Occupy Tucson and the Ballot Box

I have to say that I'm rather pleased with the results of today's elections. Elsewhere in the country, the bill that gutted union rights was repealed in Ohio, and a proposition that would have outlawed most birth control was defeated in Mississippi. Up in Phoenix, the arch-Republican behind Arizona's SB 1070 lost his recall election, and in Tucson's Sunnyside school district., the intern who saved Gabby Giffods' life was elected to the school board. Democrat Jonathan Rothschild will be the new mayor of Tucson, and it looks like my Ward Four City Council member, Shirley Scott, has been narrowly reelected.

Meanwhile, in downtown Tucson, members of the Occupy Tucson movement have been living in tents in a city park. One of them got nearly 5% of the vote today as the Green Party candidate for mayor.

The election in Tucson today was kind of weird, though. We've had early voting for quite some time, and ID has been required to vote here for years. But this year the whole process changed, and John and I knew nothing about it until the primary at the end of August. Someone had the bright idea of conducting the whole election by mail, and that's what they did. For 35 years I've been voting in person on Election Day, but this year that was a little harder to do. Instead of dropping in at the neighborhood elementary school, we had to find the ballots that had arrived unnoticed in the mail, mark them, put them in the special envelope, sign the envelope, and, because we didn't mail them back ahead of time (not that I wanted to), drive them over to one of only seven polling places in the entire city and drop them in a box there.

Jan exercises her right to vote.

To be honest, that wasn't terribly onerous for us, once John found the ballots after I failed to do so. John stuck mine in my purse, and I marked it and drove it to the Udall Center a few miles away. I was more concerned about my friend Jan, who rode over with me. Jan, who has voted in every single election since she first became eligible, did not receive a ballot in the mail, as far as we can tell. She's registered at her home, but has been living in a rehab facility with multiple health problems. The ballot apparently did not arrive at the house, and she had not re-registered at what was supposed to be a temporary address. The good news is that she was able to give a sworn statement that she did not receive her ballot, and get a replacement one.

So that was good, but I wonder about the homeless. Where do their ballots get mailed?

Outside the 150 foot limit at Udall Center was a Green Party activist, who was giving out free bumper stickers and chatting people up about the Green Party mayoral candidate, Mary DeCamp. DeCamp conducted her campaign from Occupy Tucson, which I briefly visited last week. I don't agree with absolutely everything said by absolutely everyone down there, but DeCamp sounds pretty cool, and I might have considered voting for her if a) I hadn't also heard good things about the Democrat, Jonathan Rothschild, and b) DeCamp were capable of defeating the Republican this time out.

Unlike in New York, Oakland and elsewhere, the Occupy protesters have not faced any tear gas or police brutality. Both sides have been peaceful, with Occupiers lining up to get citations for occupying a city park after 10:30 PM without a permit. I used to think that Occupy should have gone through channels and gotten the permit, but that turns out to cost a reservation fee of $155 a day and a requirement for liability insurance. That's if the permit was granted at all. I suppose they could pass the hat, but it does seem an unreasonable restriction on the right of assembly. "Your right to expressive activities does not stop at 10:30 p.m.," Occupy Tucson's lawyer said in an interview. They've filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the fines and arrests.

When I stopped by on Friday afternoon, there were lots of tents set up on two small strips of land between Congress St. and Broadway Blvd. downtown, plus an information book, a media tent and a conflict resolution, er, rock.

Although it all looked pretty organized to me, the guy manning the info booth told me that the place was in disarray because the night before, Tucson Police threatened to take people to jail unless they vacated Armory Park, which had been the main Occupy Tucson site. "We finished moving everything at four o'clock this morning," he told me. They not only moved to the other site, peacefully, but cleaned up the park they were leaving on their way out. Now they've filed a lawsuit to step the arrests and fines, and to forestall another incident of the police making them vacate a park or suffer mass arrest. The Thursday night order was purportedly to prepare Armory Park for two scheduled events. Since then the city manager has suggested that they might need to leave& Veinte De Agosto Park to accommodate a veteran's Day parade. However, the parade route doesn't go past that park.

From Occupy Tucson

My favorite shot from my visit is this one, of a woman decorating her Occupy Tucson tent. It quotes Gandhi: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I'd say the Occupiers are trying very hard to be the change, and we should support them. "It's for all of us, you know. It's for you, it's for me, it's for everyone who doesn't live in the ivory towers," occupier Mike Robbins said in a recent interview. In other words, it's for us, the 99%.

Karen

Keith and Gabrielle and Raul and All

I almost bought Keith Olbermann's book tonight.

His new hardback, Pitchfords and Torches, is a compilation of short pieces (and not-so-short ones) written for and presented on his MSNBC show, Countdown With Keith Olbermann. Today Keith was suspended indefinitely without pay by his boss, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, for making three last-minute campaign contributions last week. NBC News, which oversees MSNBC but not CNBC, has a policy against news staff making campaign contributions without prior permission. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough gave money to a Republican campaign in 2006, but apparently the rule was not in place until 2007.

 

Gabrielle Giffords at a 2009 Health Care town hall appearance

What makes this story kind of freaky for me is that two of the three candidates to which Olbermann contributed the individual maximum amount of $2,400 each are my local Congress people. Our two Southern Arizona members of the House of Representatives, Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, were both reelected this week by the skin of their teeth. (Olbermann's other contribution was to Rand Paul's unsuccessful opponent.) Giffords, whom I heard speak at a heath care town hall, is a blue dog Democrat, a little to the right of me but smart and sensible. I not only voted for her again this year, but also made a small campaign contribution. Raul Grijalva, from Congressional District 7, is the congressman for the other half of Tucson and co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus. I met him once two years ago, and liked him a lot. He's smart and funny and fierce, and although he makes the occasional misstep, I trust him to fight for the same ideals I believe in. Raul got himself in trouble this year by calling for a boycott of Arizona because of the vile SB 1070 our horrible Governor signed into law. Grijalva later regretted the boycott. Intimidation tactics against him this year have included a bullet through his office window (Giffords got one of those too), an envelope of suspicious white powder and your run-of-the-mill death threats. Don't ever let someone tell you that only Muslims are terrorists, because that is terrorism too. There was also a lot of money poured into the campaign of his opponent, the unfortunately-named Ruth McClung. Gabrielle Giffords, meanwhile, was targeted with hundreds of the most vicious and misleading campaign signs I have ever seen in a political campaign.

Congressman Raul Grijalva in 2008

Both the Giffords and Grjalva races were so tight that even with 100% of precincts counted in this week's election, no one had been declared the winner in either district. Both Democrats were ahead, but not by much. The delay in calling it was due to by-mail early voting ballots hand-delivered to polling places, and also provisional ballots from people who attempted to vote at a given precinct but were not listed in the precinct's voter registration logs. (Basically the Board of Elections has to check whether these folks are registered voters somewhere else, or were accidentally omitted from the lists. If they are legitimately registered to vote in those electoral races, their votes are then counted.) The Associated Press just called the CD7 race for Grijalva on Thursday, if I recall correctly. The reelection of Gabrelle Giffords was just called late Friday afternoon with the release of new numbers by the Secretary of State's office, by which time she was up nearly 4,000 votes. The results still must be certified, but basically they've won - finally.

