So on Saturday I went to Gary again to campaign for Obama with my one (white) neighbor who goes to law school who I had gone down there with during the primary season too. It was great to go with her, she's so very appreciative of how this campaign has let us just go down and walk around Gary and given us an entree into the community, though twice during this last time when she went to a house a kid answering turned around and yelled, "Mom, there's a white lady at the door!"
(That said, my one neighbor said her favorite part was how this one lady frantically answered the door with a phone on her shoulder and was like, "My friend just called and my broccoli's burning, can you hold on, I'll be right back?", and after the lady disappeared back into the kitchen for ten minutes, she came back to talk, and had brought my friend some sweet tea since she made her wait.)
Anyhow, we took the electric train down to Gary -- I thought the (black) train conductor was going to give us a free ride since we were in Obama gear, but he didn't, he just didn't come sell us tickets at first -- and since the office is now downtown and not on the outskirts in a strip mall, we got to get off at the downtown stop and walk over a few blocks to the office. There's really no businesses right downtown, and just empty, well-kept storefronts interspersed with some very nice lots with (black) people hanging around in them. Because of the train schedule, we got in like an hour early -- it was like 8:30am and we didn't really have to be there till 9:30am -- so we checked in at the office and then went over to "Eat Your Heart Out Tacos and Ribs" to get some coffee and maybe breakfast, only it was closed even though according to its schedule it should have been open, so the (black) security guy in the mini-mall pointed out an open liquor/drug store and we headed over there...
The security guard there ("Moses") was this nice and really chatty younger (black) guy with an earring, so we shot the shit with him about his hangover and how the corporate bailout was to protect the guys on the top -- he said it was because congresspeople had investments at stake, and then he added how President Bush was going to address the nation pretty soon, and he was like, "And when was the last time you saw the president up on a Saturday morning?" -- and after saying how people needed jobs since they worked at whatever anyways, the people across the street in the park were selling drugs were out there at 8am everyday just like they were going to work, and after when I had gotten my coffee and my friend her granola bar, he added that next time they would throw on some hotdogs and Polish sausage in the roller for us if we wanted since they usually only have them on weekdays, but then he immediately broke off talking since his friend who was like 300lbs and wearing a drapy khaki pantsuits and sunglasses and a straw hat marched in, and he yelled out "Biggie!" and went over to see his friend, who started doing a 'raise the roof' gesture as soon as his friend had yelled out his name.
Back at headquarters, a bus had just arrived -- busses filled with volunteers go every weekend from the end of one of the Chicago subway lines out to Iowa, Indiana and Michigan -- so the one older black lady from Gary who was wearing a pink baseball hat with a symbol of a hand making a peace sign, a heart, and a stylized version of Obama's head (=PEACE LOVE OBAMA) was in full force being like, "Sign in here, sweetheart" and "Oh no, you go over there, honey." Along with everyone else - like 90some people! - we got herded into a side room where they gave out canvassing instructions, and we got to admire other people's Obama-wear... A big thing now is these buttons that people get made where someone has a button where the bottom half is "FOR OBAMA" and the top half is blank so you can add in people's names in block letters - one lady had an "ERMA FOR OBAMA" button on, and another one a "BARBARA JEAN FOR OBAMA" one.
After I ate like two donuts - people brought donuts in, which was wonderful; I had one glazed, and one chocolate with sprinkles - me and my friend and this one retired guy from the area went out to register people; the focus of the campaign right now is to register people for the Oct. 6th deadline and so grow the voter pool, and then to have people vote absentee ballot to avoid problems at the polls on election day, which happen a lot. For like a morning and afternoon shift, we registered like 17 people and got like 6 or 7 to vote absentee, which was good.
(The guy was telling us that since the Republicans control the county government, they make it difficult for the black people in Gary to vote, too. He said early voting in person is at the county courthouse but it's a long drive, and they fought like heck to have a location in downtown Gary during the primaries and finally got one for the last two weeks before election week, and it was so successful that the county government isn't going to let it happen again. I told my mom this and she was pissed off. "That really happens?" she was like, and then she was like, "I think voting should be as easy as possible for people.")
Like always I was impressed by the level of civic engagement in Gary. This one huge (black) dude who answered the door was a precinct captain, and he told me not to bother with the list, he knows who was registered in the area and who wasn't, and told me to check out the two houses down on the other end of the block since one was a rental and the people might just have moved in, and the other was some weird people who never bother to register, though he's been getting on them to. Impressive too was the couple people I met who had told me that they had taken their kids and nieces and nephews who had just turned or were just turning 18 to go register to vote so they'd be set by the time of the election. In a way, maybe it's the city layout causing closeness, maybe it's the solidarity of the black community surfacing in voting Democratic, but whatever it is, just the sheer number of people who know about polls and polling places and what'd coming up election-wise and have known this and have been voting forever is just incredibly impressive.
Honestly, like my one (white) neighbor was saying, this Sarah Palin bullshit about small towns has these huge racial overtones to it, because small towns do tend to be white, so you're saying that the moral heart of America is white, which is bullshit, people could learn a lot by going to Gary to see the civic culture there, which is impressive.
(My one [white] neighbor was also saying how Sarah Palin's language of "choice" to describe her Down's Syndrome baby is weird, since according to her it shouldn't be a choice... She also said that if one of Obama's daughters got pregnant, that would be used to stigmatize the social breakdown of the black family, whereas with a white family like Sarah Palin's it's just something to be dealt with in-house and doesn't reflect bad on white people's families.)
Other than that, with canvassing, this one middle-aged dredded black dude at a house was already registered, but kept saying "God bless you" to me, for going and trying to register people.
Anyhow, back at the ranch, someone had brought in a huge tray of spaghetti at lunchtime, and I had some of that between shifts along with a breadstick (didn't touch the salad though), and when we got back after our second round of canvassing, someone had left out a box of Church's fried chicken and some mashed potatoes and gravy and some honey biscuits, which I had a bunch of, too, so I didn't even need to go into the lunch I had packed up and brought with me. These northwest Indiana Obama offices really are like a big black family barbecue, which I can be a part of and still have it not be all that weird, since his campaign has opened up space for that.
That was about all that happened at canvassing. I think next week I'll go to the Hammond/East Chicago office... During the primaries there was two offices, but there were some organizational problems and they collapsed them to one for the general elections, and some people in Gary said there were still some problems there, so I might go see what's up with that.
The last tidbit is that Saul Alinsky's ACORN group was registering voters all across Gary but somehow something was getting fucked up and no one was getting registered, so volunteers around the campaign office were wondering what the heck was up with that. My one (white) neighbor I went down to go campaign with said there's been all sorts of internal problems with that organization, but who knows, really.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query indiana obama. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query indiana obama. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Canvassed for Obama today.
I canvassed for Obama today in northwest Indiana, and got mostly black neighborhoods to canvass.
Walking into the campaign headquarters, we were all greeted by all these other volunteers already there, a lot of them good-looking middle-aged black women. One asked me and a couple people I went with where we were from, and right after I was like, "...but I'm originally from Michigan," she was like, "Where, I love Michigan!", and then when I said the northern lower peninsula, she was like, "I love the vineyards there, I've taken a lot of vacations there. But, then again, I'm a slush."
The campaign was very organized - packets divided into odd/even sides of the street so teams could go out and quickly go door-to-door, and when early voting information changed (a county courthouse that was an early voting site had electricity problems in the morning from severe storms the previous night), the office managers made sure that the extended voting hours got distributed immediately to canvassers.
The campaign also had a lot of donated food, and a black guy grilling up burgers and chicken for everyone, who was 2/3 black. It was almost like a big black family barbecue.
In terms of canvassing, in one lower income mixed black-white neighborhood where almost no one was home, the girl from my apartment building I was canvassing with got this fifty-some year old white guy in dirty jeans and a dirty black t-shirt and a graying pony tail pulled back under a black baseball cap. Huge amounts of pot smoke just rolled out the door when it was opened, and, as it turned out, the guy was an Obama supporter, though he wouldn't early vote that day since he was in no shape to drive.
At another house in another neighborhood, that one a little more well-off and a little more black, the girl from my apartment building I was canvassing came up to one door at the same time as three young black guys, so she asked them and the guy who opened the door about Obama, and the guy at the door and one of the three young black guys who came up to the door with her were Obama supporters and said they had already voted, though two of the three young black guys who came up to the door with her said they didn't vote. Anyhow, as soon as she started going down the walk, she said the three young black guys started hitting the other guy and were like, "Where's the fucking pot, you motherfucker!?!!??!"
Walking between streets along a main road, too, I passed a strip of businesses that included a black barber shop that was filled with guys, so I popped in to see if they all knew about early voting. They hadn't, and one guy who was getting his haircut gave me a power-fist farewell on my way out.
In terms of general canvassing, I felt weird just assuming black people were all for Obama, so I after I asked if people had given any though to who they might be voting for in the primaries - I don't ask them straightaway who they support, since that's very definitive and doesn't provide any opportunity for conversation -- I would be like, "So, who are you leaning towards now?", and most black people would be like, "Obama!" or something like that. One older black woman, though, was for Clinton, so I'm glad I said everything like I did for every voter I came across, so I didn't come across to her like some stereotyping dick who assumes every black person votes Obama.
Later, back at the canvassing office, three older black women were sitting at a table and I overheard them talking about how they didn't know who Hilary was until this campaign got going. "And Bill showed his colors too," one said, and to that the second was like, "Hello," and the third just nodded and was like, "mmm-hmmmm."
Walking into the campaign headquarters, we were all greeted by all these other volunteers already there, a lot of them good-looking middle-aged black women. One asked me and a couple people I went with where we were from, and right after I was like, "...but I'm originally from Michigan," she was like, "Where, I love Michigan!", and then when I said the northern lower peninsula, she was like, "I love the vineyards there, I've taken a lot of vacations there. But, then again, I'm a slush."
The campaign was very organized - packets divided into odd/even sides of the street so teams could go out and quickly go door-to-door, and when early voting information changed (a county courthouse that was an early voting site had electricity problems in the morning from severe storms the previous night), the office managers made sure that the extended voting hours got distributed immediately to canvassers.
The campaign also had a lot of donated food, and a black guy grilling up burgers and chicken for everyone, who was 2/3 black. It was almost like a big black family barbecue.
