I lost something, but then I got it back

Today my phone had a fall
And I didn’t even know
I just got on the train and my day began to go

I walked
I cruised
I searched
And then I parked
And that’s when a realization put a stop to my heart

Said damn where’s my phone
Where was the last place I seen it
Said damn where’s my phone
Gone…and I couldn’t believe it

I ran to the office and borrowed a phone
Called mine knowing well the owner wasn’t home

Click… who’s this?
It’s the guy who’s phone you found
Well that’s great, yeah man I picked it up off of the ground

Appreciate it and need it

Where can I come meet ya
Pennslyvania 2000

20 minutes there I’ll cya

Red light, green light, red light, green
Stopped, parked, and scanned the scene

4 options 4 corners
1 mystery man with my phone
Investigation skills… time to canvass this zone

He was leaned back
Real cool, real relaxed
Cup of joe in front of Starbucks in fact

In my best school boy “can you help me” tone
I said excuse me sir but I lost my phone

He says, I don’t got anything for you so get the f@#$ away,
Shocked I said, “is that how you treat people everyday”…

Real quick in front of me was some 230 pounds
Real ready to stomp my lil’ head down into the ground
Now I don’t know what happened to this man that morning
But it sent me into one of those days that make a life story

I walked away from that guy
That man of anger and maltreatment
Turning back into the world
That felt cold and hard as cement

Downtrodden and disappointed by the way we sometimes act
I looked to the other corner
And saw a man in a jacket and cap

Walked over
Wondering
What will I get next
Before I could speak it was like his gums had hit eject

A smile the size of those dental diagrams
A big Australian voice and one big friendly hand

He’d been waiting
With no reason to wait
He had picked it up
In an act of good faith

I offered him coffee
I offered a quick bite
But with a smile he walked a way and wished me luck in life

Two men
One phone
And the way we choose to be
That Australian man made an impact on me

The magnification of one example is ample to show
Everyday we decide the community we know


Thanks for giving me my phone back Crocodile Dundee D.C. man. I spent some time with Mr. Lincoln tonight (his monument) thinking about my day and our tomorrow, which prompted a Mother Goose style blog.

That little story leaves out the fact that my peers and I had the opportunity to have a Q & A with the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture for a few hours which were among the most informative I’ve spent in D.C.

Tomorrow there is a chance I’ll have to be a witness in case I’ve been investigating for awhile now. Sure I’m a little nervous for the cross examination but it should be fun.

Happy Halloween Weekend,
IW

5 Sides to Remember

What has five sides, more than 26,000 employees, enough telephone wire to encircle the globe twice and more secrets than your ex-girlfriend or -boyfriend?

If you’re traveling into D.C. on the Yellow or Blue lines, you hear its name on the muffled Metro speakers everyday. “Next stop Pentagon, doors opening left side.” Yes, I have the Metro memorized. The daily rock and swaying action of the train along with those melodious conductor voices are synonymous to lullabies in a crib, but everyday PENTAGON stands out.

I’ve gained what I would describe as a global perspective in the last few years. I was lucky enough to spend a summer in Chile, hop over to Argentina, take a politics trip into Mexico, work in Costa Rica and travel to Nicaragua. During those experiences the immensity of the world and the ranges of lifestyles people have in other countries were impressed upon me. So now, when I ride by the Pentagon everyday, I often think of the enormous significance of this single spot on the globe.

The headquarters of the United States Department of Defense…. The headquarters of the most significant military force the world has ever known…. The figurative spinal cord of the nation that has often laid claim to a responsibility to protect the rest of the world from the wrongdoings of murderous dictators and malicious military regimes alike.

This Tuesday I stopped in that very building for a Washington Center tour. As with many other local hotspots, certain sections of the building are closed off to public access, but just being inside was quite an experience. The tour was lead by the type of guide you would expect to find at the Pentagon. With a 6' 6'' linebacker build, the immaculately uniformed officer had a voice so booming it would knock any pretentious public speaking professor on his heels.

We stopped to ponder famous paintings of such moments as the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We passed along a chronological history of some of America’s most prominent military operations. We listened to explanations of glass-protected documents that represent longstanding peace treaties with countries like New Zealand and Canada.

Toward the end of the tour we went to the side of the Pentagon where Flight 77 crashed. Our tour guide gave an account of the events of 9/11, and we spent some time in silence before we read the stories of those who passed that day. It was another one of those Washington, D.C. experiences that I will never forget.

My roommate shook hands with President Bush today. We both were there to hear the Dalai Lama speak at the Capitol.

