Waiting on another Senator...

I'm sitting here at my desk awaiting a telephone call from Senator Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and while I'm waiting I figured I'd leave a note about my experiences these past few days.

Yesterday morning I was told that the News Service liked my story on the Jews at the Helsinki Commission and was going to run it. They also wanted a couple of pictures, so I got a pair of nice photo credits too.

So far, I know the Knoxville News-Sentinel and the Abilene (TX) Times-Record have printed it.

One thing I didn't mention in my previous posts is how inspiring it was for me to work on this story. Not sure why.

But it was a spiritual experience for me to work with these people, a positive one. The amount of faith and passion these men poured into their testimony was beyond anything I've seen in quite some time. The old Jewish rabbi accent, in its many forms, is a very, very powerful thing to hear. They were talking about books with love and tenderness usually reserved for long lost friends in painful whispers that found volume by pulling on the heartstrings of all present.

And seeing the Holocaust survivors standing, all of them under 5 feet tall, their growth probably stunted from their time in the camps, as they seemed to tower above everyone else in the room.

Amazing. Just amazing.