 4, 06/01/03 – Minnesota, Boston
Winter 03 -- Dean's News Vol 6, No. 3, 03/01/03 – Arizona, California and
Colorado
Fall 02 -- Dean's News Vol 6, No. 2, 12/01/02 – Balkans and Turkey,
Minnesota, Toronto
Summer
02 -- Dean's News Vol 6, No. 1, 09/01/02 --
Minnesota, California and Canada's Maritimes
Spring
02 -- Dean's News Vol 5, No. 4, 06/01/02 -- Nearly
arrested
Winter
02 -- Dean's News Vol 5, No. 3, 03/01/02 -- Arizona
and California
Fall
01 -- Dean's News Vol 5, No. 2, 12/01/01 -- Boston,
Minnesota, New York City
Summer
01 -- Dean's News Vol 5, No. 1, 09/01/01 -- Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia and Minnesota
Spring
01 -- Dean's News Vol 4, No. 4, 06/01/01 -- Baltic
Nations, Poland and Czech Republic
Winter
01 -- Dean's News Vol 4, No. 3, 03/01/01 -- Boston
and Arizona
Fall
00 -- Dean's News Vol 4, No. 2, 12/01/00 -- Colorado,
Minnesota and Gettysburg
Summer
00 -- Dean's News Vol 4, No. 1, 09/01/00 -- Minnesota
and Washington
Spring
00 -- Dean's News Vol 3, No. 4, 06/01/00 -- Eurailing in Europe, and Minnesota
Winter
00 -- Dean's News Vol 3, No. 3, 03/01/00 -- Jamaica,
Arizona and the Millennium
Fall
99 -- Dean's News Vol 3, No. 2, 12/01/99 -- The
Middle East and Minnesota
Summer
99 -- Dean's News Vol 3, No. 1, 09/01/99 -- Minnesota
Spring
99 -- Dean's News Vol 2, No. 4, 06/01/99 -- Pacific
Northwest
Winter
99 -- Dean's News Vol. 2, No. 3, 03/01/99 -- Haiti and the Dominican Republic
Fall
98 -- Dean's News Vol. 2, No. 2, 12/01/98 -- Germany, Poland and Czech Republic
Summer
98 -- Dean's News Vol. 2, No. 1, 09/01/98 -- A summer romance
Spring
98 -- Dean's News Vol. 1, No. 4, 06/01/98 -- New York City and Minnesota trips
Winter
98 -- Dean's News Vol. 1, No. 3, 03/01/98 -- Arizona and Colorado trip
Fall
97 -- Dean's News Vol. 1, No. 2, 12/01/97 -- Venezuela and Trinidad
Summer
97 -- Dean's News Vol. 1, No. 1, 09/01/97 -- Toronto and Niagara Falls
Best wishes to all,
Deano
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