How have I never heard of this book?

The other week on the subway going home, a woman across from me was reading this book:

I leaned across and was like, "Hey, what's that book you're reading?", and she told me all about it, and it turns out it's all in their: "Smile", how much Mike Love is an asshole, his encouters with the Manson Family, you name it.

The (white) (blonde) woman was very nice, and she said a friend of hers had given the book to her.

When she got up to leave 2 stops before mine, she said good night, and only then did I noticed that she was rather large, with a belly and a big old apple bottom crammed into her jeans.

More womenpriests.

Ludmila Javorova, one of the most interesting women you've never heard of:

In Czechoslovakia after the post-Prague Spring crackdown, her bishop seems to have ordained her so she could minister and help keep the Roman Catholic Church alive.

I wish her story and interviews with her were available in English (if they aren't already).

Radicalizing grad students.

I had seen a front page story in an August edition of a neighborhood newspaper about administrator salary levels at my university, and while only 5 people were named, I decided to write the journalists (who I've met a couple times) to see if he had a bigger list.

He did, from the university's publicly available tax forms, and on the list of like 20 highest paid officials was the provost who has continually said there's no money to give students, and who has let skyrocketing fees erode student wages.

It turns out the guy made just over $610,000 last year, of which $10,000 was bonus pay.

Out of curiosity, I dropped those #s to my one (white) colleague from Mississippi who's very passive with student union stuff and doesn't want to get involved or sign up, and write away you could see him getting pissed off...  For him, I could see that was some kind of turning point, making him more open to grad student unionization.

I'm meeting with a student union member sometime after January to get them those tax forms.  I'm not emailing them, I'm going to a computer and dropping the file from my zip drive to theirs.  Those #s deserve to be out there and inform public debate on campus, but I don't want my name attached to them getting out.

Dream of produce.

At my house, I keep a lot of produce sitting out on the kitchen table: potatoes, onions, garlic, bananas, oranges, and apples...

The other week, I had a dream that I reached down into the bag of apples and picked on out, and noticed that the side of the green apple was bruised and a bit graying amidst the brown, and I realized that there was somehow mold growing underneath the skin...

Great Xmas gift.

My present for my one friend from high school who runs an integrated homeless/domestic violence shelter, and who loves the book "Heaven's Harlots" (which I got her years ago as a present):

A huge envelope full of photocopies of MO letters from the Children of God that have to do with flirty fishing.

I was gathering those materials to teach them and printing them out for myself, and I thought, why not print them out for her, since she'll love them, and maybe one day she could be a guest lecturer for one of my classes, since she has a social science ph.d. and is interested in certain dynamics of the group.

She texted me as soon as she got them, "Just got your package.  Kick ass!!!!!! ..." (with six exclamation marks).

Last sex doc, ever.

So the sex doc series that I've been going to for over 4 years wound down a few weeks ago.  

Though it was still successful and there was always a good crowd and new people kept showing up, both the curator and the host decided it was time to end, and so it did, with a film about an Australian man with a disabled wife who decides to open a brothel.

During the discussion period, people talked a lot about sex work.

"Some people go into sex work with dollar signs in their eyes, but it's like anything else, you have to work for it, and the people who do okay in it really are savvy people," the one (white) woman who does sex work and sex worker outreach said.

Then some guy commented that he knew some people who decided to open up their house for swinger parties, and they made some money at first, but then attendance dropped off and then they just stopped.

"It's like anything, to do well in it it has to be your passion, people sense that," he was like.

Then this one couple, a (white) woman in her mid-30s with bright pink hair and black-rimmed glasses and a (white) guy in his mid-30s with a goatee and a seriously tweezed-out moustached and black-rimmed glasses - said that since they started doing sex work, they watch porn and dissect how much the people in it get paid per act.

"Like, 'Wow, a DPDA, that's $4000," the guy was like.

Later, everyone adjourned to a bar to socialize, and it was nice, since a lot of people who hadn't been to the series in a while (at least when I'd been there) came out for the last film.

One guy who did show up was the one (dark-haired) (white) guy who's a computer programmer and into BDSM, with his fiance.

He got into his favorite topic, how there's not many other male subs out there, and so him and some other people started talking about how that differs culturally, and how like in Tokyo it's nothing but male subs, and how in Belgium fem subs are seen as out-of-line for public play, but it's okay in your own home.

The one (white) female sexologist also was there, and she was talking with the (dark-haired) (white) (BDSM) guy's girlfriend about different stuff, and listening to her talk about how she loves Dan Savage etc. and wants to mainline him she likes him so much and she identifies with him since she understands what it's like not to like vagina too.

"[Her boyfriend's name] has a book of vulvas and I tried to open it up, errr, I open and I try to look, and I do, but I just can't, no, not for me, no book of vulvas, disgusting, no book of vulvas."

"Which one?", the sexologist was like.

Then, when the girlfriend replied, the sexologist was like, "Oh, that's the first one, it's a classic," and she said it had been recently reprinted.

Later, the one guy I know from there who's into BDSM who I've been friends with talked some more with the (white) (female) sexologist, and he was saying how he feels judged and out of place a lot at dungeons, since he's just not into public sex.

"Watching or participating?", she was like.

"Both," he said.  "I could tolerate it for a while, but really, at the end of the day, I'm monogamous," and at that point he started talking about how there was an assumption in BDSM that you were polyamorous or just out to fuck around, and that made things hard.

"There really is no perfect sex community," the sexologist was like.  "Though if there was, I'd like, 'Here!'".

Later, I started talking with the sex worker / sex worker outreach volunteer woman some about my bar project, and I brought up the one Mexican trannie bar that I've heard about and have passed by but haven't been to (yet!).

"I've heard of that!", she was like.  "I got a call about it, there were a lot of prostitution busts and someone was writing an article about it."

"No shit!", I was like, and then I started telling her about the one late night club I sometimes pop into where all this crazy shit happens, and there's a lot of stuff, but as I began to explain myself, I realized I wasn't using the right words...

"Yeah," I was like, "All the time I see, uh, uh, Mexican...  trannies there, and there always - " and at that I paused -

"You know, hookin'."

She kind of gave me a blank face, patiently, and then said something about "transwomen" this, but I didn't hear her say any correct terminology for prostitution, unfortunately.

Holiday Breakfast convo.

A few weeks ago my dept. had its annual holiday breakfast, where there's a buffet for like 3 hours and everyone from professors to students to administrative assistants sit around and chit-chat.

I sat down with some (female) (African-American) administrative assistants I know, and after talking for a long while (can't remember why) about swimming and where we learned to swim and where we swam as kids (which led them to talking about how some of the city's water parks got shut down b/c of gangs), somehow we started talking about local businesses, and I said it was sad how the university when it renovated this one building displaced a very good Caribbean cafe that had good business but could never find equivalent facilities to re-open and so closed down.

"Cafe what?", the one administrative assistant was like.

"Cafe [2nd half of the restaurant's name," the other administrative assistant was like.

"Where is that?", the one administrative assistant was like.

"Oh you know," she said, and described the location.  "I know you've been here, we all went there for lunch, and you ordered a hamburger, and I remember thinking, 'Oh no she didn't.'"

And at that, she leaned over and put her hand on the other administrative assistant's shoulder and laughed like they were long-time girlfriends.

Guy Talk at a Steakhouse Bar.

The other week after going to see "Breaking Dawn Part Two" with a colleague, she had to split because she was working early the next day, so I walked her to the bus stop and then grabbed a beer at a downtown steakhouse-in-a-hotel bar that I had never been to before.

It was getting around 10pm, so it was empty, except for a few tables here and there, a couple people by themselves at the bar, and this group of like 3 (white) guys in their late 30s at the end of the bar.

I took a seat in the middle of the bar towards the group of young guys, and as the restaurant cleared out, I could hear their conversations.

The one guy was saying how he was on a Southwest flight to a business conference in Orlando, and this "doofus-looking" guy who was sitting on the aisle had his iPhone out as they landed, and as they got up to wait so they could get their luggage from the overhead racks, he could see that the doofus-looking guy had some website up with pictures of naked torsoes of men, and he kept sending a message out to different men, "Just landed.  How are you?".

"It must be that GRINDR thing people are talking about," he was like.  "He got some message back, then, the guy looks around all of a sudden, he forgot he was on a plane, but I was like, 'Nope, just me who saw you, bud.'"

Then some other guy told a story about some chick who he picked up and she took him home, and he was around in the bed forever waiting to see if she'd let him fuck her, but she wouldn't, so he ended up just laying there next to her and jacking.

"I was so hard up, I shot all the way up to the headboard, I haven't done that in years," he was like.  "You could hear it land, it was thick and milky, we had been drinking all night."

At that, the other guys laughed.

"But the worst is, the way I had my cock angled, some got on her chest, and then she's all crying in the bathroom, 'Now you got me pregnant, now you got me pregnant!'", he continued.

"Dude, you didn't tell me that part," one of the other guys said.

"I forgot," he was like. 

Then, after a pause, he continued on, and was like, "I was hoping she'd forget, we were so drunk, but in the morning, she remembered."

Then, after a pause, he was like, "That's okay, though, a little awkwardness is good, it keeps people real."

At that, the other guys nodded, and the guy who had been speaking started to say what a high class girl she was, seriously.

Some other guy then said that his last girlfriend wouldn't fuck in a Pizza Hut bathroom, and wouldn't wear a short skirt so they could pretend to be in high school again and he could finger her in the movie theater.

"That's bullshit," one of the guys was like.

