"Necessary and Proper"

The first week of teaching went really well. The kids are exceptionally smart (which I already had a feeling they would be) and very engaged (which I was not expecting). Keeping up their level of engagement will be tough, because I can already tell they get bored easily (which fits with their being smart kids).

On the very first day, when I had them talking about contract consideration and Hamer v. Sidway, they had a hard time reconciling the idea that there was no necessarily right answer to the question as to where the line should be drawn for "enough consideration." I started with consideration and contracts because it's an issue that none of them would have had any preconceived notions about. When we move on to more contentious topics, I want them already understanding that they can make arguments for both sides without compromising their values.

By the second day, when I was explaining how I had taken points off of a lot of their homework because they failed to explain WHY they had made any decisions, they started to get it.

On Thursday, just for fun I threw up a question of the day that mirrored the facts in McCulloch v. Maryland, the landmark 1800's case that gave the government wide power to do what it wanted after the Supreme Court justified the establishment of the Bank of the United States using the necessary and proper clause of the Constitution. I had made them read the first three articles of the Constitution for homework.

"So," I said, "is there anywhere in the Constitution that gives the power to Congress to establish a national bank?"

A girl raised her hand.

"It isn't directly in there but they have the necessary and proper clause."

At which point I should have just ended class. To be fair, it was just one student and no one else came up with the exact idea on which the Supreme Court relied, but clearly I need to find more challenging materials for these kids.

Thursday night I went to a retirement party for someone at Street Law. I didn't know the retiree very well, but it turns out the party was at the house of one of the original founders of the Street Law clinic at Georgetown. We talked for a while and then he leaned over and said "so I hear from Lee that you're good with technology." Then I fixed two TVs in his house. I figure it's the least I could do for someone who indirectly gave me a job over the summer and a clinic to work on all year.

The Return of Teacher-Mike

The past week has been very productive. My room still is not quite ready, but it is very, very close. 

See the green thing? It came with the house. It's about 400 pounds. 

It took six people and rope to move it from the kitchen to the basement.

My bed is going to go in the corner and that is my reading light.

Most of the week I spent in orientation for my teaching clinic. We learned all the ways that you can lose control of a classroom by making even the slightest of mistakes. So, you know, fun. The school that I will be teaching at (starting today in a few hours) is one of the best in DC, so I won't have to worry about discipline problems (as my clinic fellow told me, it is my fault entirely if I do). Just to start them off scared, I'm making them read part of a case opinion from the 1800's as their first piece of homework. The first sentence is "Appeal from an order of the general term of the supreme court in the fourth judicial department, reversing a judgment entered on the decision of the court at special term in the county clerk's office of Chemung county on the 1st day of October, 1889." I just don't want them starting the year feeling like this is going to be an easy elective class, you know?

On Friday we had a surprise birthday party for Ben. How much of a surprise? Well, we made sure that he came to see the house when it was a total wreck and then spent most of the day on Friday putting into operable shape. Then we made sure that Ben was going to be at another party nearby (one that had nothing to do with him). Then Jeff called Ben and asked him to come over for five minutes to help get the refrigerator in place. When he arrived, grumbling at the prospect of having to move a fridge while he should be at a party, everyone jumped out at him in their finest 50's garb yelling "surprise!" Josh then volunteered to start up the car to take Ben to the emergency room, since he looked to be having more heart palpitations.

This surprise party brought to you by the house at North Carolina Ave. and 

Emily Goo, posing (I think purposefully) with her head cut off in the mirror.

On Saturday Kels and I helped Goo with another birthday party, this time for her fiance. He was sent on a scavenger hunt to find his presents in what seemed to be The Amazing Race meets Carmen Sandiego. We hid mysteriously in a bar and handed over a clue within a crossword puzzle when they arrived.

Afterwards we went up to Fort Totten, where Kels found an apartment! It is in the basement of a house near the metro owned by a very nice couple with a baby. Now the only thing she needs to find is a gym that she likes and operation #getkelstoDC will be 100% complete.

Oh, and we went to the portrait gallery, too. She insisted on posing with Uncle Stonewall.

Hammertime

The past week in the still-under-construction house has been full of fun little challenges. One day I got it in my head to install a washer/dryer. My first move was to use a giant hammer to free the drain pipe of its cap.