Anyway, Keith happened to have Raul on his show last week, I think for the sixth time. I think Raul managed to sneak the web address of his campaign site into the interview, something Keith has criticized Fox for allowing their guests to do. After the interview and the show, according to reports, Keith discussed the upcoming election and these particular races with a friend, and then privately went to a Mailboxes Etc. (why not online?) and made his contributions. His heart was in the right place, but it was against the rules, as his colleague Rachel Maddow acknowledged on her own show tonight. Rachel also took the time, however, to point out the false equivalence between Olberman's secret donations and the open donations to, endorsements of and campaigning for Republican candidates that goes on at Fox.

Okay, so it's not a good idea to base your ethics on the questionable ethics of the other guy. But is the policy Keith violated a good and fair one? If applied across the board to all MSNBC on-air personalities, it's fair enough; if Keith is singled out, not so much. It's certainly not a violation of Keith Olbermann's First Amendment rights, as Keith himself frequently pointed out when others got in trouble for what they said on tv. This is not a case of Congress abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. This is an employee working for an employer that has certain rules, and the right to enforce those rules. If an employee does not agree with those rules, they can obey them anyway, or try to change the system, or try not to get caught, or go work somewhere else. Keith broke his company's rule, although whether he was aware he was breaking it is somewhat in question. The company has the right to suspend him for that.

But should they suspend him, and is it a rule worth having in the first place? I'm on the fence about the suspension itself, as long as it's a fairly short one, just to show that the network enforces its rules and stands on its principles. But I'm not so sure the policy should apply to an MSNBC primetime host in the first place. Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz are clearly, unabashedly liberals. They make no pretense to the contrary. Chris Mathews and Lawrence O'Donnell are perhaps a tad less so, but they are not shy in airing their opinions, any more than "Morning Joe" Scarborough is shy about offering his right-leaning opinions on the same network. All of their respective shows are steeped in political commentary. That's what they're for. They back up these opinions with actual news reporting, checking facts to a degree that's entirely absent over at Fox. That makes them vaguely journalists, and subject to the NBC News designation. However, a distinction should be made, I feel, between political commentators who also report news, such as Keith and Rachel, and "straight news" reporters and anchors such as Brian Williams et al. There is no question about Keith reporting a story impartially. He doesn't. He presents the facts along with his opinion about those facts, liberally sprinkled with satire, sarcasm and pop culture references. That's his job, and he's good at it. His career since about 2003 has been predicated on his expressing political opinions. So where is the impropriety in his contributing to a political campaign, privately and without advocating for that candidate on-air? Does this change in the least public perception of his standing as a journalist or the relevance of his political opinions? Not at all. Indeed, I'm surprised that any such rule applies to Keith and his colleagues. It makes no sense to me.

What does make sense to me is that on a network that decries the Citizens United ruling that allows corporations to spend millions on political advertising without disclosure, Keith and other paid on-air personalities should disclose their political contributions on air, particularly when interviewing someone whose campaign they support financially or plan to support a few hours later. The interview itself should have no more than one reference to a campaign website, and no call for the viewer to make a contribution. But that's it. Beyond that, the journalist-commentator should be free to make contributions as his or her conscience dictates.

As for the current mess, Keith should admit that he screwed up, apologize and be reinstated.  Given the paucity of left-leaning media compared with the fact-challenged behemoth of right-wing media, we need as many Keith Olbermanns as we can get.

I haven't told you about the book thing yet. Tonight John wanted to cheer himself up with a trip to a local bookstore. Locally-owned new bookstores are all but dead, so the choices were Borders or Barnes and Noble. I have a discount card for B and N so off we went.

The first thing that happened when we walked in was me spotting a sign in the cafe for an upcoming appearance by Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, right there in the store. This bummed me out, and made John angry. As John went off to check the Peanuts books, I decided to take a look at Keith's new book, and see whether it was something I had to own, or at least buy as a matter of solidarity. I checked the new hardbacks, the bestsellers, and other featured displays in the front of the story and along the center aisle. No Keith. Glenn Beck and a few other right-wingers, yes, but no Pitchforks and Torches. Eventually I asked. It was in the back of the store near the kids' books, in the newly arrived section of the Current Evens rack, in the History section of the store. It wasn't someplace I would think to look for a new book by a major tv political commentator, at least, not as the only place it was shelved.

Between that, the Huckabee sign and the fact that B&N only had the Peanuts books John wanted as a two-book boxed set, John was highly displeased with B&N and the whole shopping experience. It hadn't cheered him up one bit. So we went on to Borders. They had three copies of Keith's book in the featured new arrivals display, although when I went back for it someone had childishly turned the book over so Keith's face has not displayed. They also had the Peanuts books, both as the box and separately. I looked over the Olbermann book, and decided I didn't need printed versions of words I'd already heard him speak on air. But we bought the Peanuts books. At the register, I converted my Borders Rewards card to an upgraded version that gave me the same 10% off on the Peanuts books that I would have gotten down the street.

I probably won't be going to Barnes and Noble again. Not for a while, anyway.

Karen

What the Democrats Did - and Didn't Do

Wheeler School: my favorite polling station.

As pollsters and pundits talk of an "enthusiasm gap" between Democrats and Republicans, with pro-Democrat percentages of "likely voters" lagging behind those of "registered voters," it's worth taking a look at what we should be enthusiastic about, what we should and should not fear, and what is at stake this Election Day. Republican tea partiers have boogiemen set before them daily in place of the real President Obama and other actual Democrats, substituting what they supposedly want to do in place of what they've actually done or tried to do. Let's do a reality check:

Below are a few of the accomplishments Obama and the 111th Congress have made, as listed on the political blog "Rescue Truth." Lest you fear that as a blog it's a dubious news source, it's backed up with lings to actual news stories backing up its substance:

25 Tax Cuts Passed By Obama and Democrats^[3]

Individuals

1. “Making Work Pay” tax credit
2. Earned Income Tax Credit increased
3. Increased Eligibility for Refundable Portion of Child Credit
4. “American Opportunity” Education Tax Credit
5. First-time Home Buyer Credit
6. Temp. Suspension of Taxation of Unemployment Benefits
7. Tax Credits for Energy-Efficient Improvements to Existing Homes
8. Sales Tax Deduction for Vehicle Purchases
9. Premium Credits for COBRA Continuation Coverage for Unemployed Workers
10. Economic Recovery Credits to Recipients of Social Security, SSI, RR Retirement, and Veterans Disability Compensation Benefits
11. Computers as Qualified Education Expenses in 529 Education Plans
12. Plug-in Electric Drive Vehicle Credit
13. Tax Parity for Transit Benefits
14. Health Coverage Tax Credit Expansion

Small Business

1. Extension of Enhanced Small Business Expensing
2. 5-Year Carryback of Net Operating Losses for Small Businesses
3. Extension of Bonus Depreciation
4. Exclusion of 75% of Small Business Capital Gains from Taxes
5. Temporary Small Business Estimated Tax Payment Relief
6. Temporary Reduction of S Corporation Built-In Gains Holding Period from 10 Years to 7 Years

Other Business

1. Advanced Energy Investment Credit
2. Tax Credits for Alternative Refueling Property
3. Work Opportunity Tax Credits for Hiring Unemployed Veterans and Disconnected Youth
4. Delayed Recognition of Certain Cancellation of Debt Income
5. Election to Accelerate Recognition of Historic AMT/R&D Credits

Fun Fact: 1/3 of the $862 billion stimulus was for tax cuts, something Republicans claim to support … although they still stand against stimulus.  I suppose it depends on who gets the tax cuts.

