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Brilliant Campaign, But Now What?

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I drove home from Reading PA on Wednesday after spending over a month as a “fellow” in the Obama campaign.  “Fellow” is a made up title for people who come to a battleground state to volunteer full-time for the campaign.  It’s kind of like being an intern, but with more exploitation.

My main assignment was to canvass.  I was a foot soldier in the infantry.  Whatever I might have done or been before was unimportant and no one was interested.  More relevant were my Spanish language skills as Reading is majority Latino.  But even if I couldn’t decir ni una palabra, they would have had me knocking on doors.  The fact that I was willing to go out canvassing, all day every day, in any neighborhood, and engage in many conversations, made me useful.  While there might have been more I could have done, by the time I arrived all the field organizers were interested in were numbers and reaching the goal of “knocking on every door in Reading — twice.”  I did my part in reaching that milestone and also managed in the conversations I had at those doors to make sure the unregistered got registered, and everyone knew his or her polling place, how to get there and when to vote.  I may have helped make up a few minds, and encouraged a couple of folks to join us in getting out the vote.

Four weeks of pounding the broken pavement and going up and down rickety front steps left me exhausted.  Reading, by the way, isn’t wasting any money on street-lighting either. I was lucky not to have twisted an ankle or worse.  When it was all over, despite the fantastic election results, I felt a huge sense of emptiness, and I felt used.

Having worked for organizations that relied on volunteers, I knew something about their care and feeding — both emotional and actual, and had felt frustrated at times. I left grateful to have played a small part in a big victory, but I also felt less important than a speck of dust.

Everybody knows that the ground game was brilliantly played.  The campaign staff and volunteers worked incredibly hard.  While I generally worked 10-12 hours a day, unlike the field organizers (campaign staff), I managed to come home a couple of times.  As a volunteer, I could take a day off.  The not-very-well-paid staff never got that luxury, and as far I can see never stopped working.  Some of them had been doing what they were doing a long time.  Others had only started a few weeks before I did.  They were laser focused on reaching daily voter contact goals.   I respected how important that work was, but there were times I wanted to bust into the Regional Field Director’s office and explain to him that “chain of command” didn’t mean he shouldn’t be walking the floor every so often and patting volunteers as well as his supervisees on the back.  They wouldn’t work any less hard if he did.  He wouldn’t be viewed as inefficient if he maybe checked in  with the fellow from Hoboken after Superstorm Sandy and asked her how things were at home. He was after all our local leader.  And while “caring” might not be part of campaign strategy, it is part of leadership.

For that matter, when we left the office Sunday night before the storm, we left with call lists because the office would be closed the next day.  There was no acknowledgement that maybe people with no electricity would not want to waste their cell batteries talking to campaign workers.  We started canvassing again on Tuesday afternoon.  While Sandy hadn’t hit Reading very hard, there were power outages and this meant no heat as well as no light for some. Many folks had family in  New Jersey whom they still hadn’t heard from. There were a couple of objections that maybe canvassing might be counter-productive and that saying we are checking on our supporters was rather empty if we couldn’t get their lights back on.

The campaign was famously “metric-driven” to the point where  it sometimes felt like voters were only numbers and volunteers simply bodies in motion. While out-of-state volunteers and staff stayed with generous host families, sometimes for several months, no one from the campaign ever called the host families to check in and make sure the guests weren’t stealing the china.  I doubt anyone other than their guests ever gave them a thank you.

Nor do I think the neighborhood folks who opened up their homes for phone banking or as staging areas during the Get-Out-The-Vote drive were thanked in any official way.  Imagine having strangers in your home day after day, all day, and we’re not talking about huge homes either.   The staging area I worked out of belonged to an older woman in need of knee surgery whose husband was recovering from a stroke.  And this was the second time she’d done it.  A letter from the President might be nice — even if he does use an autopen.

Why is any of this important? Didn’t we all have the satisfaction of seeing Obama get re-elected? Sure we did.  And I got that thanked every day by ordinary people in Reading.  But the point is, for those of us not doing this to pad our resumes or build a career — acknowledgement, respect and validation was something we needed, something that would have made us do even better.

