Be the change you want to see.

(I get to use this icon again)

Did you cry during the inauguration? I did, big shuddery breaths and all, and I've been doing it off and on all week.

Monday was a long effortful hike which my body needed badly.

Tuesday I got my Second Opinion with the Kaiser psychiatrist, and she said yes, I think you do have ADHD, and offered to try me on Strattera.

Wednesday we got up early enough to watch the Inauguration, and I cried a lot

Yesterday (Thursday) we had couple's therapy and I got to say a couple of things that have weighed on me my whole life. Jeff shared some things he said he would like to change, so there were lots of Feelings, and he kept me company while I had them.

Today's been cleaning up cat pee AND ALSO finding out I have a viral post on The Wellerman and the Worker's Songs folksong Tradition, so now I'm going out to find more good ones to add to the post.

Eventful goddamn week.

<3

My election team was wonderful this year. Everybody was really competent, friendly upbeat. We were sharing little conveniences with each other. Ciara had dental floss one day that I needed it and I had eye drops for Maria... If we needed to lift or move something, whoever was handy pitched in.

We did set-up Friday from 12-6. Opened the polls Saturday 9-5 (worked 8-6), same on Sunday and Monday. Saturday and Sunday were a little boring 😴 with few voters to help. Monday started to get a little bit busy and interesting 😉...

But there was no way to predict Super Tuesday in the Stanford University Voting Center.

Dear GODS.

We got to work at 6, preparing to open the polls at 7. We opened on time.
A flood of people came in. And just. Never. Stopped. Coming.

We had a tiny lull around 10 am. I grabbed half a bagel with cream cheese and a short cup of coffee which Stanford had kindly provided us, and that was the only break aside from the quickest potty breaks, till Nancy came over and told me to take a half hour lunch at 3:15.

Aside from that, all any of us had time to do ALL DAY till 9 pm was drink water and then process more voters. It was INTENSE.

Reflecting on it now I wish I had taken up one of the two voters who offered to get us food or coffee. I'm realizing that I was lucky to be at the station where I was standing, because I could take 2 minutes to walk over to the kitchenette, fill our water bottles, and redistribute them to my 3 or 4 person team.

The check in station workers (the e-poll iPad users) were all sat down. I bet they didn't get a chance to run over and fill water bottles. Dillon and June were the only ones at their tabulator and provisional ballot dropoff stations, they couldn't leave unless they were relieved.

😟

We needed more staff. We needed line wranglers. We needed signage. We needed to be able to eat food and take bathroom breaks.

Here's my short script from the touchscreen voting machines activation station:
* calls name off printed sticker tag
* gets provisional envelope (from about 50% of our voters)
* Loads voter card with precinct and political party so the touchscreen ballot will include the appropriate races
* pulls secrecy sleeve for the other 50% of voters, attaches voter's sticker tag to their envelope for provisional voter
* Explains how to use the voter card to activate the touchscreen voting machines, and how to take the ballot that prints out afterwards to the tabulator to actually cast your vote.

We got so busy and simultaneously so single-minded and exhausted that three of us took turns on paper ballot printing, touchscreen activation, and explaining to the voter, the last step I described just now.

Me, I can do the describing, or the data entry, for a good long time. But switching back and forth between them is COSTLY, cognitively. And we'd been on our feet, driving ourselves to work through our breaks and dinner. I had to swap with Wendy or Emily and just do the describing for awhile once my eyes started crossing at the laptop... We kinda did play tag there for several hours in the afternoon into the evening.

Sometimes I got a minute to go collect the voter cards from the tabulator stations, because we only had 20 or so and we'd process enough voters to be close to running out. Same with the sharpies we were handing out for the paper ballots.

We had a couple of grim panics on Election Day when the printer had a paper jam or ran out, because the vote center leads were required to switch or add paper.

At the end of each night we had to count up how many sheets were left in each printer, as part of the voting numbers confirmation.

It's taken me two and a half days, a workout, and several doses of acetaminophen (and one of Voltaran to my swollen ankle and knee on Wednesday night at bedtime) to feel more or less back to myself.

When I got home Tuesday night I could not actually eat very much. We'd had pizza waiting for us (maybe from the ROV?) when the last voter finished at 9 pm. That helped some. That and cola or fruit would have been AMAZING. But at least we did have pizza.

I finally got home round 11pm after we locked up all the stuff we were legally required to (iPads, laptops, tabulator brains, and the remaining printer paper for the ballots) and sent the ROV couriers off with all the ballots and reports.

I couldn't even start falling asleep till 1230 am... And had adrenaline dreams all night Tuesday night.

Wednesday was only a couple of hours to finish exhaustedly breaking down the voting center and packing up all the supplies. Once we finished, We all hung out together for an extra 30 or 40 minutes, some of us, just enjoying chatting.