As has been noted by the New York Times and elsewhere, many Americans have no idea that Obama and Congress have cut taxes. Most tea partiers simply assume that the "tax and spend Democrats" have raised their taxes. Plus the supposed "Obama tax hike" looms on the horizon, which is actually the built-in expiration of a tax cut instituted early in the Bush administration. President Obama wants to extend these to all but the richest 2% of Americans, who would still get a tax cut on part of their income but not to the extent that their getting it now. This "tax cut for the rich" translates to an increase of "$36 billion to the federal deficit next year" compared to the Democrats' plan," according to the Washington Post. That's more than can feasibly be made up by cutting spending on trivialities like education, safe food and drugs, safe mines and oil rigs, a cleaner environment or unemployment benefits. Check out the graphic - is this the fiscal discipline you're looking for?

More accomplishments listed by "Rescue Truth":

Women’s Rights

• Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
  
  • Protection against pay discrimination
  • Restores interpretation of Title VII of Civil Rights Act that protected women and other workers

Financial Rights

• Credit CARD Act
  • Prevents retroactive rate increases
  • Requires companies to provide 45 days notice before changing rates and other contract provisions
  • Additional restrictions placed on fees
  • Prevents companies from taking advantage of students
  • Ends unfair double-cycle billing practices
• Financial reform bill
  • Establishes Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which seeks solely to ensure financial institutions are being fair to consumers, and improvement in the simplicity in contracts
  • Prevents taxpayer bail out of financial institutions
  • Allows the GAO to audit the Federal Reserve
  • Various mortgage and derivatives reform, etc.

Education

• Student loans^[1]
  • Ends “socialistic” federal subsidies to banks and other financial institutions (Interestingly, Republicans are okay with the kind of socialism that redirects taxpayer money to banks and other financial institutions.)
  • Eliminates unnecessary “middle-man” in student loan process, which placed financial burden on taxpayers while banks took in profits
  • Annual student loan payment capped at 10% of income
  • Saves an estimated $61 billion over 10 years

Health Care

• Children’s health insurance bill^[2]
  • CBO said bill will allow states to cover more than four million uninsured children by 2013, in addition to seven million already covered
  • Requires states to provide dental and mental illness coverage to children
• Tobacco regulation
  • Provides graphic warnings on tobacco use risks
  • Restricts advertising to prevent marketing to minors
• Health care reform
  • Insurers cannot cancel coverage when a person gets sick
  • Requires health insurance corporations to cover preexisting conditions
  • Eliminates lifetime limits
  • Allows insurance purchase across state lines
  • Allows young adults to stay on parents’ health insurance policy until 26

Crime and Civil Rights

• Hate crime legislation^[4]
  • Provides protection for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people
• Tribal Law and Order Act
  • Provide additional means to reduce high rates of violent crime, including rape & sexual assault within Native American reservations
  • View the rescuetruth.com post on the Tribal Law and Order Act

Other

• The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act
  • Expands service and volunteer opportunities
  • Benefits education, health care, energy, etc.
• Stimulus
  • Cash for Clunkers successfully contributed to 680,000+ vehicle sales in summer 2009
  • Largest clean energy investment ever made
• Reduced deficit by $122 billion^[5]
• Reduced federal spending by 2%^[5]

Sources

1. ABC News. Obama Highlights Student Loan Reforms Within the Health Care Bill
2. Obama Signs Children’s Health Insurance Bill
3. PolitiFact. Axelrod claims Democrats passed 25 tax cuts last year without the help of Republicans
4. CNN. Obama signs hate crimes bill into law
5. Raw Story. Democrats shrank US spending, deficit in last fiscal year, figures show
   

That's a pretty good list of accomplishments in two years, especially with Republicans doing their best to kill or water down every bill, with the stated purpose of making Obama's presidency a failed one. To be sure, they have not accomplished everything they've tried for, largely because of attempts at bipartisan compromise; but it's still pretty impressive: saving the U.S. car industry, making the financial industry less predatory, ending preexisting condition clauses in health insurance, making student loans more cost-effective for both students and the government, etc. Now let's look at what the Democrats have not done, despite claims to the contrary:

• Place the government in the hands of a secret Muslim terrorist born in Kenya. For the birthers to be right, not only do the many people who have examined the actual Hawaii birth certificate have to be lying, but someone has to have had the foresight to place fake birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers when the baby with the funny name was born.In addition to this, Obama has a long, well-documented history of regular church attendance. If he were a terrorist, wouldn't we have seen some evidence of this in the past two years? Heck, he hasn't even managed to close Guantanamo!
• Take away your guns. Putting aside the fact that not everyone owns a gun or wants one, this threat seems entirely empty. Although the NRA sent out mailers making this claim, and many people still believe it today, Obama's stated position is quite different. According to his 2008 position papers, as reprinted on FactCheck.org, "Barack Obama believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms. He will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns." He is, however, in favor of "commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn't have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets." This is a far cray from the NRA claims that Obama wants to "ban use of firearms for home self defense" and "ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns." So much for the claims. The reality? In two years of legislation by the mostly-Democratic Congress under Obama's leadership, no attempt has been made to take away the average person's guns. Almost nothing appears of a list of active legislation in the Senate, and what has passed has been mostly gun-friendly, as an article in The Hill points out: "Quigley noted the 111th Congress has not debated closing the gun-show loophole or reauthorizing the assault weapons ban, which Obama promised to pursue on the presidential campaign trail. Instead, Democrats have passed gun-rights measures, including the “Protecting Gun Owners in Bankruptcy Act of 2010” and legislation that would allow guns in national parks and on Amtrak trains."
• Indoctrinate your children in school. Although the federal government does help to fund children's education, what this comprises is determined at the levels of the state and local school board, leading to frequent battles over the teaching of evolution, book bannings and the content of textbooks. When Present Obama addressed schoolchildren on a national basis for the first time, right-wingers fearfully kept their children him to protect them from the harmful effects of hearing what the President of the United States wanted to tell them. Obama's insidious message: stay in school and work hard. Shocking!
• Institute Sharia Law. Never happened. Never attempted.
• Steal elections with massive voter fraud. The Republican nominee in my Congressional district, Jesse Kelly, made a spurious claim last week that people are bused in from Mexico to commit voter fraud on behalf of Democrats. Aside from the small problem that they would have to already be registered to vote in the precinct and be able to show idea, there's the fact that it simply has not happened, according to Arizona's Republican Secretary of State, who called such rumors "a kind of urban legend": "As Arizona’s chief elections official, I take seriously any allegations of fraud in our election process. As soon as these accusations came to light, we got in contact with elections officials in Yuma County and across Arizona to determine if a fraudulent scheme was afoot. With our initial inquiry complete, I’m happy to report that these latest allegations of rampant registration fraud are without merit." Part and parcel with this local story are similar claims about ACORN (which not longer exists thanks to scapegoating and an entirely deceptive videotape) The New Black Panthers (just a couple of guys, apparently) and "at risk" districts which just happen to be populated by minorities and others likely to vote Democratic. At what point does poll-watching become intimidation? We may find out tomorrow, as Tea Party poll-watchers look for people they can accuse of voter fraud. Actual voter fraud cases, by the way, are exceedingly rare.
• Institute Death Panels to determine whether Grandma must die. The actual passage in the health care reform bill said simply that if you want to consult your doctor before making your own end-of-life decisions (i.e. a "living will"), insurance should cover the office visit. Ooh, scary!
• Put you in jail for not buying health insurance. There never was any such provision in any of the health care reform bills.
• Take away your freedom. Are you less free than two years ago? People have openly carried firearms at political rallies, shouted slurs at members of Congress and spat on them, and carried signs depicting Obama as Hitler, the Joker or a tribesman with a bone through the nose. Nobody's been taken to an internment or reeducation camp, or even prosecuted for such things.