I saw a neighborhood volunteer who was in the office every day almost walk away in frustration.  A newly arrived fellow who had  been promoted to Deputy Field Organizer (unpaid) told her to make some calls. The volunteer was upset by the call list.  She was supposed to recruit volunteers from a list that included people we hadn’t talked to before.  Some were even Republicans. This was a woman who knew her community well and had worked the polls for years.  She knew more about local election laws than anyone working in that office, and she was great at talking to people — in person as well as on the phone.  After trying to use the list, she gave up. She started to shout, “I’m wasting my time.  I’m done.  I’m not coming back.”

I took her out and we went to lunch. I let her vent.  I didn’t defend anyone’s behavior.  I just listened — a professionally acquired skill, which no one seemed to know I had.  I  reminded her how important she was to the campaign.  It was rewarding to me to see her and that same Deputy Field Organizer weeks later on election night.  They had bonded and gotten past that moment.

A couple of days after I arrived, I went to a training offered by the Regional Director.  The training module he was using talked about stories and how important personal narratives were in the campaign.  He demonstrated this by telling us his.

Then he asked us to think about our own personal narrative — why re-electing Obama was important to us based on our own experiences. Narrative is something I know a little bit about.  But he skipped the part in the module where we would actually share our own stories and learn to listen to others.  He didn’t think that was important.

In retrospect, I wish I had tried to talk to him afterward and given him feedback on the need for more process, less talk.  I could have offered to put together a brief narrative training based on the module, as a team builder for volunteers and staff, but I’m reasonably certain I would have been rebuffed. It wasn’t in the game plan.  I was there to serve in the infantry.

Election night, no one had thought to get a projector for the office so that staff and volunteers could watch the returns together.  Instead we spontaneously gathered around a  laptops by the front desk.  A few of us were watching when one of the field organizers grabbed the laptop, presumably to report results (he was talking through his bluetooth) to someone else from the campaign.  He seemed oblivious to the people in front of him who were watching,  including a woman in a wheelchair.   No one seemed mad at him. It was his moment too.  But what was the message?

The victory party was held at a bar a few miles from the office.  There were familiar faces from our office as well as from an unsuccessful local congressional campaign.  But we were all on our own for food and drink.  There were lots of big screen televisions, but no speeches from anyone in the campaign office.  Nor was any campaign official there to thank the volunteers and lower level staff.  The Regional Director was apparently elsewhere at some other party for the big shots.  Maybe one that had an open bar and free chips.

Just a little bit of closure would have been nice.  A handshake from someone in charge.  A very short speech, you know a narrative, from the Regional Director or maybe even the State Director even via Skype, thanking all of us for our time. Yes, I did get hugs from some of the other grunts including local people who were there before the campaign moved in and will be there long after, but how can they see the campaign and the people who ran it, as appreciative or respectful of their efforts if they don’t get thanked?

I get that a campaign is not a service organization like the ones I worked for that treated volunteers like gold.  I get this wasn’t a community organizing project to help people learn self-advocacy so they could run their own tenant council or voice concerns to their children’s teachers.  I get that this wasn’t about the personal growth and empowerment of volunteers, but it could have been and should have been about something  bigger than just winning one election.

My cousin, the political professional, tells me this is how it is with campaigns.  Fair enough.  But the ground game as it now has to be played requires more.  It requires people power, and empowering people is the fuel needed to run it.  It worked this time  because of a popular President, who many viewed as being unfairly under attack by an extremist right wing.  It worked because voter suppression efforts in states like Pennsylvania backfired and fired people up.  It worked because as Mike Huckabee put it, Romney looks like the guy who fires people.  But it may not work four years from now when people are complacent.  It may not work four years from now if it doesn’t work to change Congress in two years — a Herculean task thanks to gerrymandering.

When I got to Pennsylvania, I discovered the call scripts and walk scripts referred not to “Obama for America” but to “Organizing for America.”   I was told it meant, “We will be here after the election and help people run for local office and be empowered in the political process.”  My understanding is this is what was happening in Ohio, and maybe some of the other battleground states.  I saw no evidence of this in Reading.

I heard no discussions about OFA or its future.  Nor do I have any idea whether the office is still open or staffed. Maybe it’s another of the many things they didn’t think the infantry needed to know about.  Maybe it got discussed in a meeting on Wednesday, which I missed trying to get home before the Nor’easter.