In terms of canvassing, in one lower income mixed black-white neighborhood where almost no one was home, the girl from my apartment building I was canvassing with got this fifty-some year old white guy in dirty jeans and a dirty black t-shirt and a graying pony tail pulled back under a black baseball cap. Huge amounts of pot smoke just rolled out the door when it was opened, and, as it turned out, the guy was an Obama supporter, though he wouldn't early vote that day since he was in no shape to drive.
At another house in another neighborhood, that one a little more well-off and a little more black, the girl from my apartment building I was canvassing came up to one door at the same time as three young black guys, so she asked them and the guy who opened the door about Obama, and the guy at the door and one of the three young black guys who came up to the door with her were Obama supporters and said they had already voted, though two of the three young black guys who came up to the door with her said they didn't vote. Anyhow, as soon as she started going down the walk, she said the three young black guys started hitting the other guy and were like, "Where's the fucking pot, you motherfucker!?!!??!"
Walking between streets along a main road, too, I passed a strip of businesses that included a black barber shop that was filled with guys, so I popped in to see if they all knew about early voting. They hadn't, and one guy who was getting his haircut gave me a power-fist farewell on my way out.
In terms of general canvassing, I felt weird just assuming black people were all for Obama, so I after I asked if people had given any though to who they might be voting for in the primaries - I don't ask them straightaway who they support, since that's very definitive and doesn't provide any opportunity for conversation -- I would be like, "So, who are you leaning towards now?", and most black people would be like, "Obama!" or something like that. One older black woman, though, was for Clinton, so I'm glad I said everything like I did for every voter I came across, so I didn't come across to her like some stereotyping dick who assumes every black person votes Obama.
Later, back at the canvassing office, three older black women were sitting at a table and I overheard them talking about how they didn't know who Hilary was until this campaign got going. "And Bill showed his colors too," one said, and to that the second was like, "Hello," and the third just nodded and was like, "mmm-hmmmm."
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Quite a night - drinks, and drinks (part I of II): the white neighborhood bar.
So, last night I was going out the door to meet my one friend from the masters program at the black neighborhood bar, when my neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with texted me that she and her friend were down at the white neighborhood bar and to come join them for a pitcher, so since that bar was closer, I decided to go down and have just one glass, and then go on to go meet my one friend from the masters program.
Anyhow, when I arrived at the white neighborhood bar, my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with's friend, who also goes to law school and has very short hair and pixie-ish cheeks but is not a lesbian, was for some reason talking about all the gender-transgressive thing she did in her childhood growing up in the outskirts of Valparaiso, like pee standing up which her brothers made fun of her for when they accidentally opened the bathroom door one day and saw her doing that, and read boy-books like "Where the Red Fern Grows" and the Hatchet series, and be sexually aggressive to her teachers and in third grade be upfront with her male teachers and ask them to kiss her, and how since she wanted to be a native American, she'd wear nothing but a loin-cloth around the house for years, even till she was like eleven or twelve and her older brother would start whining to their mom about how he was embarrassed to have friends over since she was going around topless, and she'd confront him and be like, "Well, I don't have breasts yet," and stuff like that.
"It took me a long time to sort through things," she said, "since all along I was attracted to men, but I hated fucking women and the way they behaved and talked and the things they thought about."
She then said that during her first years of college, her dad at the goading of his girlfriend who has a gay son, took her aside and started off on this long talk about after his dad (her grandfather, who she never knew) died in his fifties, her grandmother kind of wandered emotionally for a few years, and then moved in with her long-term best friend, and they shared a house together, and went to functions together, and for all practical intent and purposes were a couple.
"And...?", she was like, to her dad.
"Well," he was like, "I don't know how to put this, but --" and he paused dramatically, "They were lovers," and then he explained though it was never articulated, everyone knew it. Then, he was like, "And I want you to know that that's okay by me," at which point she had to tell her dad that she wasn't gay, and he was like, "Well, I wanted you to know that anyways."
After this, somehow we segued into how her friend at law school was doing a research paper into bestiality and animal consent, and we all started swapping horse-fucking stories as well as a few livestock insemination ones, and then she started talking about this one documentary she saw about men who liked getting fucked by horses, and then somehow we started talking about fetishes and how they deveop in youth, and then out of nowhere my neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with, who was raised in southern Illinois by hippie parents and who always looks stoned though she's not and has never tasted meat in her life, said that when she was a kid, she had a genocide obsession, and how she couldn't stop reading "The Diary of Anne Frank", but even more than that, she couldn't stop reading the more-recent "Zlata's Diary", about whatever the fuck war that was from a few years ago where there was shit going on in Sarajevo.
After that, there was an awkward pause and it was about time for me to get going, so I told them about how I talked to my mom that evening on the phone and how she was telling me about the recent visit of the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school...
(I didn't even know she was visiting and staying with my parents; I guess my mom had went to write this to me in an e-mail when she was at work this past week, but she was like, "I pressed the wrong button, and the next thing I know, the entire e-mail was obliterated, and I wasn't going to write out the whole goddamn thing again!")
So, the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school repairs cars, and she had met a bunch of people over the internet who really like used Kias, so she drove down to stay with my parents and then the next day was going to meet this weird guy from a shitty-ass small town near us to drive down a couple hours to another part of the state for this impromptu Kia rally, only she flaked out at the last minute and didn't want to meet up with this guy, so she was basically hanging around our house a lot, and since my mom had a few days off of work and realized that this Yooper girl had never really been anywhere since she had been born and raised in the U.P., my mom decided to go with her on a couple daytrips around the northern lower peninsula, the first one being to this pleasant summer-town on Lake Michigan with a yuppie-ish downtown.
Anyhow, they enjoyed their day there, and on the way out of town, this Yooper girl asked really casually, "Is there a 7-11 around here?", and my mom was like, "Yeah, actually a couple blocks up, we're going to go right past it, why, do you want to stop?", and the Yooper girl was like, "Could we?", and the next thing you know, as they pull up and are sitting in the car and just before the Yooper girl opens the door, she starts kind of staring wistfully, and is like to my mom, "I've always wanted a Slurpee..." -- since, as it turns out, the U.P. gets a station or two from northern Wisconsin media markets and 7-11 ads are on all the time, but there are no 7-11s in the U.P, so this girl had all her life wanted to go to a 7-11 and try a Slurpee.
So, after finding this out, my mom, who wasn't going to go into the store at all, went into the store with this Yooper girl to show her to help her operate the Slurpee machine, and while my mom was showing her that, she mentioned to the Yooper girl, "You know, [me] and sometimes [my brother] used to always mix the different Slurpee flavors, it would look so disgusting that it would make me sick," and the Yooper girl, once she heard this, was like, "No way!", and made a mixed Slurpee. She didn't sip it right away, but after they paid and got back in the car, as soon as the door was closed and the Slurpee was put in the cup holder, the Yooper girl gave a big "Yessss!" with her hand, and started stomping her feet on the car floor and squealing.
And, as it turns out, she really likes Slurpees, and has had six this past week.
"Sounds like a keeper!", my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with said.
Besides that even, the next day they went to a more major city in my area, and on the way out of town, the Yooper girl turned to my mom and was like, "[my mom's name], is there a Dunkin' Donuts around here? I'd like to buy you a coffee."
"You know, I actually don't feel like a coffee," my mom said - "Oh," the Yooper girl said right away, and seemed crestfallen -- "But -" my mom continued, "We can go to one anyway, would you like to stop?", and immediately the Yooper girl said "oh!" and was like, "Could we?"
So, they pulled up the Dunkin' Donuts, and my mom waited and waited, and finally the Yooper girl comes out with her coffee and a donut, and as soon as she gets in the car, she was like, "That kid in there was so nice, I tipped him real good. There were so many donuts, I didn't know what to do, and he was real nice and explained them all to me!"
Anyhow, when I arrived at the white neighborhood bar, my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with's friend, who also goes to law school and has very short hair and pixie-ish cheeks but is not a lesbian, was for some reason talking about all the gender-transgressive thing she did in her childhood growing up in the outskirts of Valparaiso, like pee standing up which her brothers made fun of her for when they accidentally opened the bathroom door one day and saw her doing that, and read boy-books like "Where the Red Fern Grows" and the Hatchet series, and be sexually aggressive to her teachers and in third grade be upfront with her male teachers and ask them to kiss her, and how since she wanted to be a native American, she'd wear nothing but a loin-cloth around the house for years, even till she was like eleven or twelve and her older brother would start whining to their mom about how he was embarrassed to have friends over since she was going around topless, and she'd confront him and be like, "Well, I don't have breasts yet," and stuff like that.
"It took me a long time to sort through things," she said, "since all along I was attracted to men, but I hated fucking women and the way they behaved and talked and the things they thought about."
She then said that during her first years of college, her dad at the goading of his girlfriend who has a gay son, took her aside and started off on this long talk about after his dad (her grandfather, who she never knew) died in his fifties, her grandmother kind of wandered emotionally for a few years, and then moved in with her long-term best friend, and they shared a house together, and went to functions together, and for all practical intent and purposes were a couple.
"And...?", she was like, to her dad.
"Well," he was like, "I don't know how to put this, but --" and he paused dramatically, "They were lovers," and then he explained though it was never articulated, everyone knew it. Then, he was like, "And I want you to know that that's okay by me," at which point she had to tell her dad that she wasn't gay, and he was like, "Well, I wanted you to know that anyways."
After this, somehow we segued into how her friend at law school was doing a research paper into bestiality and animal consent, and we all started swapping horse-fucking stories as well as a few livestock insemination ones, and then she started talking about this one documentary she saw about men who liked getting fucked by horses, and then somehow we started talking about fetishes and how they deveop in youth, and then out of nowhere my neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with, who was raised in southern Illinois by hippie parents and who always looks stoned though she's not and has never tasted meat in her life, said that when she was a kid, she had a genocide obsession, and how she couldn't stop reading "The Diary of Anne Frank", but even more than that, she couldn't stop reading the more-recent "Zlata's Diary", about whatever the fuck war that was from a few years ago where there was shit going on in Sarajevo.