Much of the argument on the Republican/Tea Party side this year is based on fear-mongering, trying to convince you that Obama is a scary foreigner who wants to hurt you, or at least cost you money, and that Muslims and Mexicans are all out to get you. The vast majority of the claims made, against them and against your particular Democratic candidate, are distortions and fabrications. Meanwhile, many of the Republican contenders are the most extreme they've been in decades, looking to privatize or "personalize" or even end Social Security, close down the EPA, resist food safety regulation (you have a personal taster, don't you?) and protect the Constitution by getting rid of amendments they don't like, such as the one that lets you vote for your Senator. Much of the Republican money machine this year is bankrolled by billionaires and corporate fat cats who know that Republicans will support their interests over those of the average person, and by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which takes millions in contributions from foreign and domestic corporations that outsource jobs as much as they possibly can. These folks want to scare you into voting against your own interests: your own safety, your own freedom, your own financial well-being. They want to convince you to value greed over fairness, "us" over "them," fear over facts.

Don't let fear and greed rule this election at the nation's expense. Vote Democrat.

Karen

Why So Sirio?

There is a street in my neighborhood that M.C. Escher would appreciate. Avenida Sirio intersects with this street four times on the right hand (west) side when you turn south on it from 22nd, four blocks in a row. I already knew this from the rare occasions when I have taken that particular back way home, and from the time, many years ago, when we were house-hunting and considered a home on one of the many pieces of Sirio. What I didn't know until today is that the street that crosses Sirio four times in rapid succession is also Avenida Sirio.

I don't know exactly how the street is laid out, or whether there's some minor variation of nomenclature that isn't reflected on the street signs as far as I can tell. I don't think I want to know. I prefer to think there is a minor space-time anomaly a mile from my house, to be passed through only by the one route known to be safe, past, so help me, the Young Explorers HQ.

Across Sirio from the Young Explorers on 22nd St. is the 22nd St. Baptist Church, not to be confused with the Craycroft Baptist Church, equidistant from my home in the opposite direction. I've been by the 22nd St. Baptist Church a zillion times in the past 15 years, but never had any cause to stop there until today.

For the first time in 15 years of voting in this precinct, unless I missed it in an off-year primary or bond issue, it was my polling place.

Outside Wheeler School in a previous primary

I had stopped at the local elementary school first, because I almost always vote there, at least on Election Day itself. Kids were getting out of school, and no election-related signs were up. Odds were that if the polling place wasn't that school, it was at the Assembly of God on Wilmot, or at the high school, or maybe, just maybe, at the bingo hall where I voted for Obama in the primary last year, the one with the address Google Maps insisted was north of Golf Links when it was actually half a mile south of Golf Links. Geography can be very strange around here, especially when I'm trying to vote! But on this occasion I went home and actually checked the Pima County Recorder's Office rather than guessing further, and made my way to 22nd and Sirio without falling off a map and into a wormhole.

The ballot is short this time, just Tucson City Council, one really bad proposition and several good ones. I went in expecting to vote for my Ward 6 Democrat, but there were three wards on the ballot. I had to ask whether I was supposed to vote in all three wards. I was. Should have remembered that from past elections!

Anyway, I'm safely from from that little adventure; and from replacing the dead battery on John's car, which I'd never driven before; from paying John's optometry and dental bills; and from issuing checks, meeting with Father Smith, helping Pat resolve a discrepancy in a deposit and sneaking into the church to listen to the substitute organist compose a new classical piece over at St. Michael's. And now, if my computer will just post this instead of crashing again as it did just now, I'll finish this entry and go read my Wrede novel.

Did you vote?

Karen

My Grandmother the Candidate

My grandmother picks strawberries at Windswept, circa 1950.

As far as I know, my maternal grandmother's only living relatives at this point are a cousin I've never met, my brother and myself. She was not an especially cuddly, doting grandmother, but I got along with her pretty well as a child. She was a bit of a rebel and an adventurer, a modern woman of the 1940s, more or less. I wish now I knew a bit more about her. She moved away from DeWitt, NY circa 1968-1970, just as I entered my teens, so we never really had anything like an adult conversation.

I was thinking about her today as I chatted in the dog park with a woman who was a feminist of the 1960s. She said she grew up watching 1940s films in which women went out and did things and had romances, unfettered by parents or children. Think Katherine Hepburn, but she named several other major actresses of the day, who "weren't especially pretty" but were strong, adult characters. That was the impression of adult life my new friend grew up with, only to encounter something very different when she got there herself. "I saw all my friends rushing into marriage and children," she said, "and it didn't seem right to me. That's supposed to happen at the end of the movie, not at the beginning." Welcome to the baby boom. My friend went her own way, traveled, had a career, and eventually got married. Twice.

Thinking about strong women of the 1940s, I tried to tell my friend about my grandmother, Flora D. Johnson, the first woman in Onondaga County to run for Congress. But I had my chronology all mixed up and couldn't keep straight what happened when. Tonight I looked it up, both on my own web pages and in other sources, including The New York Times. Here is what I know of her story:

The two Floras, circa 1940s.

Flora Missellier DuFour was born June 28, 1895 in Stratford, Connecticut, the daughter of Charles Edwin DuFour of New Haven (Jul 27 1867-Feb 6 1950) and Mary Adelaide Beardsley (dates unknown). She married Ambrose Alexis Johnson of Scranton PA (Sep 12 1891 - Aug 18 1950), with whom she had her two children, Flora M. Johnson and my mom, Ruth Anne Johnson (originally Ruth Louise Johnson). As a small child my mom, who looked a bit like Shirley Temple at the time, tap danced in the street and was given money by strangers, much to her parents' mortification.

Ambrose Johnson owned a small machine tool company, for which the elder Flora was Vice President. The two daughters also helped out in the office. There may have been trouble in the family even then, though, because I'm not sure Ambrose was around when Flora and her daughters lived at Windswept, a farm in Tully, NY. Mom told me that sometimes other farmers would bring them vegetables to eat. Flora and her daughters picked their own strawberries. I gather that my mom and grandmother didn't get along very well, but I only have the vaguest idea why.