Here’s what it says about OFA in Wikipedia:

“Organizing for America is a community organizing project of the Democratic National Committee.[1][2][3] Founded after the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, the group seeks to mobilize supporters in favor of Obama’s legislative priorities.”

Now, that’s an organization I could support.  The reason why so many brilliant, earnest young people want to work for the President in the first place is because they were inspired by his community organizing experiences as recounted in Dreams from My Father.  Obama has stated his desire to be a transformational leader.  He is achieving that goal in his efforts to enfranchise the actual silent majority of Americans — the have-nots, historically alienated from the political process.

Community organizing has been used to empower people to work on particular issues within their communities.  Harnessing its power and using it in electoral politics to promote a progressive political platform, that’s something else.  That’s not how politics is usually done, but it’s something a movement inspired by Barrack Obama can do.  That work should have started back in 2009 when it was supposed to. And if it has started in Ohio or other places where OFA is stronger, than it should have been more well known.  They should have sent that memo out along with all the chances to win dinner with Barack and George.

Many people have lamented the lack of a  progressive equivalent to the Tea Party. While the Tea Party is a faux-grassroots organization propped up with Koch brother dollars, there is an opportunity to apply campaign discipline and community organizing skill to create a real movement, aligned with the Democratic Party.  Occupy is a mess that doesn’t speak to the mainstream, and doesn’t seem to want much to do with electoral politics or the President.  Move-on doesn’t have a clear “off line” presence.

OFA already has staff and tens of thousands of volunteers.  They have offices.  They have an infrastructure. Actually fulfilling their mission is not impossible, but even if the DNC decides to give them more financial support, they will not be successful if they continue to run things in ground-game election mode.  They are going to have to take off their campaign field organizing caps and start thinking like community organizers.  Here’s how they might start:

  • Keep the Regional Directors on as long as they understand it’s a different job, or hire people with more community organizing experience,  but either way make sure it’s understood that the  mission isn’t winning one election, but improving participation in all of them, for years to come, and the strategy is different. Have the organizer identify and begin to work directly with neighborhood leaders.  Hint:  It’s all those people who live in Reading and showed up almost every day of the campaign and/or allowed their homes to be used.  The ones they should have made more efforts to cultivate during the campaign.

  • Set up some kind of local board or advisory board to have an active role in running local operations.  Yes, I know that’s a huge shift from how a campaign is run, but your mantra has to be:  This is about building a grassroots movement.
  • Make sure your neighborhood leaders/core volunteers get some real training.  There should also be feedback and evaluation of trainings by trainees, as is done in professional organizations. Hint:  The hired organizer does not have to be responsible for all of the training, but can use experienced volunteers to help, and even bring in non-local volunteers with experience.  The national organization can assist with modules and “train the trainer” sessions.

  • Make sure that the organizers also get the training and support they need. This includes a lot of help understanding and implementing the best practices for working with and managing volunteers.  It’s more than simply honoring the hosts at a luncheon, having a “Volunteer of the Month” bulletin board,  and generally showing a caring attitude — although all of that would be a start.  It’s a vision of what people can do. It means understanding that volunteers are giving a service and have to get something in return.  How do you keep them around when it’s not about re-electing the President, but is instead the grind of an endless campaign?  If field organizers and/or directors will be staffing OFA post-campaign, then they need training in how to inspire and motivate people. What I saw in Reading was about getting the numbers, rather than organizing the volunteers.  It was about relying on the inspirational figurehead of Barack Obama, and not actually modelling leadership.  OFA not only requires community organizing skills, but because this is long-term movement, requires specific skills that lead to volunteer retention.  OFA needs to be a place so attractive to work that people will be willing to do it for free.  It has to be a community within the community.  Hint:  Look to some of your host families  core local volunteers, and out-of-staters as they may include people with professional experience working with volunteers or as community organizers who may be willing to mentor less experienced OFA staff on the “soft” skills.
  • Have volunteers/neighborhood leaders work on strategies (including canvassing) to bring people in to town hall style meetings with local leadership including electeds, board members etc to determine what local issues need to be worked on, while also working with OFA to set national goals.  Hint:  As a ground-worker, I saw the huge need for  voter education.  Many people do not understand the registration process and only vote in Presidential elections.  There was not enough time during the campaign to work with folks on the importance of local elections as a way to have the President’s back and help support his agenda.  Voter registration drives also have to be ongoing.

