It's been a while since I've written a strictly personal entry--too long, probably--and most of you, I'm sure, are getting a little tired of my pontificating on the news and politics. So, here goes...

Last week was great. Over at America Abroad Media, we were making all of the final preparations for our first ever television program. A co-production with CNN-Turk, "America and Turkey: The Road Ahead" was a two-hour long, in depth discussion about US-Turkish relations. Filmed live via satellite in Istanbul and Washington, the program brought together distinguished panelists and university students from both countries. It was pretty interesting, to say the least (I'll get to the show in a minute).

My job over the last week was to get an audience for the program. Though we had sent out invitations to just about the entire city and all of the Turkish organizations (i.e. the Ataturk Society, the American-Turkish Council, etc.), we needed to make sure there was a decent studio audience. To make matters more interesting, the studio--located at George Washington University; also the home of CNN's "Crossfire"--seats about 250, so only a few dozen people in the audience would have looked pretty weak. As a result of all of this, I spent the better part of three days calling the offices of all 100 Senators and about 50-75 Congressmen to personally invite their interns (because there are so many of them and so little work, their offices are always happy to send them to events like this). Some offices, like those of Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN), Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO), and Representative John Spratt (D-SC) sent just about all of their interns to the program.

In the end, we got about 140 people in the crowd (about double what we had initially hoped for), 50-60 of whom were interns on the hill. Although I don't get to see a lot of the fruits of my labor here at America Abroad (researching a program months away, one can get overwelmed), it was particularly gratifying to see that my work had paid off. It was also nice to hear all of the compliments I received from co-workers on getting such a large and interested crowd.

The program (on Thursday) went off well with very few glitches, as far as I could tell. The taping was slightly delayed due to the bombings in Istanbul and Ankara, but other than that, things ran pretty smoothly. Marvin Kalb--who you might remember from his days on CBS News and NBC's "Meet the Press"--moderated the program spectacularly. It was really nice to see a journalist at the top of his game. Although I thought I liked Tim Russert, after seeing our program first-hand, I'd really love to see "Meet the Press" back under the guidance of Kalb.



The guests for the program were also outstanding. The students from George Washington, Harvard and Princeton really shined, and the panelists were top notch. They included: Embassador Elizabeth Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), former-Rep. Steven Solarz (D-NY), Philip Gordon of Brookings and Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute.

Overall, I was really proud to be a part of this.

The next day, Friday, I went to New York to see family, which was nice. I ate a little delicatessen food at 2nd Avenue Deli (probably the best Kosher deli in the city), went on an NBC studio tour, and went to my favorite museum--the Museum of Television and Radio. While there, I watched an episode of "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" (you've got to love a young Bob Denver [later Gilligan] as Maynard G. Krebs), the episode of "Laugh-In" when Richard Nixon said "sock it to me" (I'm told this was a really big event), and and episode of "Your Show of Shows" with Sid Caesar.

I guess, as you can tell, life's going pretty well then. I'll head back to Oregon for a family reunion this weekend, which I'll surely tell you about later, but until then, it'll be back to politics here at Basie! G'night.