My grandfather, Ambrose Johnson. As he was dying of cancer,
he tried to bribe my mom not to get married.

A member of the Democratic Party, Flora ran for the Congress of the United States in 1940, the first woman in the history of Onondaga County, NY to do so. She was successful up to a point, becoming the Democratic nominee for Representative at Large. According to The New York Times, Eleanor Roosevelt was scheduled to attend a reception and tea at the Hotel Astor in her honor on September 24, 1940. But Flora lost in the general election, reportedly due to personal scandal - which is to say, the local newspapers reported she was having an affair. She got a divorce from Ambrose (a Roman Catholic) in Reno in 1943, and in 1944 she married Thomas Ballantyne. Ballantyne had this second marriage annulled in 1948, and the court ruled she was still married to Johnson. Ambrose Johnson died of cancer two years later. Flora retained the name Ballantyne on correspondence for decades thereafter, but finished her life as Flora D. Johnson.

Flora in her officer's uniform, probably well after the War.

It must have been shortly after her run for Congress that my grandmother enlisted, becoming an officer (a WAVE or a WAC, I don't remember which) in World War II. After the war she was a licensed real estate broker in Dewitt, NY (1950s-1960s). My Aunt Flora, a civil engineer, lived briefly in Guam, got pregnant, came home to live with her mother and gave the baby, my cousin Vereene, up for adoption in 1954. (I'm not sure of the order of events, where my Aunt Flora got pregnant or when she moved in with her mother.) At some point after that, my aunt worked on the Interstate Highway System.

Once she was single (and possibly before that) my grandmother frequently visited Europe, especially Venice, where she once shared a flooded hotel with playwright Thornton Wilder. She brought back a fair amount of Venetian glass and jewelry, very little of which remains among my mom's effects. Sometimes my aunt was with her on her overseas adventures.

I remember the two Floras as living together at the end of a street in DeWitt, near Clark Real Estate and not far from Grandmother's favorite place to eat, Howard Johnson's. I remember visiting overnight once, and Grandmother made me lumpy Cream of Wheat, which I loved. (I upset my mom asking for lumpy Cream of Wheat thereafter.) For Christmas one year she gave me a drink and wet doll, which I didn't care about because that was the year I got Chatty Baby. Around 1965 she gave me her 1941 printing of Winnie the Pooh and an 1868 book called The Cricket's Friends. She kept dog biscuits for the cocker spaniel next door, which tied me to a tree one day by running around and around while I cried out for help. She took me to Tully once to pick strawberries on what remained of her land there, which by then was heavily overgrown. On the way back we ate at a diner, possibly my favorite restaurant at the time, the Orville Barbecue. That's when she introduced me to ice tea. And that's pretty much the extent of my memories of her.

The two Floras moved to Fairfax, VA in the late 1960s or possibly 1970s, where Aunt Flora continued her career until health issues forced her to retire. They moved to Cocoa Beach, FL (1977-early 1980s). My grandmother had a series of pacemaker operations in the 1970s. She died in Florida on July 6, 1984.

I have questions now that can't be answered by paying $3.95 each for PDF copies of old newspaper articles. Was she a New Deal Democrat? It seems likely, and good for her. It doesn't sound as though she was much cut out to be a wife and mother, although the two Floras got along well as mature adults. What was the issue between her and my mom? Why did she risk a seat in the House of Representatives by getting involved with another man? Why didn't she and Ambrose get along? When the the family live at Windswept, and was Ambrose with them at the time?

I guess I'll never know.

Karen

I Remember Ethel

Sometime in the last 24 hours, I dreamed about Ethel. It was just for a second, just long enough for me to realize who she was. Then she walked away, head held high.

I probably wouldn't have remembered that snippet of dream were it not for the fact that Merry Maids has a sign up announcing that they're hiring. I considered for a moment whether I'd be willing to wash windows and vacuum floors just to get employed again. Then I saw that the pay offered is hardly more than I'm getting in unemployment now.

Ethel was a maid - or, more accurately, a housekeeper. Within a year or two of our moving to Manlius, NY in 1961, my Mom hired her to come in twice a week and clean our house. She did laundry and vacuuming, dishes and dusting. And when I was little and not in school, she made me Campbell's soup and bologna sandwiches for lunch. I think that when she started, she was 28 years old. Her favorite tv show was The Edge of Night.

We didn't get along well, especially as I grew older. It wasn't because she was the only African American I knew back then (not that that term existed yet). It was because she found that the most efficient was to clean my room was to throw my stuff away. Once I wrote on an envelope, "Do not throw away." She threw it away. There was money in it. I got in the habit of going through the trash cans in the garage on Tuesdays and Fridays.

I should have been cleaning my own room, and I should have negotiated with her rather than resenting her. As it was, I probably wasn't very respectful. She called me a "b---h" when I was too young to know the word. When I was a little older, I tried to get her fired. Not good. My mom was never going to fire her in any case. Mom's health wasn't great - she had lingering effects from polio encephalitis - and she really needed the help.

And yet, even back then, with no experience of black people beyond this woman I didn't like very much, I saw that bigotry wasn't confined to the people on tv, the people down South who opposed "forced busing" and the man who killed Martin Luther King. I saw that even my mom, the Johnson Democrat from Stratford, Connecticut, had her lapses and her biases. It made me question my own attitudes, and fight to be fair-minded. And when we finally did terminate Ethel's employment, because my parents were divorcing and my mom was moving to Florida, I cried and wished her well.

And here is where I'm going with this seemingly pointless reminiscence. I would like to think that 45 years later, a young woman like Ethel would have a much broader track of opportunity than the woman I sort-of knew. Today's Ethel should have the same shot as anyone else of a decent education, and of a job that doesn't involve cleaning up after a suburban family of professionals. Given the same advantages I had, today's Ethel could probably be a suburban professional herself. And I hope that even the original Ethel's life improved considerably after the day we said goodbye.

Are we there yet? The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States points to the answer, that yes, she can. But as far as we've come, we still have some distance to go. Last night, NPR ran a memorable photo of a hotel ballroom in North Carolina, site of an abortive GOP victory party. The signs for Elizabeth Dole (shame on her!) were still up, but the Republicans had left. "But as Obama's speech came on the TV in the hotel ballroom, about a dozen hotel employees gathered to watch -- all of them African-American."

There will always be people cleaning rooms and vacuuming floors, and making considerably less money than other people with better jobs. But we should never have reason to assume that the people at the party are white, non-Hispanic and Protestant, and the people doing the cleaning are African American in some parts of the country, Hispanic in others. We really should be beyond that by now.

And it is getting better, much better. Last night's election proved that. The smart, thoughtful, even-tempered Harvard guy didn't fit the old profile for the job of President of the United States, but he was the better candidate and he won anyway. The old barriers are falling. And that's also why I'm sure that the passage of Proposition 8 in California, of Prop 102 in Arizona and whatever the equivalent measure was in Florida is only a temporary setback. The tide of history is pushing us forward, and a single wave of bigotry can't hold it back for long.

Karen

Election Day Vignettes

I should go to bed, but I need to get all this down first. I'll probably add to it throughout the day.