  • Have all staff and core volunteers read or reread and discuss Dreams from My Father, highlighting and studying the parts about community organizing.  Hint: Themes for discussion: How is forming a movement different from running a campaign?  Also, despite what the Tea Party would have you believe, Saul Alinsky is not a dirty word.
  • Make sure that active OFA chapters exist even in “safe” progressive states and communities, as members there can continue to increase voter turn out, help with voter education, raise awareness of issues, train more local people to take an active role in the political process, and assist when needed in other states and communities.   The DNC and OFA need to work closely together.
  • Switch from “movement” mode back to “politics” mode when it’s time to get out the vote.

The chattering classes are already saying that pulling off the ground game in 2016 will be harder than it was in 2012.  They’re saying it was all about Obama.  But from what I saw on the ground, the campaign ended when Ohio was called, and “we have his back” really was just a slogan.   Some of the  neighborhood leaders were around four years ago and continued to be active in their  communities. Others were dormant between Presidential campaigns.  Tens of thousands of people were registered in Reading alone.  Hundreds were energized and helped out.  It’s time to build a movement that will outlast this election cycle, one that will support the democratic agenda by empowering people to lead in their communities — including by running for local office, one that will spearhead voter education, making voting part of the culture and holding elected leaders accountable. This is the best way to have the President’s back over the next four years and to ensure that in 2016 we will continue to move forward.

Joining the Circus – Volunteering in a “Battleground” State

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Back in September, before the first debate, things were looking good for the President, but the voter suppression stuff was worrisome especially in Pennsylvania.  I kept seeing a clip of that sleaze-ball Republican legislator saying that voter identification would win the state for Romney. Having once gone through the arduous process of helping an elderly non-driving relative get a photo ID, I knew there was a good chance he was right.

So I was primed and ready when I got an e-mail from Kal Penn urging me to leave safely Democratic New York and move to a battleground state to work for the re-election of the President.

(Kal and I aren’t close.  We’ve never met, but like Michele and Barack he sometimes sends me and millions of other Americans e-mails.)

Being one of the lucky ones who could afford and get several weeks liberty, I answered the call and ran away from home to join the circus.  I was sent to Reading, PA where I’ve mostly been knocking on doors, making phone calls, and practicing the español.

From the day I arrived on October 4th through October 9th, the focus was on registering new voters and helping those who’d moved to change their address. There were also phone calls to and canvassing of registered voters, persuading the persuadable, and gently reminding the mildly and even enthusiastically supportive that every vote counts and this is their chance to help make history.

What I learned that first week was that America is greatly in need of civics lessons and voter education.   Many people wanted to register but didn’t know much about how.  While Pennsylvania encourages registration at it’s Motor Vehicles Department, they don’t offer much else.  People aren’t aware that changing your address at the post office doesn’t change it at the Board of Elections, or what it means to register with a party.   People, who may be enthusiastic about voting for the President, aren’t aware that there are elections more than once every four years and voting in those elections could make the President’s job much easier. Some acted as though the whole process was not only hopeless, but a bit sordid, not something with which they would ever involve themselves.

All this reminds me of ivy-educated Rick Santorum telling people that wanting to send your kids to college makes you an “elitist,” and how dare those lousy elitists assume you’d want to do any such thing. I can easily imagine the Republicans who have done so much to keep the numbers down in the voting booths, doing it even more blatantly if they get in, while trying to convince the suppressed that it’s for their own good.  “Those lousy democrats, they want to make you leave your house and wait on lines to do something you don’t even want to do.  It’s like the Soviet Union.  It’s worse than Hitler! Join us in voting now to repeal voting forever!”

While celebrities like Jay-Z and Beyonce have done their best to make supporting the President a thing, voter education has to be supported and people who live in a democracy need to understand how it actually works from the most levels to the highest.