That part was nice. I mean, the rest of our time was so busy and productive, and the voters were almost all super patient and nice, but that little bit of social contact Wednesday late morning once we were done, soothed some of the ragged edges in me after the fuckin' MARATHON we ran.

Let's review shall we:

Friday: setup noon to 6. Our team was: Nancy and Maria, leads. Ciara the trainer and subject matter expert. Me, Wendy, Dillon, June, Jeanie, blonde Nancy, Craig, Silvia, (I'm missing someone's name). And a rotating staff of incredible student volunteers, a total of six over the six days we worked there.

The county employees union had just called a strike, but Registrar of Voters department was declared exempt from the strike due to the crucial role of making the election happen. Our supplies didnt arrive till nearly 3, but we made quick work of setup and arranging all the things we needed.

Saturday: worked from 8-6, two fifteen minutes breaks and one hour lunch. Polls open from 9-5.
Sunday: same as Saturday, still slow, only trickles of voters. We all got our breaks and lunch.
Monday: about same as Sunday, but a few light flows of voters, made me think that Tuesday might actually offer some interesting challenge.

Tuesday: AVALANCHE OF VOTERS, CONSTANTLY WORKING BETWEEN 6 AM AND 9:30/10 PM.

Wednesday. Jeff made me breakfast before I had to go back in at 9, because I'd asked him to, the night before. A light load at Stanford, wrapping up the voting station for pick-up. Done by 12. Fond farewells. Wendy (my new friend) & I went for lunch at my favorite Mexican place and talked for over two hours.
Home by 3. Sacked out in a nap till 7. Found more food (Mac and cheese with sliced sausage and tomato) read on the internet till bedtime. Borked my sleep schedule with the nap...

Borked my food schedule on Election Day, and severely overworked my body
With (counts) yeahhhhh 16 hours straight of work with one half an hour food break. More than half of that 16 hours is overtime. I'm quite curious about how the math on that is going to go.

Recovering. Mostly recovered by now. Scars still a bit sore.from Tuesday's extreme overwork, but I'm good.

And now?
Now I believe that I CAN DO ANYTHING.
LOOK AT WHAT I DID, TOGETHER WITH THAT TEAM. I think we processed 1200-1500 voters, that's what Wendy thought she heard Nancy and Maria say.

My body, my mind,my team effort, OUR team effort. Ye gods.

I don't say this, but I am in AWE.

(Now I just have to finish my drawing class homework for tomorrow at 10 am)

5: Laboratory

I'm so angry today, and disappointed.
Tempted to make some hackneyed reference
To the Laboratory of Democracy
That America is supposed to be
But the time machine struck land
November 9, 2016
And now we live in the alternate timeline.
And this ain't the GOOD timeline.

wow. Busy fuckin' month, actually.

i started September with Burning Man and ended September with a flight home after a week in new york.

in between all that personal stuff (packing and unpacking, making memories and food and friends) the USA exploded again

these hearings for rage flailing alcoholic brett kavanaugh have got me and a lot of other people triggered AF.

the ONLY good thing about it is how everyone is actually talking about sexual assault, microaggressions, and shit like the gendered language and gendered biases a lot of us have never examined thoroughly before now.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/catherine-hardwicke-broke-records-with-‘twilight’-then-hollywood-labeled-her-‘difficult’

^^^ one article i just read where gender bias and gendered language ... shit i don't even really have the words for THIS. Prevented a qualified director from other jobs she was PRETTY DAMN FUCKING QUALIFIED FOR. So that the jobs could all get given to men.

so women (& other non-men) are finally looking at and expressing their rage. over a lifetime of bullshit that's been dumped on them. and the good men are listening.

But a lot of men are being dicks about everything and trying to sweep this tidal wave of uncovered feeling, back into the sea.

*smirk* Good luck with that boys! hah

I did not have the language to talk about my own sexual assault when i was 21. I didn't even realize it WAS a sexual assault, a violation of my no, an intentional boundary breach, for almost a year afterwards.

my college had a Take Back The Night rally. this was fall of 1991.

I remember some fuckin dudebros. Our chant as we marched was "whatever we wear, where ever we go, yes means yes and no means no!"

the fuckin dudebros yell back from the shadows, "no means yes, yes means anal!"
*fuming, 27 years later*

Our basic assumptions are DIFFERENT AS FUCK. Because "Patriarchy? you're SOAKING IN IT!"

i have a lot, a LOT of feelings about all of this shit. Kavanaugh is being brought face to face with his own privilege and is being called OUT on the damage his thoughtless actions caused... but the same kind of calling out didn't prevent 45 from being inaugurated (I'm NOT going to say ELECTED because he WASN'T).

So much to do! Thank fuck for therapy. I'm going to make concrete plans to hang out more often with women and other folks who are also enraged and ready to take action.

