I’m recovering from the mad rush of paper writing and conferencing in August. I haven’t read anything serious in a week, so let’s just talk about homey stuff.
The beginning of the week was all about school supplies and new backpacks. Got the kids off to their first day of school with only minor bumbs. Jonah wanted a shirt that showed off his muscles, but I feel strongly that boys shouldn’t wear wife-beaters to school on the first day. Ian went running in with a great grin on his face. He’s not so pleased about going to his twice a week daycare program after regular school; he’s going to have to get used to it.
Then I had a day of local political organizing. Wrote up a handout, passed it around, got the neighbors up to speed, and updated the local blog. I’m trying to find a good balance between striking fear in the developer and his lawyers and not losing the sympathy of my neighbors. Steve and I weren’t sure if we should add the “PhD” after our names in the letter that appeared in the local paper. Did it seem snobby or give us credibility? Were people going to be annoyed that we have different names? I’m going all suited up to the town board meetings, because if I have to go against three rows of suits, I should probably wear heels and a jacket. But then, my neighbors are in shorts and t-shirts. Will they think I’m being uppity? When Jo(e) wrote about her experience with local politics, she had to walk a similar line. Is this a chick thing? Didn’t Hillary experience the same pressure when she had to change her name to Clinton in Arkansas?
The project that I’ve got going on at the tail end of this week is organizing. I’m giving myself one week to organize the kids papers, work papers, and all the photo crap. Got a label maker from Staples to inspire me. One of the best thing that has happened to me are .pdf files. I no longer have to save boxes and boxes of academic papers. It’s all on my hard drive. I save .html files of newspaper articles. Actually, my blog also functions as my personal file cabinet. The kids’ papers are harder to organize, because I can only chuck things out when they aren’t looking. I’ll take pictures of my anal filing cabinet when I’m done.
Steve is still away and might not get back until tomorrow. Sigh.
Apt. 11d 
Hilary did it backwards, I think: she caved into pressure so Bill could be elected, not so she personally could get into politics. (I guess, taking the long view, she got into politics because of taking his name. But the proximate reason was when he lost an election.)
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True. I was just thinking about the pressure in politics to blend in and to play down credentials. It’s partially the American populist thing. In my case, I also don’t want to appear to be too competent, because that means everyone will lay back and let me do all the work. This morning, I was thinking it was a chick thing — there’s a strong mistrust of educated women, but right now I think that men have that problem, too. Look at the Kerry/Bush election.
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If you can get it organized, an effective message is sent by a bunch of people wearing roughly the same thing (red shirts, blue jeans, for instance).
I suggest against the suit if its elected officials that you’re dealing with. They pay attention to the regular folks who might just vote in low turnout elections. If its unelected, appointed folks, you may want to go with the suit.
No one in the Northeast is going to care that much about your last names. PhD is probably better for actually getting the paper to run it.
This comes from 7 years of community organizing experience with ACORN, although its still more art than science. More people = more of a difference. Also think about escalating for future events. Try to figure out a gimmick to take it to the next level if there’s a next step.
For more info on ACORN – http://www.acorn.org
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Hats off to you on the organization kick you’re on.
If you’re saving all your PDFs on your hard drive, just a quick reminder to make sure you’re backing it all up to media that does not expire. (Many people don’t realize that burned CDs will fade within a few years and the saved material will be gone.) Load it onto a file server somewhere or copy it to an external hard drive once in a while and get it out of the house. Have Steve take it the office, maybe. All it takes is one bad rainstorm or determined burglar to deprive you of your archives otherwise.
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