After that, there was an awkward pause and it was about time for me to get going, so I told them about how I talked to my mom that evening on the phone and how she was telling me about the recent visit of the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school...
(I didn't even know she was visiting and staying with my parents; I guess my mom had went to write this to me in an e-mail when she was at work this past week, but she was like, "I pressed the wrong button, and the next thing I know, the entire e-mail was obliterated, and I wasn't going to write out the whole goddamn thing again!")
So, the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school repairs cars, and she had met a bunch of people over the internet who really like used Kias, so she drove down to stay with my parents and then the next day was going to meet this weird guy from a shitty-ass small town near us to drive down a couple hours to another part of the state for this impromptu Kia rally, only she flaked out at the last minute and didn't want to meet up with this guy, so she was basically hanging around our house a lot, and since my mom had a few days off of work and realized that this Yooper girl had never really been anywhere since she had been born and raised in the U.P., my mom decided to go with her on a couple daytrips around the northern lower peninsula, the first one being to this pleasant summer-town on Lake Michigan with a yuppie-ish downtown.
Anyhow, they enjoyed their day there, and on the way out of town, this Yooper girl asked really casually, "Is there a 7-11 around here?", and my mom was like, "Yeah, actually a couple blocks up, we're going to go right past it, why, do you want to stop?", and the Yooper girl was like, "Could we?", and the next thing you know, as they pull up and are sitting in the car and just before the Yooper girl opens the door, she starts kind of staring wistfully, and is like to my mom, "I've always wanted a Slurpee..." -- since, as it turns out, the U.P. gets a station or two from northern Wisconsin media markets and 7-11 ads are on all the time, but there are no 7-11s in the U.P, so this girl had all her life wanted to go to a 7-11 and try a Slurpee.
So, after finding this out, my mom, who wasn't going to go into the store at all, went into the store with this Yooper girl to show her to help her operate the Slurpee machine, and while my mom was showing her that, she mentioned to the Yooper girl, "You know, [me] and sometimes [my brother] used to always mix the different Slurpee flavors, it would look so disgusting that it would make me sick," and the Yooper girl, once she heard this, was like, "No way!", and made a mixed Slurpee. She didn't sip it right away, but after they paid and got back in the car, as soon as the door was closed and the Slurpee was put in the cup holder, the Yooper girl gave a big "Yessss!" with her hand, and started stomping her feet on the car floor and squealing.
And, as it turns out, she really likes Slurpees, and has had six this past week.
"Sounds like a keeper!", my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with said.
Besides that even, the next day they went to a more major city in my area, and on the way out of town, the Yooper girl turned to my mom and was like, "[my mom's name], is there a Dunkin' Donuts around here? I'd like to buy you a coffee."
"You know, I actually don't feel like a coffee," my mom said - "Oh," the Yooper girl said right away, and seemed crestfallen -- "But -" my mom continued, "We can go to one anyway, would you like to stop?", and immediately the Yooper girl said "oh!" and was like, "Could we?"
So, they pulled up the Dunkin' Donuts, and my mom waited and waited, and finally the Yooper girl comes out with her coffee and a donut, and as soon as she gets in the car, she was like, "That kid in there was so nice, I tipped him real good. There were so many donuts, I didn't know what to do, and he was real nice and explained them all to me!"
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Ho-hum (2 of 2): Obama volunteering.
The best part of going down to Indiana on Sunday to volunteer for Obama was breakfast. I went to this diner place located just down the street from the campaign office, and the waitresses were all old white ladies who smoked too much and younger, plump Mexican women. I sat at the counter, and I could see they had two calendars above the work station: one from their meat distributor that featured a picture of a filet mignon for the month of October, and the other from some wildlife organization, featuring a wolf. I got the steak and eggs, and enjoyed it.
(I've always enjoyed eating out when I'm down there... The last time I went to this local burger chain and got a burger and some homemade stuffed pepper soup. I told the kind-of-fat, slightly-older-than-me female cashier it was good, and she said that I should come in the next time they make cream of potato soup, and that though it's good just plain, I should put nacho cheese in it like she does, since it makes it better.)
Canvassing I didn't notice much, except that the undecideds seemed to be Republican-leaning people who are disgusted with McCain, and that the Dems are hepped up to vote and will wait in line no matter what. If there's long lines on election day, I bet a lot of the Republican-leaning independents will stay away, though I have no idea of how fired up the die-hard Republicans are, we never go knocking on their door.
When I got back to the office, I ended up doing data entry for a while, and I kept coming across these fantastic names, but only like 2/3 of the way through I decided to start writing them down:
Sietika
Katanya
Ammetta
Cheneen
Tanisha
Monique
Tamaris
Marshina
Laurentha
Kanita
Latesha
Tukieda
Chanita
Lavora
Aisha
Chante
Lakesha
Lakimber
Nakesha
Carletta
Virlean
Deona
Evelen
Melony
Lakeya
Willodean
Zeeshan
Loria
Kadestric
Kareena
Mittie
Rashidah
Lelia
Vernice
Kianna
Darvell
Coriane
Delia
Tangie
Alisa
Kaprena
Melyne
Lelicia
Sharmaline
Parris
Lyntoya
I wonder if they would have fired me if they had caught me writing down the names... Can you believe that if I had had foresight and written them down from the beginning, I would have had three times as many names? It's interesting, how a lot in black culture unique names are given since it's seen as a way to honor how each child is a unique person. One could also do a lot linguistically on "permissible words" in a language - all of the names sound "English-y" to us, though we have never heard them before... The obvious thing to do is link them to the phonotactic structure in English, i.e. restrictions on what sounds appear where.
On another note, down in Indiana, I keep hearing this thing from vaguely-racist voters, that if (when!) Obama is elected, blacks will rise up/be unmanageable... This Hillary-supporting Mexican woman who's holding her nose to vote Obama since she can't stand Palin was telling me that the way she's treated in grocery stores by black clerks is only going to get worse, which is kind of like what this older woman a month ago was saying, that after the first black mayor ever was elected in Gary, in one week you went from having 2 to 18 street gangs.
As far as I can see, there's no way a canvasser can really meet that argument, since it's unfalsifiable predictions about the future. I wonder how many people think shit like this.
(I've always enjoyed eating out when I'm down there... The last time I went to this local burger chain and got a burger and some homemade stuffed pepper soup. I told the kind-of-fat, slightly-older-than-me female cashier it was good, and she said that I should come in the next time they make cream of potato soup, and that though it's good just plain, I should put nacho cheese in it like she does, since it makes it better.)
Canvassing I didn't notice much, except that the undecideds seemed to be Republican-leaning people who are disgusted with McCain, and that the Dems are hepped up to vote and will wait in line no matter what. If there's long lines on election day, I bet a lot of the Republican-leaning independents will stay away, though I have no idea of how fired up the die-hard Republicans are, we never go knocking on their door.
When I got back to the office, I ended up doing data entry for a while, and I kept coming across these fantastic names, but only like 2/3 of the way through I decided to start writing them down:
Sietika
Katanya
Ammetta
Cheneen
Tanisha
Monique
Tamaris
Marshina
Laurentha
Kanita
Latesha
Tukieda
Chanita
Lavora
Aisha
Chante
Lakesha
Lakimber
Nakesha
Carletta
Virlean
Deona
Evelen
Melony
Lakeya
Willodean
Zeeshan
Loria
Kadestric
Kareena
Mittie
Rashidah
Lelia
Vernice
Kianna
Darvell
Coriane
Delia
Tangie
Alisa
Kaprena
Melyne
Lelicia
Sharmaline
Parris
Lyntoya
I wonder if they would have fired me if they had caught me writing down the names... Can you believe that if I had had foresight and written them down from the beginning, I would have had three times as many names? It's interesting, how a lot in black culture unique names are given since it's seen as a way to honor how each child is a unique person. One could also do a lot linguistically on "permissible words" in a language - all of the names sound "English-y" to us, though we have never heard them before... The obvious thing to do is link them to the phonotactic structure in English, i.e. restrictions on what sounds appear where.
On another note, down in Indiana, I keep hearing this thing from vaguely-racist voters, that if (when!) Obama is elected, blacks will rise up/be unmanageable... This Hillary-supporting Mexican woman who's holding her nose to vote Obama since she can't stand Palin was telling me that the way she's treated in grocery stores by black clerks is only going to get worse, which is kind of like what this older woman a month ago was saying, that after the first black mayor ever was elected in Gary, in one week you went from having 2 to 18 street gangs.
As far as I can see, there's no way a canvasser can really meet that argument, since it's unfalsifiable predictions about the future. I wonder how many people think shit like this.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Nails / Obama / Memories of the Obama campaign.
I was at the black neighborhood bar again last night. I played Ciara's "1, 2 Step" on the jukebox, as well as that one song where the guy goes, "I want to put you to bed/ to bed/ to bed" (the #7 most-played song at the place according to the jukebox stats, by the way!). When the Ciara came on, this round black girl at the bar started swaying in her seat back and forth and snapping her fingers and mouthing the lyrics. Later, her friend with the big tits went up to the jukebox and swayed back and forth and pressed selections on the touch-screen with these long, long hot pink fingernails that clicked against the screen as she touched it.
This morning at school I passed by a soda machine that had a piece of paper on it that said "Do not use this machine to make change," and underneath that someone had written, "No, use OBAMA!"
Yesterday I was thinking about how when I went to this one door in Gary when I was campaigning with my neighbor before the Indiana primary, I got this one middle-aged black guy at the door who was an Obama supporter, and the entire time I talked to him this sullen high schooler with gangster pants and a sports jersey and his hair tied up in a bandana who I assumed was his son stood there behind his dad sullenly, and at the end of the conversation I asked if he was a voter too, and he said no, but his face lit up when I recognized him being there -- at the end of the day, the kid was just a high school kid trying to be cool, and actually looking for attention, and was happy to be recognized by this almost-30 white guy who came to his family's door in an official capacity for the Obama campaign. It gives you a different perspective on some of the gang-banger looking young black males you sometimes see on the street.
This morning at school I passed by a soda machine that had a piece of paper on it that said "Do not use this machine to make change," and underneath that someone had written, "No, use OBAMA!"
