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!