"Yeah," he was like, "She's just not in touch with herself."

Reduce - Reuse - Recycle.

I use old produce bags (apple bags, tangerine bags with the orange mesh) to carry my lunches in.

Fun at the Art Museum.

The other week I had to go to some offices in the basement of the art museum for preliminary paperwork, because I'll be teaching a class at the associated art school in the spring.

The basement offices were no frills, full of dingy gray walls and no decoration and white lettering-on-black nameplates outside offices, but when I left and passed the packing room, there was all these big cardboard boxes sitting around, and some people putting gigantic paintings into them.

On a sidenote, I heard it's typical for instructors at the art school to swear a lot.  One former undergrad I talked to said this Scottish sculptor woman she had her first class ever with was like "Feckin' this!" and "Feckin' that!" on her very first day of class.

"I was like this," she said, making a gesture showing how wide open her eyes were.  "I was only eighteen and it was my first day of college!  But, I got used to it pretty soon."

Newtown Shootings: My one British friend's take.

The other day I ran into my one (half-British) (half-Sudanese) (Muslim) friend at the gym.

"Did you hear about the school shootings?", he was like, and when I said yes, he said, "All those children were white, and so was the gunman, I really wonder if this is a white cultural thing.  They always say it's a male, he had mental problems, but they never mention that he's always white."

"Gun violence affects young black men, too," I was like.

"Yes," he was like, "But you don't see them going into places and shooting a ton of random people up."

I then said that he was using the term 'white' very loosely, as if there was a unified white culture across space and time.

(He's into anthropology, and likes it when people make points like that.)

"You know," he was like, "You're very right, I should watch what I say.  It's only Muslims who are always the baddies everywhere."

Bar Numbers are simply unreal.

On Tuesday I got up to 1094 bars (yes, 1094, that's not a typo).

These numbers are just getting to be unreal; if I didn't have a logbook of bar names, I wouldn't believe it myself.

Bar problems...

The past month, I've been very surprised when I walk around the city, to see that easily 10 bars have recently closed that I had already been to.

Add that to other bars I've noticed, and that makes 15-20 bars that have closed since I began my project.

I wonder how many others there are out there that I haven't even noticed - and, more importantly, how will I ever know, since the bars are so scattered around the city, it's not like I'll pass by every one again?

Another Bar Low.

I forgot -

On a long night of barhopping like 3-4 weekends ago, I stopped through this Polish bar out by the airport that looked like a chalet, and had a lot of union decals slapped to the inside of the front door.


As I was halfway done with my beer, the (younger) Polish guy next to me got up, leaving like a quarter of the beer left in his very large stein.

As I sat there drinking more and more, the waitress never cleared his glass, even though he had obviously left.

Just as I was about to grab it, the bartender, this younger, kind of stand-offish (Polish) woman sweeps up and picks up the stein and puts it in the crook of her arm as she goes to get some other glasses.

"Wait," I was like, "Can I finish that?"

She just stopped and stared at me, then was like, "Okay," and put the beer in front me.

It was some kind of lambic, and tasted like raspberries.

Ten minutes later, the young bartender woman was back, and was like, "Here, I start to pour new keg and it is no good," and she put a small, very foamy mug of beer in front of me.

I tasted the beer, and it was sour and awful, and I drank it.

Cop corruption story.

The Mexican guy who kept buying me beers a few weeks ago was telling me about how cops shook him and his friend down last year.

They had left some bars and picked up a 6-pack and were driving home, and the cop pulled them over.

"If this is your 1st time," the cop said to the guy's friend, who was driving, "I'll let you go, if you go straight home."

The guy promised it was, and the cop ran his license, and let him go.

When they got home, the guy checked his wallet, and all his money (like $180) was gone... He had been drunk and handed over his entire wallet to the cop when the cop asked for his license, and the cop had tooken the cash.

Overall, the guy got off cheap since a DUI would have been much more expensive, and the cop knew that if he got the money, he'd make something and the guy couldn't or wouldn't complain.

Then, I told the Mexican guy about my one lawyer friend from Missouri's neighbor who's a swinger and f*cks all the cops and firemen and who gets away with stuff b/c the cops won't file anything on her, like the time I called the police on her after she drunkenly destroyed a neighbor's glass door by pounding on it with her fist.

Bar developments (2 of 2): New Bar Lows.

That night that I hit up all the Korean bars, I discovered the city's only Mongolian karaoke bar (that I know of - yet!).

It was in a row of Korean restaurant-bars (Koreans love bars in restaurants, where you eat food with friends and maybe sometimes get a drink), and was in what I was told was a Korean karaoke lounge where all "the old Koreans" go and get drunk with their bartender friend who owns the place.

So, I walked next door, and on the door is the words "Mongol Karaoke", with Mongol in Cyrillic.

But, I step inside, and it's a typical karaoke lounge, with an older (female) bartender, and like a mixed crowd of 5 clients sitting at the bar, with one of them holding a microphone and singing while looking at the karaoke screen hanging over an empty stage.

The bartender takes my order then disappears, then some woman starts singing karaoke and I can't tell who, and then suddenly the bartender reappears and drops off a bowl of peanuts in front of me and I thank her, and only when she nods do I noticed that she has the microphone and is singing, and that she knows the song so well that she went back behind the bar away from the TV screens, dropped off the peanuts, and thanked me with a nod, all while singing (and she had a great voice!) and not missing a beat.

I was impressed.

Later, I asked her why the place was called Mongol Karaoke, and she said that was just the back karaoke rooms that they rent out.

After a while, I got the story -

Some Mongolians used to drift in every now and then and do karaoke, and they'd complain that there weren't enough Mongolian songs.

So, the owner got a lot of karaoke CDs of Mongolian songs and put the name "Mongol Karaoke" on the door to corner that section of the karaoke market; the bread-and-butter of the place is still Koreans, but the Koreans know it's a Korean place and keep coming, and now the Mongolians are devoted to it, even though they usually come around on weekends.

Right after that, the bartender offered me the book and said I should sing, so I flipped through pages of Koreans songs (in that Korean alphabet) till I got to some English stuff, and I looked for a singer that would have international appeal.  I remembered that the Carpenters were big in Korea (or maybe Japan?) from a bio of them that I read, so I sang chose "Superstar".

The version was a knock-off, and I was flat, and halfway through the 1st verse, 4 of the 5 clients called it a night and left.

Bar developments (1 of 2): New heights of barhopping.

Starting about 2 months ago, bartenders and people at bars started buying me shots and beers a ton, to the point where I'd have to turn them down, if I was planning on a long night of barhopping.

A few weeks ago, though, hispanics started doing this for me a crazy lot.

At one bar, I ordered in Spanish, and before I left 2 (Mexican) guys in their mid-40s who heard that started asking if I was Polish, but the one kept mixing in Spanish words, his English was so bad.

"Puedo hablar un pocito de Espanol," I was like.  "Toda la familia de mi madre es Polaca, pero yo soy un Americano."

They liked that, and were like "Very good!" and started speaking a bit of Spanish to me, but it was too much and I had to tell them that.

They then asked about my father, and we had to figure out the Spanish word for "Hungarian".

I also asked for their help in how I ask for a cheap beer, and one said, "Que es la cerveza borrata?" (if I remember correctly), and the other said to try, "Qual es la cerveza que cuesta menos?".

Then, a bartender tried to get me another Miller Lite.  I had to beg off, saying I was meeting my Mexican friend for goat tacos and I didn't want to get too drunk, and then I said something (in Spanish) about how I liked goat, to their great delight.

At the next bar, a Mexican customer was talking with a Colombian bartender, and he got me 2 beers, I was having such a good time I stayed and accepted.

The bartender also gave me her Amway card.

Like a week later, I hit up a ton of Korean bars, and this one 23-year old quiet, self-identified Christian Korean student who had only been in the U.S. less than half a year did shots of Patron with me, at his expense at the bar of the karaoke lounge where he worked.

I'm not being any friendlier than I've ever been, but something has changed, I'm just really connecting with people a ton now.

Apartment fire!

The other week I went to go set out some beans in a pot to soak at night, and when I moved them from the counter to put them on my couch (I have very little counter space), I noticed the pot slid funny, so after I set the pot on the couch, I wiped up the bit of water that was there.

The next morning, I put my coffee on, and put the pot of beans on the stove to boil.

In like 2 minutes, I smell this smell like plastic burning, and I look over and there's some flames and a bit of crackling coming from underneath the pot, so I run over and grab my mitts and pick it up, and there's a lid of tupperware sitting on the burner, burning, so I picked it up by the non-burning part and threw it into some water that was sitting in the sink.

In retrospect, I realize that the lid must have been on the counter, then water made it stick to the bottom of the pot, all the way through when I placed the pot on the couch, left it there overnight, and picked it up again and put it on the stove.

Thankfully the fire wasn't big, and thankfully I'll still be able to re-use the tupperware lid (only the top of the lid was burnt, and mildly so, and it still fits on my lunch container).

Bus trip...

The other week this one young (black) guy gets on the bus right after some kind of maybe homeless-looking (black) woman, and then doesn't have enough money on his buscard, and starts saying that he owed a quarter on the last bus but no-one had change, so he had to give a whole dollar and that's the 75-cents that would have made the difference.

At that, the (black) woman who got on with him starts backing him up and saying she saw it, but the (younger) (black) (female) bus driver was having none of that, and finally some (middle-aged) (older) (Asian) guy gives the guy a quarter.