Yesterday I was thinking about how when I went to this one door in Gary when I was campaigning with my neighbor before the Indiana primary, I got this one middle-aged black guy at the door who was an Obama supporter, and the entire time I talked to him this sullen high schooler with gangster pants and a sports jersey and his hair tied up in a bandana who I assumed was his son stood there behind his dad sullenly, and at the end of the conversation I asked if he was a voter too, and he said no, but his face lit up when I recognized him being there -- at the end of the day, the kid was just a high school kid trying to be cool, and actually looking for attention, and was happy to be recognized by this almost-30 white guy who came to his family's door in an official capacity for the Obama campaign. It gives you a different perspective on some of the gang-banger looking young black males you sometimes see on the street.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Obama memories / Obama opinions.
So, I forgot this story from when I was down in Indiana before their primary campaigning for Obama --
At the one field office, several local high school kids who were black came in to make signs that would be used for visibility on election day, and somehow they all started talking about the Reverend Wright thing, and this one girl was like, "My family used to go to his church, but we stopped since gas got so high, and now we stopped since he crazy."
Also, yesterday my dad and I were at this cute little cinderblock hamburger place near the train station where the waitress-cook uses a drywall spatula for the burgers, when my dad said he's been for Obama for months. He says he likes how level-headed he is and how he's not taken any political bait put out by McCain and Clinton, and how you can tell he's surrounded himself by good advisors.
My dad also was like, "And I'm glad didn't give her husband a bullet three or four months ago, because if she had, she might be the nominee right now," and when I gave him a confused look, he just shook his head and was like, "I wouldn't put it past them, I don't trust either of them worth a darn."
He then went on to say how Hillary's a bitch, and he's thought so ever since she went way beyond her role as presidential spouse to try to ramrod this healthcare plan through congress, and how he thought it was weird that as soon as they could, they left Arkansas to live in one of the richest zipcodes in the country (=Westchester County in NY), though she then went on to claim she represented the working class, and he added how he felt manipulated in the democratic primary in Michigan to show up and only have her name on the ballot, and to have her go and try and claim all the delegates from Michigan since she "won" it.
He then went on even more, and said that both he and my mom hated how Hillary used her being a woman to be emotional and plead special treatment during the campaign, and how that came off as really unprofessional -- he called it "that old woman-'Woe is Me' bit", just like my mom calls it -- and he also said that he's glad she's not the nominee, since that meant they would have to really look at her and Bill's finances and how his presidential library got funded, and who knows what that would turn up.
My dad also said he'd wear an Obama button if he had one, and that he hasn't worn a presidential candidate button since Kennedy.
At the one field office, several local high school kids who were black came in to make signs that would be used for visibility on election day, and somehow they all started talking about the Reverend Wright thing, and this one girl was like, "My family used to go to his church, but we stopped since gas got so high, and now we stopped since he crazy."
Also, yesterday my dad and I were at this cute little cinderblock hamburger place near the train station where the waitress-cook uses a drywall spatula for the burgers, when my dad said he's been for Obama for months. He says he likes how level-headed he is and how he's not taken any political bait put out by McCain and Clinton, and how you can tell he's surrounded himself by good advisors.
My dad also was like, "And I'm glad didn't give her husband a bullet three or four months ago, because if she had, she might be the nominee right now," and when I gave him a confused look, he just shook his head and was like, "I wouldn't put it past them, I don't trust either of them worth a darn."
He then went on to say how Hillary's a bitch, and he's thought so ever since she went way beyond her role as presidential spouse to try to ramrod this healthcare plan through congress, and how he thought it was weird that as soon as they could, they left Arkansas to live in one of the richest zipcodes in the country (=Westchester County in NY), though she then went on to claim she represented the working class, and he added how he felt manipulated in the democratic primary in Michigan to show up and only have her name on the ballot, and to have her go and try and claim all the delegates from Michigan since she "won" it.
He then went on even more, and said that both he and my mom hated how Hillary used her being a woman to be emotional and plead special treatment during the campaign, and how that came off as really unprofessional -- he called it "that old woman-'Woe is Me' bit", just like my mom calls it -- and he also said that he's glad she's not the nominee, since that meant they would have to really look at her and Bill's finances and how his presidential library got funded, and who knows what that would turn up.
My dad also said he'd wear an Obama button if he had one, and that he hasn't worn a presidential candidate button since Kennedy.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Silverfish / Ticket / Button / Campaign.
I walked down the backstaircase at school where I had smashed a silverfish with the bare palm of my hand last week. Its carcass was still on the wall.
I'm a little pissed about how the Obama campaign did tickets on (as I understand it) a first-come, first-served online basis. This rewards people who are on the internet and fuck around all day, not people like me who actually get shit done and am not on Facebook every frickin' moment of every frickin' day and still find time to volunteer, unlike those fools. It probably also benefits white people more, because of the digital divide.
On another note, I really hate people in non-swing states who wear their Obama buttons all the time. Why? It's more about them than the campaign, I feel. I only wear mine when I'm in a swing state. I feel I have weird privacy issues like that, somehow.
In terms of campaigning, my mom finally got around to doing it today in my hometown back in Michigan, and she wrote this e-mail to me this evening under the subjectline "mission accomplished":
Just stopping by the library to let you know that I worked all day on the Obama campaign. I left 59 hangee things on doors and spoke to 23 people. The best was a lady in her 30's who wanted to vote strictly for the medical marijuana proposal...forget Obama. I'm sure she thought it was for the legalization of marijuana.......you go girl!
...
I stopped by the [community college center where my father teaches sometimes] to see Dad before his class. There he was in the parking lot reading a Parker book and almost dozing off............told him I was going to tell you that.
Tomorrow I will stopping by the headquarters after I get out of work at 1pm.
Tomorrow's the BIG day.......................
Love, MomXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I wonder how her volunteering will go tomorrow. I will be in Indiana.
I'm a little pissed about how the Obama campaign did tickets on (as I understand it) a first-come, first-served online basis. This rewards people who are on the internet and fuck around all day, not people like me who actually get shit done and am not on Facebook every frickin' moment of every frickin' day and still find time to volunteer, unlike those fools. It probably also benefits white people more, because of the digital divide.
On another note, I really hate people in non-swing states who wear their Obama buttons all the time. Why? It's more about them than the campaign, I feel. I only wear mine when I'm in a swing state. I feel I have weird privacy issues like that, somehow.
In terms of campaigning, my mom finally got around to doing it today in my hometown back in Michigan, and she wrote this e-mail to me this evening under the subjectline "mission accomplished":
Just stopping by the library to let you know that I worked all day on the Obama campaign. I left 59 hangee things on doors and spoke to 23 people. The best was a lady in her 30's who wanted to vote strictly for the medical marijuana proposal...forget Obama. I'm sure she thought it was for the legalization of marijuana.......you go girl!
...
I stopped by the [community college center where my father teaches sometimes] to see Dad before his class. There he was in the parking lot reading a Parker book and almost dozing off............told him I was going to tell you that.
Tomorrow I will stopping by the headquarters after I get out of work at 1pm.
Tomorrow's the BIG day.......................
Love, MomXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I wonder how her volunteering will go tomorrow. I will be in Indiana.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
My inauguration day breakfast.
So, since on weekday mornings I always walk by restuarants and there are always all these students in there and I wonder how they have the time to eat out and blow away a morning midweek, I asked my neighbor who I had volunteered for Obama with in Indiana if she wanted to go out for breakfast at the local cafeteria on inauguration day, and she did, so we arranged to meet at 7:30pm and walk over and get breakfast so we could be on campus by 9am by the time the ceremony was supposed to start, central time.
At like 7:28am, though, while I was taking a shit, she called me frantically to see if we could call it off or postpone, since she had been up since early working on a legal brief and needed it in today and it wasn't finished yet, but since I still had some Greek I wanted to get done -- I had gotten up at 6:30am and had some pre-breakfast breakfast and coffee over Greek -- we agreed that she'd call in like a half hour, and she did, and since she had finished up enough of the brief for the moment, she popped down and headed out to the cafeteria for breakfast, only like 45min. behind schedule.
When we got the cafeteria, there turned out to be two tv stations there, and there was a $5 breakfast special (ham omlette, or a veggie omlette, or a strip steak and eggs, or pancake and meat) and a free Obama mug for the first 500 people who showed up, so we got in line to wait -- the line was to the door, and the place was full of (mostly black) people in their Obama wear, much of it with sequins, and the cooks were frying and flipping multiple sets of five strip steaks at a time on the grill -- and all of a sudden from four people up there was this short white woman in black with a bright scarf and glasses and with shoulder-length gray hair...
It was her law school human rights prof, the one who had arranged the Black Panter panel I had gone to a few weeks earlier, and she was like, "Hey, where are you guys sitting, I'm waiting for my friend Bernardine to call, but we can all sit together!"
So, we got through line -- her prof kept talking rapid Spanish to the Mexican cashier lady, as she talked in rapid Spanish to the Mexican busboy who took our trays after we sat down and took our dishes off them to make more room; I cracked to the couple (black) people in line next to us that I hoped they kept the $5 strip steak breakfast special going for the next 8 years -- and we sat down with this white lady recently moved from Dallas who said we could sit with her, since there were no tables open.
"Yes," the law school prof was like, after getting off her cell phone again, "It's my friends Bernardine and her husband Bill, they were the terrorists with the Weather Underground, say hello to your neighbors!", and then she asked the lady from Dallas what she thought of the neighborhood.
Anyhow, like two seconds this older white guy with an earring walks up, and so does this older white woman in turquoise with dangly gold earrings, and the law school prof introduced them by their first names real quick, and they asked me in particular if they could leave their Starbucks cups on the table and I could watch them while they went to get food (the empty space on the table was right next to my dishes).
"Yeah," the law school prof was like, to them, "You can keep them, just as long as you hide it."
So, they went up, and meanwhile this guy who kind of looked like Obama arrived in a suit and was walking around taking pictures with everyone, and he was going by our table and two tv camera crews were following him.
"My lord!", this one older black lady at a nearby table was like, right after he shook her hand. "I guess I didn't need to go to Washington after all!"
So, anyhow, at that point BA and BD get back to the table with their breakfasts and he sat down next to me and she on the other side of him, and the law school prof started gushing about my friend and her studies, and kind of mentioned me, and then BA brought up how nice it was at the inaugural concert the previous night to hear Pete Seeger sing some verses of "This Land is Your Land" that aren't sung too often.
