The Trail©

Went out to WVSU's campus today for a Democracy Day thingy. Lots of booths—ACT, ACLU, NAACP, HRC and assorted acronyms; both campaigns; various frats and sororities. Virtually every single booth except the Bush-Cheney booth had Kerry stickers, signs and gear. So even though about ninety percent of the people there with stickers had Kerry stickers, the Bush booth still had a line longer than ours all day long. I guess you can have too many friends.

A charming young gentleman from the Bush campaign gave a quick speech late in the day. He talked about coal, vaguely asserting that Bush was good for coal miners. I found out later that his family is in the oil business.

My boss, Lida, gave the Kerry speech, although mostly she whirled from one end of the campus to another, signing up volunteers. Lida is cool, and so is her mom. Remember high school, and there was one kid who had a really cool mom? That's Lida.

Happy birthday, Lida's mom.

I had brought Sean Madden along from Job Corps because he has little else to do. He's graduating in a week (on my birthday) and then getting a really good job with Intel. They're giving him a two month long course in how to keep proprietary information secret, which he's promised to ignore. Like Lida, he made me look bad; he registered a fair number of people. I didn't.

Early on, I walked into the library with a clipboard full of volunteer sign-up sheets. A stern lady with library glasses demanded, "You aren't doing that political stuff in here, are you?"

"Uh, no."

"What are you doing?"

"Ah—ah, research."

"About?"

"Stem cells?"

And so I spent forty-five minutes pretending to do research on stem cells. Later, I got caught up in extended conversations with a middle aged woman working on her poly-sci degree, a whino who wanted to know more about Nader and a former local TV anchor running for congress. "Stay Classy: Vote Ron Burgundy."

I got yelled at by members of AþA when I tried to put a giant Kerry-Edwards sign on what their president called "holy ground." "A monument to our founders." I suppose the founders of the West Virginia State University chapter of the AþA fraternity are as worth of a memorial as anyone else.

Post a Comment