In addition to helping turn out the vote in November, the real mission of being here is to convey enthusiasm for the democratic process.  It’s not just about helping to ensure the re-election of the President, it’s about organizing in communities for the future, actively encouraging local people to become involved, volunteer, and become leaders in their communities.  It’s about empowering people and building democracy like building the economy — from the middle out, not from the top down.

If I weren’t here, I’d be home pulling my hair out on a daily basis and obsessing over which state is “leaning” and why Real Clear Politics just threw another one into the “toss up” pile.  I’d be venting my snark on The Wonkette and checking FiveThirtyEight Blog like it was the weather report in Florida during hurricane season.  Here is good.  I’m staying in the home of a delightful older Unitarian lady.  I’m working harder than I have in years and being supervised by a field organizer less than half my age, and having more fun than I’ve had in a long time.

A Night at the Opera, Another Night at the Theater, A Weekend at Home

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The better half and I try to vacation at least three times a year — my birthday, his birthday, and our anniversary.  This being the Internet, I won’t tell you which one occurred last week, but we weren’t able to get away, and so decided to celebrate at home, in New York City.  Here’s what we did:

Wednesday:  Dinner at Hell’s Kitchen, a trendy “progressive”-Mexican place in (where else?), Hell’s Kitchen.  Being reluctant omnivores, we went for veggie choices.  A recent trip to Italy had made us more aware of the lovely artichoke, which is not on enough menus in the United States, so we started with the poached artichoke quesadilla with idiazabal cheese, roasted sweet corn, and poblano crema.  Yummy.  For main courses we ate light and shared family style:  We ordered  huitlacoche with avocado, and mascarpone cheese. Hutlacoche for the uninitiated is a truffle that grows on corn — or in simple terms a fungus.  It has a unique taste and texture, a bit smoky, a bit spongy.  We are fans.  Plus the cheese didn’t overwhelm the dish, which is one difference between “progressive” Mexican and run of the mill.  The crispiness of the taco created a perfect balance of textures.  As a second main, we had the burrito with wild mushroom,  guacamole and poblano sauce, which was also well balanced and delicious. The mushrooms tasted like they might have been sautéed with a teriyaki sauce, giving them a steak-like flavor.  We split a dessert, banana empanadas with chocolate sauce and fresh whipped cream.  The cream was unsweetened as it should be to help offset the sweetness of the sauce and the banana.  There were other dessert choices that sounded equally good.

Then we walked up to the Metropolitan Opera House to see La Traviata directed by Will Decker with Natalie Dessay, as Violetta, Matthew Polenzani as Alfredo, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky is Germont,  I am an opera ignoramus.  The decision to go to the opera was made by my better-half, based on its being on both our bucket lists.  Neither of us had seen live “grand” opera before, except maybe once or twice on PBS.  We are now both fans, trying to figure out what we can sell to pay for season tickets next year.   We were expecting to be entertained.  We were expecting “theater.” What we got was an emotional wallop.  Even in the back of the orchestra where we were, when Gourmont slaps Alfredo and you hear him fall, there was more than a murmur in the audience.   To train the human voice to do what they do and do it while dancing, laughing, running and crying is amazing. To do it while acting is a miracle.  While we were expecting the tragedy of the lovers, Hyorostovsky’s nuanced performance made us feel Germont’s guilt and regret for separating them as well.  The stark set with its surreal clock ticking away the minutes of Violetta’s life, and the contemporary dress created a sense of timelessness.  This wasn’t a story about a nineteenth century courtesan, but about life, death, love and regret.

The following evening was theater night.  Ducking work, we got to TKTS at 2:20.  The main line was already huge, but the Play Express line was short.  By 3;15, we had two FRONT ROW seats to the Clybourne Park, which had opened earlier that week.   On the one hand, we were amazed at our luck; on the other, hand, it’s scary that almost all the non-musical plays had availability.  The play, itself has been described as a “sequel” to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.  More accurately it’s a re-imaging, with a first act taking place in 1959, the time when the original is set, and the second act fifty years later.  It’s been described as an  “uproariously funny”  comedy.  While it is that, it’s also an explosive drama.  There are several points at which violence seems imminent, and we weren’t prepared for the tragic tone of the first act.  When the curtain came down for intermission, my better half said, “After this, I’m going to need a drink.”  The second half is funnier, broader, more satiric, dealing with gentrification and reverse integration, but that too moves into dangerous territory.