"Like what?", I was like.
"There's this one about a sign," he was like, "And how on one side it says 'No Trespassing - Private Property', and on the other side it's blank, and how the blank side was made for you and me. It's a great verse, and no one ever sings it! And there was Obama, singing and bopping along and knowing all the words, it was great."
At that point I asked about Aretha and Bettye Lavette and when they were singing, but that really didn't work into the conversation, I was very self-conscious during the whole thing anyhow, and then they started talking with the law school prof about how they had high hopes for the inaugural poetess, since she was their friend and some news agency this morning said it would be the most-watched live poem ever.
"I hope it's a good poem," I was like, and then the conversation died again, so I excused myself to the restroom since I needed to take a piss and call my mom at work to let her know who I was dining with.
(She wasn't right there, so I hung up after they put me on hold.)
When I got back, the Obamas were on the rented flatscreen put up in the cafeteria, they were just going into the White House with the Bushes, and for some reason Michelle was up walking with then-president Bush and they touched hands, and one of the old black ladies at the next table was like, "Don't you be touching his hand girl, Barack, get yourself up there!", and her whole table laughed at that.
I sat down again, and since I was almost done with my coffee, I asked BA if I had to wait in line again or if there was a quicker way to get a refill.
"Here, have mine," he was like, and pushed his mug toward me, "It's black so you'll need cream, but I have my other coffee, I just wanted the mug."
I then told him that I actually drink my coffee black, but they had a coffee ready with cream in it when I was in line, so I took that anyways just to make things go quicker, but I do like my coffee black, and I poured his mug into mine.
"I'm happy about the mug too," I was like. "The other day I chipped my favorite mug, so it's nice to have a new one," and I explained to him how when I was in Alaska I stole this mug from my brother that had an Aleutiq in full native dress standing on an Alaskan bluff on one side and the tribe's corporate mission statement on the other, something like 'Maximize profit while preserving cultural pride", and he was like, "I hope you can still use it? Kitsch like that is great!", and then he told me about how when he was in China recently he got for a friend this poster from the Cultural Revolution, which had a bespectacled Chinese professor in a dunce cap in the corner over the characters "Repent, stinking intellectual!"
I then told him how I recently saw some celebrity news about how Gwyneth Paltrow or someone had bought this purse in China with characters on it and it turned out that months later some newsservice figured out that it said something like "Down with capitalism" on it, and her publicist put out a statement that she was no longer using the purse.
"Really?", he was like, "That's great."
At that point, I think, the law school prof said that she had asked the Mexican cashier about getting a second mug, and the lady just gave it to her for free, and wasn't that nice.
Like right at that moment, I started talking to the older black ladies at the table next to us, just as Bill was asking me what I was studying, and so I was caught between conversations and ended up talking to the ladies. When I told them about how Obama had wished me a Merry Christmas, they liked it, especially when I said the entire crowd was like a bunch of kindergartners all waving back and saying "Merry Christmas!" across the street to him, and just look now, you can't get within ten miles of him.
Right when BA and BD were leaving, though, he asked me again, and when I told him how Protestant fundamentalists read the Bible and how studying the Bible historically challenges that, he was like, "That's great, and you can tell you know what you're talking about since you can say it in one sentence so someone outside the area can understand, it takes a lot to do that, and a lot of my students haven't been able to do that yet."
With that, BA and BD said they were leaving, and the one law school prof got up to say goodbye, and so me and my neighbor finished up our breakfasts quick to go into school to watch tv in an auditorium where they were projecting the ceremonies onto a big screen, and we said goodbye to the white lady from Dallas who had let us sit at her table, though she was talking to another table of black ladies on the other side of her.
As soon as we got out of the restaurant, my neighbor was like, "I can't believe that just happened!", and when I was like, "I know, he's been on the news so much!", she was pleasantly like, "Actually, she's the more important one historically and was much more in charge, she was the one on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted List."
Then, I called my mom again at the library, and one of the other ladies answered, the kind of hippy one who has long white hair and wears big clunky wood jewelry.
"Guess who I just had breakfast with, Elaine!", I said when she answered, and when she was like "Who?" and I told her, she was like, "You are so lucky, you brat," and then she went to go get my mom.
At like 7:28am, though, while I was taking a shit, she called me frantically to see if we could call it off or postpone, since she had been up since early working on a legal brief and needed it in today and it wasn't finished yet, but since I still had some Greek I wanted to get done -- I had gotten up at 6:30am and had some pre-breakfast breakfast and coffee over Greek -- we agreed that she'd call in like a half hour, and she did, and since she had finished up enough of the brief for the moment, she popped down and headed out to the cafeteria for breakfast, only like 45min. behind schedule.
When we got the cafeteria, there turned out to be two tv stations there, and there was a $5 breakfast special (ham omlette, or a veggie omlette, or a strip steak and eggs, or pancake and meat) and a free Obama mug for the first 500 people who showed up, so we got in line to wait -- the line was to the door, and the place was full of (mostly black) people in their Obama wear, much of it with sequins, and the cooks were frying and flipping multiple sets of five strip steaks at a time on the grill -- and all of a sudden from four people up there was this short white woman in black with a bright scarf and glasses and with shoulder-length gray hair...
It was her law school human rights prof, the one who had arranged the Black Panter panel I had gone to a few weeks earlier, and she was like, "Hey, where are you guys sitting, I'm waiting for my friend Bernardine to call, but we can all sit together!"
So, we got through line -- her prof kept talking rapid Spanish to the Mexican cashier lady, as she talked in rapid Spanish to the Mexican busboy who took our trays after we sat down and took our dishes off them to make more room; I cracked to the couple (black) people in line next to us that I hoped they kept the $5 strip steak breakfast special going for the next 8 years -- and we sat down with this white lady recently moved from Dallas who said we could sit with her, since there were no tables open.
"Yes," the law school prof was like, after getting off her cell phone again, "It's my friends Bernardine and her husband Bill, they were the terrorists with the Weather Underground, say hello to your neighbors!", and then she asked the lady from Dallas what she thought of the neighborhood.
Anyhow, like two seconds this older white guy with an earring walks up, and so does this older white woman in turquoise with dangly gold earrings, and the law school prof introduced them by their first names real quick, and they asked me in particular if they could leave their Starbucks cups on the table and I could watch them while they went to get food (the empty space on the table was right next to my dishes).
"Yeah," the law school prof was like, to them, "You can keep them, just as long as you hide it."
So, they went up, and meanwhile this guy who kind of looked like Obama arrived in a suit and was walking around taking pictures with everyone, and he was going by our table and two tv camera crews were following him.
"My lord!", this one older black lady at a nearby table was like, right after he shook her hand. "I guess I didn't need to go to Washington after all!"
So, anyhow, at that point BA and BD get back to the table with their breakfasts and he sat down next to me and she on the other side of him, and the law school prof started gushing about my friend and her studies, and kind of mentioned me, and then BA brought up how nice it was at the inaugural concert the previous night to hear Pete Seeger sing some verses of "This Land is Your Land" that aren't sung too often.
"Like what?", I was like.
"There's this one about a sign," he was like, "And how on one side it says 'No Trespassing - Private Property', and on the other side it's blank, and how the blank side was made for you and me. It's a great verse, and no one ever sings it! And there was Obama, singing and bopping along and knowing all the words, it was great."
At that point I asked about Aretha and Bettye Lavette and when they were singing, but that really didn't work into the conversation, I was very self-conscious during the whole thing anyhow, and then they started talking with the law school prof about how they had high hopes for the inaugural poetess, since she was their friend and some news agency this morning said it would be the most-watched live poem ever.
"I hope it's a good poem," I was like, and then the conversation died again, so I excused myself to the restroom since I needed to take a piss and call my mom at work to let her know who I was dining with.
(She wasn't right there, so I hung up after they put me on hold.)
When I got back, the Obamas were on the rented flatscreen put up in the cafeteria, they were just going into the White House with the Bushes, and for some reason Michelle was up walking with then-president Bush and they touched hands, and one of the old black ladies at the next table was like, "Don't you be touching his hand girl, Barack, get yourself up there!", and her whole table laughed at that.
I sat down again, and since I was almost done with my coffee, I asked BA if I had to wait in line again or if there was a quicker way to get a refill.
"Here, have mine," he was like, and pushed his mug toward me, "It's black so you'll need cream, but I have my other coffee, I just wanted the mug."
I then told him that I actually drink my coffee black, but they had a coffee ready with cream in it when I was in line, so I took that anyways just to make things go quicker, but I do like my coffee black, and I poured his mug into mine.
"I'm happy about the mug too," I was like. "The other day I chipped my favorite mug, so it's nice to have a new one," and I explained to him how when I was in Alaska I stole this mug from my brother that had an Aleutiq in full native dress standing on an Alaskan bluff on one side and the tribe's corporate mission statement on the other, something like 'Maximize profit while preserving cultural pride", and he was like, "I hope you can still use it? Kitsch like that is great!", and then he told me about how when he was in China recently he got for a friend this poster from the Cultural Revolution, which had a bespectacled Chinese professor in a dunce cap in the corner over the characters "Repent, stinking intellectual!"
I then told him how I recently saw some celebrity news about how Gwyneth Paltrow or someone had bought this purse in China with characters on it and it turned out that months later some newsservice figured out that it said something like "Down with capitalism" on it, and her publicist put out a statement that she was no longer using the purse.
"Really?", he was like, "That's great."
At that point, I think, the law school prof said that she had asked the Mexican cashier about getting a second mug, and the lady just gave it to her for free, and wasn't that nice.
Like right at that moment, I started talking to the older black ladies at the table next to us, just as Bill was asking me what I was studying, and so I was caught between conversations and ended up talking to the ladies. When I told them about how Obama had wished me a Merry Christmas, they liked it, especially when I said the entire crowd was like a bunch of kindergartners all waving back and saying "Merry Christmas!" across the street to him, and just look now, you can't get within ten miles of him.
Right when BA and BD were leaving, though, he asked me again, and when I told him how Protestant fundamentalists read the Bible and how studying the Bible historically challenges that, he was like, "That's great, and you can tell you know what you're talking about since you can say it in one sentence so someone outside the area can understand, it takes a lot to do that, and a lot of my students haven't been able to do that yet."
