February 2015
The room was long since empty. The only ones left were Henry Grant and Clyde Kim, the president and vice-president of the new chapter of NPAPP at Applewood University. They figured that Quinn would be walking over to thank them, but they thought wrong.
It had been a tough two months for Quinn, trying to make sure that her own NPAPP chapter at Shrewsbury. The NPAPP orgs on the East Coast seemed to be doing moderately better, managing to keep their members over the Winter Break. Fred Wolff, the President of the NPAPP, was so concerned over the West Coast branches that he issued a Policy Memo (FHM-52) regarding how meetings were to be conducted. "These standards are time-tested in strengthening the connections between the NPAPP and our local communities. Your retention is awful. I intend to take a tour of the West Coast and see which chapters are really committed to the NPAPP and which will be left to twist in the wind."
Quinn sensed that Applewood would be twisting in the wind soon. "This was awful," Quinn said. "Really, it was just awful."
Grant looked poleaxed. "What did I do wrong? I got on campus radio, I put up tables, I've networked as much as I can, I - !"
" - and what do I show up in? You know perfectly well that these public meetings are the only places where we've got people's undivided attention! People [i]chose[/i] to come here! This might be your only shot! You might have doomed this NPAPP chapter to failure!"
Kim looked around. "That's a bit harsh."
"It's supposed to be. I could be spending my weekends other ways than giving speeches to sparse crowds."
"So it's the size of the crowd then - ?"
" - no, no, no, NO!" Quinn sighed. "Look at this place. Front row. Next to the podium. It was completely empty when I spoke. You just let your party members sit anywhere, and no one wants to sit up front. The people who came in sat on the side of the wall. What the hell is that?"
Before Grant could answer, Quinn continued. "You can't even tell if this is an NPAPP meeting! There's nothing here that says "NPAPP". What is this meeting supposed to be about? And holding it at 3 pm? When people are still in class? Jesus!"
"So you want some sort of Broadway production?" Grant answered, sharply.
"It would be better than this [i]nothing[/i] production. Like I said, how I am supposed to know if this is an NPAPP meeting?"
"What does an NPAPP meeting look like, then?" asked Kim.
"If you can't organize a successful meeting," Quinn said, "you should get out of NPAPP. Fred Wolff said that. Here's what you need to do. I want you working with the student body president and the various campus clubs."
"They're not NPAPP," Kim said. "They hate us."
"I don't care. You'll find an open ear sooner or later. There's no rule against being in NPAPP and being in anything else at the same time. There's also no point in just having the same guys here that are here already. You want to get agreement in people to come here and listen."
"We handed out flyers," Kim said.
"We tried that at Shrewsbury," Quinn said. "It doesn't work. They go right in the trash can. You inform the school newspaper, you inform the local press. Maybe they listen, maybe they don't. You put up a set of fliers and posters in prominent places. You make sure that people always know you're meeting."
"Okay," Grant said.
"Now, the meeting. You need a podium, minimal. Party signals. Green banners, green flags. Maybe some floral arrangements. Go to the florist. See if they're putting anything in the trash, something you can buy cheap. Something to let visitors know that this is a special place. March into the meeting all at once."
"We only have seven people," Kim said.
"Okay. Then play music. The national anthem, God Bless America, anything. And don't step on my speech! There should be attention paid to just one person. Your job should be to introduce the speaker and close the meeting. God, that ten minute speech you gave at the end just killed my momentum! I don't think anyone here remembered a single thing I said."
Quinn should see that Grant was angry. "Don't be angry," Quinn said. "At Shrewsbury, we struggled, too. We did all of the things that you're doing now, and our meetings sucked. Now we're up to fourteen regular people. People are coming in and they're hearing the message. They know we're around, they know we're here to stay, they know that we care. We have meetings for the party and we have speeches."
"Who speaks?" Kim asked.
"I do," Quinn says. "I don't like to have non-NPAPP speakers speak." She still noticed that Grant was mad, so she lied. "I [i]sucked[/i] as a speaker. Really awful. But after I made the changes I talked about, I felt more confident, like we had a real political party. You could just feel the energy in the room. At the end, we sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" and everyone chimed in. We didn't feel stupid anymore. We mattered."
Grant seemed to be mollified. "We have a lot to think about."
"If you need any help at all, in the world, I'm right here," Quinn said. "You can always call me. But please, please read the Policy Memos. Fred Wolff could be coming out here and we want to impress him."
Kim nodded. "I have a question."
"Uh-huh."
"You said that we should have 'party signals'. The only signal we have is green T-shirts. That's pretty common."
"Okay."
Kim continued. "I mean - it just doesn't say 'NPAPP'. Maybe some words that say NPAPP? I mean...." His voice trailed off.
Quinn remembered a few times when she talked to people at Shrewsbury that asked if they were an offshoot of the Green Party. People didn't remember NPAPP very much, either in all-letters or by its full name. She had been thinking about that for a long time."
"Maybe I could write to Fred Wolff. Maybe he has an idea." Quinn had never written to Wolff before; she usually wrote to the "West Coast Co-Ordinator" who was in New York. She had been told that all correspondence should come through the Co-Ordinator only and that Fred Wolff wasn't to be bothered on "every little bitchfight" going on in the various party orgs.
"Anyway, there's some good news. This was so unmemorable that you actually have another chance. We've written up some stuff at Shrewsbury that seems to work for us. And it's my fault, Henry. We really need to do a better job of communication."
Henry nodded. "Well, maybe I should have asked. Maybe we shouldn't have half-assed it."
"So you'll 'all-ass' it next time?"
"Yeah," Henry said. "Cool. Can you speak? I'm a shitty speaker."
Quinn calculated. [i]Three hours in, three hours back. Another day shot to hell.[/i] But she managed to somehow smile and promise that she'd do what she could.
(* * *)
"Daria, you have been a real lifesaver."
It was 3:26 am. Daria and the editor of the [i]Raft Pennant[/i], Terri Skelton, were sitting in an office of the Raft Student Union trying to prep a copy of the student newspaper.
"Hey," Daria said. "I'm just glad you found a use for all that crap." In her 'tryout' for the [i]Pennant[/i], Daria had submitted three articles. All three were published the next day, and Daria had quickly been added to the masthead.
"I'm just glad I found someone who could write," Terri said. "What was that bullshit that Maurice said? [i]Sorry, I just didn't have the time to write this week.[/i] I swear to God, I'd like to release one copy of the [i]Pennant[/i] that was all blank, and in small print at the bottom of Page One, write 'Compliments of the editorial staff'."
"Come on," Daria said. "You would definitely have room for your editorial."
"Yeah, but no one wants to read my political ranting," Terri said. "Thanks for giving up your cozy apartment and helping me out."