We ate after the theater at Marseille, an unpretentious but stylish, French bistro on ninth avenue.  We ordered snails, of course.  Going carnivore, I ordered the honey glazed duck breast.  The better half had the mussels with fries.  Lots of mussels, and the best fries either of us had ever tasted, ever, in our lives.  We tried to figure out what made the fries so perfect.  Garlic might be one answer, but there was also the lack of grease and perfect crispiness.  The desserts are a bit more extensive than what’s on the posted menu.  We had something mousse-like with dark chocolate, so intensely rich that we were satisfied with just a few spoonfuls (rare for us).

We hardly left the house over the weekend, except for errands and long walks to local parks — Central Park, Fort Tryon, Morningside and Riverside, where everything seemed to be in bloom.  Saturday night, I started to read Just Kids,  Patti Smith’s memoir of her time in New York as a bookstore clerk/struggling artists/poet and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe.  I kept reading into Sunday morning when I finished. I mention it here because like our two nights out, the  book could only have taken place in New York, although the New York, Smith writes about where young artsy types could somehow eke out enough of a living to afford the smallest room in the Chelsea Hotel is long gone as are the bookstores where she worked Brentano’s and Scribner’s.  Argosy somehow survives.  Gotham Books which published her early work, gone as well.

Smith, herself, has been quoted as saying that New York is now beyond the means of struggling artists who would be better off going elsewhere. Still for those of us, artist and non-artist who remain or are just visiting, and have limited incomes, some discounts are available. Our two front row theater seats costs were about $60 a piece at TKTS, and though we paid full freight at the opera, discounts and standing room are available.  Ninth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen offers many reasonably priced restaurants.  Walking is still free, as is browsing, and books remain here and elsewhere the most affordable form of entertainment going.

For those of you who might not make it to the Met this year, here’s a clip:

The Gentleman or the Abyss

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times, true story, ,

Last week, I went to the Apollo to see the Prez. Let me repeat that because there’s something magical and ridiculously unlikely in that sentence.  Obama, is, of course, the first sitting president to ever come to the Apollo.  Ten or fifteen years ago, Harlem was much less safe and chic than it is today, and a presidential visit to the theater would have been unthinkable.  But then, to paraphrase Tom Tomorrow, if Dr. Who had landed in 2001 and announced that in 2008 America would elect a black man named Barack Hussein Obama president, it wouldn’t be the time travel part that would sound crazy.

Today 125th street has tour buses and chain stores, but still the feeling of history, and the Apollo is history.  Tickets were reasonably priced, starting at $100, far less than a Broadway show or a concert.  This was not a big donor crowd, just enthusiastic constituents, still proud of their President though some may have been a little disappointed that he hasn’t always been as forceful as we’d hoped.  (As someone said to me recently, “I still love the President. I’m just not in love with him anymore.)

Our politically savvy cousin (a former campaign manager for a sitting senator) who accompanied us, reviewed the President’s speech as a “incoherent, but exciting.”  Obama was trying out different things, honing his message for the coming election. He was in training.

The speech reminded me of why we had expected so much.  He hit the right populist notes, sounding like Jimmy Stewart in the never released Capra sequel, President Smith Runs for Re-election. He talked about the economic mess he inherited, how hard it will be to pull ourselves out, the need for the same rules to apply to everyone, and that we are all in this together. He talked about the good that government can do and referenced social security as well as health care reform.  He mentioned the GI bill, which his grandfather had used to go to college after the war.  My father also went to school on the GI bill.  In his case to attended optometry school at Columbia, although  before the war he’d  gotten a bachelor’s degree at City College (also in Harlem, USA), which back then didn’t charge tuition.  Imagine that!  A free university education.  What a country we once were back when that socialist FDR was in charge.

Obama talked about his opponents and how much the republicans had changed, referencing both Lincoln who created the Internal Revenue Service and Teddy (Bust the Trust)  Roosevelt.