With that, BA and BD said they were leaving, and the one law school prof got up to say goodbye, and so me and my neighbor finished up our breakfasts quick to go into school to watch tv in an auditorium where they were projecting the ceremonies onto a big screen, and we said goodbye to the white lady from Dallas who had let us sit at her table, though she was talking to another table of black ladies on the other side of her.
As soon as we got out of the restaurant, my neighbor was like, "I can't believe that just happened!", and when I was like, "I know, he's been on the news so much!", she was pleasantly like, "Actually, she's the more important one historically and was much more in charge, she was the one on the FBI's Top Ten Most Wanted List."
Then, I called my mom again at the library, and one of the other ladies answered, the kind of hippy one who has long white hair and wears big clunky wood jewelry.
"Guess who I just had breakfast with, Elaine!", I said when she answered, and when she was like "Who?" and I told her, she was like, "You are so lucky, you brat," and then she went to go get my mom.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Fellow volunteers.
At school I try to wear my Obama button, which I have found endears me to many of the staff.
I had to pop into the office of the one (early 50s) (very dignified) (English-born) assistant dean, and then after I took care of some paperwork stuff she started talking about how she volunteered for Obama in Indiana back in 2008.
"They would say," she said as she always does, very slowly and deliberately and in her English accent, "'They must be in serious trouble, if they are importing help like that.' I was forced to tell everyone that I was indeed a citizen."
She then said since Indiana isn't really competitive, she hasn't volunteered.
"There's always Iowa," I was like, "If you go on a trip."
"But that's a bit too far," she was like.
"No it's not," I was like. "Bring your Harley to work, and 5pm Friday just hit the open road and you'll be there in no time."
I had to pop into the office of the one (early 50s) (very dignified) (English-born) assistant dean, and then after I took care of some paperwork stuff she started talking about how she volunteered for Obama in Indiana back in 2008.
"They would say," she said as she always does, very slowly and deliberately and in her English accent, "'They must be in serious trouble, if they are importing help like that.' I was forced to tell everyone that I was indeed a citizen."
She then said since Indiana isn't really competitive, she hasn't volunteered.
"There's always Iowa," I was like, "If you go on a trip."
"But that's a bit too far," she was like.
"No it's not," I was like. "Bring your Harley to work, and 5pm Friday just hit the open road and you'll be there in no time."
Friday, April 18, 2008
Rounding up people to campaign for Obama.
So, I'm going to campaign for Obama tomorrow in Indiana tomorrow and yesterday when I asked the one Mormon student in my program if he wanted to go canvas with me, he was like, "You mean like go door to door?", and when I said yes, he was like, "So you mean like being a missionary? I've got a handle on that!"
Today, though, he said he couldn't, saddly, and he was sad too since he's a big Obama supporter.
Today, though, he said he couldn't, saddly, and he was sad too since he's a big Obama supporter.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Election Day in Wisconsin (1 of ?): My post-mortem.
For me, Wisconsin was a positive, because of the turnout that I saw in the (black) precincts in Racine.
From what a (black) teacher told me at the results-watching party, she knows her ward, and they had better turn out than for Obama in '08, and I heard the same from others too.
At the end of the day, people from on-high had told everyone free to go to Racine since the race was close there.
(In our optimism we thought it was because the rest of the state was a done deal, but in retrospect I know realize that it was because there was still hope for Racine - was that why Obama avoided stopping through Wisconsin the past week even though he was in Illinois and Minnesota, because he knew it was futile? After the results came in, an organizer told me that 5 days ago the writing was on the wall, but they got everyone out because you never know what will happen...)
In any case, I ended up getting sent out to a (black) neighborhood to go around door-to-door, and when I got through with the route, to start over once again, to wring every last voter out of the precinct.
Right away, I came across two (black) (I think high school age) girls who had been working that turf all day, and had correct information about same-day registration, and the voting rights of convicted felons (if you were out, you were good to vote, as long as you weren't on probation).
I also came across a lot of doorhangers from a local Latino-African American high school group, who had knocked the entire neighborhood earlier that day as part of civic engagement.
When I was in the neighborhood, too, which was this little neighborhood tucked away off some main roads, someone drove through with a van with "VOTE TODAY" on all the windows - just like someone was driving around all of Racine with a billboard truck (like the kind usually advertising titty bars), only "VOTE TODAY" or something like that was on it.
For the entire 2.5 hours I was there, I didn't meet a single person who hadn't voted, until the very end... Even when I was in Gary for Obama on Election Day, I would still meet the random person who was coming home from work and still hadn't voted, and the sheets were maybe at most 4/7 full of confirmed votes.
In Racine, however, the entire sheet was 2/3 to 4/5 full of confirmed votes, which is practically unheard of.
When I think of how unimpressed (black) Wisconsin residents I've met have been with the Democrats, compared to (black) folk in Illinois and Indiana, I really think it's something that they've rallied to this election so much. Somehow, I don't think they're going away, and are a solid, mobilized part of the Democratic constituency now.
So, overall, I think the get-out-the-vote effort was better than ever, and more Dems have been mobilized, and most of all of the 6 recall elections that day (gov, lieutenant gov, 4 state senators), Dems picked up 1 seat despite all the money spent against them, and were better off than they were at the beginning of the week.
I really do think Wisconsin folks understand this is a war, and the Dems up there are relentless. Esp. since they did end up picking up a seat, I have a feeling that volunteers won't get discouraged, though of course they were disheartened when Walker won the recall.
From what a (black) teacher told me at the results-watching party, she knows her ward, and they had better turn out than for Obama in '08, and I heard the same from others too.
At the end of the day, people from on-high had told everyone free to go to Racine since the race was close there.
(In our optimism we thought it was because the rest of the state was a done deal, but in retrospect I know realize that it was because there was still hope for Racine - was that why Obama avoided stopping through Wisconsin the past week even though he was in Illinois and Minnesota, because he knew it was futile? After the results came in, an organizer told me that 5 days ago the writing was on the wall, but they got everyone out because you never know what will happen...)
In any case, I ended up getting sent out to a (black) neighborhood to go around door-to-door, and when I got through with the route, to start over once again, to wring every last voter out of the precinct.
Right away, I came across two (black) (I think high school age) girls who had been working that turf all day, and had correct information about same-day registration, and the voting rights of convicted felons (if you were out, you were good to vote, as long as you weren't on probation).
I also came across a lot of doorhangers from a local Latino-African American high school group, who had knocked the entire neighborhood earlier that day as part of civic engagement.
When I was in the neighborhood, too, which was this little neighborhood tucked away off some main roads, someone drove through with a van with "VOTE TODAY" on all the windows - just like someone was driving around all of Racine with a billboard truck (like the kind usually advertising titty bars), only "VOTE TODAY" or something like that was on it.
For the entire 2.5 hours I was there, I didn't meet a single person who hadn't voted, until the very end... Even when I was in Gary for Obama on Election Day, I would still meet the random person who was coming home from work and still hadn't voted, and the sheets were maybe at most 4/7 full of confirmed votes.
In Racine, however, the entire sheet was 2/3 to 4/5 full of confirmed votes, which is practically unheard of.
When I think of how unimpressed (black) Wisconsin residents I've met have been with the Democrats, compared to (black) folk in Illinois and Indiana, I really think it's something that they've rallied to this election so much. Somehow, I don't think they're going away, and are a solid, mobilized part of the Democratic constituency now.
So, overall, I think the get-out-the-vote effort was better than ever, and more Dems have been mobilized, and most of all of the 6 recall elections that day (gov, lieutenant gov, 4 state senators), Dems picked up 1 seat despite all the money spent against them, and were better off than they were at the beginning of the week.
I really do think Wisconsin folks understand this is a war, and the Dems up there are relentless. Esp. since they did end up picking up a seat, I have a feeling that volunteers won't get discouraged, though of course they were disheartened when Walker won the recall.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Wisc. Volunteering (2 of 2): Moms.
For whatever reason, I had a lot of moms with young kids who were undecided voters, when I volunteered in Wisconsin this past weekend.
None would identify issues, but I gave my spiel about how the economy is mine, and even though it isn't where we want it, Obama has the leadership we need, and then I said I was from Michigan, and that it would have been catastrophic if the auto industry had gone under.
"Those loans have been paid back ahead of time or on schedule, and Mitt Romney wrote an editorial 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt'," I said.
I then said that my relatives lived near Detroit and it would have cost 1 out of 5 jobs, and where I'm originally from, it's the north part of the state with a tourist economy just like Wisconsin, and "there wouldn't have been any tourists left."
I then said Obama wasn't thinking about politics because that decision was unpopular at the time, he was thinking about what's best for the country and for the middle class.
A few of them got enthusiastic and nodded when I said stuff like that.
One 30-something lady (Mexican-American) was a bit of a devil's advocate and said she's looking at both sides, but we talked a bit, and her 30-something (white) husband came to get some Obama lit before going over to his friend's house.
"He's a rabid Republican," he's like, "I want to give him some of this and set him off."
"You sure about that?", I was like. "He's probably got guns. You'll be laughing, and the next thing you know, he's shooting up the ceiling."
"Concealed carry," the mom was like, smiling and joking.
"I'm not kidding you, people are nuts like that," I was like, and then I told them about a friend's dad from Terre Haute, Indiana, this short pudgy old doctor guy with white hair and moustache and glasses who's always laughing and talking, and who walks around with a handled paper shopping bag full of old old newspapers spilling out of it.
"My friend's fiancee saw that, and she thought, 'Oh, that's odd, but that's just [her fiance's name]'s dad, he thinks he'll read all those old newspapers' Then, she talked to her fiance, and he said his dad actually carries a rifle under there, no shit."
They loved the story, and the husband laughed, and I thanked them and got going, and as I walked down the steps the husband gave his wife a kiss goodbye as she held their baby.
None would identify issues, but I gave my spiel about how the economy is mine, and even though it isn't where we want it, Obama has the leadership we need, and then I said I was from Michigan, and that it would have been catastrophic if the auto industry had gone under.
"Those loans have been paid back ahead of time or on schedule, and Mitt Romney wrote an editorial 'Let Detroit Go Bankrupt'," I said.
