Be Nice to your High School English Teacher

When I graduated from North Penn High School in 1993, I had 700 or so people in my graduating class, and we were the second largest high school in Pennsylvania. Today, one of the volunteers told me that her son is a senior there, and his graduating class has about 1100 students in it. Clearly something’s wrong with education when you can have one school with 3400 students in it in 3 grades (it looks like a small airport now). Anyway, somehow, 15 years later, my high school senior year English teacher, Mrs. Colliver, managed to recognize me when I saw her at the campaign office. She’s retired now, and has been coming in regularly to make phone calls and volunteer however she can. It was really fun to reconnect with her! I keep wondering how many more people will come through the door by the end that I knew growing up.

New note to this post: I also learned that another regular volunteer named Cathy was ALSO an English teacher at my high school, and coincedentally, the mom of a guy in my graduating class! Last night when she was in the office I introduced her to Facebook and showed her pics of a lot of her former students, my former classmates!

Also, here's a picture of the front page of our local town newspaper, The North Penn Reporter! Go Hillary!

Manic Monday - Hello Hillary!

Monday morning started off a bit rough for me, to be honest. I spent the weekend in DC visiting old friends, taking my nephew to the zoo, sorting out our storage unit, and feeling guilty that I wasn’t back in PA at the campaign office. I drove back to Philly early Monday morning and came into the office at about 11am. When I got there, I learned that everyone was out except a volunteer named Monica, minding the office. “Everyone’s gone to the Hillary rally!” she said. “Crap!” I thought. I’m such a loser- this must have been scheduled over the weekend (I vaguely recalled hearing on the news the announcement that the Clintons had announced a new blitz of rallies in Pennsylvania for Obama) and I wasn’t around to hear about it, and get scheduled to volunteer. I’m really not in the “in” volunteer group, I thought – they didn’t even call me! (which is sort of true, since a lot of the regular volunteers from Lansdale have been around since the primaries, and have major streed cred that I don't have.)So instead of sulking, I realized that it was quite close to town, so I decided to drive there and attend it anyway. I mean, I wanted to see Hillary! I was still early enough and when I went to go through the gate, I saw Sheila. I asked if she needed any help, and sure enough she handed me a clipboard and put me to work!!! The rally was at a beautiful state park, and the weather couldn’t have been better, not to mention the fall leaves that were already turning beautiful fall colors. The energy there was contagious and although I’ve heard most of the pieces of her speech in media clips here and there before, I have to say that even I, in my jaded, “I hate canned speeches and prefer to be an intelligent snob and vote based on the issues,” thing, was inspired and cheering and jumping up and down by the end. She really is an amazing woman, and when she came down off the podium and shook hands and greeted people in the crowds, I was about two feet away from her at one point. It was really cool.

What resonated with me so much in her speech, is when she spoke about how many people in the US today hate politics, and see the presidential campaign as a symbol of all the negativity and, well, BS in politics today (okay that’s me super paraphrasing). She talked about how our country was built on hope, on civic engagement, on empowerment of the people for the future, and all that traditional American democracy stuff. But somehow the way she said it, got me almost choked up. Maybe I see too many people in developing countries who don’t have nearly the opportunities for democracy, or maybe it’s because I see the way our country throws away that opportunity as such a sad shame, but either way, I agreed with her that Obama really does represent something different. But then again, I was already going to vote for him.

In the end, I started out my Monday driving home to PA in the dark, having to stop multiple times for coffee to stay awake, just to be back to work on the campaign.
But a depressing start ended with a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and the chance to really get to know the other volunteers better and show that I’m a reliable volunteer too. And oh, there were these home-grown vendors that just showed up out of the blue at the rally. I bought a really crazy hot pink pin for my friend Melissa in Philly that says, “Hot Chicks Dig Barack Obama!”

I'd rather be in Kuala Lumpur...(Not Really!)

This week I’m missing a big annual meeting for my team in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. That is, my team at my “real job” that I do in Thailand. I’ve been to every one of these meetings since the tsunami recovery program began, but I wasn’t able to take my annual leave any earlier this year, and I decided that volunteering for the campaign was more important to me right now than this meeting. Luckily my bosses were pretty supportive, and in some ways, a few of them wish they were able to do what I’m doing instead of sitting in meetings all day. I hope they’re reading and living vicariously! Frankly, in just over a week of volunteering I’ve heard so many inspiring stories about community mobilization, volunteerism and pure American sense of civic duty that I hope I’ll be re-energized even for my own regular job when I go back.