Like 4-5 minutes later, that same younger (black) guy is leaning forward in his seat, singing some kind of R&B tune in a slightly louder than normal voice, and he did that all the way through my stop where I got off for the subway.

"Have a peaceful night," I said to the (black) (female) bus driver as I got off.

"Thanks," she was like, and then she realized what I said and laughed and was like, "Thanks!".

Roman Catholic Womenpriests.

You know what I really like?  Roman Catholic Womenpriests.

The name "womenpriests" is a little odd (it's almost like a corporate logo where two words are both capitalized and written without a space in between, and it's reminiscent of 2nd-wave feminist wordplay), but I love 3 things about them:

1) They got apostolic succession by having (unnamed) bishops consecrate them.

2) They take a historic view, and say that what Rome condemns one century it loves down the road.

3) They call the consecrations "contra legem" ('against the law' in Latin), which not only points out that some specific man-made canon prevents women from becoming priest, but even uses Latin to boot in order to do that, which must really irk conservative Catholics, who tend to love to throw Latin around.

Overall, between the apostolic succession, the appeal to history, and the Latin, they took all these conservative hallmarks and did something really really liberal.

Go them!

Vegetable stock experiment: squeezed-out lime.

The other week when I was making up some vegetable stock for incorporation in a lentil soup, on a whim I threw in the squeezed-out lime I had just squeezed into the lentil soup (I added lime juice in, since I was already adding vinegar in b/c of a recipe I had seen, and they seemed like they complement one another).

My tasty vegetable stock became very very bitter, but not unpleasantly so, and when I added it to the big pot of lentil soup, it actually made the whole thing deliciously savory.

It was only then that I remembered that back when I did Latin translation for a spice company, that I read something about how dried slices of lime are used in north african cooking, and that the taste can be overpowering, but very effective in the right recipes.

I'm def. doing the same thing in the future when I make lentil soup.  I just can't stop eating this batch of soup!

Dream of my apartment.

I dreamed that I was in my apartment, and I had bought a plastic meattray full of crabs to boil in some kind of soup I was making.

As I was looking at the pot, I realized the broken crab that was stuffed into the pot was struggling a bit, and was still alive, and as I stepped back, I realized that there was a very small tortoise that had been on the meat tray as well and hidden under the crab, and it had fallen out and was now crawling around on the floor.

I looked at it and for some reason didn't touch it, and it crawled in behind the fridge.

I then looked at the tray and pulled out a small manta ray the size of my hand, and I held it up in the light by its fins and was filled with utter revulsion.

I had to leave, and meant to take a broken plate and put a bit of water and some carrots on it and put it near the fridge so the tortoise wouldn't die, it had already been through enough, but I had to leave so quickly that I forgot, and when I was gone I was wracked with horror and regret at the suffering of the tortoise.

...the previous day I had considered buying some stew beef and make beef barley soup and had looked at the meat trays at a store, though I didn't end up buying them... I guess that was the material for some of my dream...

Barman on cheap drinks.

The other week before going to a friend's birthday party, I popped into a (new) piano bar in a ritzy neighborhood near downtown to get a drink and pre-game.

I went in and asked the aging (gay?) (white) (male) bartender for their cheapest beer, my standard order.

"Nothing here is cheap," he said affably.

"Ok, then give me your cheapest you got," I was like, and he brought me a Miller Lite bottle (for $5.50).

"You know," I was like, "You can tell a lot about a man by the drink he orders."

"Yes!", he was like, smiling and laughing, "You are practical."

Great text from a friend.

In texting me back about not being able to meet me for a movie, my one Czech literature professor friend accidentally had the name of her ex-boyfriend replace a common word.

Right away, she texted me back:

[his name]?  I mean [the common word].  This phone is psychoanalysing me.

. . .

..memory of post-election racism...

The other day I was remembering when I texted my one (black) (female) friend who used to work as a reporter when I heard that one Polish bartender yell "n*gg*r lover" when Sandra Fluke appeared on the screen of FoxNews, and she texted back:

Oh my gosh.  People will say anything when they think no one's listening.

The woman did realize people were listening, though!

Proud of Myself.

The other day I was comparing the Vulgate to a critical edition of the Greek New Testament, and later I spent time memorizing some Hebrew vocab.

I'm very happy with how far I've come with those languages (though there's so much farther to go with all of them).

My one Dutch friend who I met through my one Dutch friend complimented me last spring on my finishing Hebrew.

"Congratulations, you're now a vir trilinguis!", he said.

He studies the early modern period, so is all about the model of Jerome and knowing Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (=the three languages of the phrase vir trilinguis).

The phrase can come off as pretentious (though it didn't at the time), but it def. helped me recognize my accomplishment.

Halloween night with the Poles!

I had 2 friends from home in town the weekend before Halloween, so after the concert they were going to, I met them and then we headed over to the Polish part of town since I thought they'd enjoy it.

(I actually got back by commuter rail from Wisconsin, threw on dressier bar clothes, had a cup of tea, and was out the door in 15 minutes to go meet them...  It was a long night, since I had been up since 6:10am in order to volunteer for Obama.)

The one Polish heavy metal bar had this Halloween party, and they had a bunch of food in the corner: a couple crock pots and some open face sandwiches.

I was talking with this one long-haired mid-30s Polish guy who was next to us at the bar ("Grzegorz" [sp.?]), who had been here on a "work 6mos - travel and see the U.S. 1mo." visa 11 years ago, and now works construction.

In other words, he's an illegal in the construction business. 

Years ago a Mexican-American guy who grew up in the city told me that Poles weren't considered white by Mexicans, since though they were white, they were immigrants facing a lot of the same situations, like being here illegally and getting dicked around by your boss because of it, and weren't really like other white people, who had all the power with stuff.

Anyhow, though that guy told me the food was free, I double-checked with the bartender, who was dressed like a pirate.

"Yes," she was like, "But do you know what it is?".

She then told me that they cooked up tripe and gizzards and served sliced head cheese, since, "That is intestines and brains, and tonight is Halloween!".

Then, she was like, "Would you eat if you didn't know?  Really, try, it is very tasty."

When we were leaving, I said bye to her, and she asekd me if I had tried anything,  I hadn't, but thanked her anyway, and then asked her her name, which she repeated once and twice, but I couldn't hear b/c the bar was so noisy.

"What is it?", I asked for a third time.

At that, she gave me a fierce pirate face, and was like, "ARRRRRRRGGGGH," and then smiled and said goodbye.

She had complimented me on my Polish, btw, when I ordered beers a 2nd time.  Poles loves that, how I learned enough Polish to get through a simple bar encounter.

Flashback to a dream.

The other week I went to a talk by an architect, and he mentioned modern architecture and glass walls and views etc. and I flashed back to a dream I had months ago:

There was a modern home that was much like a glass block with some metal walls, and I took a tour with a friend or relative or 2.

After going through the front massive foyer, which was set up to be much wider than it was long and was the entire length of the house and very empty and bright, I was in the back other half, which was divided off by the side wall covering a staircase going upstairs.

There, to the immediate right, there was a corner with opaque walls and a study with wooden bookshelves built into the wall, and I knew the architect had worked when he lived there.

To the left, there was a huge glass wall with a door going out to the yard, and I went out through it, and there was this gorgeous large tree in the yard, and I craned my head back and looked up into its branches.

I remember the grass was very green, and there was a soft but noticeable and comforting light shining down from within the tree...

Comment of my mother: My research.

The other day I was talking with my mom on the phone, and I said I had had a productive day (when I was young she would always wish me and my brother, "Have a productive day!"), and that I had read a few hundred pages in this like 830-page book that had been channeled by an American seer in the mid-19th c.

"All these books that are my primary sources are so long," I was like. 

"Can't you skim?", she was like.

"You can, but you have to read a lot too, and that takes longer than you think.  And this book is just bizarre shit."

"No wonder you drink so much," she was like.

3 Texts.

I love to text!  One night when I was out barhopping, I got 3 great texts from friends:

1) From my one (white) colleague from Mississippi:

'did i just walk into a garden because all i see is hoes' =[krunk karaoke hostess]'s facebook status

2) From my one friend with the cat, who's an extra in an opera and had been talking with people backstage:

So the 15 year olds just had a story about a guy buying tampons for his mom and being worried people would think he's gay.  I just had to explain what a butt plug is and how it differs from a tampon.

3) From my one Czech literature professor friend, who I had texted when I was looking at a moose head and said I wondered if the moose ever thought it would end up on a wall in the bar I was at:

No.  He thought about eating and having his sperm spread.

. . .

Further Inquiries: Throwing up on Public Transportation.

I was texting my one (black) friend who lived a lot of years in Obama's neighborhood, to see if she had ever thrown up on public transportation, and she replied:

Once I got off the bus to throw up.  The Jeffrey 6 at museum campus on the way to work after a night of margaritas.  Why do you ask.

. . .

Addendum.

I texted about the fight to the guy who used to date my one friend from Buffalo, who used to bowl at that alley, and he was like:

Doesn't surprise me.  I've been there late at night b4 and dudes smoke pot right there while bowling.

. . .

Barhopping: Bowling alley conversation.

Tuesday night I was in a bowling alley bar (yes, those count too, since anyone can walk in and get a drink).

It was like 9pm at night, and as I walked along the lanes I had to go past this fastfood counter and a small bar without seats next to a billiards tables, and I was worrying there wouldn't be any bar you could sit at, and then finally towards the far end of the place there was another bar, this time with seats in a little lounge area, and actually right by there an emergency exit door near where from outside I had seen people come outside on the sidewalk to smoke.