"Trust me. I was glad. My roommate, Jane, is holding a party at our apartment. I couldn't take it any longer. I made an Irish goodbye. I'll solve things with a shovel when I get back."
"Is that a death threat?"
"No, but it could be. I meant a shovel to pick up all the beer bottles. I guess it really wasn't meant for Jane and me to room together."
"That sucks. I think we're in the same situation. I'm rooming on campus but my roommate sucks. She farts. She's a pig."
"Terri, everybody farts."
"Yeah, but not so loudly or with such gusto. Hey, Daria, if you're looking for a roommate...."
"Tempting. But I can't leave Jane hanging for the rest of the semester."
"Got it. Just let me know."
"You think I'm going to get an 'A' in Reporting I?"
"Shit," Terri said. "If you've seen the trash that walks in here with an 'A' in Reporting I, you should get a triple-A grade in Reporting I this semester, and with oak leaf clusters."
(* * *)
Quinn grabbed her cardboard paper and decided to go to work. She ripped a sheet of dark green paper out of the tablet, placed it on her desk, and thought. [i]What could I put in the center that would make the NPAPP stand out?[/i]
Green made sense. It stood for environmentalism, for capitalism, and actually for Islam. (She didn't know if the NPAPP had a position on Islam, and would read the forums for a hint as to what it was.) There had been great symbols in the past. The swastika of the Nazis and the hammer-and-sickle of the old Soviet Union were instantly recognizable and drew up a wealth of feelings and associations. She needed something like that for the NPAPP, but not so monolithical or creepy.
Her first attempts were based on rearrangements of the letters N, P, and A. Too cluttered, or too simple. Did she really [i]want[/i] a symbol that everyone could draw? It had to be something that would recognized from a long distance away. White was another color of the NPAPP, and something white against the dark green background was sure to work. But what? It couldn't be a logo-in-white circle, the comparisons to the Nazi flag would be unwanted and obvious.
She decided to look up articles about brand identity. Some famous logos were actually quite busy. Harley-Davidsons, for example. Many just spelled out the name of the product, like Oreo or SyFy. Some logos were instantly recognizable: the golden arches of McDonald's, the bulls-eye of Target, the shell of Shell. There were all sorts of directions to go in.
There were hours of logos to look at, and Quinn's essential problem was that she couldn't just copy someone else's trademarked logo. This logo had to be original. She wasn't good at 'original', she was a follower of fashion. But she had given up fashion for the NPAPP, and if the NPAPP needed original, by God, she was going to supply original.
She looked outside at the green trees. The grass was as green as the NPAPP's signature color. It would be snowing at Raft, where Daria was. White on green. She thought of various winter-themed logos. A stylized snowflake against a solid green background looked good - but unfortunately, it didn't have anything to do with NPAPP, unless they wanted to imply they were all special snowflakes.
Bored and anxious, she kept looking outside, and gave up. She walked, aimlessly, through the halls. It was past 1 am in the morning, time had eluded her and the halls were dark and quiet.
Quinn wandered, aimlessly, through the dorm. There was a set of flyers on the wall, advertising all sorts of campus clubs, including the NPAPP. Unlike the NPAPP flyer, some had drawings, art, mostly unsuitable for what Quinn wanted to do.
A geometric design caught Quinn's eye. It was a set of circles linked with straight lines, the Kabbalah. Even though each of circles had Hebrew script inside, the symmetry appealed to her. Here was something that an ordinary person could draw and remember. The problem was, it wasn't simple enough and she was certain that the Kabbalah diagram was well know among a certain section of the community. But maybe, the Kabbalah could give her inspiration for something.
She read about Kabbalah and learned that the diagram was an [i]Etz haChayim[/i], the Tree of Life. Tree of Life sounded great, better than some dumb donkey or elephant. The primordial energy of the universe, distilled into one symbol. Quinn smiled. Now she needed a Tree of Life symbol which would go into the center of the flag, and that would be it.
Unfortunately, when she looked up images for the Tree of Life, they had two problems. They were invariable Celtic Trees of Life. The logos were invariably circular and she did not want a white circle in the middle of a green flag, because no matter what you filled the center space with, it would be ripe for parody. Furthermore, even though the Trees were recognizable even the simplest representations were quite complex, and they couldn't be easily reproduced. It gave her hands cramps just [i]thinking[/i] about how the hell you were going to be able to put that together.
She tried to look up "tree of life abstract". An attempt to simplify the Tree of Life down to its very basics. All she could find were basic corporate logos around a tree theme.
She was almost disgusted, but then thought, "Hey, if it's good enough for a start-up, it's good enough for NPAPP!" So the design would be a very basic design of a tree. Some leaves. A trunk. Easy to reproduce.
The trunk branched in two different directions at the top and the bottom. Now, all she needed was leaves. Not knowing how many leaves she would need, each leaf was the exact same shape, a football-shaped ellipse. There were seven leaves at the periphery and six bunched up in the middle to make the mass of the tree.
Quinn looked at her handiwork. "Good enough for now," she told herself. After gluing the pieces together, she went to bed.
(* * *)
Daria returned to her apartment at 4:56 am that morning. She'd be in class two hours later, so it basically gave her enough time to take a shower, change clothes, and get a bite to eat. She'd deal with the rest of the day when she had to.
She dreaded opening the doors and seeing how things looked. The place did look like a mess, but it wasn't as if the carpet had been reduced to burning fragments. There were actually surfaces that could be considered "clean" or "clear" by a disinterested observer.
Jane's bedroom door was open. There was Jane inside, no hookup. Everyone had cleared out. Daria decided to check her e-mail and then take a shower.
No new mail, from either her parents or from Quinn. She closed her laptop and undressed, wrapped a long towel around herself and walked into the bathroom. Placing her glasses on the sink, she pulled back the shower curtains to take a shower.
The bathtub was currenly occupied by an unidentified male. He was asleep, dressed in a nice shirt (but no pants or underwear whatsoever) and pretty much dead to the world, unconscious.
This was not the sight that Daria prepared to see at 5 o'clock in the morning. "JANNNNNNNNNEEE!!!" she screamed.
(* * *)
Quinn took a photograph of her work the next morning, sent it off to the West Coast Coordinator, and promptly forgot about it.
One week later, she received an e-mail.
From: Fred Wolff
To: Quinn Morgendorffer
Re: NPAPP logo
This is a wonderful symbol! It illustrates the idea of the movement perfectly! A green background symbolizing our dedication to the environment and a white tree that provides shelter for all. This is an idea very close to an idea that I had but you have crystallized it triumphantly!
I have thought about adding black to the NPAPP colors, as all great flags have three colors. Black represents our determination. And frankly - between you and I - white pants attract dirt of all sorts. I believe we would look smarter with black pants, and I have immediately sent a policy directive.
