Blogging on the Powwow

Marching for rain? Raining for crowds? Crowding for marches? Nah...who am I kidding? The briefest of perusals on social media and news sources shows that people all over this country and the world were marching for science this past weekend. So was I. That said, there was a lot of rain and the crowds were thick! I'm a social scientist, but I definitely lean heavily on the science  part of this phrase. I love being part of a community that helps to create new knowledge. Through my  affiliation with Murray Straus , I have seen close up the tremendous impact that a community of researchers can have in creating new knowledge for the public and for new public policy. Nevertheless, the march for science wasn't without  controversy about whether scientists should  be marching for science at all. One camp argued that by having a march to support science, it makes science a special interest group , and detracts from the abstractness and pureness of science. In othe...

When I first started my Congressional fellowship, Congress was in recess... a lot.  It was late September and we were moving into the final weeks before a major election. Then there was the post-election season. In truth, I think that between late September and the December holiday break, Congress was in session about three weeks. It wasn't until January that I really got a sense of how different things work when Congress is in session versus recess. The Senate and the House follow similar schedules for being in session or recess. As readers can see, Congress has been in session most of the time since January. It's stacked as a very full schedule. Two weeks away from Washington in April, but then pretty busy until August. Even when members of Congress are away from Washington, they maintain an incredibly demanding schedule, especially for a group of people, who on average, are nearing traditional retirement age . But, back to recess. It's recess and from what I can tel...

Tonight's blog post is written from Austin, Texas. Anyone who knows me knows that I love to run. With minor exceptions, I'm interested in running pretty much any day, any time, any place...well, any place where there's a sidewalk, because I'm a cautious runner! 😊 If you've known me for some time, then you also know that I have been plagued by running injuries - mainly in the form of stress fractures. I have blogged about this many times - such as  here  and here . In 2013, I was recovering from another stress fracture, when my physical therapist said, "You know, your old physical therapy, Leigh, who moved to Austin...she's started an online coaching business. Maybe you should give her a holler." Boy, am I ever glad that he made that suggestion. I started working with Leigh, an endurance athlete herself, though the auspices of her online training business, Athletes Treating Athletes , in summer 2013. Even in that brief lead-up to the 2013 fall ...

As readers can see, I'm testing out a new "theme" for my blog. I love the picture of the Powwow River at the top and the dark colors, but I'm not crazy about the layout. I welcome feedback from my readers! There's a young man in my office who, as he says, is "low man on the totem pole." As the last one added to the staff, he has to be ready to do anything in order to move up. I think he'll do fine. He's bright and even-tempered and from what I can tell, a highly competent person. He's also funny as hell. But, he is sometimes the focus of jokes in our office "pod" - or our small cluster of work spaces. Last week he was working on his first bill. I think he was the first one to actually say, "baby's first bill," and then probably regretted it. He was lightly harassed about it for the rest of the afternoon. I suspect it was something akin to what goes on in junior high school locker rooms, but with a bit more soph...

Well, we're going to start today's blog post with a lesson on spelling. Readers might think that I have misspelled capital  in the title of this blog post, but indeed, I have not. CapitAl,  with an "A" is used to refer to the official seat of government for a state or country. CapitOl, with an "O" is used to refer to the building occupied by a state legislature. I had to remind myself of this when I moved to Washington. You can look it up here . Okay, back to Stella. Stella , the blizzard, that is. She visited the capital. In truth, she also visited the capitol itself, but more generally speaking, she visited the capital of the United States. It was my first adventure with snow in the city and probably the only one that I will have given that it's the middle of March and the cherry blossoms are (or were?) in bloom. Yesterday there was quite a bit of hoopla about what would happen in the event of snow. Would it be all snow? Would there be rain? Would ...