I checked afterwards, and apparently that is the correct way to do this. Hooray for intuition.

(Note to self- might be best to check BEFORE hammering next time.)

And here's the (basically) finished product from behind.

I didn't get to turn it on that night, because our electrician, who said he was running to Home Depot and could pick up a power cord and who had left at noon with the words "I'll be back," did not, as it turns out, come back. I've been told this is normal within the contracting world so I suppose I have to accept that.

The view of all the new doors that I will springload to snap at intruders.

And my bathroom is almost finished.

But there are still a few things left to do...

I was very fortunate to be able to spend time with Absi, Brian, Josh, and Kayface recently. Absi was flying back from England and Brian and Kay came down to visit home and such, so it just happened to work out. We went to the zoo and saw some really cool animals and I learned the hard way not to lead Kelsey towards insect displays. Later that night we played a three hour card game with Davia and Dan Snow added to the mix. We also got donuts.

We also went to Josh's apartment, I think on Sunday, and he made dinner. Then we played bananagrams and I took cute pictures of his cat, Harper Lee. You know, like the writer.

This week I've been doing my Street Law Clinic orientation. The first two days they spent scaring us (rightly so) by feeding us an array of classroom management horror stories. We find out where we will be teaching tomorrow and we start teaching on Monday, theoretically (I am not ready for this, but I am very excited). 

Movin On Up

Well, it has been a busy week. For a better overview of the weekend than I can provide, please see Kelsey's blog here. Basically we did a lot of things with a lot of people over the weekend, one highlight being watching Emily Goo in Bertucci's, one of her favorite restaurants. Goo likes her favorite things and demonstrates her affection accordingly.

Like doing headstands in the middle of the restaurant. A waiter was walking by and I think pointed this out to the manager, who shrugged because he had some innate recognition that this was Emily Goo and she is allowed to do whatever she wants.

Another highlight of the weekend was watching The Last Starfighter, starring Norman Snow, with Dan Snow. Now THAT a good 80's movie. I've had the theme song stuck in my head for days. It starts off sort of like a derivative of the second half of the Indiana Jones theme, but around 35 seconds kicks in to the main melody, which is great. 

Also have been doing more work on the house. Every day it looks better and better- none of which is due to anything I am doing, but it is fun being there watching a lot of the process unfold. 

This is a drawing of my room. We're starting to figure out furniture.

At one point during the weekend we went to wish Jake and Marilyn a fond farewell. Jake is going to Duke for an MBA and so is leaving DC. We played one of my favorite games, called Boom, and this is all covered more extensively in Kelsey's post so I'll just stop talking about the weekend and post the pictures I have, which are different from her pictures mostly because they are entirely off topic.

This is a picture of the bookshelf in Jake's house. I have no idea why I took a picture of it.

This is what you get when you try to take a picture of me in the Botanical Gardens. A picture of you taking a picture of me. Meta.

What I REALLY wanted to say in this post is this: on Thursday Kelsey had an interview for an Academic Advisor position at a DC University. On Friday she was called back for a second interview on Monday. On Tuesday they offered her the job, and TODAY she started work. She now has her own enormous office with a window and high ceilings (not to mention a really awesome job that she will do great at), and I am jealous. 

Also, today I am moving (mostly) to the new house. I believe that Jeff will be staying there for the first time tonight as well, so it's a special day worthy of remembering in a blog post at least.

You Must Construct Additional Pylons

I spent most of my weekend time over at the new house. We have moved on from destroying to creating. This means that I had almost nothing to do with most of the new features. I have my fingers crossed that I will be able to move in sometime within the next two weeks, but if not I have an air mattress and I can sleep elsewhere in the house. I will not be homeless. Again.

This used to be a place for the washing machine in the basement (my lair). Before that, it was a shower. We removed the washing machine and put the shower back in. I sort of need access to a shower.

Look! This is the front of our house and we have plants!

There used to be a closet door here. Now it is a wall.

This is the other side. The wooden floor used to be part of the closet. 

We're turning it into a refrigerator alcove. 