I then said that my relatives lived near Detroit and it would have cost 1 out of 5 jobs, and where I'm originally from, it's the north part of the state with a tourist economy just like Wisconsin, and "there wouldn't have been any tourists left."
I then said Obama wasn't thinking about politics because that decision was unpopular at the time, he was thinking about what's best for the country and for the middle class.
A few of them got enthusiastic and nodded when I said stuff like that.
One 30-something lady (Mexican-American) was a bit of a devil's advocate and said she's looking at both sides, but we talked a bit, and her 30-something (white) husband came to get some Obama lit before going over to his friend's house.
"He's a rabid Republican," he's like, "I want to give him some of this and set him off."
"You sure about that?", I was like. "He's probably got guns. You'll be laughing, and the next thing you know, he's shooting up the ceiling."
"Concealed carry," the mom was like, smiling and joking.
"I'm not kidding you, people are nuts like that," I was like, and then I told them about a friend's dad from Terre Haute, Indiana, this short pudgy old doctor guy with white hair and moustache and glasses who's always laughing and talking, and who walks around with a handled paper shopping bag full of old old newspapers spilling out of it.
"My friend's fiancee saw that, and she thought, 'Oh, that's odd, but that's just [her fiance's name]'s dad, he thinks he'll read all those old newspapers' Then, she talked to her fiance, and he said his dad actually carries a rifle under there, no shit."
They loved the story, and the husband laughed, and I thanked them and got going, and as I walked down the steps the husband gave his wife a kiss goodbye as she held their baby.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Celebrity.
So, outside the deli across the street from my house there's this one older homeless black dude with drugged-out eyes and a big pot belly who always is asking people for money, and since I have to pass by him everyday on the way to school, he always says hi to me, and sometimes he calls me 'big guy', like when he sometimes slurs out, "How you doing today, big guy?"
Anyhow, when I was coming home yesterday, he was like, "How you doing today, big guy?" like he says a lot, only all of a sudden he said, "Hey, you know you're in the paper?", and when I tried to tell him I wasn't, he walked over to a nearby trash barrel, pulled out a paper that was lying near the top, and flipped it to some page and showed a picture of me coming out of an Obama regional office with another canvasser from the first time I went to go canvas for Obama in Indiana, which is already over two months ago.
(I forgot there was a student photographer along on the trip - for some reason the story with the pictures he took only came out in a quarterly student magazine published this week.)
After he showed me that, I was like, "Well, shit," and he immediately was like, "A small coffee would be nice, you don't know how hungry I am," and so I took him in the deli and bought him not only a coffee, but also whatever sandwich he wanted, and he got a cheeseburger, and added in fries too, which I found out when I went to go pay for everything.
Some of the black people in the deli knew him, too, and he kept showing them my picture and being like, "This man here is a celebrity, he works for the Obama campaign!", and they all smiled and nodded appreciatively at me.
Anyhow, when I was coming home yesterday, he was like, "How you doing today, big guy?" like he says a lot, only all of a sudden he said, "Hey, you know you're in the paper?", and when I tried to tell him I wasn't, he walked over to a nearby trash barrel, pulled out a paper that was lying near the top, and flipped it to some page and showed a picture of me coming out of an Obama regional office with another canvasser from the first time I went to go canvas for Obama in Indiana, which is already over two months ago.
(I forgot there was a student photographer along on the trip - for some reason the story with the pictures he took only came out in a quarterly student magazine published this week.)
After he showed me that, I was like, "Well, shit," and he immediately was like, "A small coffee would be nice, you don't know how hungry I am," and so I took him in the deli and bought him not only a coffee, but also whatever sandwich he wanted, and he got a cheeseburger, and added in fries too, which I found out when I went to go pay for everything.
Some of the black people in the deli knew him, too, and he kept showing them my picture and being like, "This man here is a celebrity, he works for the Obama campaign!", and they all smiled and nodded appreciatively at me.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
2 more election night memories.
1) My neighbor who I'd been volunteering with in Indiana - at home eating dinner after a long day of volunteering in Indiana, and all of a sudden there's all these cars honking on the street outside her window. Pennsylvania had been called for Obama, so she gulps down her meal and rushes to the bar to watch the rest of the results since she didn't want to miss anything else.
2) Joan Baez - hanging out with her band in a jungle-themed hotel room in Alexandria, Virginia, and they're all in bathrobes with zebra prints leopard skin etc. The elction is called and they go down to the street and are like "yea!", but no one's there, the street is empty, they just hear a "yea!" from like a mile down the road somewhere, so they catch a cab to the White House and there ends up being like 4000 people there, happily.
2) Joan Baez - hanging out with her band in a jungle-themed hotel room in Alexandria, Virginia, and they're all in bathrobes with zebra prints leopard skin etc. The elction is called and they go down to the street and are like "yea!", but no one's there, the street is empty, they just hear a "yea!" from like a mile down the road somewhere, so they catch a cab to the White House and there ends up being like 4000 people there, happily.
Friday, November 14, 2008
The power of a picture.
When I was down in Indiana volunteering on Election Day and going door-to-door hanging door hangers saying 'VOTE OBAMA TODAY', what really struck me was the picture on the door hanger:
If Hillary had been the nominee and there was a picture of her and some white guy VP together, I would have had a framework to process the image, that of the domineering wife. With Obama and Biden, however, it's a black man in charge with a white man playing sidekick, and there's really nothing else like it in our culture.
If Hillary had been the nominee and there was a picture of her and some white guy VP together, I would have had a framework to process the image, that of the domineering wife. With Obama and Biden, however, it's a black man in charge with a white man playing sidekick, and there's really nothing else like it in our culture.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
My three favorite election moments.
1) At the black neighborhood bar (watched results there) when Michelle Obama came onstage in that red and black dress of hers and she and Barack looked into each other's eyes really intensely and had that really intimate quick kiss while he had his hands resting on her ass --- the black people started cheering and whistling, and this one drunk black dude yelled out and was like, "Yeah, he's going to fuck like a president tonight!"
2) In between canvassing shifts in Indiana, me and my canvassing partner stopped for a quick break at a local diner that deep-fried everything, and I asked the old counter lady about the "taco dog" on the menu. "That's a hotdog in a soft taco shell with cheese and onions and lettuce and beef," she was like. "It's something different." When I got it, they plunked a bottle of hotsauce on the table, and the cheese turned out to be nacho cheese.
3) At the very last shift of the night, my canvassing partner took a lady to the polls, and since her car was small, I ended up staying at the (black) voter's house with her (black) teenage daughter Kwaneesha. The mom sat me down on a plastic-covered hair in their living room to wait and handed me the remote to their huge flatscreen and was like, "Here!" Then, she made me get up again so her daughter could take a picture with me and my partner and her, of her on the way to the polls, and we all held up Obama doorhangers. It took my partner like 30-40 minutes to take her to the polls, since there was a small registration problem that they had to iron out, and plus the lady kept having her take pictures of every step of her going to vote, about thirty or so pictures in all, my canvassing partner said.
2) In between canvassing shifts in Indiana, me and my canvassing partner stopped for a quick break at a local diner that deep-fried everything, and I asked the old counter lady about the "taco dog" on the menu. "That's a hotdog in a soft taco shell with cheese and onions and lettuce and beef," she was like. "It's something different." When I got it, they plunked a bottle of hotsauce on the table, and the cheese turned out to be nacho cheese.
3) At the very last shift of the night, my canvassing partner took a lady to the polls, and since her car was small, I ended up staying at the (black) voter's house with her (black) teenage daughter Kwaneesha. The mom sat me down on a plastic-covered hair in their living room to wait and handed me the remote to their huge flatscreen and was like, "Here!" Then, she made me get up again so her daughter could take a picture with me and my partner and her, of her on the way to the polls, and we all held up Obama doorhangers. It took my partner like 30-40 minutes to take her to the polls, since there was a small registration problem that they had to iron out, and plus the lady kept having her take pictures of every step of her going to vote, about thirty or so pictures in all, my canvassing partner said.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Activism (1 of 2): Now.
What really gets me about Occupy is that there is a ton of incredible leftwing activism going on right now.
The Obama campaign had *amazing* community-organizing that turned Indiana blue, and the same thing will be happening in Arizona, I hear.
In the Midwest, as well, there's been a ton of great union organizing in Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
A friend in psychology was saying that there's scholarly literature that divides groups into goal-focused and process-focused, over a spectrum, where the 1st focus on results, the 2nd on consensus-building, honoring everyone's voice, etc.
I think the trouble with Occupy is that it's the 2nd, but it also thinks it's the 1st.
The Obama campaign had *amazing* community-organizing that turned Indiana blue, and the same thing will be happening in Arizona, I hear.
In the Midwest, as well, there's been a ton of great union organizing in Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin.
A friend in psychology was saying that there's scholarly literature that divides groups into goal-focused and process-focused, over a spectrum, where the 1st focus on results, the 2nd on consensus-building, honoring everyone's voice, etc.
I think the trouble with Occupy is that it's the 2nd, but it also thinks it's the 1st.
Friday, June 26, 2009
A Coffee Can for You (73 of 77): Cafe Altura.
I got this can when I was down in Indiana volunteering with my neighbor for Obama:
Like many liberals, the can is prone to wordiness:
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Just when you thought it was over, there's more:
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I associate this can with liberals since I got it at a store when I was volunteering for Obama, and because it was a natural health foods store. I think I also got an organic soda when I was there, and this raspberry gummy treat bar thing made out of wheat or gluten and with all-natural sweeteners.
Like many liberals, the can is prone to wordiness:
.jpg)
Just when you thought it was over, there's more:
.jpg)
I associate this can with liberals since I got it at a store when I was volunteering for Obama, and because it was a natural health foods store. I think I also got an organic soda when I was there, and this raspberry gummy treat bar thing made out of wheat or gluten and with all-natural sweeteners.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Like six things.
1) I ran into an undergrad I know last night. He said he's seen "Batman: The Dark Knight" like twice, and both times he's noticed different things. The first time he saw it he was on something, and he noticed that whenever the Joker was in a scene, the incidental music had a buzzsaw playing underneath it softly, to the point where the listener would be discomforted even though they wouldn't realize that it was there.