There was this short, perkily plump (blonde) (white) woman in her early 50s, and she asked me how I was doing, and after I said tired b/c of my long day, she was like "Well, you can sit there a while if you want, or I can also get you a beer," and she said that in a very helpful (not passive-aggressive!) voice, and I ordered their cheapest beer, a $3.50 draft PBR that she brought to me in a small plastic cup.

"Man, it's busy in here on a Tuesday night," I was like.

"Oh yeah," she was like, "It's the leagues, there's no open bowling now till ten, during summer there's a lot, but not now."

She then added that it was nothing like back in the day, when they used to be open 24 hours.

"Really?", I was like.  "When did that stop?"

"Over ten years ago," she was like.  "You should have seen it, we had night leagues and everything.  People get off the factory at twelve, and of course they don't want to go to sleep right away, so they come in here for a league that begins at one.  Then Friday and Saturday, this place was hopping till after four or five a.m.  The bar would close at the normal time of course, but the place would still be going on, and it'd be hopping till four or five a.m."

"No shit," I was like.  "So those leagues are gone?"

"Yeah," she was like, "The factories closed up, they're over where those condos in back of here are now.  We had the post office league, but they went down to [competing bowling alley to the south] for some reason.  Can't remember why.  Leagues are great, though.  They drink all night and you got a captive audience!"

And at that she smiled.

"It's too bad that had to end," I was like - but right away she corrected me, and said that it wasn't, since it got to be too much of a headache.


"They made us stop because of that one huge gang fight," she was like.

"No way," I was like.

"Oh yeah, it was awful.  You could tell something was brewing for weeks.  It was cold and so guys would come in, and we could tell something was off, so we kept them at separate ends of the lanes, some down there and some down there.  But, every week more and more guys started coming in, and then one night you could just tell something was going to happen, and it did, and it was only ten-thirty, before the security guys got here at one.  It happened right in front here", she said, gesturing to in front of the bar.

"Damn," I was like.

"It was awful. Other people were in here, a lot of families, and you had all these women and kids running down the alleys and back in the pins, the ones who couldn't make it out the backdoor."

"Holy fuck," I was like.

"There's that police station down at [she named an intersection not that far away] and they called them, but it took them a while.  Though, when they showed up, there was fifteen squad cars, and that's not including the paddy wagons."

"Holy fuck," I was like.

"They took a few guys away, and the ambulances did too."

"Holy fuck," I was like.

"Back then we had glass, and they were throwing glasses and ashtrays at each other, the place was a mess.  One guy got it in the head with a bowling ball."

"Holy fuck," I was like, and then I realized what I had been saying, and apologized for my language.

"Don't worry, hon," she was like, "That's nothing," and she smiled at me again.

I kind of paused, and then I was like, "So were the guys black or Latino?"

"Vietnamese," she was like.  "A few restaurants opened up down the block, and people started coming around, especially in the winter when it's cold and there's nothing to do, because you're always open."

Then, she was like, "It was the Thursday before Thanksgiving, I remember that because I work Thursdays, but I had surgery and had the day off, and the next morning I'm there at the hospital waking up, and people are calling me and saying, 'How are you doing?', then right away 'Did you hear what happened last night down at the alley?', and I'm all like, 'No, what, what?!?'".

Then, she was like, "It's probably for the better, you had a lot of drunks that late at night, people coming in and throwing two to three balls down the alley at the time, and you had to babysit them.  A lot of nice people, but a lot of babysitting too."

Then, she told me how they have an agreement with the alderman where they can still stay open as late as they want on the evenings of major holidays, and that the whole 24-hour thing started since it was cheaper insurance-wise just to keep the alley open 24 hours instead of having to have it locked up tight and no-one there for so many hours each night.

"Come back and visit again sometime!", she said to me as I left.

Exciting Latin lesson today!

I spent way too much time planning today's Latin lesson for my one student who's a dept. assistant on campus:

The library special collections exhibition space has a really really cool exhibit going on that includes examples of some the oldest Vetus Latina and Vulgate manuscripts.

So, I read the exhibition guide to figure out what verses were on there, assigned them to my student, and then after we read through a critical edition we're going to go look at the actual manuscripts.

I took 30min. the other day to go compare, and there's a lot of interesting stuff: misspellings, variants that are noted in the apparatus of our critical edition, use of enlarged letters to indicate Eusebian (sp.?) canon divisions (though they accidentally skipped one!), and even a homoiotelueton (where a verse gets omitted because they skipped ahead to the same word that was down the same page some).

There's also a really nice book with the beginning of the Psalms, and a 9th c. abbot's Bible from a famous monastery that's open to Jerome's preface to Proverbs and then the start of Proverbs.

If this lesson plan goes well, we might go do Psalms and Proverbs next week...

For sightreading, too, I'm going to make him look at "nihil obstat"-type ending to a 16th c. printed edition also on display.

Thanksgiving memory.

I had Thanksgiving at my one Czech literature professor friend's house, with her mom and another graduate student she knows.

I got a ($20) (pumpkin) pie from the bakery, and also brought over a couple of bottles of wine.  I'm not sure what the other grad student brought (maybe more wine?), but my professor friend made a turkey with stuffing and these really good brussel sprouts with cheese on top, that were gone by the end of the meal.   There weren't many sides, but it was a good meal and you didn't even notice, everything was so good.

My pie had slid in the box, though, and part of the filling had flipped out and I had to flip it back into the pie crust with a knife.  I apologized when I handed it to my professor friend.

"Look, it's deconstructed," she said, as she opened the piebox lid and looked in.

Called it!

I forgot -

At a big beginning-of-the-year student reception like a month ago, I ran into one colleague with his wife and his new baby.

"And this is Monica," he said, proudly holding out his new baby.

"No way!", I was like, "Did you name her after Augustine's mother?".

It turns out he did.

You know what I don't understand?

People's fascination with Scientology.

For one, if you're interested in fucked up abusive cults, there's far more fucked up abusive cults to learn about.

For another, L. Ron Hubbard was a very purposeful manipulator, it seems, and so was his successor, apparently, so in some ways they're just less interesting groups to study, than where the groups have leaders who are self-deceiving and destructive but not deliberately making shit up, at least not a lot.

I'd much rather read about the Peoples Temple or the Children of God anyday, they teach you so much more about religion and the world than Scientology.

Perhaps the interest in Scientology is a reflex of popular atheism, where people are set up to understand religion as fraudulent, and so they look at the group that seems to best exemplify that?

In any case, I recently had our library on campus order 6+ Scientologist memoirs, and have begun to read them.

Dreams of a salary.

Someone the other day was saying you can't live on $30,000 a year.

I was thinking to myself, I've lived on $13,000-$16,000 for so long, I simply can't imagine having that much money, and that much stability.

Hating on the Dutch.

When I hit bar #1000, I sent out a text to a lot of people, including this one (Filipino-American) (ex-military) guy my one (light-skinned black) friend from Arkansas used to date, and who the three of us shared together my 1st epic night of bar-hopping, where we hit up 10 bars in a night, including 1 tiki bar just outside of city limits that technically doesn't count but was fun anyway.

(They had had their first date there, and both raved about it and said I'd love it - I did - and so we set up an itinerary where that was our halfway point, where we barhopped out to city limits, had a break there with ice cream rum drinks - I think I had a "fogcutter" - and then barhopped back home.)

Anyhow, it turns out that he finished up at community college on the GI bill and is now at a major state school, but it's a ton of work and he's a bit alienated from being older than other students, but he's still DJing, and over winter break is doing a Berlin - Amsterdam - the Hague junket.

I texted him that the Dutch are horrendously racist.

He texted back:

Oh well - i guess if its not wet behind the ears know it all privileged racist fraternity children i suppose must settle for those racist dutch bastards.  Haha.

I remember when we were at a Polish metal bar, he and my friend felt uncomfortable around all the Polish people, though they did take up an offer to play 2 Polish guys on foosball.

"This is very them-versus-us," my one (light-skinned black) friend joked.

"You're Team Light Brown!", I was like.

They laughed.

Silverfish.

I've found some silverfish in my apt. recently:

1) I was eating dinner late at night and one started slowly moving down the wall in my dining room...

I went to whack it, but it fell off and scurried behind a pile of books.

2) The other day I was drawing a bath, went to go do something, and came back, and when I came back, the bath was half-full, and there was a silverfish sitting on top of the water.

I got some scrap paper from my wastebasket and scooped it out, and it seemed to have been dead from the hot water.

I crushed it between the paper just to make sure, and it made a wet squish rather than a crisp one like they usually do when you crush them.  I think the water boiled it.

Broth - Bag.

This woman who I met at a bar turned out to be a restaurant manager, and we had a very long talk about making vegetable stock and having a garden in the city.

Because I love to cook cheap and with minimum waste, I found her method of keeping a tupperware full of veggie scraps (onion, carrot, and celery ends, garlic and onions skins, etc.) in order to boil them up into veggie stock once a week very inspiring.

So, for like the past month, I collect my vegetable scraps and then boil them down once a week, and for the past several weeks after I cooled the broth, I poured it into a ziploc freezer bag that I kept in my fridge.

The other week when I made lentil soup, though, I had forgotten to thaw out the bag, and so I poured bits of warm water into it before dumping it out into the pot, but I tried to force out the big frozen chunk from the bag too soon, and I tore a small hole in the bag and can't reuse it.

That really bothered me, the waste of that bag.  I had saved that bag from something else in order to reuse it, but because I wasn't careful, I could only reuse it once.