The best part of the weekend was getting to hang out with our new neighbors, Jess and Greg. They were having a wine and cheese party at their house and invited us over. When I walked in to see them playing a game of Settlers of Catan, I knew that they were going to be our kind of neighbors. Indeed, they are the sort of neighbors that you would dream about if you were to dream about the exact kind of neighbors that you would want. They are super nice, give us food, and have a cool group of friends that I hope we get to see some more. What more could you ask for? Oh- they also have a sous vide machine, which is my new favorite techno-toy. It cooks food in vacuum packs and the food always comes out amazing. It turns flank steak into filet mignon, essentially. I was very impressed.

On Monday I had a mock interview at a law firm, even though I am not participating in law firm interviews (because I do not want to work at a law firm). My interviewer was a super nice guy (every law firm partner that I have met is super nice, weirdly enough...) and specialized in international project financing law. I brushed up on that field (more interesting than I had thought) and went in and had a nice conversation. He gave me some great generalized tips about interviewers, said he didn't have any critiques for me because I hit every point I needed to, and gave me a fake call-back. It was nice being mock-hired after my mock-interview. Maybe I should have gone into international project financing....

Meimei Day

I haven't seen Meimei (Megan A) since January 1st, so I was delighted when she emailed me and Josh the other week to say that she would be in town. We scheduled today as "Meimei Day." Since Josh had work, he was with us for lunch and dinner. In between those two events, Meimei and I went to all of our favorite museums and had many adventures. 

First Stop: Native American Museum

The Native American Museum is the most beautiful museum, architecturally speaking, of all the ones on the Mall. It also has the most wasted space and the most repetitive exhibits of any of them. What is there is very nice, but for some reason I feel like they could do better by having more focused exhibits rather than a few snippets from every tribe in the Americas. Still, we learned a lot and even took a few pictures.

This is the dome as seen from the inside.

I told Meimei to stand in a rainbow. Clearly a good idea.

Second Stop: Hirshhorn

We both like modern art and the Hirshhorn always has good stuff, so we went over there. They installed a new exhibit since the last time I had been there- something to do with colors. This was by far the most entertaining modern art exhibit I have seen in a while. Some of the artwork made use of optical illusions and some of it was just an excuse to make an entire room blue. We had to put on special shoe covers to go into these rooms so as to preserve their color saturation.

I'm sure I thought this would look cool later.

Meimei wanted to stand between the green and red rooms so she could re-experience Christmas.

We both thought the green room made us look a little sickly. I am not sure what the looks are supposed to communicate.

There was also a room that was nothing but long blue strands of some rubbery material coming down from the ceiling. Once someone takes a few steps in you can't really see them anymore.  

Well, maybe a few more steps.

Finally, there was an exhibit that I couldn't take a picture of because it is just a room that is pitch black. After standing in it for four seconds the face of a giant tiger popped up in front of us and roared. Thanks, modern art, you are terrifying.

Third Stop: Museum of American History

No pictures from here, but this museum is really great so long as you remember to turn RIGHT after walking in and skip the entire wing that seems to be devoted to dresses that first ladies wore at some point or another. We checked out the Slaves at Monticello exhibit as well as the America at War walkthrough, both of which were highly informative and well done. They manage to present things honestly and in a very human way without propagandizing in any way. American History: some things are good, some things are bad. 

My favorite part of this museum is a house that they moved into the museum. It was built in the 1700's and there are good records as to who lived in the house and what the house might have looked like at that time, so as you walk around the house you see each room as it would have looked in each era. 

Last Stop: Natural History Museum

We were drawn to Natural History for our last stop because they were advertising something called the TITANOBOA: MONSTER SNAKE (I can put it in all caps because they put it in all caps). Having no idea what this was, we went to the second floor to go see. In order to get there we had to walk through a bunch of high-definition photographs that had won prizes for being the best wildlife pictures of the year. They were so good that you could see the pores on a shark. Not something that you necessarily WANT to see, but nice that we have that technology.

We arrived at the TITANOBOA exhibit and saw that it was a giant snake that is now (thankfully) extinct. It was discovered when a couple of graduate students couldn't categorize some vertebrae as belonging to the rest of the alligator bones that they came with. The students slowly realized that the only thing that the vertebrae could belong to was a snake roughly 28 inches in diameter. 

