Brendan Ryan, 16, a junior at La Salle Academy, lives in Providence. It's his first year as a Senate page. "I've always been interested in politics - my mom was a page when she was in high school. And my dad - he's a lawyer - ran for state rep once, Joanne Giannini's seat in Mount Pleasant. We live right across from her."

Brendan plays the guitar, piano, violin, cello and flute. "I can play all of them a little bit, but my favorite is guitar. When I was a kid, my mom made me learn to play the fiddle while my sister did Irish step-dancing."

At school, Brendan is involved in La Salle's debate club and model legislature. Recently, he and his friends started a political discourse society at the school "where liberals and conservatives can come together to talk.

"I think it's great that we live in a country where social activists and lobbyists and citizens and legislators are all allowed in this building - in the seat of power. By the way, my grandfather works here, too - he's a clerk in the House. Tom Flanagan, do you know him?''