2004-01-28 - 3:57 p.m.

saturday night - i wish every day were saturday night

it's about 7:30p. canvassers are drifting back in from the bitter cold with tales from the front. apparently, the street signage in this section of new hampshire is awful and the canvassers have had a terrible time locating the addresses they are supposed to be targeting. in the dark, their accuracy is halved. it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that the good folks of salem and derry have torn down relevant signs specifically to confuse campaign workers. my general feeling from the populace is one of polite frustration. i imagine they can't wait for tuesday, if only because the end of the primary will clear all these earnest youngsters off their doorsteps.

our next task is to write personal letters to new hampshire voters. the personal letters are a part of the literature packets distributed by the canvassers. the letters are yet another way we are encouraged to tell our story. we sit through yet another redundant set of wintern personal stories. wintern rob's story includes a gloss on his military family (which could perhaps explain his increasingly authoritarian attitude towards the volunteers) that at least adds a little narrative texture to his story of dropping out of college for dean. northhampton wintern makes a big deal about the bottom-up ethic of the dean campaign. once we are trained in the letter-writing task, it will be our responsibility to train the other volunteers in the task as they drift in from various other assignments. we mostly don't do this, partly because the task seems self-explanatory. handed blank unlined copy paper and black pens, we all sprawl out across the floor and start writing. volunteers ask one another about what they are writing. the tone is amiable. one eighteen-year-old girl has a particularly good letter, and we encourage her to read it aloud. in the middle of her reading, wintern rachel starts yelling for us to move into the front room. we try to hush her so we can hear the letter, but it is no use. she insists we set down what we are working on and move to the front room immediately. i see absolutely no choice but to comply. we all set down pens on half-finished letters and move to the front room.

in the front room, a high-ranking wintern is manning a massive white board. he explains to us that this is the most important part of the day. the top of the white board says 'how did it go today?' and it is divided into two equal sections: pluses and deltas. this is our chance to give feedback about the whole volunteer experience. pluses represent things that we liked, and deltas are things that could be changed. in case you missed that, there can be no negativity in this inventory. volunteers raise hands and begin adding cautiously to the pluses column. one guy praises his fantastic housing situation and i am completely taken aback. another woman praises the organizational skills of the winterns. i raise my hand and describe my visibility experience. i say that i loved doing visibility and had a great time, but that the period of time we spent in subzero temperatures was too long. my plus and delta are duly recorded on the white board. another volunteer who is at least ten years my junior jumps right up and says that some people can stay out much longer than two hours, and that maybe we should form two different groups for visibility. i suddenly feel very tired and old. i'm sure that everyone near me can see the murder in my eyes. more pluses and many more deltas are added to the whiteboard. few of them address what seems to be the basic problem: the force of so much youthful enthusiasm is not the same as a well-executed plan. and that there are actually too many volunteers.

eventually the winterns have taken enough deltas, and they direct us to disperse to our housing. joanna gives me the high sign and says that she and april and i are meeting someone in the other office who is going to take us home with her. we grab our bags and help joanna roll her luggage across the snow. we are greeted by a lovely tall young girl, who assists us into her hatchback and says we will be staying at her mother's house in the hills of derry. julie is so sweet and beautiful and good that the three of us fall deeply in love with her at first sight. she asks us if we need anything, she drives us to burger king so that joanna can get a bunless burger. i suck down an enormous diet coke while april munches daintily on fries. julie tells us her mom is so excited that we are coming she has baked a cake.

julie's mom's house is an amazing giant antique nestled in picturesque woods. they have a friendly dalmatian. there is in fact a cake with homemade buttercream frosting. we are allotted an upstairs room with the single largest bed i have ever seen in my life. it will easily sleep three, but april prefers the downstairs couch. joanna doesn't really want to share a bed with me either, claiming she thrashes about in her sleep, but i convince her that the bed is so big she will have to call my cellphone to get my attention. we chat with julie until about 11p. she's as gentle and caring as she is lovely. she and joanna are both special ed teachers and they share experiences. i am so tired i can tell that only caffeine and sheer will are animating me. julie apologises for the fact that the upstairs shower is broken. there is no bathing alternative. i knew there had to be a catch.

see photos of my weekend for dean on my fotolog.

stay tuned for further installments!

special thanks to everyone who has linked here! i haven't been this popular since junior high!