Priests and nuns in Kenya.

The other week I met an anthropology Ph.D. student at a reception function at school, and we started talking and he told me about a friend of his who works in western Kenya who has gotten to know some priests real well, and he's been to these wild parties where the priests are sitting around with nuns on their lap and people are passing around and swigging communion wine.

I told him that I've heard stories about African priests in the U.S., where a lot take the system for a ride and don't take anything seriously.

"My impression is that African priests are a regular shitshow," he was like.

Election Reactions (2 of 2): Barhopping.

Since I'm done volunteering, it's time to catch up with bars.

Like that week on Thurs., I took a bike trip to the far west side of the city, to an Italian-American neighborhood then a Polish neighborhood.

At the bar of an Italian restaurant, there were all these white guys in expensive-looking cheap suits talking about the election.

"I think what happened is that black people finally woke up," one guy was saying, "and saw that Romney would take away their food stamps."

He also was saying that he's socially liberal and doesn't "give a fuck about abortion", and is glad that evangelicals are a dying breed in the GOP.

Later, at this lowscale tiki bar where there were two working-class (white) men and an older (Polish) bartender working amidst thatch walls, aquariums, and fans made out to look like palm leaves, the bartender had on FoxNews.

When some segment said how married women voted for Romney more than Obama, she was like, "Of course, they are responsible, they do not want something for nothing."

Later, when there was footage of Sandra Fluke on, she yelled out "slut!" and "n*gg*r lover!" at the screen.

The other guys were union, though, and pushed back a little...  When FoxNews was saying how Romney was a nice guy and Obama cheated by tarring him, the one was like, "You mean cheated like keeping all your money in the Cayman Islands?  Hey, that's not fair!".

Election Reactions (1 of 2): Friend from home.

My one friend from home who runs an integrated domestic violence - homelessness shelter for her county was saying by text that after the election, she feels like she won the lottery.

I was saying that it's great how all the batshit crazy GOP guys were defeated, and she texted back:

Fuck yeah it is!!!  How terrible when you have to stay up to see if "all the rape guys" were defeated

I then was saying that our polity would be so much better if we had a "one ovary - one vote" policy, which she agreed with, though I then said that there might be problems with women voting the wrong way, because for women nowadays, "no" means "yes".

Addendum Addendum.

I forgot -

On the night before the election, I had a tought time sleeping.  I dreamt that I was on this porch talking to a (white) voter, and the more and more I talked, the more and more sure they were that they were voting for Romney.

One of the volunteers from California that on Monday night she had a nightmare that she was watching news coverage and Romney won.

Addendum.

I really love and admire (African-American) voting culture.

One (African-American) administrative assistant at a research center on campus told me she helped get her daughter's registration straightened out (she had been at college in '08, and is now living at home), and then registered her son to vote (since he turned 18 this year).

She told me that at the (African-American) early voting site in her suburb, the (elderly) (presumably black) precinct woman was like, "We have a first time voter here!", and then every started saying "First time voter!" and applauding her son.

I wish all American subcultures had that level of respect for and dedication to voting.

Election Day (9 of 9): Volunteering recognition.

The one chief-of-staffer for one of the Wisconsin Democratic senators who was instrumental in mounting opposition to Scott Walker's policies has always been very appreciative of my volunteering in the recall races, and tells everyone how I brought up my bike on commuter rail and then would bike to the office and then bike out again to do routes and then bike back to the commuter rail at the end of the day.

"It's not that much!", I was like, "I bike all summer long, it's free to take your bike up, and it's so much more convenient that way."

She and everyone else doesn't see it that way, though, and at the watch party she introduced me to her boss and told the story (again) to him and told him that I was that guy.

He thanked me, we said a few things, and then as we both went to go and shook hands, he gave me a hug.

Election Day (8 of 9): High pressure sell.

One (hispanic) guy with a beard who answered the door said he had just gotten back from work (it was around 1:30pm) and he'd eat and then "maybe" go vote.

I got him registration info, and was like, "So can we count on you to vote?", I was like, and he was like, "Probably," and I was like, "That's not good enough, can we count on you to vote?, I want to hear a yes," and at that he took abash, and so I started saying that the Republicans were taking away the votes of brown people in Florida and Ohio by turning them away illegally and people were waiting in lines for hours and hours, and so I asked him again if we could count on him to vote.

He said yes hesitantly, but he seemed more committed, and I asked him if he could commit to going after lunch like he had floated earlier, and he said he would, around 3pm, and he'd drive over.

They tell you in voter turnout training to push for a yes and then ask people to lock in when they'll vote and how they'll get there, but I've never really had to do that before with a noncommittal voter, and until then I had never thought that advice made much sense.

Election Day (7 of 9): Cheesegear, Romney voter.

1) One shop downtown not only had a cheese wedge hat, but a cheese fez!

2) One (pleasant) (older) (white) man who answered the door said that everyone had voted, and then something about, "But change that around, for Romney, not Obama," when I asked if it was for Obama.

"Don't steal my pumpkins!", he was like, since he had several ornamental gourds outside the door.

I laughed and said I wouldn't, and it was nice that people could disagree on candidates and still be nicer to each other.

Election Day (6 of 9): Getting new voters registered.

I triumphantly gave registration info to a handful of new voters, including these 4:

1) One (white) guy with a messy beard was walking across a street, so I greeted him like I do everyone I meet, and mentioned I was with the Obama campaign, and he said he'd vote for Obama because he's so glad to support an African-American president, but he couldn't vote.

"Why, have you commited a felony?", I was like, and he had, but I checked and he had been off probation for 7 years, and hadn't realized he could vote again.

Then we talked about forms of identification, and I called in to get his precinct, and amid all this I gradually realize that the guy is homeless.

I ended up giving him the number for a ride to the polls, shook his hand and told him I was glad he got the information to start voting again, and said bye.

He promised to vote, and was glad that Tammy Baldwin was committed to preserving Social Security and Medicare and other programs that folks need.

2) One (younger) (cleanly-dressed) (black) girl was walking by on the street and seemed a bit out of it, and I talked to her, and she said wasn't going to vote, but just me asking made her want to.

So, I started talking with her, and it also turned out she was homeless, and I got her the registration info so she could get registered to vote out of the day shelter that she lives at, and I also called in to figure out where her voting location was.

"Thank you so much," she was like.

"No, thank you for doing this," I was like, and gave her a hug.

3) At one house where there was an Obama sign in an upper window, there was a younger (hispanic-looking) guy going into the house, and so I checked up with him on registration, and it turns out he was 18 or 19 and he needed to double-check registration information.

After that, I noticed there was a newspaper image of Puerto Rican flag with something on it taped up in the window on the side door, so I asked him if his family was Puerto Rican, and he said yes.

"That's so cool, I was like.  Where's your family from there?  I have friends from Ponce and Mayaguez, and my friend from Ponce always talks to me about Puerto Rican culture and stuff."

"Arecibo," he was like.

"Isn't that in the mountains?", I was like.

"Not really," he said.

"Oh," I was like.  "But don't you have those little frogs there?"

"Coqui?", he was like, brightening, "Yeah!".

4) An older Mexican man answered the door at one place and seemed happy to see my Obama button, so I gave him the flier.

"?Puedes votar?", I was like.  "Desde ocho, aqui," and I pointed at the address.

He seemed confused.

"

Gotta clean.

The weekend after Thanksgiving I set aside to thoroughly clean my apt.

I had been getting frustrated at little things, and a lot of it was how much shit had mounted up in my apt.: paper I needed to throw out, dust everywhere, disorganized folders, etc.

Even though people said my apt. was clean when they were through there, it wasn't to me, so for sanity's sake I committed to cleaning it so I could leave vacation with a clean slate, refreshed and ready to go.

It took me 3.5 hours on Sat. and then 3 hours on Sun. to do everything I needed...

I was surprised at how long it took, but I hadn't cleaned since late August, since I had been so busy with school and then the Obama campaign.

I hadn't done laundry since then until like early Nov., either, and had finally run out of boxer shorts and re-wears (some of them were starting to smell funky), and broke down midweek and did laundry when I was working from home.

Somehow, I'm always surprised at how many papers that I read once and don't need anymore or never needed in the 1st place end up thrown around my apt., or tucked in the folders that I carry around with me.

Election Day (5 of 9): Two union bartenders.

The election watch party was in an autoworkers union hall that they had let out rent-free, and 2 older (white) women who were retired autoworkers and bartended on the side were there bartending for everyone.

(The local Democratic party had bought kegs of Miller lite, but you had to get liquor and mixed drinks yourself!)

I talked with the women a bit:

1) The one with longer (dyed) blonde hair said she couldn't stand Tommy Thompson.

"There is nothing worse than an arrogant man," she was like.  "And don't get me started on Paul Ryan."

Then, she got started on Paul Ryan, and said his staff had had her arrested several times.

"How can you go and lie to someone's face?", she asked, and she said the first time he toured her auto plant, he went down the line shaking hands, and she stepped back and put up her hands to make sure it was clear that she wouldn't shake his hand.

"He was new then," she was like, "And I was weird, but they caught on fast and wouldn't let him go there anymore for a photo op."

She then said that she shows up at his constituent meetings with records of his votes that she has a notary public put an affadavit on, and whenever he lies about a vote, she stands up and says, "Lie!", and tells everyone that he just said he supported such-and-such issue, but has actually voted against programs that help autoworkers etc.

"I do that till the staff run around and take me from the room," she was like.  "One said, 'You can't say that someone lies,' and I said, 'Fine, call it an untruth, but let's talk about his record,'", she was like.  "That didn't go over well."

