Natterations

Thursdays are such a strange day—not the beginning or middle of the week but then again, not the end either…

I spent most of the day at a conference on Culture and Development in Latin America which was at the Inter-American Development Bank. Sounds interesting? It wasn’t. Well, parts of it were. But I suck at shoulder-rubbing. Unlike other ppl, the opportunity to try and get your name remembered by important ppl in a given field does not excite me. The conference was mainly panels of Ministers of culture. And since I know someone reading this is wondering what denomination that is—let me clarify that “Minister” is the title much more commonly used than but comparable to “Secretary” in the US Govnt. And no, they don’t answer phones or file papers. Secretary as in “sec of state” of “sec of defense” etc… And (sorry to all of you who DO know whaat I’m talking about) the reason why you’re not pulling up the name of the “secretary of culture” for the US is because he/she doesn’t exist. Thank God there is some bureaucracy we have yet to create in this country. In fact, the only thing we have that is Federal Govnt for arts and culture is the Nat’l Endowment for the Arts and there was a rep there from that. There were also Ministers of Finance at the conference (such as the one from Peru) so they made it slightly more interesting—that is like the equivalent a mixture of the US Secretary of the Treasury and Alan Greenspan. The conference mainly discussed cultural dev’t = economic dev’t and aspects of LA culture that do/do not help economic/social development. If you think it sounds liberal, it was… but parts were useful. I think the most striking thing of the entire conference was the discussion--and complaining—concerning the budgets of the Ministries of Culture. The Brazilian Minister of Culture took his entire panel time to lament that they only get 1% of GDP as their budget and need the Govnt to take them more seriously…he compared Brazil to Mexico where the Ministry of Culture has 6% of GDP for a budget and said he hoped to bring Brazil to that level. When the Rep from the Nat’l Endowment for the Arts spoke, she pointed out (complaining) that their budget is .0005% of GDP in the US. There were lots of economists there but I was unimpressed by their math for the following reason: no one seems to realize that if the richest country in the room pays the least govnt money toward cultural development then MAYBE just MAYBE the answer to solving economic problems is NOT increasing the Federal monies spent on developing culture…. DUH…. Ergh. Anyways, I mainly stayed awake so it wasn’t too bad…and my report for Steve at Heritage can be pretty short I guess. Oh, and Colombia has this young beautiful girl for the Minister of Culture—she looks like she stepped out of a movie—like I’d guess she’s 28 or so. Only in Latin America would one of the highest ranking females in the Govnt look like a Hollywood actress… perhaps I should mention that in my report…

By the time I got to the State Dept after the conf (around 2pm) the announced the Fed Govnt was shutting down cause it’d been snowing really hard since about 8pm last night. So ridiculous cause it was so warm outside, the snow wasn’t accumulating on the roads—only everywhere else. I stayed at work til 5 cause I had stuff to do and leaving seemed silly. I had planned to go straight to the airport to get the girls but then realized their plane doesn’t come in ‘til 11pm. So now I am home trying to get stuff done before going to retrieve them.

Yesterday I got everything squared away to switch both my internship and my advising to Dr. Bom since I have a relationship with him and he wanted to oversee them. That made me happier cause I don’t have to worry about this prof that was supposed to be overseeing my internship that I could never get a hold of. I’m working now on my resume to give Dr. Bom since he said he would use it to recommend me to the Dean and other professors for a Graduate Assistantship… I just realized there are only 6 positions awarded with full tuition and the stipend, so I am emailing the professors he suggested to try and get an “in” since I really need the position.

Ok- stuff to do and I’m sure you have more things to do than read this. Hasta Luego…