But the moment that would be immortalized on YouTube was when he first came out, after the Reverend Al Green, and he began to sing Let’s Stay Together.  The crowd went wild.  Obama beamed that big smile, the one that inspired crazy Pam Geller to speculate that Malcolm X was his biological father (my absolute favorite conspiracy theory, not only for its absurdity and physical impossibility, but because I kind of wish, if only.)   At the time, I just enjoyed the moment.  It only hit me hours later that of course the singing was staged.

When the stakes are this high, nothing is left to chance.  I can imagine Obama with his advisers planning the marathon of his New York night — three dinners and a show.  I could see him being told that the entertainment would include Al Green, prompting an impromptu song burst, followed by one of the bright not-so-young men saying, “You’ve got to do that!”

I accept that he is after all a politician, an incumbent running for re-election in a tough economy. The line that has haunted me since Thursday wasn’t the musical interlude, it was when he said that this is not the same Republican party he ran against in 2008, that back then he ran against an opponent “who agreed that we should ban torture, believed in climate change, [and] had worked on immigration reform.”

Here’s what it comes down to. On one side are the republican candidates left standing. There’s  Romney, a rich man who can joke about betting $10,000, and about his being “unemployed,”  then turn earnest about corporations’ being people.  If he didn’t actually exist, Stephen Colbert would have had to invent him.   There’s Gingrich who doesn’t just pander to racists, he incites them while playing the victim. And Santorum is still in the race, a man openly disdainful of science, education and contraception.  Here are people advocating policies that would rid us of even the small safety net that exists, who would happily gut social security, rescind health care reform, destroy public education and leave an economy in shambles, men who talk about limiting government while advocating its entry into our bedrooms.

Before the show, as we waited on line (this being New York) that cold winter’s night.  Across the street, there were the usual motley band of protesters, occupy Wall Street types with signs about corporations and Guantanomo, proclaiming their status as part of the 99%.   Of course this was an event for the 99%.  Ironically, many of us had probably at least visited Zuccotti Park.  While some will argue that there isn’t much difference between the parties, at this point that’s unaffordable nihilism.   Maybe Obama is too “centrist” for some or too much of a gentleman when times call for a street fighter, but we are all standing on a precipice and it’s either him or the abyss.

A Matter of Life and Death

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Email to a friend:

Hi Susan,

Are you in Colorado?  Happy New Year.  Hope the snow is fresh and the crowds are reasonable.   Just wanted to update you on my whacky life.  So last Friday (a week ago), Maizie had a seizure, which I wrote you about. Then the second one the following day which was 12/24, again complete with eye-rolling, collapsing, peeing, and getting up a couple of minutes later and looking around like, “Huh? What? Where’d this puddle come from and why is my backside wet?  Shit. I hope Mommy doesn’t yell at me for this.”

Craig was ready to put her down that day, and if Dr. Dan (the new vet that my nephew works for) had been in, we would have.  But he wasn’t, and we made the appointment for Thursday, as that was the first early morning one we could get, and Craig wanted to go to work afterwards (and not go home and brood).  But Sunday morning, when he took her out, she was all “jaunty” and continuing to want to kill her frenemies, and to want affection, and to get all excited around meal time, and signal to go out to troll, etc.  By Monday, Craig was having doubts.

I just couldn’t take it.  At that point, I still wanted to kill my dog.  I was thinking of my Dad, after his cancer returned and he kept talking about how he just wished a piano would fall on his head.  I was thinking about Craig’s cat, Big Red, and how he waited too long, didn’t even notice how much weight he was losing because he saw him everyday, and finally Craig was supposed to travel for work and I was going to take care of Big Red, but when I went over a few days before Craig left,  I realized he was dying and  we had to put him down sooner.   I was thinking about Maizie’s inevitable decline, and the stoicism of dogs, and how we should just get off this emotional roller coaster, and how it would be me, working from home, more likely to see the next seizure, more likely to be the one taking her in when she finally couldn’t get back up on her hind legs, carrying her to the car.

Craig thought it was my being obsessive, and it was Italy, our planned anniversary trip, coming up in two weeks — the first time we’d be in Europe together, and to a country neither of us had visited.    Maybe something to that, because we both agreed that if we didn’t put her down, leaving her in a kennel for 10 days, even a nice one, was probably not a good idea.

