Day 2 in DC

I am sooooo exhausted, so just the high points of today:

• Seeing Slittle, who now works at EMILY's List and is officially a Role Model for the current WGS students.
• Meeting with my aunt Kathy--my late uncle Jim's ex-wife--who is now in charge of the Women in Development branch of USAID. From her colleague, Mary: "Eternal vigilance is necessary to keep gender in focus."
• Ellie Smeal came to talk with us when we visited the Feminist Majority Foundation. Unfortunately, because it hadn't even occurred to me that we'd get to meet with her, I didn't warn the students at all or give them any info on who she was. So for that reason, and because we all had dangerously low blood sugar by that point, they weren't as impressed as they probably should have been.
• Visited with Congressperson Jim Wilson, Republican from SC. His office was floor to ceiling pictures and certificates. Literally floor to ceiling--and the ceilings were probably 15' high. Slittle said it sounded like the psychiatrist's office in Garden State, and that's true, but times 10. He seemed a bit nervous, perhaps because he wasn't expecting 25 women (one one man) with Feminist Majority Foundation tote bags to come marching into his staunchly Republican office. Jenna Lyles won the award for asking him the best questions. In short:
• Jenna: "Do you support the ERA?"
• Jim: "No, because we don't need more laws. We need to enforce the ones we have."
• Jenna: "So, did you vote for Amendment 1 in South Carolina, that made gay marriage illegal?"
• Jim: "Yes."
• Jenna: "But, gay marriage was already illegal in SC. So why did you think we needed another law in that case?"
• Jim: "Ummm...."