I shall present your flag at my next staff meeting; you shall soon see some variant of it. You shall receive some credit for it; you are clearly a young woman of distinction.
-FW
[i]Fred Wolff himself[/i]! He had seen Quinn's flag, and he had approved! Well, not all of it but he was clearly sympathetic! Green, white, [i]and black[/i], and they sorely needed the black. Quinn resolved to throw out all of her old white pants immediately.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Dancing in the Streets V
Thanksgiving 2014
Daria was at the Lawndale Airport, waiting for Quinn's arrival. Daria had gotten there first - she had actually planned it so that Quinn could absorb the blow of parental love, but the high cost of plane tickets convinced the Morgendorffers to shop around. Two transfers and an 11:30 pm arrival time later, Quinn's plane finally showed up at 11:44 pm.
Quinn came off the plane, in a green T-shirt and blue jeans, wheeling a pink suitcase. "Hey!" she said.
"Hey," Daria said. "We have to convince our parents to have another kid. After three months with no one in the house, they were smothering me to death. Like waterboarding with love."
"Tell me about it," Quinn said as Daria followed along to the luggage pickup. "When you left, I thought it was going to be totally impossible. I was almost convinced to go to Lawndale State in the fall, anything to get me out of the house. Where's Jane?"
"Jane has no dinero," Daria said. "Unless I can fit her into a suitcase, there's no way she has enough money to make it back home."
"That's too bad," Quinn said. "So what are you going to do?"
"Endure Mom and Dad," Daria said. "Check the internet on my cell phone a lot."
"I plan making a lot of calls," Quinn said. "A [i]lot[/i] of calls. I haven't heard anything from Sandi or Tiffany at all. What about you?"
"Well, I haven't heard anything from them either," Daria said.
"No, stupid. I mean [i]your[/i] friends at Lawndale."
"What friends?" Daria said. Quinn took that as confirmation that Daria had had no contact with her senior classmates other than Jane. She wondered what they were going to talk about on the way home.
(* * *)
The two drove along the highway after midnight. Quinn drove, as Daria hated to drive. Daria squinted. "Funny T-shirt?"
"Hm?"
"I can't read the writing."
"Oh," Quinn said. "This is my National Progressive American People's Party T-shirt."
"Oh, those guys," Daria said. Quinn wanted to know exactly what Daria was talking about and Daria admitted to her multiple encounters with the NPAPP. "So you've joined up?"
"Yeah," Quinn said.
"Wow," Daria said. "I didn't think those guys met your standards of either fashion or popularity."
"I'm expanding my horizons," Quinn said. Daria gave her a funny look, but nodded.
"Daria?"
"Hm?"
"What do you think of the NPAPP?"
"I don't really think of it," Daria said.
"Come on. You knew it when it was just the American People's Party. You had to come to some conclusion."
"This isn't going to be some sort of political come-to-Jesus speech I'm going to get?"
"No. I want your honest opinion. Please."
Daria sighed. "I suppose that the NPAPP is like a lot of other little groups out there on the fringes of American political life. They have some good ideas, although I think there's too much in their program that other people can pick apart. I think that after four years or so, the party will have to come to a decision. They'll either have to join up with one of the established political parties and break up or they'll go the other way and become more strident and more obnoxious, like similar groups. Parties this size only stay together as long as there's one compelling personality. If the party can establish beyond "small group" level, it will survive, else the members will find something better to do with their time."
"Hmf," Quinn said, obviously disappointed but not saying anything.
"You wanted me honest opinion. Be careful what you ask for."
"Well, I'm in it for the long haul."
"So when did you join?"
"In October," Quinn said.
"Yep. The 'long haul'." Daria smirked, and Quinn frowned.
(* * *)
Daria, Quinn, Helen, and Jake were finally together again, as a family, at the dinner table. Jake had labored long and hard over the turkey, and he was Hitler in a chef's hat. The kitchen had been annexed like the Sudentenland, with Jake giving orders for nothing to be disturbed and declining any help from his daughters. Finally, Jake's mighty labors ended, and the Morgendorffers feasted.
Daria asked to take some of the food home for Jane, but the parental attention - with her parents attempting to turn back the clock to when they were both in high school - disturbed her. Her parents could never let live, they always had to pry. They wanted to know what her classes were like, what she thought of Raft, did she have a boyfriend, did Jane have a boyfriend? She just didn't feel close enough to share and Daria knew that things would be changing over the years. She felt she had already separated from her parents and that they all lived in different universes.
Quinn, of course, loved to talk, and Daria decided to let Quinn talk as much as she wanted to. Quinn talked about Shrewsbury but since NPAPP was the most important thing in her life at the time, the bulk of her conversation consisted of retelling her adventures with the Shrewsbury chapter on the minute level.
Helen and Jake - of course - were fascinated. Jake wanted to talk about the new Christmas shopping season. Helen and Jake were conservative Democrats, and almost every economist stated that this Christmas season was when Americans were going to cut loose and open their wallets. The high price in gas - still at $4.30 - had forced Americans to curtail some of their extracurriculars, and economists believed that this reprioritizing of household budgets would add up to a windfall that would hit the economy.
Quinn shared the story of her college friends trying to find plane tickets at a decent price. "It's hard. And now I'm starting to wonder if it was a smart idea going to school in California. Out-of-state tuition is a killer."
"I'm glad to see that you're taking an interest in politics," Helen said. "Maybe there's something that you can do about that."
"Oh, we're definitely trying!" Quinn said.
"Quinn, your group doesn't even have a dozen people in it. I don't think that the DNC and RNC are shaking in their boots at the prospect of the National Progressive American People's Party."
"But isn't that the way it [i]always[/i] is?" Quinn said. They always tell you to 'vote', but you get to vote between the Democrats and the Republicans. That's like a choice between getting stabbed and getting shot."
"Right," Helen said. "But when your life is at stake, that distinction is a real difference."
"But it doesn't have to be that way. I don't [i]want[/i] to choose between getting stabbed and getting shot when I go to the voting booth."
"How did [i]you[/i] vote Daria?" Jake asked.
"Using a complex mathematical formula weighted by the number of lies told by the candidates."
"Funny," Quinn said. "I voted for the first time this year. Half of the people on the ballot are running unopposed. I thought I was in North Korea. I can write in a candidate, but the rules make sure that he can't get elected. You can vote for a write-in candidate, but he can't advance past the primary in California."
"Quinn, you might have better luck working within the system," Helen said. "Join the Democrats - or God help us, the Republicans - and work for real change."
"Work for 'real change'." Quinn snorted, as if she had heard Helen a dozen times before. "People have tried that for years, Mom," Quinn said. "That doesn't work. Both political parties are broken. The economy is broken. The environment is broken. So our goal is to be a real choice."
"Like the Greens," Daria said.