Scene One: I voted!
(see also Your Voting Stories (Nov. 4 11am Update) at Huffington Post)

I was too nervous to go to bed last night, and when I finally tried, the dogs hogged my side of the bed and I couldn't lie down. So I slept on the couch, for about an hour. John woke me at 6:30 AM. I got dressed (carefully avoiding any political apparel), told the excited dogs they weren't going anywhere, and got in the car. It was 6:56 AM, 58 degrees.

Early morning voters cross the parking lot at Wheeler Elementary.

The drive to Wheeler Elementary took two minutes. The walk across the half-full parking lot took another two minutes. One woman was walking back to her car, smiling, and three other people behind her chatted as they returned to theirs. The first woman told me that the wait was "not too bad," in a tine that implied it wasn't bad at all. Ahead of me, a man chatted briefly with a poll worker by the door. I overheard the word "antsy." Then he went in. I said, "I think everyone is feeling antsy today." Then I went inside as well.

This serene scene helped to calm Election Day jitters.

Although the Tucson Citizen had reported that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona and the FBI would be on the lookout here for voter fraud, there was no sign of anyone in uniform, any security, anyone the slightest bit intimidating. Everyone was cheerful and friendly. The only change in the set up compared to past years as an extra table with the sign "start here," which handled the ID checking. After I fumbled for my driver's license I was given a slip with the number 83, and went to sign in next to my name. The next person to arrive did not have the proper ID, and was sent home to get some utility bills to verify his address. The alternative was a provisional ballot, although the poll worker didn't use that term. She did explain that it would be sealed and opened later and encouraged him to bring in two bills instead. "I'll be back," he promised, after politely explaining the level of inconvenience this would entail. One of the poll workers told me there had been only four people so far with an ID or registration problem.

After about a three minute wait for a polling booth, I set down my newly acquired ballot inside the blue plastic walls and picked up an uncapped felt tip pen. I found myself almost in tears as I filled in the first oval on the form, next to the name OBAMA. It took about eight minutes to fill out the rest, referring to my sample ballot a couple of times on the lesser races and propositions. In all there were 16 races (six with only one candidate, one with no candidates), nine propositions including the anti-gay marriage Prop 102 (I voted against that, and all but two of the others), and 21 judges to dump or retain (I gave them all a Yes to retain, including the judge for whom I was a juror last year).

Then I turned in the ballot, got my sticker and left. On the way out, I got to tell someone else how short the wait was. Total time, from leaving the house to pulling back into my driveway: 20 minutes. If only everyone's voting experience could be this pleasant and trouble-free!

Scene Two: Drive.

Over the past few days, the question of whether more volunteers are needed to drive people to the polls has yield a constantly fluctuating answer. Just in case, and because I don't want to make any more phone calls, I planned to offer myself and the Eagle for this task. Last night I emptied half the trash from the car, including the worn out seat covers. This morning after voting, I reported the experience to HuffPo, tried briefly to sleep, changed into an Obama shirt and went back out. I sprayed the car with disinfectant and Febreeze to get rid of that stale doggie smell, and then treated myself to breakfast from McDonald's for the first time in two months.

Overheard at McDonald's:
Elderly Man: Happy days are here again!
Elderly Woman: We'll see.

Then I was off to a car wash, where they offered me a voter's discount on the "The Works," and a new windshield on Allstate's dime due to some minor pitting. (I said I'd think about the latter.) It took me a while to finish cleaning out the car, after which they vacuumed and washed it. (They did a very good job on the vacuuming, an adequate job on the windshield and such.) Several of the guys working on it spoke enthusiastically of Obama ("That's what I'm taking about!") when they saw my shirt.

Next stop: Pima County Democratic Headquarters. I thought I saw the place full yesterday, when for the first time they were using a parking lot across the street. Today that lot was full, and the lot for the VFW hall (or whatever it is) was also getting Democrats parking - and not only because it was a polling place. A woman stood on the sidewalk with flags and Gabrielle Giffords signs, the latter of which have proliferated overnight in my part of town. Someone was telling her how far away she needed to stay from the polling place as I walked by.

Inside, the main room was busier than I had ever seen it, by far. A tv was on, all the tables were set up, and people filled nearly every seat. One man was telling someone that he was waiting to use a land line, because "I don't have enough minutes left on my cell phone."

I checked in up front about driving, and was directed to the right person. There was a sign up sheet by the door, along with a bowl of ID tags to wear when driving, so people would know you're legit. The coordinator had me sign in with my name, phone number and car details, but said they had plenty of people and only one request to that point. Someone said it was more likely people would call for a ride later in the afternoon, and there was general agreement that maybe I should sleep between now and then. I wrote by my phone number to call if needed, and left.

On the way to the HQ I had passed several polling places, and didn't see any lines or other problems outside any of them. Coming back, I saw that a church whose sign on Sunday seemed to cryptically support religious right candidates is a polling place today. I got to wondering whether the Eastside Assembly of God, which has a big banner supporting the anti-gay marriage amendment, is also a polling place.

A rather partisan polling place. Sort of.

It is. The "Yes! 102" sign is still hanging proudly from the church's roof, and there are a few other signs scattered around. I'm pretty sure it's legal; the banner is supporting a (very bad, bigoted) cause, not a candidate, and the actual polling place is not in that particular building.

Behind the church, the Activity Center is the actual poll site.

The actual voting is behind the church at their Activity Center, where I've voted in a few primaries and shopped at at least one rummage sale. As I turned the car around and snapped a few shots, I saw a man moving a political sign a little further from that building.

Yeah, that's much better.

Here's where the sign ended up. Again, I'm reasonably sure it's legal; it's not the same thing as a minister telling the congregation to vote for a particular candidate. But I have to tell you, it rubs me the wrong way. This is the same church that competes for my trick or treaters with their Fall Festival.

Scene Three: Listen

Me on Twitter: Slept 4 hours. Guess they don't need me to drive people to the polls. Do I dare take the dogs to the dog park, or will I stay by tv? Dogs! about 6 hours ago (5:19 PM) from web

Me on Twitter: Bought a $5 radio to listen to @nprpolitics in the car and at the dog park earlier. My car radio shorted out weeks ago. about 3 hours ago (8:24 PM) from web

Scene Four: Watch

Me on Twitter: Can't concentrate on tv and computer at the same time, so online world being neglected by me for now. PA! Ohio! NM! AZ too close to call! about 3 hours ago (8:22 PM) from web

I've mostly watched MSNBC all night, occasionally switching to KVOA for local results. Giffords and Grijalva are both winning (yay!) and so far, 102 is passing (boo!). My stepmother worked for Obama in NC, and it frustrates me that they still haven't called that state for Obama. I also want AZ to have a closer percentage, even if Obama doesn't win it. There's still a lot of southern AZ to count, as late as 11 PM. It could still happen.

Scene Five: HE DID IT!

Me on Twitter: HE DID IT! Per MSNBC about 2 hours ago (9:01 PM)

When MSNBC called the race, I cried. I hugged my husband. I hugged my dog. Obama did it. He really did it. And we helped, everyone who voted, blogged, made calls, sent emails, went door to door etc. Dirty tricks were attempted, but could not carry the day.