***I'll try to come back and write in more detail about all the amazing things I got to do and see in September, part of why the braindump is needed here is to acknowledge recent fucked-upness and to revisit it when I have more of a plan.

May the best man win.

Seriously.

(of course that means MY candidate would win...!)

the xkcd comic yesterday just confirms an question I had on Monday.

They keep trying rigid containment systems on the gulf oil spill gusher. (top hat etc, talking about explosive charges to close the hole again...)

would some science-type explain to me why a flexible containment system couldn't be dropped over the top of the gusher, and then the oil directed specifically to some other containment rig? (I mean aside from the whole it's a mile down in icy cold ocean waters and the flexible material might simply freeze and break under all the pressure...)

I'm thinking of something designed like a ginormous female condom, with weights on the wide open end to drop over the gusher, a gargantuan hose (or hoses) at the end to funnel the oil, and for the container, some of those ocean-going bags full of fresh-water that some idiot was trying to sell to southern California a few years ago.

Why can't this mess be contained & channeled, at least part of the time?

(in other related news, I just had a memory of Gary Larson's mosquito-cartoon, where one mosquito is swelled up like a balloon, and the other mosquito says, "Gladys! Pull up, you've hit an artery!" Maybe that comic is more related to this topic than I realized at first.)



Feel free to forward sciency friends here, I genuinely want to understand.

Whoa. McCain's acceptance speech really was a class act, and lets me see a little into what the people who wanted him, saw in him. I think I heard him use the word "love" five times, which is five times more than I ever heard him use that word in any of the debates or sound bites... he was restrained, and respectful, and classy, and supportive, and inclusive, and I am pretty impressed at his demonstration of his "reaching across the aisle" skills...

i can't WAIT till someone Youtube's Barack's acceptance speech!!!

eeeeee!!!

Edit: WOW. Jeff found Obama's speech to be overly dramatic.

I liked the, Yes, we won, Yes we Can. Now, Let's Get to Work.

Yes. That.

Looking thru voting materials tonight.

Apparently I signed up, at some point, for Permanent Vote by Mail status.

I don't remember doing that.

Apparently Permanent Vote by Mail Status means I am supposed to have received an Official Ballot in the Mail...

This did NOT occur.

Jeff says there are many stories about Vote by Mail or Absentee Ballots going missing/never arriving, in at least 4 different states.

I am allowed to vote at the precinct if I bring my unvoted Vote by Mail ballot (you know, the one I didn't RECEIVE...) to the precinct.

You. Have. Got. To. Be. Shitting. Me.

Okay, the Contra Costa County Elections website has a phone number to call. I will call at 7 am and ask, very politely, exactly what the fuck I am supposed to do in order to vote.

... thank you, Livejournalians, for a place to throw my rant out into the universe.

Via Rafael Jesus Gonzalez, whose mailing list I am on:

"George Lakoff argues that the Republican choice of Palin makes total sense if you truly understand the strategy of the Republicans in this election. Lakoff is the author of The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 20th Century Politics With an 18th Century Brain (2008) and Don't Think of an Elephant: Know your Values and Frame the Debate (2004)


The Palin Choice
The Reality of the Political Mind

by George Lakoff

This election matters because of realities-the realities of global warming, the economy, the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, civil liberties, species extinction, poverty here and around the world, and on and on. Such realities are what make this election so very crucial, and how to deal with them is the substance of the Democratic platform <http://www.demconvention.com/assets/downloads/2008-democratic-platform-by-cmte-08-13-08.pdf> .direct link to PDF on HuffingtonPost website linked below.

Election campaigns matter because who gets elected can change reality. But election campaigns are primarily about the realities of voters' minds, which depend on how the candidates and the external realities are cognitively framed. They can be framed honestly or deceptively, effectively or clumsily. And they are always framed from the perspective of a worldview.

The Obama campaign has learned this. The Republicans have long known it, and the choice of Sarah Palin as their Vice-Presidential candidate reflects their expert understanding of the political mind and political marketing. Democrats who simply belittle the Palin choice are courting disaster. It must be t aken with the utmost seriousness.

The Democratic responses so far reflect external realities: she is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women's lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.

All true, so far as we can tell.

But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign. That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of the political mind. (emphasis mine)

Here's why I'm worried...(rest of the article)

Heads up, zpdiduda, ef2p, joedecker, ozarque and others who grok language, persuasion, and politics...

Scares the HELL out of me that we might not GET a chance to make a real change. If the Dems lose because we can't frame the debate so it captures the minds and hearts of the AmPublic, well. It's a worry ozarque has expressed on multiple occasions. I agree - politics IS perception, but I don't have enough background to know what to do next, other than point as many people as I can, toward this very well-written explanation of the current landscape.

Go, read. Talk about it. Get INVOLVED...