"No, [i]not[/i] like the Greens. The Greens are in bed with Big Labor. New boss, same as the old boss. And most of them are socialists."
"Quinn, I read your party platform," Daria said. "I distinctly recall 'abolition of unearned income' was one of the planks. A lot of that stuff sounds very anti-capitalist."
"But DAH-ria," Quinn said with a smile. "We're not out to destroy capitalism. We just want responsibility. We want the people who work for a living to be rewarded, and we want the people who use capitalism to destroy the enviroment and destroy people's lives not to use corporations as a shield to hide behind punishment."
"Then you'd have to get rid of the Fourteenth Amendment," Daria said.
"Maybe we will get rid of it," Quinn said.
"Quinn - do you even know what the Fourteenth Amendment is?" Daria said.
"No, but I can find out. If the Fourteenth Amendment isn't doing good for the people, then we intend to get rid of it."
"Maybe you should read the Constitution first before you decide to change things," Daria said.
"That's the same old talk, Daria. Come along and work within a system that doesn't work for anybody but itself."
"Okay. Then what if no one listens to you?" Daria said.
"We'll [i]talk harder[/i]. If we're right - and we are right - people will listen. Now I have to go to the bathroom. Excuse me."
Quinn left the table and headed to the bathroom. With the three of them at the table, Helen said, "I think it's sweet. Seeing Quinn involved in her first political causes. I remember when I was a young radical."
"What was it like, Mom, meeting Martin Luther King?"
"Quiet," Helen said. "At least Quinn is involved. Some of us could stand to be more involved."
"Helen's right!" Jake said. "Why aren't you involved?"
"Because leaving a skull-shaped impression in a solid brick wall isn't my idea of fun. Besides, Quinn doesn't know anything about the National Progressive American People's Party. It's just one of her stupid popularity causes and it will blow over."
"Daria, you said that these American People's Party people were at Raft?" Helen asked.
"Uh huh."
"Were they popular?" Helen was asking honestly.
(* * *)
Christmas 2014
Jane and Daria waited outside the security gate. "I wish I could hang around, but you know me, 'Jihadi Jane'. I - !"
"Shut up!" Daria said with some urgency. "No joking, they take that bullshit seriously at airports. Unless you want to meet Five Fingers Gretchen in the strip-search room at TSA."
"Damn. I knew I should have emptied all of my cavities before showing up at Logan," Jane said. "So, when am I going to hear from you again?"
"Probably when I get back to Lawndale. It's going to be fun. The usual parental smothering. Quinn going on about her political causes and planning the revolution from her four-poster. Going through the ritual of gift exchange. The usual crap."
"Wish I could join in," Jane said. "Bring me back a present."
"You already have a present," Daria said, lifting her backpack over her shoulder. "The use of the apartment while I'm not around."
"I intend to make full use of it. Ho ho ho."
"Yeah, speaking of 'ho', please don't fuck on my bed."
"I have no intention of fucking on your bed," Jane said. "Now make it back to Lawndale and enjoy some of that fine, fine Christmas nog."
As Daria walked over to the friendly TSA officer to show her tickets and driver's license, she suddenly had the realization that Jane fully intended to fuck on her bed. She sighed. She could always change the sheets when she got back.
(* * *)
Daria knocked on the door to Quinn's room. "Enter," Quinn said.
Helen and Jake had kept both Daria and Quinn's rooms the way they were before they left for college. Daria always felt embarrassed going back to her old room, due to some of her fashion and music choices of which she was reminded whenever she looked at the bookshelves. She wondered if Quinn felt that same kind of embarrasment, surrounded by pink and gonks.
The gonks had been rudely shoved to the floor. Quinn had her shoes off, typing on her laptop.
"Hey," Daria said. "About that - !"
" -- the Fourteenth Amendment?" Quinn asked. "The one that made the former slaves citizens?"
"Ah. You've done some reading."
"Yep. 'Free citizens vote'. That's an easy way to remember the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments."
"Okay. Now that we've mastered American Civics, I wanted to talk about the Gift Exchange. What do you want me to buy you?"
"The same old crap. Something practical. Which I intend to exchange for money, by the way, so keep the receipts."
"Got it. Do the same for me. I wonder why we don't just skip the charade and exchange money. Or just keep our damned money."
"Well, I suppose the ritual is what's important," Quinn said. "Besides, it's the annual boost to the American economy, so people need us out there buying crap."
"I guess. So what are you going to buy with your loot?"
"I'm donating my loot to the NPAPP."
"Of course," Daria said. "I guess I'm subsidizing the New Revolutionaries now."
"Well, you knew that was where the money was going to go." Quinn slightly closed her laptop and turned to Daria. "I think I'm going to major in political science."
"Realllly?" Daria was surprised.
"Yep."
"How do you think Mom and Dad are going to feel?"
"They're going to be unhappy. But...I guess moving back to Lawndale wouldn't be so bad if they refused to pay for it. I guess I could go to Lawndale State."
"That's a fate worse than death," Daria said. "Do you want my advice?"
"Well...no. Not really. But I am interested in hearing it."
"There is absolutely [i]nothing[/i] you can do with a political science degree. Except either run for office, or help someone else run for office. And since there are only two major parties in the United States, in the end that's going to mean working either for Team Red or Team Blue. And the Greens already stole your color."
"Daria, I don't intend on working for either the Democrats or Republicans. That's like working for your grandpa."
"Quinn, get serious," Daria said. "After four years of political science - and that is if you take it seriously and even if you join a real political party - you are going to be terminally unemployable. The only job you've ever had was at a pet store, and we all know how that ended. Political science pays for shit. You could become a lawyer, but we're now glutted with lawyers, a bunch of doucebags chasing the same free-floating one hundred dollar bill. And I know you like your luxuries. Do you [i]really[/i] want to move back after five or six years to this room?"
"First, Daria, I am serious. Second, I'm going to stay with NPAPP as long as it holds up. Third, you underestimate me."
"I underestimate you. Miss Trendy?"
"Do I [i]look[/i] like a fashion plate now?" Quinn indicated her jeans and her NPAPP shirt with the sweep on one hand. "Maybe I have more inner resources than you think I do."
"Okay. Warning has been delivered. My job is done. You could move in with me, I suppose, but it's a little crowded with me and Jane."
"How's that going?" Quinn said.
"She's fucking on my bed," Daria muttered, and left the room.
(* * *)
Daria was holding a pink sweater in Quinn's size as she made her way to the Albatross and Finch checkout line. It was an odd experience. Normally, she stayed away from an ultra-trendy store like A&F, with their "greeter gods and goddesses". One time, Daria and Jane ventured into A&F for a laugh. The store was notorious for the motto that only the coolest, most popular and best looking people should be wearing their clothes. The stares and the lack of customer service made it quite clear which category Daria and Jane belonged to.