Me on Twitter: @BarackObama Congratulations! I have never felt so honored to be able to vote for a particular candidate. All the best for your presidency! about 2 hours ago (9:16 PM) from web in reply to BarackObama

I was reasonably pleased with McCain's concession speech, not so much with his crowd. Loved the scene at Grant Park, and Obama's speech. John and I told Cayenne that Obama was pro-dog, since he's getting the kids a puppy.

From: Barack Obama
To: Karen Blocher
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 10:49 pm
Karen --

I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.

We just made history.

And I don't want you to forget how we did it.

You made history every single day during this campaign -- every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it's time for change.

I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.

We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I'll be in touch soon about what comes next.

But I want to be very clear about one thing...

All of this happened because of you.

Thank you,

Barack

A new world begins today. All the stress of trying to get Obama elected is over. Now the pressure is on President Elect Obama, and the people he chooses to enter the White House with him. There are plenty of serious problems to be dealt with that affect all of us, and months yet before he can put his hand on the tiller. The new Congress should help. The rest of us who supported him want to help, but I'm not sure how. Other Americans will disagree with every move--until it works! And the fearful contingent may eventually notice when he shows himself not to be a socialist Muslim terrorist dictator. I hope so, anyway!

It's going to be interesting.

Karen

Saying It Doesn't Make It So.

Dusk during the debate.

I need more time to digest before I have much to say about tonight's debate. Part of this is due to an odd disconnect in the way my mind works. When I read something that is supposedly factual, I am constantly analyzing it for plausibility, internal inconsistencies, lapses in logic and variance with previously established facts as I understand them. But when I hear a speech, even as part of a debate, I'm a bit more gullible. Even politicians whose positions I abhor acquire a certain Grima Wormtongue quality when delivering their prepared remarks, and sometimes I come very close to buying into the truthiness of it all. (By the way, although I don't watch his show, Stephen Colbert deserves the thanks of a grateful nation for two highly useful words, "truthiness" and "wikiality.") It sometimes takes me a while afterward to apply the same kinds of standards to the spoken word as to the written one. I say "same kind" because they can't quite be the same actual standards. Everyone misspeaks, stumbles over an occasional spoken word, and says things off the cuff that don't quite make logical sense. A certain amount of slack must be cut.

Homemade signs at Pima County Democratic HQ

So listening to George W. Bush the other night giving his economics speech, I had to grudgingly admit he did a pretty good job of explaining the situation we're in, if not necessarily exactly how the bailout will help. And listening to the debate tonight - on tv at home, in the car, at Democratic HQ, and finally in various post-debate wrap-ups - I found myself sometimes agreeing with what John McCain was saying. As did Barack Obama, it turned out, who graciously acknowledged when McCain came out with something similar to Obama's own policies. And no, I don't count it as a weakness to acknowledge when your opponent is on the right track. That is intellectual honesty and consensus building, not weakness and deference to the superior debater or candidate.

Yes we can eat cake! (But I didn't)

But McCain wasn't gracious in return, and maybe that's why the Wormtongue effect didn't work very well tonight. Much has been made already of McCain's failure to look at his opponent throughout the debate, beyond a fleeting glance or two in his general direction. It's difficult to be charming and ungracious at the same moment.

Maybe that's why McCain's frequent claims that Obama "just doesn't get it" hit my ears as a desperate and condescending lie rather than a sincere attempt to point out a genuine weakness in his opponent. Obama consistently showed a wide-ranging knowledge of foreign policy issues and the major players involved, and was even able to connect the dots between the individual conflicts and the strategic disadvantages of being dependent on foreign oil. Meanwhile, McCain showed a similar level of knowledge at times, but stumbled over a few names, got a few facts wrong, and stated no clear policy of his own while frequently distorted Obama's. When your opponent just proved to anyone who is listening that he has a strong working knowledge of the subject, it seems dishonest and pointless to claim otherwise a second or two later. Say that you disagree with your opponent's assessments, and here's why your opponent's ideas won't work. Don't try to pretend that the disagreement stems from ignorance, not when the other candidate is clearly demonstrating the opposite. Whom was McCain trying to convince? Maybe, maybe, sound bytes of his accusation will be believed by people who rely on such things, and will never hear what was said immediately before or after. But those are the people who already believe the ignorance and inexperience claim. To everyone else, each repetition just made McCain look more petty and desperate, and more as though he's the one who doesn't "get it."

Dog park sunset, Thursday. We didn't get there Friday.

Between my near all-nighter last night, volunteering this afternoon and a bit of unseasonable rain, I didn't manage to get Pepper and Cayenne to the dog park today. But the dogs, and a certain cat, were very much on my mind. Having consulted with Carly over permission and what photo of Carly's to use, I now present the Elvis edition of the Cool Cats for Barack button:

And this next one was requested at the campaign office, but I figure there may be a person or two here who is interested:

Here's another tweak. There was a concern that Tuffy on the Barkers for Barack buttons looked too much like a German shepherd, a breed some people associate with racist attacks and police brutality. I kind of hate to see my poor little mixed chow caught in such a blanket condemnation. Nevertheless, I redid that button with Cayenne pictured instead. Here's the post I prefer for it:

And here's the main one the campaign will be using:

We can't leave Pepper out, can we? The Pima County campaign for Obama can, but we can't:

As with last night's buttons designs, today's additions call all be seen and downloaded on my Obama gallery on Picasa. Share and enjoy!

Karen

The Romance of Campaigning

Because of the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot last night, I don't think I remembered to tell you what I was going to do today. Let's catch up with a snippet from my Obama blog, Outpost Tucson:

Oh, drat, their site is down again.

Well, anyway.

I wrote recently that being shy (and adverse to confrontation, although I didn't mention that), I'm not up for making phone calls and going door to door for Barack Obama, or for anyone else. I figured my only contributions to the cause would therefore be the little bits of money I managed to donate before my unemployment made it impossible, plus any blogging I'm inspired to do on the subject.

But on Monday afternoon, I got a call from a volunteer, asking me to volunteer. When I told her I wasn't comfortable with making phone calls or ringing doorbells (the latter activity is called "walking and talking," or a "walk and talk," apparently), she suggested I could do office work. "Can you do data entry?"

I told her that as an accountant, half of my professional life involves data entry. (As much as accounting processes should be automated by now, you'd be surprised how much raw typing is involved sometimes, or copy-pasting.)

"Are you familiar with Excel?"

I think I laughed. She immediately said, "That's probably a stupid question, isn't it?"

Anyway, bottom line is, I agreed to come in and do data entry from 1 PM to 4 PM on Tuesday through Friday of this week. I didn't commit beyond that, in case lightning strikes and I get a job.

So today I found my way to an odd little discontinuous stretch of 1st St. behind Speedway. I had been a little surprised that there even was an Obama HQ in Tucson, since it's John McCain's constituency and the new statewide Obama office in Phoenix was just announced in email last week, with no mention of a Tucson one. When I actually arrived at the place, though, all was revealed. It was the Pima County Democratic Headquarters. There were so many campaign signs on the wall outside for so many different races that I looked them over three times before I found the Obama one. It was buried in something like the third row down, the smallest sign.

The table I worked at, in a room with many campaign signs.