She then said that at some parade recently, Ryan saw her and came up to talk and was like, "Why can't we get along?"

"Because you lie," she said she said.

She also said she had a picture of him taped up in the back of her car with the word "LIAR" above it, but she took it down since she would get into nasty conversations at stoplights.

2) The other bartender, with shorter, graying brunette hair and a common sense level voice, said that she bartends at this one bar and last night she had to put up with 2 Republicans coming in.

"I said, 'Fellows, let's not talk politics, because emotions are high right now,' but wouldn't you know it, they kept talking and talking all night and needling me.  So, when the one finished his beer, he put his bottle out for a new one, and I took it away and went to the cooler, and I came back, and - "

- and at that she took an empty bottle that she had just taken away from the counter, and slammed it down in front of me again empty with one big authoritative BAM -

"and I said, 'Here you go.'  He says, 'What are you going to do with that bottle, fight me?', and I said, 'Open your mouth again and find out.'"

At that, she looked at me, and was like, "That stopped him real good."

Election Day (4 of 9): California volunteers.

That batch of volunteers from California were great.  The guy ran a doggie daycare with his (much younger) girlfriend, and one of the 2 women who accompanied them was a dog trainer who brought her dogs along everywhere, one of which she would make do tricks in front of large groups of people.

"Hey [the dog's name]," she was like.  "What do you think of Paul Ryan's budget?"

And, at that, the dog would put its paws over its face like it was hiding, and everyone would laugh and clap.

Anyways, the other woman they brought with them was saying how when she went out to volunteer earlier, one of the volunteers said he wouldn't vote for Paul Ryan, but that Paul Ryan seemed like a nice guy.

"What do you mean?", she was like.

"Well, he seems like a nice guy," the guy said.

"You know what they call someone who smiles and looks you in the eye and is nice to you but then turns around and makes a budget that harms the elderly, the mentally retarded, and the poor?", she was like.  "A sociopath."

At that, the other volunteer paused, though for a few seconds, and was like, "You know, you're right, he is a sociopath."

Election Day (3 of 9): Shit.

Because I had made up a big pot of lentil soup as an experiment, I'm not sure what it does to my bowels, but I sure was gassy all election day, and everyone few hours when I was back in the office I'd dodge in to the bathroom, fart a lot over the toilet, and every once in a while a few pieces of greenish-brown shit would fly out and clump up on the top of the toilet and smell nasty.

I made sure to use the Lysol-equivalent in there, but the 2nd time I took a shit, the toilet got semi clogged, and the water was murky and there were bits of toilet paper and a few scattered turds in there, as the water slowly settled down, but not enough to flush everything.

I tried flushing a 2nd time, but it didn't work, then I opened the door and there were a couple middle-aged (white) women volunteers waiting to piss, so I shrugged and was like, "The toilet is a bit clogged," and the first one said, "Okay!", and headed in to use the restroom anyway.

I wonder what my shit will look like from all the crazy food I ate up in Wisconsin on election day: bagels and cream cheese, tons of coffee, lots of cold lasagna and pasta salad, then fruit salad and Miller Lite at the watch party.

Election Day (2 of 9): Good voters, bad voters.

I met some great voters and some bad voters:

1) One (white) (working class) woman whose (bearded) (fat) boyfriend had just left for work in a car with an extremely booming bass and who probably wasn't going to vote said she had voted, was on him a lot, had convinced one person to vote, and actively reminded like 3 coworkers.  She said she'd work more on someone when she got home!  She lived in this very industrial neighborhood in a rundown house that had a small stone lion on the porch for some reason.  She also had some person's girlfriend living at that address, and had gotten her registered and to the polls as well.

2) The (shorter) (young) (heavyset) (white) (works-at-a-gas-station) girlfriend of the (bearded) (white) guy in the cowboy hat said she had driven 3 coworkers to the polls that morning...  The (bearded) (white) guy in the cowboy hat had drive 2 friends in the morning, and since he finished up canvassing at 7:20pm (10 minutes before me), he used that spare time to call his remaining friends to check up on their votes, and he got 2 more off their asses to vote before poll close, they had meant to vote but hadn't realized how late it was getting.

3) Outside one apartment building where I spent the afternoon, at every entryway they had a box where you could scroll through names, so I checked to see what people hadn't been contacted and then I double-checked to call names not on the list...

At one entryway I reminded some voters who hadn't voted yet (the wife was waiting for her husband) and at another I turned up some voters not on the list, so I decided that was a useful way to spend some time, esp. since there weren't really any other turfs available to me right then.

At like the 5th entryway, though, as I'm going through the list, this (heavyset) (shorter) (white) woman in her mid-50s comes out to get the mail, and as she passes in front of me to get to her mailbox, without even looking at me, she hits the "hang up" button on the box as the phone is ringing over the intercom.

"Don't do that here," she was like.  "Everyone was talking the other day and said how much they hate that."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I was like.  "What's your last name?  I won't call you."

"Everyone hates it, don't call," the woman was like.  "And there's only two apartments in the building."

(The complex did have foreclosures here and there, and I'm guessing some summer people, since it was near the lake.)

"At other apartments some people thanked me for reminders," I was like.  "What's your last name?  I'll make sure not to call up there, I don't want to bother anyone who doesn't want to be bothered."  

We repeated that conversation a few more times and she wouldn't say her last name, then she went in brusquely, and I called up and left messages for a few people (the doorbox rang up to apartments and I guess answering machines).

It wasn't about her and people being bothered at all, honestly, I think she was a Romney person who hated to see Obama people out.  People can try to scare you off like that, and come out and say to not knock on the other door on the porch if a house has been divided into apartments, and stuff like that.

Election Day (1 of 9): Course of my Day.

I got up at 6:10am to get the 6:45am commuter rail ride that got into Wisconsin at 8:15am, then walked to the office, where I got a walk pack that'd set me up for the next like 3 hours.

The walkpacks were "semi-blind", which means that you went to the doors as indicated (knocking for supporters, avoiding people who weren't supporters or who were marked "don't knock"), but going to any unmarked doors, since the reasoning was that since the area is 75-80% democratic, if you turned up new voters, they'd mostly be on your side.

They gave me 2, since they said that so many doors were already crossed off (b/c people early voted, for example), I'd get through them in no time...

As I was getting ready to get organized to go out, my one friend who I know from the sex documentary series who's into BDSM showed up with a couple of his friends, so we talked for a second, then I headed out.

My 1st turf was west of the railroad tracks in a mixed working class area (white, black, some latino), and I was very conscientious about going to every door, so I was busy from like 9am until 1:45pm (!), but I met a handful of voters who I was able to get info to on same-day registration, their polling place location, and everything like that.

I walked back and took like a 45minute lunch where I ate some cold lasagna and pasta salad out of the fridge, and found out that 2 of my friends (and a 3rd they brought with them) had been in the office just a while earlier, and had been sent up to a campaign office in a city like an hour north since they were short on volunteers up there.

After my lunch, I got a new walk packet in this condo complex just west of the campaign office - they didn't have that many turfs left in walking distance, or at all! - so I basically spent the next hour buzzing buzzers and occasionally reaching someone to find out they had already voted.

After that, I went back, and they got me *another* walk packet in that same large condo/planned development complex, and I spent more time buzzing buzzers and occasionally finding out that someone had voted.

When I got back around 6pm-ish, the office was empty, since a half hour earlier anyone left had been sent to the staging office on the other end of town.  Since no-one there had a car right then, I helped peel tape off the floor, and after 10 minutes a (white) guy my age with a beard and a leather cowboy hat came in, and after we had both refreshed ourselves with pulled pork sandwiches, we got into his truck (after he cleared some crap out), then headed over to the next office.

It was like 6:30pm by then, and since polls closed at 8pm, we got walkpacks next to each other and went out with flashlights to a nearby neighborhood to round up any last vote, with people who hadn't been contacted at all or people who had said earlier in the day that they vote (people wrote notes on this), to make sure they voted.

It was rainy and dark and I walked around like that full hour in an working class area to the near southwest of downtown, and the most I did was talk with a few people on the list and confirm that they voted...  Though it hadn't been since that morning that I had met anyone who hadn't voted, my partner talked with a girl who was waiting for her boyfriend to get home so they could go vote together, and as he left, the guy's car pulled up in the driveway.

As we were in that one fellow canvasser's truck, he had some newsradio channel on, and I couldn't believe it was election night already, and I didn't feel like I was there, and I was just a bundle of nerves, and I kept wishing there was more time to prepare for the campaign.

Around that time, I found out that the people I knew who had driven up and had decamped to another city weren't going to be meeting up with me, they were super tired and were driving home instead.

Back at the campaign office, we dropped off our packs and talked with everyone who was there - including that one highschooler, her twin sister, and her boyfriend, who couldn't volunteer that day but had dropped by the office to see how everything was going.

Also there was a guy from California who had flown in to volunteer for the recalls, and who had come back again with his girlfriend and even more family.

There was a (black) engineer, too, who was talking with staffer, and he said he'd give me a ride to the election night watch party, and he was lingering forever, but I had to wait for him since the (white) guy with the beard and a cowboy had to go get his girlfriend and he only had one seat in his truck.

At the watch party, I ran into a ton of people and I had free beer and calmed down, but after all the Wisconsin results came in, it was pretty much downhill and people were breaking up by like 10:30am.