This time, Daria was given help not once, but [i]twice[/i] by one of the greeter goddesses. She asked the "goddess" if she was working on commission. "Yeah," was the answer. "We get paid sub-minimum wage. Part of the reward is the privilege of being a greeter goddess, but we get paid on commission."
Daria was surprised that an A&F greeter goddess would be so casual with a mere mortal. "That's what I figured. This is the Christmas season, though. Looks like a nice long line."
"You should have seen the line [i]last[/i] year," the goddess said. "The lines here and at Khaki Barn were ridiculous back then. You could make serious bank. Nobody is buying anything this season."
"NPR says that this is going to be one of the biggest Christmas seasons ever."
The goddess rolled her eyes. "Yeah, everybody says that. Me, I'm looking to find steady work somewhere. A place where I don't have to work for commission. Do you know someone who's hiring?"
"I wish I did. But I'm a college student, so...."
"Yeah. I'm starting to regret not going to college myself. Anyway, if you need some help packing that, just let me know."
"Nah. But I'll throw in an extra pair of socks."
"Thanks," the goddess said.
Daria thought about their conversation. [i]It would certainly make a good story of some kind. Maybe a long-form essay.[/i] Since she had some time, she decided to see if the person would interview with her. It was going to be a long Christmas break, and she needed to show some incentive.
(* * *)
It was three days before Daria and Quinn were to return to their various schools.
Jane had sworn up and down to high heaven that there was no fucking on her bead. Finally, she admitted it. "Yeah, there was a little fucking." Daria knew going into their co-habitation (so to speak) that Jane was rules adverse, but she didn't appreciate it that Jane was overstepping her most personal of boundaries.
In the meantime, she had talked to seven different people at the mall who all confirmed that Christmas sales were down, and that there were more returns that usual that year. Daria looked for some confirmation of the numbers in the major papers, but those papers remained upbeat. Given that Daria's story was flying against conventional wisdom, she admitted to herself that she had doubts as to whether or not it would fly.
(* * *)
January 2015
Shrewsbury College
When Quinn made it back to her dorm, the first thing she did was plan to hook up with Madeline. She dialed Madeline's cell phone but got no answer. After two other "no answers" she decided to go to Madeline's room and find out what was going on for herself.
Quinn knocked on Madeline's door several hours later. A blonde chick opened the door. She didn't look like Madeline or her roommate.
"Hello?"
"Hi! I'm here to talk to Madeline!"
"Madeline?" the girl answered. "You mean the girl who used to be here?"
Madeline's side of the room was replaced with new junk, whereas Madeline's roommate's stuff was still there. "What happened. Did she changed dorms?"
"No, I heard she transferred."
[i]Transferred![/i] As Quinn said her goodbyes, she couldn't believe it. Madeline had flown the coop, abandoning the NPAPP chapter, abandoning Shrewsbury, abandoning her friendship with Quinn - abandoing everything. At least it explained why Quinn wasn't getting any calls back.
She made a note to check at the admissions department to make sure that the new person in Madeline's room wasn't mistaken. Even so, it looked like Madeline was gone for good and the presidency - good or bad - was now in her hands.
(* * *)
Raft University
Daria had just finished changing the sheets on her bed. After the inevitable fallout, Jane decided that she had something to do. "I've decided that I have something to do," she said, and walked out of the apartment.
Since Jane never checked their answering machine messages, Daria caught up. There was a message from her advisor.
[i]Daria, this is Dr. Philpot. I want to chat with you about that essay you e-mailed to me. Give me a call at my office number. Goodbye.[/i]
Daria dialed back. She didn't think he would have 'beta-read' it so soon. "Hello?"
"Hello, Dr. Philpot. This is Daria Morgendorffer. You left a message."
"Yes, yes," he said from his office. "I wanted you to know that I enjoyed that essay very much. I left a few comments on it. I didn't think I'd write so much but it sucked me in."
"Thanks."
"By the way...I did something without your permission."
"Hm?"
"I shared it with Dr. Maxon over at the journalism department. He's a colleague of mine. I'll just say that he was very impressed and he'd like you to call him immediately. He wants to talk to you about the benefits and privileges of a degree from the Raft School of Journalism."
Daria was surprised. "I don't think it was really that great."
"Well, I think Dr. Maxon was more surprised by the date of the essay and the news."
"Hm?"
"It looks like the major networks are reporting horrible Christmas numbers. Dr. Maxon enjoyed how you drew your conclusions and insisted that it would be a horrible holiday season. He was talking about that essay with great enthusiasm. You might have a future in journalism."
Daria was at the Lawndale Airport, waiting for Quinn's arrival. Daria had gotten there first - she had actually planned it so that Quinn could absorb the blow of parental love, but the high cost of plane tickets convinced the Morgendorffers to shop around. Two transfers and an 11:30 pm arrival time later, Quinn's plane finally showed up at 11:44 pm.
Quinn came off the plane, in a green T-shirt and blue jeans, wheeling a pink suitcase. "Hey!" she said.
"Hey," Daria said. "We have to convince our parents to have another kid. After three months with no one in the house, they were smothering me to death. Like waterboarding with love."
"Tell me about it," Quinn said as Daria followed along to the luggage pickup. "When you left, I thought it was going to be totally impossible. I was almost convinced to go to Lawndale State in the fall, anything to get me out of the house. Where's Jane?"
"Jane has no dinero," Daria said. "Unless I can fit her into a suitcase, there's no way she has enough money to make it back home."
"That's too bad," Quinn said. "So what are you going to do?"
"Endure Mom and Dad," Daria said. "Check the internet on my cell phone a lot."
"I plan making a lot of calls," Quinn said. "A [i]lot[/i] of calls. I haven't heard anything from Sandi or Tiffany at all. What about you?"
"Well, I haven't heard anything from them either," Daria said.
"No, stupid. I mean [i]your[/i] friends at Lawndale."
"What friends?" Daria said. Quinn took that as confirmation that Daria had had no contact with her senior classmates other than Jane. She wondered what they were going to talk about on the way home.
(* * *)
The two drove along the highway after midnight. Quinn drove, as Daria hated to drive. Daria squinted. "Funny T-shirt?"
"Hm?"
"I can't read the writing."
"Oh," Quinn said. "This is my National Progressive American People's Party T-shirt."
"Oh, those guys," Daria said. Quinn wanted to know exactly what Daria was talking about and Daria admitted to her multiple encounters with the NPAPP. "So you've joined up?"
"Yeah," Quinn said.
"Wow," Daria said. "I didn't think those guys met your standards of either fashion or popularity."
"I'm expanding my horizons," Quinn said. Daria gave her a funny look, but nodded.
"Daria?"
"Hm?"
"What do you think of the NPAPP?"