Inside, though, it quickly became clear that much of the activity was centered on getting Obama elected. I found myself speaking to several people and being gradually conducted counterclockwise around an entire rectangle of rooms with tables, a few cubicles and a couple actual offices. I filled in a form, and they hoped to put me to work updating lists of volunteers. One problem: they didn't have a computer available for me to use.

No problem. I drove home and brought back mine.

I ended up working until just after 5 PM, sharing a folding table with several other volunteers doing similar work. One of them joked that we were a table of Old White Women (which in my mind, I immediately abbreviated as OWW). I refrained from mentioning that I'm not even close to 60 years old. I'm not sure I got as much work done as I should have, because of a very minor learning curve, a few technical issues, and (mostly) because we were enjoying each other's company a little too much. I'll do better tomorrow.

The guy in charge was smart and funny and appreciative. He said that the retro shirt I was wearing reminded him of Good 'N' Plenty. From now on, that's my Good 'N' Plenty shirt. He said something about some people not wanting to do volunteer work once they learn it's "not glamorous. It's appreciated, but not glamorous." Once people find out it's not about getting to meet George Clooney, he said, they don't want to do it.

I said that it might not be glamorous, but there's a certain romantic idealism to it. I mentioned my childhood friend Joel, who was working for Eugene McCarthy's election back when we were in sixth grade. I didn't give details, but here in the blog I'll tell you that I never thought I could get involved in social or political causes the way Joel did and and still does. But I admired him for doing in, and still do. The coordinator said that McCarthy came to Tucson in the 1980s for a poetry festival.

I see Rose Mofford, and Janet Napolitano, and...!

In the front of the HQ are books and framed photos. The photos are of past and present Democratic presidents and governors and so on. Three of them are of JFK: a portrait, an enlarged photo of him with two men I don't recognize, and a 1960 campaign poster. I don't want to call the area with the campaign poster a shrine, but in a secular way it almost is, at least for me. As a lifelong democrat who actually remembers the day JFK was shot, I was impressed to be working in a room decked out with vintage Kennedy stuff, and nearly 50 years of party history.

Drat. I messed up with the flash.

It's probably facile to compare JFK with Barack Obama, but I'm going to do it anyway. In 1960, Kennedy had to deal with mistrust on the part of some people because he was *gasp* a Roman Catholic. Obama is carrying a similar burden several times over, as a black man with a mixed parentage that I think was still illegal in some places in 1960. If that's not enough, xenophobic idiots get all aflutter about his Muslim-sounding middle name, and accuse him of being secretly part of the one religion it's socially acceptable to hate, at least in some quarters. Throw in an anti-intellectual charge of elitism and other spurious claims, and you have an effective bit of what John calls "hate porn."

I bet these guys were inspired by their candidate too.

But if Obama has an exaggerated version of Kennedy's challenge as a member of a mistrusted minority, he also has some of Kennedy's strengths. He's smart and articulate and funny, with great rhetorical skills. He has relative youth, charisma, and a rare combination of optimism, idealism and pragmatism. Like Kennedy, Obama inspires others to do for their country, to believe they can do more than they ever thought they could accomplish. From what I saw today, I'm just one of millions of people who are inspired and enthusiastic and accomplishing things after decades of depression and disappointment and cynicism.

Will it all translate to a win in November, or fall before the constant onslaught of lies and hate porn, and all come to nothing? Can we overcome both open and hidden bigotry, ignorance and greed, honest disagreement, voter fraud, deliberate falsehood and reckless disregard for the truth? If he's elected, can we expect policies to be made and laws enacted that start to make things better than they are now?

Okay, so it's not a certainty. Far from it.

But yes we can.

Karen

References

This sign outside my polling place always amuses me.

I had a pretty good day today. I was feeling a little depressed about being a week away from unemployment, but then my boss offered to pick up lunch from Baggin's for me. We even shared a joke about the name of the sandwich I ordered, Unforgettable. The punchline is I honestly misremembered whether the Unforgettable was the turkey with avocado and cream cheese, the turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce, or the egg salad. It turned out to be my least favorite of the three, but it was good.

During the afternoon I also finished my current reconciliation project, saw a variety of butterflies (I'm getting rather fond of them, despite previous claims to the contrary), and best of all, got a call from a recruiter. Over the weekend, I had updated my resume and uploaded it to five sites. This recruiter saw it, and decided to try again to connect with me. In the past, our timing has been terrible: she tends to call me right after I accept a job elsewhere. Not this time. I'm meeting with her the day after this job ends.

What makes this especially good news us that she has several permanent positions in mind to send me out for. I've come to the conclusion that I hate temping. I never feel like I'm quite part of the team. I'm just the temp, peering through a window at a happy family I'll never be part of. Job security is poor, benefits are problematic (was I eligible for the open enrollment that ended August 31st, which I found out about on August 31st, when the plan administrator was closed?), and just when I overcome my shyness enough to get to know a few people, the job is over. I would happily continue to work with the company in Oro Valley (I forget the silly pseudonym I gave it for blogging purposes), but I can't and that's that. And bouncing around like this, I start to feel as if I can't hold down a job. I know it's not my fault that First Magnus folded and the RV dealership cut staff in the wake of low sales and high gas prices, but it feels as if I'm a bit of a jinx!

So I'm thrilled at the idea of trying out for a permanent job. That's exactly what I want, to find a good company and stay there for 20 years.

And here is where I need your help. Not everyone's help, but help from, let's say, three or four of you who consider me a personal friend. This recruiter wants me to provide at least six references, a mixture of professional and personal ones. It's getting to be too long ago for my UoP instructors, and my ex-bosses are mostly all scattered to the winds, or dead. So I need to fill things out with a couple of you folks! If you've known me, online or both online and off, for at least three years, not just as that blogger with the dogs but on a personal level, then I'd appreciate you serving as a reference. (I should just email you, but I thought it would be more fun to blog the request. Please email me if you're interested in helping out.)

Proof of citizenship, sample ballot & shredded seat cover

Wheeler School: my favorite polling station.

This evening I voted in the Democratic primary for local and statewide offices. I was enthusistically greeted by the people working the election, probably because they were having a slow day. They asked why I took pictures outside. I told them it's a tradition with me to document that I voted by taking pictures of the signs. Someone offered to take a picture of me voting, but I declined. Fun fact: I voted for Paul Newman for Corporation Commission, because he's pro-solar. Last year I voted for Dean Martin for some other statewide office - treasurer, I think.

And tonight I watched some Quantum Leap for the first time in a couple of years. I also took the Seventh Doctor's umbrella away from Cayenne, and later caught her chewing a California Adventure map. Bad dog! Since I scolded her, she's been avoiding me. Boo hoo!

Oh, and I doubled the length of the Wikipedia entry about Richard Wilson, a fairly obscure but award-winning science fiction writer who was an acquaintance of mine in college. He worked for Syracuse University as its press officer, and I found out tonight that he was the main person who convinced a slew of major science fiction writers to donate manuscripts, galleys, correspondence etc. to the S.U. research library. (I was once shown a 1950s fanzine donated by Frederick Pohl, and a color drawing of Vincent Price donated by Forrest J Ackerman.) So I wrote about that.

With references, of course.

Karen