More to come next week,

Ian J. Warner

Law School Application Season

It’s something like…

Watching the ice cream cone you saved up to buy melting before you can eat it all…

Trying to securely tie your shoe strings into a double knot when your six-year-old psyche just wants to get out there and play…

Standing on the edge of the high dive when your instructors keep screaming YOU’RE NOT READY TO SWIM…

Yet all you can hear inside your head is…

DIVE, DIVE, DIVE.

And you’d better make this dive perfect or you will never touch the sweet water of law school in which half the world expects you to drown.

What a rush. Literally...

Resume, recommendation, loan application, STOP, rethink and redirect.

Hello again, Mr. Stephens (Washington Center Director of Internships with a resume that any recent graduate would do well to emulate). Thank you for meeting me for lunch. Yes, I am planning to attend law school next fall. Well, I believe so, but I also need to decide if I’m going to stay here in D.C. after December. My current internship at the Public Defender Service is great and I am interested in staying on there as an investigator until law school begins.

“Well, Ian, no matter what course you choose, please keep me posted. Consider me a resource.”

Thank you for your time, Mr. Stephens, and I’ll talk to you soon.

RUUUUUNNNN
Late for work, late at work
LSAT PREP, LSAT PREP
TEST, TEST, TEST

Kaplan class has been good. I really enjoy being busy. I’m just better when I’m busy.

And I will stand behind the statement in my "personal statement" that the State of the State is leaving the impoverished, largely minority community behind. Take a look at D.C. and its clear as day to me.

“Don’t go to Southeast.” They say it with reason and working there gives me cause to stand up and say our legal system is sending generations of project prisoners from cell blocks to city blocks where hope is hard to find. It sounds harsh but so is the reality of what is going on in the halls of the public schools in those neighborhoods. There are too many good people in bad surroundings. It hits home as I am talking to a 17-year-old kid facing felony assault. He just didn’t see any other way to handle a situation he could not avoid at school.

RUUUN. Blog time, online, school search, pay dirt….breeeathe—that loan came through.

Grocery shop, waterhole hop, and don’t forget your business card.

Ian Warner
Intern Investigor
Public Defender Sevice Washington D.C.
(206) 940-4422

Talk to you soon,

IW

CEO of AOL, Bill O’Riley, College Coaches, Professional Ethics and Blog Readers

I like to stay informed. Everyday prior to my arrival here, at least once, I read a few stories out of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Seattle Times. I knew I was going to have to hit the ground running here in D.C. so I wanted to be ready.

As you can imagine, during my extended stay in Costa Rica I spent very little time watching any of the American news networks and when I returned…I was not pleasantly surprised by their progress.

Before I left in May, I had periodically argued that some of Fox New's presentations were becoming dangerously slanted.

Lately, many of the broadcasts have become simply unwatchable. To make things worse, CNNBC has seemingly reacted with programming that directly responds to, if not initiates, slanted banter between itself and Fox News. (Sadly ESPN is just safer....)

So at this week's Presidential Lecture Series when I had a chance to ask the current President of AOL, Randy Falco, (who also worked at NBC for 35 years, during which he held positions which influenced news programming, including president of the network) about his view on the current trends in news broadcasting, in terms of the growth of highly opinionated politically polarized broadcasts...I could not resist.

He responded like a disappointed father, basically stating that he understood recent trends as efforts to compete for ratings but that he always believed news broadcasts had a responsibility to simply present the news as it happened. (He also stated out right that he doesn't consider Bill O’ Riley to be a real journalist--volunteering the answer to a question that I was too afraid to ask!)

I thanked him for his answer and walked back to my seat, feeling more satisfied than I had expected to be. He went on to answer a question about ethics in the business world, which he described as “doing what you say you’re going to do.” That sent my mind into the typical bad listener habit of tangential thinking…I daydreamed about leaders that I respected in my past, finding that all lived up to Falco’s definition of ethics.

Like the aspiring ethical professional I am, I applied Mr. Falco’s mantra of ethics and returned a favor to my old college coach. He knew a kid at another college who was a son of a coach he knows. The student wanted to talk to me about my experience at the Washington Center. I told my coach I would do it right away but it was 10:30 when I got home after a day of work, the lecture, and a 4-hour LSAT diagnostic test. Remembering Mr. Falco, I made the call and luckily left a message on his answering machine.

Today he called back while I was at work. And guess what he said? “I’ve looked at the Washington Center web site and I’ve been reading all your blogs”. What? Someone is reading my blog besides my immediate family! Other prospective students are reading this in an attempt to gain perspective on what’s going on out here in D.C.? (New TWC blog experiment working?)

Well “readers,” I’m busy. D.C. is a infinitely interesting place--and thanks for reading. Tomorrow is my lunch with the VP of the Washington Center and tonight (at 10:15 after a day of work and 4 hour lsat class) I’m going out to interview a Spanish-speaking witness and I’m excited about it.

On the run,

IW