"I don't really think of it," Daria said.
"Come on. You knew it when it was just the American People's Party. You had to come to some conclusion."
"This isn't going to be some sort of political come-to-Jesus speech I'm going to get?"
"No. I want your honest opinion. Please."
Daria sighed. "I suppose that the NPAPP is like a lot of other little groups out there on the fringes of American political life. They have some good ideas, although I think there's too much in their program that other people can pick apart. I think that after four years or so, the party will have to come to a decision. They'll either have to join up with one of the established political parties and break up or they'll go the other way and become more strident and more obnoxious, like similar groups. Parties this size only stay together as long as there's one compelling personality. If the party can establish beyond "small group" level, it will survive, else the members will find something better to do with their time."
"Hmf," Quinn said, obviously disappointed but not saying anything.
"You wanted me honest opinion. Be careful what you ask for."
"Well, I'm in it for the long haul."
"So when did you join?"
"In October," Quinn said.
"Yep. The 'long haul'." Daria smirked, and Quinn frowned.
(* * *)
Daria, Quinn, Helen, and Jake were finally together again, as a family, at the dinner table. Jake had labored long and hard over the turkey, and he was Hitler in a chef's hat. The kitchen had been annexed like the Sudentenland, with Jake giving orders for nothing to be disturbed and declining any help from his daughters. Finally, Jake's mighty labors ended, and the Morgendorffers feasted.
Daria asked to take some of the food home for Jane, but the parental attention - with her parents attempting to turn back the clock to when they were both in high school - disturbed her. Her parents could never let live, they always had to pry. They wanted to know what her classes were like, what she thought of Raft, did she have a boyfriend, did Jane have a boyfriend? She just didn't feel close enough to share and Daria knew that things would be changing over the years. She felt she had already separated from her parents and that they all lived in different universes.
Quinn, of course, loved to talk, and Daria decided to let Quinn talk as much as she wanted to. Quinn talked about Shrewsbury but since NPAPP was the most important thing in her life at the time, the bulk of her conversation consisted of retelling her adventures with the Shrewsbury chapter on the minute level.
Helen and Jake - of course - were fascinated. Jake wanted to talk about the new Christmas shopping season. Helen and Jake were conservative Democrats, and almost every economist stated that this Christmas season was when Americans were going to cut loose and open their wallets. The high price in gas - still at $4.30 - had forced Americans to curtail some of their extracurriculars, and economists believed that this reprioritizing of household budgets would add up to a windfall that would hit the economy.
Quinn shared the story of her college friends trying to find plane tickets at a decent price. "It's hard. And now I'm starting to wonder if it was a smart idea going to school in California. Out-of-state tuition is a killer."
"I'm glad to see that you're taking an interest in politics," Helen said. "Maybe there's something that you can do about that."
"Oh, we're definitely trying!" Quinn said.
"Quinn, your group doesn't even have a dozen people in it. I don't think that the DNC and RNC are shaking in their boots at the prospect of the National Progressive American People's Party."
"But isn't that the way it [i]always[/i] is?" Quinn said. They always tell you to 'vote', but you get to vote between the Democrats and the Republicans. That's like a choice between getting stabbed and getting shot."
"Right," Helen said. "But when your life is at stake, that distinction is a real difference."
"But it doesn't have to be that way. I don't [i]want[/i] to choose between getting stabbed and getting shot when I go to the voting booth."
"How did [i]you[/i] vote Daria?" Jake asked.
"Using a complex mathematical formula weighted by the number of lies told by the candidates."
"Funny," Quinn said. "I voted for the first time this year. Half of the people on the ballot are running unopposed. I thought I was in North Korea. I can write in a candidate, but the rules make sure that he can't get elected. You can vote for a write-in candidate, but he can't advance past the primary in California."
"Quinn, you might have better luck working within the system," Helen said. "Join the Democrats - or God help us, the Republicans - and work for real change."
"Work for 'real change'." Quinn snorted, as if she had heard Helen a dozen times before. "People have tried that for years, Mom," Quinn said. "That doesn't work. Both political parties are broken. The economy is broken. The environment is broken. So our goal is to be a real choice."
"Like the Greens," Daria said.
"No, [i]not[/i] like the Greens. The Greens are in bed with Big Labor. New boss, same as the old boss. And most of them are socialists."
"Quinn, I read your party platform," Daria said. "I distinctly recall 'abolition of unearned income' was one of the planks. A lot of that stuff sounds very anti-capitalist."
"But DAH-ria," Quinn said with a smile. "We're not out to destroy capitalism. We just want responsibility. We want the people who work for a living to be rewarded, and we want the people who use capitalism to destroy the enviroment and destroy people's lives not to use corporations as a shield to hide behind punishment."
"Then you'd have to get rid of the Fourteenth Amendment," Daria said.
"Maybe we will get rid of it," Quinn said.
"Quinn - do you even know what the Fourteenth Amendment is?" Daria said.
"No, but I can find out. If the Fourteenth Amendment isn't doing good for the people, then we intend to get rid of it."
"Maybe you should read the Constitution first before you decide to change things," Daria said.
"That's the same old talk, Daria. Come along and work within a system that doesn't work for anybody but itself."
"Okay. Then what if no one listens to you?" Daria said.
"We'll [i]talk harder[/i]. If we're right - and we are right - people will listen. Now I have to go to the bathroom. Excuse me."
Quinn left the table and headed to the bathroom. With the three of them at the table, Helen said, "I think it's sweet. Seeing Quinn involved in her first political causes. I remember when I was a young radical."
"What was it like, Mom, meeting Martin Luther King?"
"Quiet," Helen said. "At least Quinn is involved. Some of us could stand to be more involved."
"Helen's right!" Jake said. "Why aren't you involved?"
"Because leaving a skull-shaped impression in a solid brick wall isn't my idea of fun. Besides, Quinn doesn't know anything about the National Progressive American People's Party. It's just one of her stupid popularity causes and it will blow over."
"Daria, you said that these American People's Party people were at Raft?" Helen asked.
"Uh huh."
"Were they popular?" Helen was asking honestly.
(* * *)
Christmas 2014
Jane and Daria waited outside the security gate. "I wish I could hang around, but you know me, 'Jihadi Jane'. I - !"
"Shut up!" Daria said with some urgency. "No joking, they take that bullshit seriously at airports. Unless you want to meet Five Fingers Gretchen in the strip-search room at TSA."
"Damn. I knew I should have emptied all of my cavities before showing up at Logan," Jane said. "So, when am I going to hear from you again?"
"Probably when I get back to Lawndale. It's going to be fun. The usual parental smothering. Quinn going on about her political causes and planning the revolution from her four-poster. Going through the ritual of gift exchange. The usual crap."
"Wish I could join in," Jane said. "Bring me back a present."