2) To show you how much Starbucks has changed our culture - this morning when I passed by a slightly older, on-the-fat-side black lady in a sweatshirt and jogging pants begging on a corner across the street from a Starbucks - she was on something; she looked spaced out and was rubbing her back against the street lamp post - she every once in a while would say to no one in particular, "Anybody got any money for a cappucino?"
3) I got my haircut today. Tennille and I were talking and she said that if Obama's kids had gotten pregnant like Bristol Palin, something would have been made of it in the media. She also said that the Palin family weirds her out, and that she can't believe Sarah Palin is carting that baby out everywhere so late at night.
4) As I found out like two weekends ago, my one neighbor who I go down to Indiana to volunteer with for Obama is in love with raw cut-up beets, which was news to me even though I already knew she was a vegan. So, when I was at the grocery store this past Saturday, I got an extra beet for her and cut it up and put it in a little sandwich baggie and left it by her door with a little index card note that said, "Good luck with the marathon on Sunday - I hope you 'beet' your best time!", since she had to skip volunteering since her and her dad were running the marathon and since her parents were in town because of that she couldn't find the time to slip away and go volunteer.
Anyhow, when I got back to my apartment last night, there was a plate full of vegan chocolate chip cookies sitting on my doormat with a thank-you note from my neighbor. I'm not a fan of chocolate-chip cookies, but they had oatmeal in them and some cinnamon, so they were almost like oatmeal raisin cookies (which I like) but with chocolate chips and no raisins, so they were tasty. I ate a lot, threw some in my lunch, and then took the rest in to Tennille and the Japanese owner and everyone at the salon, since I don't want them to go stale on me (I don't go through that many cookies).
5) This morning I mailed my ballot again, and again I'm amazed at how together black people are when it comes to voting... The one black lady who works at the post office -- there's two of them, this one was the fatter one and her name isn't Linda, that's the other one, the other one also tends to have purple nails a lot, I can't remember the name of the one I talked to today -- basically laid out the entire system for me of how every township rents out PO boxes that are opened up once right after the polls closed by a representative from the Republicans, one from the Democrats, and one independent, and they count votes together, and so I shouldn't do registered mail, since there's no person to sign for my vote when it comes in. "And," she was like, "They're not going to count it, they're not going to count it anyways," and then she gave me her opinion on the first-time-ever citywide early voting that's happening now, even though a line was forming behind me.
I said, too, that I just was worried about my ballot getting delivered and shouldn't I go ahead and do delivery confirmation, and she was like, "No, and we can't guarantee delivery, you'd have to do Priority Mail for that, but listen to me, I'm trying to tell you that it will get there and save you some money so you don't need to do anything special to this letter."
6) I was reading Catherine Albanese's "Nature Religion in America" today about Davey Crockett, who said this about himself once after saying he was a 'screamer' and a 'horse':
I can walk like an ox, swim like an eel, yell like an Indian, fight like a devil, and spount like an earthquake, make love like a mad bull, and swallow a n*gg*r whole without choking if you butter his head and pin his ears back.
He said this on the floor of the U.S. Congress in a speech, actually... He was a U.S. Congressperson from Tennessee at that time.
2) To show you how much Starbucks has changed our culture - this morning when I passed by a slightly older, on-the-fat-side black lady in a sweatshirt and jogging pants begging on a corner across the street from a Starbucks - she was on something; she looked spaced out and was rubbing her back against the street lamp post - she every once in a while would say to no one in particular, "Anybody got any money for a cappucino?"
3) I got my haircut today. Tennille and I were talking and she said that if Obama's kids had gotten pregnant like Bristol Palin, something would have been made of it in the media. She also said that the Palin family weirds her out, and that she can't believe Sarah Palin is carting that baby out everywhere so late at night.
4) As I found out like two weekends ago, my one neighbor who I go down to Indiana to volunteer with for Obama is in love with raw cut-up beets, which was news to me even though I already knew she was a vegan. So, when I was at the grocery store this past Saturday, I got an extra beet for her and cut it up and put it in a little sandwich baggie and left it by her door with a little index card note that said, "Good luck with the marathon on Sunday - I hope you 'beet' your best time!", since she had to skip volunteering since her and her dad were running the marathon and since her parents were in town because of that she couldn't find the time to slip away and go volunteer.
Anyhow, when I got back to my apartment last night, there was a plate full of vegan chocolate chip cookies sitting on my doormat with a thank-you note from my neighbor. I'm not a fan of chocolate-chip cookies, but they had oatmeal in them and some cinnamon, so they were almost like oatmeal raisin cookies (which I like) but with chocolate chips and no raisins, so they were tasty. I ate a lot, threw some in my lunch, and then took the rest in to Tennille and the Japanese owner and everyone at the salon, since I don't want them to go stale on me (I don't go through that many cookies).
5) This morning I mailed my ballot again, and again I'm amazed at how together black people are when it comes to voting... The one black lady who works at the post office -- there's two of them, this one was the fatter one and her name isn't Linda, that's the other one, the other one also tends to have purple nails a lot, I can't remember the name of the one I talked to today -- basically laid out the entire system for me of how every township rents out PO boxes that are opened up once right after the polls closed by a representative from the Republicans, one from the Democrats, and one independent, and they count votes together, and so I shouldn't do registered mail, since there's no person to sign for my vote when it comes in. "And," she was like, "They're not going to count it, they're not going to count it anyways," and then she gave me her opinion on the first-time-ever citywide early voting that's happening now, even though a line was forming behind me.
I said, too, that I just was worried about my ballot getting delivered and shouldn't I go ahead and do delivery confirmation, and she was like, "No, and we can't guarantee delivery, you'd have to do Priority Mail for that, but listen to me, I'm trying to tell you that it will get there and save you some money so you don't need to do anything special to this letter."
6) I was reading Catherine Albanese's "Nature Religion in America" today about Davey Crockett, who said this about himself once after saying he was a 'screamer' and a 'horse':
I can walk like an ox, swim like an eel, yell like an Indian, fight like a devil, and spount like an earthquake, make love like a mad bull, and swallow a n*gg*r whole without choking if you butter his head and pin his ears back.
He said this on the floor of the U.S. Congress in a speech, actually... He was a U.S. Congressperson from Tennessee at that time.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Yet even more Obama.
My mom was telling her boss at the library about Kwaneesha's mother taking so many pictures on her way to vote and at the voting sited down in Indiana where I was volunteering on Election Day, and the librarian said it gave her chills, to think that it meant so much to people.
Last night I was talking to my one (black) older lady friend who works the library guard desk on Sunday nights, and she was saying that it seemed like just yesterday that her grandmother would call her in the room and be like "Come here, come here!" every time a black person was on television, and she added that it's always stuck with her, how much Ed Sullivan did for Gladys Knight.
"Did he have the Pips on too?", I was like.
"Yes," she said, and gave me a look and enunciated with restrained sassiness, "They are a package."
"Oh," I was like, pretending to be stupid.
She also was saying that she's always said that black people would never be equal till there was a black president, and now she doesn't now what she's going to do.
"Well," I was like, "How about quit your bitching, for one?", and she laughed and mock-acted and stared straight-ahead and deadpanned, "Yes sir, we are equal now, don't have nothing to complain about, yes sir."
Towards the end of talking after saying she was tired like she always said -- I asked why, like I always do, and it was since she was out till 5am the previous night at the casinos, like she is a lot -- she also got up a bit and pointed to her chair cushion; she had put a plastic bag over it, since she said the old guy who worked before her smelled too bad.
"Oh," I was like, "I thought it was out of consideration, in case you farted, or in case you farted and some shit came out, that way you wouldn't stain the seat."
She then waved her hand at me, and was like, "Please!", and I told her that that had actually happened to me once, this summer I was with some friends and I was standing outside an ATM booth waiting for a friend to get some money and I let out a really wet fart like I had been letting out all day, but that one felt a bit different, and as soon as I started walking, I felt a little little squish between my ass-cheeks, so I tried to keep them together and I had to go a the closest bathroom and wipe it out.
"Please!", she was like again, "That is too much information, what makes you think you can go telling me that?", though you could tell she was laughing, she has a toilet sense of humor too.
"Well," I was like, "since Obama's been elected, we're all family, that's why," and she laughed, and I went into the library to go work on my presentation for today.
When I left the library a few hours later, she was like, "Bye, cuz!"
Last night I was talking to my one (black) older lady friend who works the library guard desk on Sunday nights, and she was saying that it seemed like just yesterday that her grandmother would call her in the room and be like "Come here, come here!" every time a black person was on television, and she added that it's always stuck with her, how much Ed Sullivan did for Gladys Knight.
"Did he have the Pips on too?", I was like.
"Yes," she said, and gave me a look and enunciated with restrained sassiness, "They are a package."
"Oh," I was like, pretending to be stupid.
She also was saying that she's always said that black people would never be equal till there was a black president, and now she doesn't now what she's going to do.
"Well," I was like, "How about quit your bitching, for one?", and she laughed and mock-acted and stared straight-ahead and deadpanned, "Yes sir, we are equal now, don't have nothing to complain about, yes sir."
Towards the end of talking after saying she was tired like she always said -- I asked why, like I always do, and it was since she was out till 5am the previous night at the casinos, like she is a lot -- she also got up a bit and pointed to her chair cushion; she had put a plastic bag over it, since she said the old guy who worked before her smelled too bad.
"Oh," I was like, "I thought it was out of consideration, in case you farted, or in case you farted and some shit came out, that way you wouldn't stain the seat."
She then waved her hand at me, and was like, "Please!", and I told her that that had actually happened to me once, this summer I was with some friends and I was standing outside an ATM booth waiting for a friend to get some money and I let out a really wet fart like I had been letting out all day, but that one felt a bit different, and as soon as I started walking, I felt a little little squish between my ass-cheeks, so I tried to keep them together and I had to go a the closest bathroom and wipe it out.
"Please!", she was like again, "That is too much information, what makes you think you can go telling me that?", though you could tell she was laughing, she has a toilet sense of humor too.
"Well," I was like, "since Obama's been elected, we're all family, that's why," and she laughed, and I went into the library to go work on my presentation for today.
When I left the library a few hours later, she was like, "Bye, cuz!"
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