Too big.

After that we went to look at the insects. The coolest thing that the museum has done there is install a live bee colony next to a window. A transparent pipe leads the bees outside, and you can watch their comings and goings. 

Around this time Josh called us and we went to get dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Afterwards we headed to the sculpture garden for the Jazz in the Garden series, where we stayed until they closed down. It was great seeing Meimei and Josh together again (they played brothers five years ago in Tragedy! and still call each other brother- it's sweet) and just having an all around great day in DC.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

First off, apparently Shark Week is coming up. I don't know this because I have a TV (I don't) or because I went on the Discovery Channel website (I didn't) or because I am especially fond of Shark Week (I mean, it's fine but I don't really care). I know because when I walked to work Monday morning I was greeted with this:

And yes, there's a giant fin on top of the building.

My main project for the week (my first as a paid part-time employee) has to do with the Citizens United decision. I get to explain what it has to do with corporations and unions and elections within the space of about half a page. Condensing 100 years of history into three sentences (to preface the decision) is a bit... difficult. I did an informal poll of my coworkers to see what your typical well educated adult would know about Citizens United and all of them got the fundamental premise wrong, so I'm not sure how I am supposed to make this work for high school students. 

To sum up (skip if you don't care about campaign finance law- the only reason I do is because I have to read about it.):

1904- (General Sentiment) "Roosevelt is in the pockets of the corporations!"

1907- (Roosevelt and Congress) "Corporations aren't allowed to donate money to ANYTHING involved with elections" (P.S. We have no way to enforce this law.)

1907-1970's- (Congress) "No really, corporations aren't allowed to give money to elections because that will make it seem as though they are purchasing the favors of the candidate." (But really, we still have no way to enforce this law.)

1971 and 1974- (Congress) "Let's toss on a cap for campaign expenditures and give candidates public funds so that they can run without being filthy rich. Oh, and here's an agency to enforce these laws!" 

1976- (Supreme Court) "Yeah, that doesn't work so well, you know, with the Constitution and all. How about this: corporations and unions engage in 'express advocacy' within campaigns." 

1977-2001- (Corporations) "Good thing it isn't 'express advocacy' to just make the other guy look terrible in a series of advertisements 'unrelated to' the campaign." (Soft money.)

2002- (Congress) "Very funny, corporations. We're redefining 'express advocacy' so you can't do that, either." 

2008- (Citizens United) "We want to air this movie about Hillary Clinton." 

2010- (Supreme Court) "Well, you weren't directly coordinating with any campaign so that seems like a reasonable, First Amendment thing to do."

2010- (District Court) "Well since it's okay for anyone to air anything about candidates as long as they weren't coordinating with them, then by logical extension corporations should be allowed to donate as much as they want to any organization that is not an actual campaign."

And THAT is why we have more negative attack ads than positive issue ads. 

Anyway, the good news is that because I'm part time I get to spend my free time actually spending time with my friends and getting ready for the next school year. A lot of my time this week has been spent at the new house tearing down walls. On Tuesday I tore down a couple of walls with Jeff and today I took town a couple more with Sara. The ones that Sara and I took down today were especially difficult because there was piping and other things that we weren't supposed to be destroying. Destruction is much easier when you don't have to worry about collateral damage. At this point, I have what you could call an "open" floor plan in my room-to-be. 

After demolition, Goo kindly had us over to her place for dinner (both nights I was there this week, at least). It's going to be really great living so close for the next couple of years. We've also been meeting some of the neighbors, and the people on our street seem very nice. I'm keeping a chart with all their names and the names of their pets, just so we will be prepared.  

When not demolishing things or working, I have been doing school preparations. I got my fingerprints done so that I can teach law in the DC public schools and I went to a DOJ career fair. My favorite people at the fair worked in the Office of Professional Responsibility. I asked them what they did and they said that they investigated misconduct charges of DOJ attorneys. Then I asked whether everyone else in the DOJ ostracized them because of that. I was expecting a "we all get along great" answer, but instead the guy looked at me and said "yeah... people aren't generally too happy to see us." I appreciated his honesty. I may apply there some day. 

Also, I have had time to revisit some of my favorite places, like the museums:

Sid the (Giant) Sloth says hello.