"You already have a present," Daria said, lifting her backpack over her shoulder. "The use of the apartment while I'm not around."
"I intend to make full use of it. Ho ho ho."
"Yeah, speaking of 'ho', please don't fuck on my bed."
"I have no intention of fucking on your bed," Jane said. "Now make it back to Lawndale and enjoy some of that fine, fine Christmas nog."
As Daria walked over to the friendly TSA officer to show her tickets and driver's license, she suddenly had the realization that Jane fully intended to fuck on her bed. She sighed. She could always change the sheets when she got back.
(* * *)
Daria knocked on the door to Quinn's room. "Enter," Quinn said.
Helen and Jake had kept both Daria and Quinn's rooms the way they were before they left for college. Daria always felt embarrassed going back to her old room, due to some of her fashion and music choices of which she was reminded whenever she looked at the bookshelves. She wondered if Quinn felt that same kind of embarrasment, surrounded by pink and gonks.
The gonks had been rudely shoved to the floor. Quinn had her shoes off, typing on her laptop.
"Hey," Daria said. "About that - !"
" -- the Fourteenth Amendment?" Quinn asked. "The one that made the former slaves citizens?"
"Ah. You've done some reading."
"Yep. 'Free citizens vote'. That's an easy way to remember the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments."
"Okay. Now that we've mastered American Civics, I wanted to talk about the Gift Exchange. What do you want me to buy you?"
"The same old crap. Something practical. Which I intend to exchange for money, by the way, so keep the receipts."
"Got it. Do the same for me. I wonder why we don't just skip the charade and exchange money. Or just keep our damned money."
"Well, I suppose the ritual is what's important," Quinn said. "Besides, it's the annual boost to the American economy, so people need us out there buying crap."
"I guess. So what are you going to buy with your loot?"
"I'm donating my loot to the NPAPP."
"Of course," Daria said. "I guess I'm subsidizing the New Revolutionaries now."
"Well, you knew that was where the money was going to go." Quinn slightly closed her laptop and turned to Daria. "I think I'm going to major in political science."
"Realllly?" Daria was surprised.
"Yep."
"How do you think Mom and Dad are going to feel?"
"They're going to be unhappy. But...I guess moving back to Lawndale wouldn't be so bad if they refused to pay for it. I guess I could go to Lawndale State."
"That's a fate worse than death," Daria said. "Do you want my advice?"
"Well...no. Not really. But I am interested in hearing it."
"There is absolutely [i]nothing[/i] you can do with a political science degree. Except either run for office, or help someone else run for office. And since there are only two major parties in the United States, in the end that's going to mean working either for Team Red or Team Blue. And the Greens already stole your color."
"Daria, I don't intend on working for either the Democrats or Republicans. That's like working for your grandpa."
"Quinn, get serious," Daria said. "After four years of political science - and that is if you take it seriously and even if you join a real political party - you are going to be terminally unemployable. The only job you've ever had was at a pet store, and we all know how that ended. Political science pays for shit. You could become a lawyer, but we're now glutted with lawyers, a bunch of doucebags chasing the same free-floating one hundred dollar bill. And I know you like your luxuries. Do you [i]really[/i] want to move back after five or six years to this room?"
"First, Daria, I am serious. Second, I'm going to stay with NPAPP as long as it holds up. Third, you underestimate me."
"I underestimate you. Miss Trendy?"
"Do I [i]look[/i] like a fashion plate now?" Quinn indicated her jeans and her NPAPP shirt with the sweep on one hand. "Maybe I have more inner resources than you think I do."
"Okay. Warning has been delivered. My job is done. You could move in with me, I suppose, but it's a little crowded with me and Jane."
"How's that going?" Quinn said.
"She's fucking on my bed," Daria muttered, and left the room.
(* * *)
Daria was holding a pink sweater in Quinn's size as she made her way to the Albatross and Finch checkout line. It was an odd experience. Normally, she stayed away from an ultra-trendy store like A&F, with their "greeter gods and goddesses". One time, Daria and Jane ventured into A&F for a laugh. The store was notorious for the motto that only the coolest, most popular and best looking people should be wearing their clothes. The stares and the lack of customer service made it quite clear which category Daria and Jane belonged to.
This time, Daria was given help not once, but [i]twice[/i] by one of the greeter goddesses. She asked the "goddess" if she was working on commission. "Yeah," was the answer. "We get paid sub-minimum wage. Part of the reward is the privilege of being a greeter goddess, but we get paid on commission."
Daria was surprised that an A&F greeter goddess would be so casual with a mere mortal. "That's what I figured. This is the Christmas season, though. Looks like a nice long line."
"You should have seen the line [i]last[/i] year," the goddess said. "The lines here and at Khaki Barn were ridiculous back then. You could make serious bank. Nobody is buying anything this season."
"NPR says that this is going to be one of the biggest Christmas seasons ever."
The goddess rolled her eyes. "Yeah, everybody says that. Me, I'm looking to find steady work somewhere. A place where I don't have to work for commission. Do you know someone who's hiring?"
"I wish I did. But I'm a college student, so...."
"Yeah. I'm starting to regret not going to college myself. Anyway, if you need some help packing that, just let me know."
"Nah. But I'll throw in an extra pair of socks."
"Thanks," the goddess said.
Daria thought about their conversation. [i]It would certainly make a good story of some kind. Maybe a long-form essay.[/i] Since she had some time, she decided to see if the person would interview with her. It was going to be a long Christmas break, and she needed to show some incentive.
(* * *)
It was three days before Daria and Quinn were to return to their various schools.
Jane had sworn up and down to high heaven that there was no fucking on her bead. Finally, she admitted it. "Yeah, there was a little fucking." Daria knew going into their co-habitation (so to speak) that Jane was rules adverse, but she didn't appreciate it that Jane was overstepping her most personal of boundaries.
In the meantime, she had talked to seven different people at the mall who all confirmed that Christmas sales were down, and that there were more returns that usual that year. Daria looked for some confirmation of the numbers in the major papers, but those papers remained upbeat. Given that Daria's story was flying against conventional wisdom, she admitted to herself that she had doubts as to whether or not it would fly.
(* * *)
January 2015
Shrewsbury College
When Quinn made it back to her dorm, the first thing she did was plan to hook up with Madeline. She dialed Madeline's cell phone but got no answer. After two other "no answers" she decided to go to Madeline's room and find out what was going on for herself.
Quinn knocked on Madeline's door several hours later. A blonde chick opened the door. She didn't look like Madeline or her roommate.
"Hello?"
"Hi! I'm here to talk to Madeline!"
"Madeline?" the girl answered. "You mean the girl who used to be here?"
Madeline's side of the room was replaced with new junk, whereas Madeline's roommate's stuff was still there. "What happened. Did she changed dorms?"