On Tuesday, we went out to dinner with the cousins.  They aren’t fans of the Maize, having a bad impression based on an unfortunate dinner incident.  But Daniel (the smartest man in any room) brought up the seizure thing. Did Craig really want to wait for the third seizure?  The answer was no, but….

The next day, Craig  checked with the airline.  No refund, of course, but $200 to change the dates.  My sister happened to call and I updated her.  I reminded her of my father’s piano line.  She didn’t think it was that simple.  She pointed out how much he’d held on at the end.

“Nobody wants to die,” she said.

She reminded me that even my mother, who was unconscious those last few days, seemed on some level, not willing to let go, although she had said earlier, after her stroke but before she faded away when the subject of a feeding tube was broached, “If I can’t eat ice-cream, what’s the point?”

But Maizie, based on what I was telling her, hadn’t reached that point yet.  And I realized she was right.

Craig cancelled the appointment.  We were still figuring out Italy. We rationalized that before the seizures we’d been planned to board her, and what had really changed?  Yes, she might take a turn while we were away, and we’d feel terrible, but more likely it would be a slow decline, another seizure maybe, maybe two, but not a crisis.

We wouldn’t leave her at the place we usually left her.  They’d screwed up last time, not monitoring her closely or contacting us when she seemed to be reacting badly to the meds she was then on for her Cushing’s.  There was another place we’d taken her a couple of times, swankier, more expensive, less convenient to get to.  We thought we’d try there, but also see if my nephew would consider dog sitting.  He couldn’t.  His workshifts are too long and she’d be alone too much.  My sister had mentioned a son of a friend’s, a musician in need of a day job, raised in an animal loving household as a possibility, but Craig thought given Maizie’s special “behavioral” issues, a stranger who wasn’t a professional might not be a good idea. We called the swanky place.  Before I’d had a chance to explain much, they reacted to the words, “Geriatric” and “frail” and told me straight out that a dog in that condition should never be boarded.

That hit us like a gut-punch.  Not only were we terrible human beings for considering killing our dog, we were terrible human beings for wanting to go away.

We wondered what would happen if there were an emergency and we’d both have to travel.  Or what if Craig got one of those good business gigs to Africa and I could join him after?  The answer to the first case, was we’d leave her at the vets, for as short  a time as possible.  In the second case, I’d stay home

Today, Craig reported Maizie seemed a little out of it on their walk.  She’s sleeping now.  She sleeps mostly.  Italy is probably off the table for a while, unless she takes a turn for the worst in the next few days.  We might ask the musician if he’s interested in the gig, not for Italy, but generally, if she lives a while, and come spring we want to use those tickets.

This is it.  There aren’t a lot of choices.  Putting down an animal is never easy.  But it probably helps if it’s already too late, if their suffering is obvious. In some dispassionate way, I don’t think it would be a big deal to deprive her of continuing a journey that is almost at its end, and may involve a steep uphill slog.  That’s in the abstract.  In reality, I couldn’t see getting her into the car, which often signals trouble but sometimes signals fun, driving her to Dr. Dan’s, where she’ll greet my nephew like a friend and then look at it me like I’ve betrayed her when she remembers it’s a doctor’s office. I couldn’t imagine my husband, lifting a now shaking dog onto the table as Dr. Dan gets the needle ready, and feeling for the rest of our lives that we deprived her of something, even though I’m not exactly sure what.

UPDATE:  1/12/12: We canceled Italy. The good news is I may go to see a show on Saturday, have tickets to see Al Green, Lin-Manual Miranda and POTUS at the Apollo on 1/19, and the better half and I will be taking some time off to celebrate doing New Yorky things.  Maizie seems to be doing better.  We went to the vet just to check in and because she was licking herself a lot.  He said it was a probably just an irritation from lying all day on a hard spot.  He said she looked great for a dog her age, even for one who doesn’t have cushings.  No seizures since the ones that almost caused her executions. We decided not to put our lives on hold and called up a bunch of kennels.  We found that some wanted to put her in a “special care” doggy nursing home where she would be tended to way more than she would ever want.   We now have two potential reasonably priced places that we think will work and will check both of them out.  Maizie will definitely do a test run of two days to make sure she can tolerate the boarding.