The California guy I know was in a group, and he said he'd be happy to drive me back to the commuter rail for the 11:30pm train, so I took him up on that, waited around the station (including a quick break to go find an alley to piss in; there were no public restrooms and I had to wait 20min for the train), hopped on the train, and was back in the city around 1am, home a bit thereafter, then took a shower and unpacked and relaxed and ate ramen noodles and was in bed by 2:30am.

I missed all the speeches since I was on the train!  I'll catch up on YouTube though...

Dream (2 of 2): Bible.

I had a dream that same night as the bike dream -

I dreamed that I saw the Greek New Testament of a professor on my committee, and it was on thick, normal pages, rather than the onion skin-type that get crinkly as soon as you use them.

I got upset, and wished I had a Bible like that.

...in the past, that prof has talked about how bibles are presented differently with paper covers etc., and also I got a Hebrew bible that was soft cover because it was the only edition the bookstore had, but some of my colleagues got hardcover ones online, and I wish I had one of those, since mine is already getting beat up from my reading Judges so much, even though I keep it at home... 

Posters!

For my one "modern groups that do interesting things with sex" course (not its real title), I made up some lesbian separatist posters that involved a period photo of a topless woman chopping wood with an ax.

I double-checked with my faculty mentor that and another poster before putting them up to make sure I get minimum enrollment, and he said the cartoon breasts on the other poster would be good, and he liked the lesbian separatist poster a lot, but he'd have to check it with someone before hanging, and if they were good, he'd hang them himself.

"You can do whatever you want in the classroom here," he was like, "And I really like that photo, but I don't want you to accidentally get in trouble with the poster, especially since you haven't taught here before."

As he said that, I noticed a black marker on his desk.

"Hey, can I borrow your marker?  I can just marker over her breasts, then we can hang the poster," I was like.

"NO!", he said right away.  "That would be even worse!".

Addendum Addendum Addendum.

10) After I came back from my 2nd round of canvassing, I met this wonderful group of 4 volunteers who had also come up from my city:

- A (shorter) (racially ambiguous) (mid-50s) woman in funky coat and big hat.
- A (much older) (racially ambiguous) woman in a fur coat who kind of resembled the lady in the funky coat.
- A (late 30s) (quiet) (white) woman who turned out to be a public school teacher.
 - That woman's mom, who looked all grandmotherly (though aging gracefully) and was in a union of some sort.

I started talking with the lady in the funky coat, and it turns out she owns a major resale shop in the city's big "up and coming" neighborhood".

They had to run out since the lady in the funky coat had lost her iPhone and someone had contacted her about it - she had left it in someone's mailbox (?) - but then I met up with them again at the commuter rail station and we rode in the same car on the way back.

"It's so important to support the president," the lady in the funky coat was like.  "This stuff matters, in this lifetime, to enable him to do good.  I can't do the good he can do, unless I'm a president in another life, but I can support him here to do what he can do."

The older lady in the fur coat also told me how that when she and the lady in the funky coat went out canvassing together, someone came out and took a photo of her.

"My mom is in her 70s and wants to help but says she's too old to walk around!", the woman told them.  "I want to show her what dedication looks like!"

We then talked about food, and the older lady in the fur coat said she really liked the Obama logo cake, and had one piece.

"Why not two, or five?", I was like.

"Oh honey," she said in her quiet voice, "I would love to, but I can't have more than one piece."

"But you worked that and more off walking around for all those hours!"

At that, she grimaced, and was like, "You know what they say, 'From the lips to the hips,'", and when she said lips she touched her mouth, and when she said hips she touched her hips.

Addendum addendum.

7) The county treasurer made a crapload of good homemade food for volunteers, as usual:

- breakfast strata (vegetarian and non-vegetarian) for breakfast.
- 20lbs of Italian beef and chili (with 40lbs of ground beef) for lunch.
- a crockpot of vegetarian chili for dinner, along with an OBAMA carrot cake that had the campaign logo in red, white, and blue frosting.

They have hospitality like no other there.  I thanked all of the local Democratic Party people profusely.

The one older (heavyset) (white) lady who had had a beer on the porch with (black) voters in a (bad) neighborhood back in 2008 when she did canvassing was very upset during lunch, b/c the Italian beef ran out and she didn't know that chili was coming.

"I just feel so awful," she was like.  "There's all these people here, what are they going to eat?".

I asked her if I should run to the grocery store and get pre-made subs like they served a few weeks ago, and we started to figure that out (money, how I would get there, etc.), but then luckily the chili came.

8) That same lady was talking with the county treasurer about election night.

"I just can't wait for this to all be over," she was like.

"You gonna need someone to drive you home like last time?", the treasure asked her.

"Oh yeah," she was like, "I'm going to get messed up."

9) One (mid-30s) (black) woman with a piercing through the skin below her lower lip mentioned her girlfriend, so I made sure to tell her that Tammy Baldwin was a lesbian.

"I didn't know that," she was like.  "They should know that down at [name of the local gay club]!"

Then she added, "I'd get with her."

She also said a bunch of her family was just plain lazy and never voted, even though they were on food stamps and stuff, so we strategized on how we could get them to the polls on election day.  We went through same-day registration stuff together, then she was going to hop online to figure out where their precinct was, and then she was going to go over there and drive them all on election day before going to work in the afternoon.

She also said she had blood clots in her lungs and because she worked in  a factory job without insurance making generators, she had $80,000 in medical bills she had to pay.

Addendum.

4) One guy was out smoking on the porch, this scrawny (white) guy in his late 30s who looked like a recovering drug addict.

The walk list said "do not knock", which meant that it was either someone who had refused or was a Romney supporter, but I said hi anyways and he was a bit chatty so we talked some.

As it turns out, his parents are Republican and he's always supported Republicans though he's never voted (?), but he's been looking at issues, and he thinks he's just not a Republican anymore because they're not for the working class.

"And that Ryan," he was like.  "I just hate the guy."

So, we talked through issues - education (he's got kids), economy (Obama saved the auto industry and has supported building windmills in Iowa), social security and Medicare (the guy turned out to have aging parents) - and he was totally on board to vote for Obama and the local rep, but he was a bit hesitant about the senate race, because the former governor was running for the Republicans.

"Hey," I was like, "My family has voted for Republicans in the past, but that has party has changed.  I don't know the details, but Tommy Thompson has changed too."

"Yeah, he was taking all that lobbying money," the guy was like.

I then told him about how Tammy Baldwin was raised by her grandparents "because her mom wasn't there for her" and had to take care of her grandma while she was dying, so she's personally invested in all the programs that seniors need, even Medicaid, which Thompson wants to cut but helps seniors afford nursing homes.

That sold him,  and I got him info on same-day voter registration info, and then I asked about his wife.

"There's no talking with her," she was like. "She just gets irrational, she hates Obama so much.  You can't even talk about anything, she just hates the man."

I said that was too bad because her vote affected their kids' futures in a bad way, and he agreed.

5) I accidentally did part of another route, and there were two (black) women in their mid-40s who were also volunteering who I had to straighten stuff out with.

We talked a lot about what an important election it was and other stuff, and the one said she just loved my enthusiasm.

When we left to go our separate ways, I made sure to fistbump both of them, and as I turned to leave, she called out, "Now you have a blessed day!".

6) When I had volunteered during the recall, there was this blonde high school student who was finishing her junior year and doing bad in government, so she took up her teacher's extra credit assignment to volunteer in the recall for the side of her choice and write a 1-page paper reflecting on her experience.

She was so put off by all the hubbub, but I said I'd show her what to do, so I gave her good training, and then because Tammy Baldwin and the local candidate for congress were there and giving remarks, I made sure to introduce her to them after their short speeches, and say she was a high school student about to go out on her 1st canvassing shift.

Both talked with her and were super nice, esp. Tammy Baldwin.

"That is so cool!", she was like, and it turns out she had a ball canvassing.

So, yesterday, I was in the campaign office like 5:15pm after my (long) 2nd walk pack, and I hear this voice, "Hey, [my name]!", and it turns out to be the high school girl.

Despite the fact that it's her senior year and she's in 5 AP classes, dance, and orchestra (and college applications, I'd guess?), she came out to give one afternoon to Obama and the other Dems.

I was just so happy, and she was next to some older (white) woman who I introduced herself to thinking it was her mother or something, only to find out it was some random volunteer who walked in at the same time and wasn't sure what to do - and my high school student took her under her wing, trained her, and went out to do a route with her.

Oddly, Tammy Baldwin and the Democratic rep candidate had popped in to the office before 3pm that same day, so her 1st-time canvassing partner got to hear them speak too!

It was very satisfying, to see history repeat itself, and a very nice high schooler giving time for a cause she believes in.

Saturday volunteering in Wisc.

Here goes:

1) The central Obama campaign is giving election night party credentials for downtown Chicago (party this year is at McCormick convention center, not Grant Park) if anyone volunteered in Wisconsin or Iowa.  2 Saturdays ago, 17 volunteers came up from Chi, last Sat. about 60, this past Sat. -- I would say about 200-300.

The canvassing for the entire city where I was got covered once on the morning shift, and again on the afternoon shift.

A lot of other cities near the border were similarly flooded with volunteers, and rumor that busses were leaving to Madison, Milwaukee, and Green Bay.

2) I ran across a couple hispanic households, where people weren't citizens but had Obama signs up.  In one, the lady has been here on a green card forever, but her daughter is a citizen and can vote.

"She lives in Nevada," she told me.  "I keep telling her to vote for me!  Don't worry, she'll be voting."

