Senator Tim Johnson

I had neglected to shower that day. What was the point? I wasn’t looking to impress anyone, so far as I knew we were to spend yet another day in D.C. perusing the vastness of the Smithsonian. Who in their right mind wants to waste time on a shower when their locomotive of a fourteen year old mind thinks it may be spending another dozen hours in the Air and Space Museum?

Visiting the halls of the capitol building and congressional offices was awe inspiring. So much so that said mind, once so focused on all things scientific, was derailed into a spiral of tumult over the state of affairs within our nation and without. Ten years and seven seasons of The West Wing later…

While the scope of the most pressing issues facing our nation is often daunting, events of the last year seem to have forced a new clarity of perception. Yet without this picture following from one locale to the next. Occasionally surfacing as some odd component or gizmo was fished from some box or another, politics would have in all likelihood been less than an afterthought throughout my life. Full well knowing that this very phrase has likely been emblazoned on hundreds or thousands of other pictures signed by this very same man, it has somehow emboldened me every time I have come across it. It has forced me to choke back the bile I taste when presented with a viewpoint on health care, education or any other swelteringly hot topic when significantly divergent from my own point of view.

Whether our chosen representatives realize or not, it is the little things they do that really change lives, not just the votes they cast. Thank you Tim, from the bottom of my heart, for even though we have never met, you have helped to expand my horizons.