Wild horses, baby cows, Harriet Tubman, fighting CAFTA

Hey folks. So again, it takes me a while to post. But this time, it's not just the grueling schedule of my mode de emploi, it's that I actually took a vacation over the 4th! Yep, no internet access for me.

Elly and I are borrowing her family's car while they're off galavanting in Costa Rica, and we sprung on the opportunity to head for the beach over the 4th. In years past, the holiday has been marked for me by some lovely, US-foreign-and-domestic-policy-bashing, anti-imperialist soiree, but I'm not sure where those happen out here quite yet. Instead, we headed to Assateague Island National State Park, where wild horsies run around the island and, well, don't really care about you and your SUV. They'll happily prance right in front of it, thankyouverymuch. It was pretty amazing, and my first summertime at a beach on the Atlantic. Despite the fact that the ocean was facing the wrong way, we had a lovely time. Elly was convinced sharks would eat her, or bluefish would spontaneously feeding frezy around her, but instead we just spent several hours playing in the surf.

But rewinding a bit to the night before, I had been invited by my Georgetown Living Wage pals to a play put on in a barn by elementary school kids. They did a rather cogent version of "The Phantom Tollbooth", and it was adorable - singing routines, the smell of dairy farm, baby humans and baby kittens, I could hardly stand it. We got a tour of the barn with cows, one of whom had been born very recently and very prematurely, so it was the cutest, fuzziest, kneecap-high critter I'd ever seen. Our tour guide was explaining that it was calving season, and I looked over and saw some hoofs hanging out of a cow - yep, the miracle of life right there in front of us! And boy, is it a painful-looking process. We were all excitedly hanging out in the barn with root beers hoping to see the birth happen in front of us, but after an hour the farmer decided it was time to assist mom - which involved tying a rope around the soon-to-be-calf's legs and pulling with his whole body. Whoa! We were all flabbergasted, and the calf got to the point of almost standing within 15 minutes of being born.

It was so crowded at the Island that we had a heck of a time finding somewhere to stay, and nearly had to drive two hours outside of it to get a hotel, which we did - eventually. On our way back, Elly turned off a road towards a wildlife preserve, we thought we'd see some more critters before hitting the beach. While en route, we saw a historical park service sign that said "Birthplace of Harriet Tubman, 5 mi". Of course we couldn't miss visiting a place of such significance! Off we went. Elly and I had a debate about which road it was on, since there were no follow-up signs to speak of. But sure enough, five miles later, there we were. It was a large, cast-iron sign at the end of a long dirt road to what was quite apparently an old plantation house. It was hard to tell if it was occupied, because there was a huge pile of firewood, but not much else would indicate that people had been there in a while. A corn field on one side, and wheat on the other, Elly and I couldn't help but notice the punishing heat in the field. We stayed for a little while and were quiet, I thought about what it would tkae in a person to escape this place and come back to get more people away from it. I took a picture of the sign and will post it here later. On the way out, the sign indicating that Ms. Tubman's birthplace was 500 ft. away had been peppered with bullets. It seemed like an appropriate place for us to spend a part of the holiday.

Much of this past week has been spent holding down the office - both my office-mates were out. In the meantime, the Senate approved the Central America Free Trade Agreement, which is crazy. We've been phonebanking against it in the House, and it may come up for a House vote as early as next week. This during a time when we're receiving daily updates from our international interns are relaying stories of abuse of workers' rights in factories across Central America. Hafta fight CAFTA!