At another place, this (short) (young) (Mexican) guy with a moustache and goatee biked up, and I talked with him a bit...

Turns out he was only 16.

"But you have a moustache!", I was like, and at that he stroked his beard and laughed.

He didn't have that good English, he said, but he said his parents was worse.

I asked, and no-one in his house was citizens...  There were several doors to the house and I was wondering if it was a house that had been split up into apartments (there's a lot of those type of houses in the city), but he was like, "No, this house, it is all my family."

"Even there?", I was like, and pointed to a door where there was an Obama-Biden logo cut out from same paper and taped to the glass on the upper part of the outer door.

"Yes, that is us," he was like.  "We all love Obama, but we can't vote."

3) One (middle-aged) (white) woman who lived by the railroad tracks was heading in from her car when I went around with a clipboard, so I called out to her and was like, "Hi, I'm going door-to-door for the Obama campaign...", and at that she held out her hand and was like, "Oh no, I'm voting the other way."

Usually you just say thanks and leave, but I was like, "You know, if Romney gets in office, your taxes will probably go up like $2000/year so he can give tax cuts to the mega-rich who aren't already paying their fair share."

At that, she said in a passive-aggressive and mock good-natured way, "You know, if Obama gets elected, illegals will continue to take our jobs."

So much hate.

Dream (1 of 2): Biking.

I had a dream the other night -

There was a boardwalk with chainlink fences on each side going through a salt marsh.

The boardwalk would gradually vary in width for no perceptible reason, sometimes being wide enough for 3-4 people walking abreast, sometimes for only 2.

It was empty, but as I biked ahead, there was a young mom on a bicycle, and she had this little sidecar with a toddler in it.

As I approached her, she got into this uphill stretch where the path was narrowing, and she turned around and said I could pass her later, and so I was forced to follow behind her as she pedalled very slowly.

I got slightly annoyed, and then -

I woke up.

WI volunteering last weekend (3 of 3): Ex-felons.

One woman who came to the door said her husband (who was the listed voter) wasn't home, and when I started talking with her, as her young child ran around, she said she couldn't vote since she was a felon.

So, I asked, and she said she was off parole 5 years ago, and I said I could double-check at the office, but I was pretty sure she could vote now.

"Really?", she was like, and she gave me her cell #.

I checked, and the people at the office said she could vote, and said that if she was "off paper" she was good.

"What's that?", I was like.

"No parole, no probation, nothing," the (white) staffer said.  "That's the phrase that people use and they tell us to use it when checking with people."

So, I called the woman back, and she was off paper, so I told her to do the same-day registration with the forms of ID that I had marked on the leaflet that I had left her.

I was sad, though, that she had not been able to vote 4 years ago, because of misinformation.

Then, a few days later, I found out that the Romney camp was spreading misinformation that felons could never vote again, and that made me just sick.

The older I get, I don't get why everyone can't vote.  If anyone's vote should get taken away, it's all those fatcats in the banks who crashed the economy and made millions, only people like them never get prosecuted.

Why shouldn't someone with kids like the woman I met have a choice over elected officials who will affect her child's future, even if she's in prison or on probation or on parole or whatever?

WI volunteering last weekend (2 of 3): Romney voters.

Last weekend I also met a lot of Romney voters, for some reason:

1) When people move but there's still old voter listings, sometimes you get other people at the door...

I got a lot of 30-something white moms in nice houses who obviously had kids, and as soon as I identified myself as a volunteer for the county Democratic Party, they'd be like, "Sorry, I'm voting the other way!", and politely go to close the door and end the conversation. I always wanted to ask why.

2) One (lower class) (white) woman who was apparently in subsidized housing answered the door, said she didn't vote in a "you can't tell me what to do" kind of way, and so I asked her why. She said voting didn't affect her.

"If Romney gets in office, your taxes will go up a lot, because he'll raise them in order to give the mega-rich fat cats a break."

"I don't know about that," she was like. "He also wants to take away Social Security and Medicare, so you won't have anything when you're older." "Well, I'm going to be working when I'm old anyways, so what's different," she was like.

"Your kids' classroom size will increase," I said, because I noticed a couple small kids running around.

"That doesn't affect me, they're not in school yet," she was like. I then checked if she was the woman on the sheet marked as a voter, and it turned out to be a family member of hers who lived next door, so I cut my losses and went to go talk to her, and she was pro-Obama.

My one friend from home who's a social worker said that most of her clients were like that woman, where it's always not them and they don't care about anything unless it directly affects them at that second.

3) One older (white) woman in a sweatshirt and glasses and open, wild eyes who seemed a bit developmentally disabled said she was voting Romney, but she said it in a really disjointed way, where I wasn't sure what she said at 1st...

She then said she didn't trust Obama, and he was going to take away Social Security.

"Are you sure about that?", I was like. "There's a lot of misinformation out there, and Romney is really proposing to do that, though he doesn't say that too much."

At that, she took pause, and then was like, "But I don't trust Obama," and said something about Christian radio.

Really, shame on Romney and shame on Christian radio for spreading so much misinformation and taking advantage of disabled people, and deceiving them into voting against their stated interests.

WI volunteering last weekend (1 of 3): Convinced undecideds?.

Last weekend in Wisconsin I may have convinced 2 undecided voters...  I meet them a lot, but I never get strong reactions where I think I've actually changed someone's mind:

1) One house was on a corner, and the way it was set up with a door on the corner and the side and these high, long, and thin windows that you couldn't see in, you could tell it was a converted bar.

I knocked on the door, and a smoking (white) woman in her mid-40s asked me in to talk after she said she didn't know which way she was voting quite yet, and there was an old (white) woman at the kitchen table drinking coffee and smoking and another (white) woman in her mid-40s smoking and drinking coffee.

The room was very smoky, and the woman who answered the door said that she's union and would be a Democrat all the way, except abortion really makes her pause.

"Well, abortion's a very difficult issue," I said, "And I'm uncomfortable with it myself, in some ways," and then I continued on to say that people who were pro-life could reasonably vote either Democrat or Republican, because while Republicans would ban it, studies show Democratic policies reduce it.

"Forget that," the other woman said, leaping into the conversation. "It's not about the baby, it's about controlling your body.  And the Republicans don't do anything about it, they just want the votes to do other stuff.  Don't you get that?"

Then, she turned to me, "I keep telling her that!"

"If that study is what you say it is," the woman was like, ignoring the other woman for a second, "I'll definitely vote Democratic."

Then, she gave me her email, and I told her I'd email her from my personal account, and when I got back to the office I found the study that provision of contraception through the Affordable Care Act will lower abortion rates massively.

2) One apartment was in back and the guy had a Spanish name, and when I went around back, there was this plump hispanic guy in a purple polo shirt talking with his landlord about the installation of a satellite dish.

I identified myself, and he was like, "One minute!", and his landlord said he supported Ron Paul, and they finished the conversation and the landlord left and I began to talk to the guy about Obama.

The hispanic guy said he would support Obama, but he didn't know much and wasn't too motivated to vote.

So, I began fishing around with issues, and I gave my testimony about Obama saving GM.

He was cold.

So, I said that a lot of hispanic friends, one Mexican-American and one whose parents were refugees from El Salvador, were very happy how Obama fights for the Dream Act, and has stopped deportation of youths who have finished high school and have no criminal records.

"And he doesn't stoke hate against hispanics, because that's just not right and just not his style," I was like.  "But I don't know if you have friends or family that this affects..."

The guy then identified himself as Spanish, and said he really didn't, though he had seemed to perk up against when I talked about the anti-hispanic stuff being wrong.

Then, he invited me upstairs because he was getting cold standing outside, he was in sandals and everything and it was pretty chilly with the wind.

I went upstairs, and he was like, "My boyfriend's been harrassing me to vote, he totally supports Obama."

At that point, I told him that Tammy Baldwin who was running for Senate was an out lesbian.

"Really?", he was like.

"Yes," I was like, "She doesn't talk about it too much since she talks about the economy since that's what most people are worried about right now, but she doesn't hide it, either."

"That is awesome," he was like, "Lesbians know how to get things done!  And they're tough, too."

I then filled him in on her bio, and he was totally stoked to vote, and I left early voter info for him and told him to get it to his boyfriend too, which he agreed to do.

Latin: What a great student.

 With my one Latin student who's a faculty assistant at school, we recently started translating the prologue to Ovid's "Art of Love", and at our 1st session on the text translated the 1st 4 lines:

Siquis in hoc artem populo non novit amandi,
    Hoc legat et lecto carmine doctus amet.
Arte citae veloque rates remoque moventur,
    Arte leves currus: arte regendus amor.

IF there be anyone among you who is ignorant of the art of loving, let him read this poem and, having read it and acquired the knowledge it contains, let him address himself to Love.
By art the swift ships are propelled with sail and oar; there is art in driving the fleet chariots, and Love should by art be guided. 

After we translated (the translation above is someone else's, not ours), I wrote the next day to him:

Something to think about and we can discuss next week:

The gerundive can bear a range of meanings, ranging from an idea of external necessity (a "must") to a strong recommendation (a "should").

Latin does not force you to choose between those meanings, but translation into English does.

A question: if you had to choose an English translation for "arte regendus amor", would you choose "must", "should", or something else entirely, and why?

Keep up the good work and see you next week,

[my name]

He wrote back later that day:

Ah, very interesting.  I’ll look into this and be ready to discuss next week. 

 

I think actually the phrase should be preferably translated "By art love must be guided", but I'm not 100% sure, and in any case it's an interesting subject to talk about.

What a great student!