Student Union update.

I've signed up like 5 members, and got like 3 of those enthused to sign other people up (actually, 1 was one who had let her dues lapse).

As a member you can sign up other members and people will do it, but the student union has no system for that, though numbers are what we need to succeed.

So, I wrote them asking them for more cards, and asked if we had a system in place, and offered to cobble a basic 1-sheet "talking points" sheet together to give to people.

Update: My one (older) (black) friend who works at the library...

I went to go visit her at the other library last week, since I hadn't seen her in a while.

Somehow we got to talking about that book about the Great Migration, and she was going to tell her family about it.

She was also asking me about karaoke, and I was telling her about my one rendition from a while ago of Eric Carmen's "All By Myself".

"I think I know it," she was like, "Sing it to me," and when I got to the chorus, she picked it up and sang a bit and was like, "Yep, that's it!"

I also had invited her to accompany me to my scrotal examination since I could bring a family member or friend along for company, but she was cutting someone's hair that morning and couldn't.

"But stop by and tell me how it went," she was like.

And, as I left and said by and was walking away, she was like, "Just look at me," and I turned to look at her, and she was like, "I'm sitting here...

"ALL BY MY-SELF...!!!!"

- and she broke out into song into the huge empty vestibule of the science library.

Doctor's appt. yesterday.

Or, rather, an annual meeting of the local dermatological society.

They paid me $30 plus free lunch and breakfast to come sit next to a giant posterboard of a blown-up picture of my scrotal rash, and I was the "UNKNOWN" of like 12 patients they had tucked away in a row of examination rooms, and doctors drifted in and out to look at the board and quiz me about symptoms to see if they could guess what it was.

I was also in a hospital gown, and offered to show them the residual scar, and when they said no (some of them did), I'd be like, "Don't worry, I'm a ph.d. student, I don't mind, it's for education!"

What bothered me is that few seemed even curious. Shouldn't doctors be better than that? But this one beautiful (Iranian) doctor came back a few times to stare at the picture, and when she walked in the 2nd time, I was like, "Isn't this better than an Agatha Christie novel?", and she laughed and was like, "The mystery is driving me crazy!"

Addendum Addendum

I forgot, from my weekend campaigning in the suburbs -

I went to this one house to see if the sporadic voter, a mid-2os (black) male was home (we had demographic info on our canvassing sheets, and a woman who turned out to be his mother answered the door.

"No, [the guy's name] isn't here," she was like. "He's incarcerated."

Poor me.

2 weeks and I still haven't shaken that cold.

Most recently, it moved into my chest. Yesterday I had to take a one-hour nap in the afternoon, though I had been hoping to go around and drop off resumes... I think it was because the post-nasal drip had made me wake up coughing the night before.

The worst part is is that it's not that bad at all and it's like on the edge of going away, only it doesn't!

Addendum.

When I was canvassing in my new neighborhood and it was 2 hours till polls closed, I was walking some turf going door-to-door, and would ask people I passed if they had voted yet. As I was on the one stretch, it was one young (white) guy who blew me off, then another young (white) guy who blew me off, and then this fattish younger (black) mom with a baby carriage who looked really, really tired, but as soon as I asked her if she had voted, she was like, "This morning!", and said that proudly, like so many (black) people do.

(The older ones sometimes tell me they couldn't vote for a long time, and now that they can, nothing will keep them from it.)

Then, when I said that this election was making me nervious, she was like, "Me too, I am so scared, I hope everything will be all right!", and when I nodded, she added, "I hope it will," in just this really sad, serious tone, so I was like, "I got to go, but let me give you hug," and I did and patted her on the back, and she just laughed and hugged me and was like, "Thanks!", and we both turned to go.

The best part was that she was just about to jaywalk on this long stretch of street without crosswalks, so we did this all right on the side of the street, since I had started talking to her when she was standing in an empty parking space with the baby carriage waiting for a big enough gap in traffic to cross.

Memories of the Campaign (3 of 3): Recruting Volunteers.

When I was campaigning in the suburbs, like the 2nd host on my 1st canvassing list was a missed address, so I talked to these two sleepy-looking late teens/early 20s girls smoking on the porch of this rundown home, and they were both registered voters, but in other districts, and after we got to talking, they both said they were really concerned about the Republicans fucking people over, so I invited them to stop through campaign hq to make a few phone calls or do some officework or whatever, if they could spare an hour, and they said they knew where it was, and they did.



Anyhow, when I got back like 3 hours later, the one (redheaded!) one had shown up and got trained and went to canvas a bit, but then got a call that there was an important meeting she had to go to -- at her group home for drug rehabilitation.