"No, I heard she transferred."
[i]Transferred![/i] As Quinn said her goodbyes, she couldn't believe it. Madeline had flown the coop, abandoning the NPAPP chapter, abandoning Shrewsbury, abandoning her friendship with Quinn - abandoing everything. At least it explained why Quinn wasn't getting any calls back.
She made a note to check at the admissions department to make sure that the new person in Madeline's room wasn't mistaken. Even so, it looked like Madeline was gone for good and the presidency - good or bad - was now in her hands.
(* * *)
Raft University
Daria had just finished changing the sheets on her bed. After the inevitable fallout, Jane decided that she had something to do. "I've decided that I have something to do," she said, and walked out of the apartment.
Since Jane never checked their answering machine messages, Daria caught up. There was a message from her advisor.
[i]Daria, this is Dr. Philpot. I want to chat with you about that essay you e-mailed to me. Give me a call at my office number. Goodbye.[/i]
Daria dialed back. She didn't think he would have 'beta-read' it so soon. "Hello?"
"Hello, Dr. Philpot. This is Daria Morgendorffer. You left a message."
"Yes, yes," he said from his office. "I wanted you to know that I enjoyed that essay very much. I left a few comments on it. I didn't think I'd write so much but it sucked me in."
"Thanks."
"By the way...I did something without your permission."
"Hm?"
"I shared it with Dr. Maxon over at the journalism department. He's a colleague of mine. I'll just say that he was very impressed and he'd like you to call him immediately. He wants to talk to you about the benefits and privileges of a degree from the Raft School of Journalism."
Daria was surprised. "I don't think it was really that great."
"Well, I think Dr. Maxon was more surprised by the date of the essay and the news."
"Hm?"
"It looks like the major networks are reporting horrible Christmas numbers. Dr. Maxon enjoyed how you drew your conclusions and insisted that it would be a horrible holiday season. He was talking about that essay with great enthusiasm. You might have a future in journalism."
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Dancing in the Streets, Part IV
Dancing in the Streets Part IV
November 2014
Shrewsbury College
"So when my Mom lost her job," William Vincent said, "that's when I started thinking about things. I decided I'd look at that flyer you put under my door, and a lot of that stuff started to make sense."
"Vincent, we're glad you're here," Madeline said. Madeline was the chairman of the NPAPP Shrewsbury organization. (Quinn had moved up to vice-chairman.) All together, their little group now had ten people in it. "The news hasn't been good recently. Quinn, I'd like you to give the report on the issues that we're facing."
Quinn stood up and the little group clapped. She was now wearing a long-sleeved green shirt (her old pink shirt, dyed green) and a pair of white pants. She had worked on her speech for at least a couple of hours, but reading it simply made her aware of how short it was.
"Don't think that what's going on in this country doesn't affect you as students of Shrewsbury," Quinn said. "The spike in gasoline prices should worry every commuter student. I grew up in Maryland and came to California because I heard that Shrewsbury provided a quality education. Now, I'm at risk of not being able to go home this semester."
Everyone nodded gravely. The current price at the gas pump was $5.69 a gallon, an unexpected spike in gas that hit the pumps shortly after the 2014 Congressional Elections and the alarming hike was considered a national crisis, leading the news every night. The Republicans were screaming that there was some sort of conspiracy to hold gas prices to artificially low levels until the end of the election cycle - if so, it didn't work because Democrats lost more seats in the House and the Senate was now tied 50-50 with Joe Biden holding the deciding vote. No one expected Obama's coattails to be long in 2016. With a Democratic president, a Republican house and a tied Senate, no one expected Congress to make headway on any major issue, not even the gas issue.
The gas issue affected everything. Despite the fact of the alarming climb of gas prices (which had only lasted for ten days) belts were already tightening. The price of airplane travel took a major bump, particularly with the coming of the holidays, and consumers screamed about the practically usurious airline rates. Small businesses that depended on the price of gas being in the $3 range were being squeezed at the margins, with the first wave of layoffs just before the Thanksgiving holidays.
There was one good thing about the gas bump, Quinn told herself. It gave the NPAPP some talking points when they went door to door. NPAPP members generally went door to door as a large group, had hit every dorm on campus and prepared to hit every dorm again.
"President Obama says that we're already in a recovery, but the recovery hasn't taken place yet. He's opening up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to bring the price of gasoline back down. I want to remind you of a saying from another previous president - 'Prosperity is just around the corner'! That was President Hoover, before the Great Depression."
"But if you listen to the Republicans," Quinn said, "you'll get the same story. Their idea of a solution is to trash the Arctic Refuge. Trash out the enviroment to fill up the tanks. Pipelines and fracking and devastation. The other story is that there isn't a recovery because President Obama has created a 'toxic environment' for 'job creators'. If you listen to Republican talk radio - and, like, I suggest you don't, because I listened to it for four hours yesterday - I guess their plan is that if we stop taxing rich people, everything will get better. Seriously, I'm not kidding, that's their plan."
"Now you might ask, 'what does that have to do with me at Shrewsbury?'. It has everything to do with you. It has to do with whether you're going to walk or drive to school. It has to do with how much it costs to buy food - the food drives too - and how much you're going to pay for that food at the Student Union. It makes you have to think about how far from Shrewsbury you can go to look for part time work. It means that more students will stay at home and take on-line courses - it breaks up our community. It affects where your money is going to go if gas prices don't go down."
"The economy is trashed. Global warming is real. The current government isn't doing anything about it. The guys who want to be the next government aren't doing anything about it either, except proposing to make it worse or let it be somebody else's problem. So you need to about this. You should ask yourself, who put these morons here, and how do we get them out? The answer to both of those questions are the same. Think about it."
The students politely applauded as Quinn sat down. "We have to keep working on getting word out about NPAPP," Madeline said. "There's nothing that we say that distinguishes us from any other political group out there. Even though we've hit every dorm, I don't think there's much awareness of who we are as a group."
"Kids are apathetic," Jeremiah Rosslo, another NPAPP member said.
"Then we have to break up their apathy," Madeline said. "People either need to fall in love with us, or hate us, but apathy is just going to kill us."
"There is something," Quinn said, "that everyone can do. To the people who come to this meeting - if you've got a talent, we can use it. I don't care what your talent is, we can use that talent and we want to use it. If there's anything we're talking about that interests you, use it. What kind of talent do you have, William?"
"Me?" he said. "Hell, I play basketball."
"Fine. You can leave fliers in the visiting team's room. We're glad to have you here, William, because...." Quinn didn't want to say "because being a jock means you're not the typical loser", and thought of something else. "...because you have a high profile on campus. If you show up in green and white, people are going to ask questions. 'What's he doing with the NPAPP?' Tell your story about what brought you here."
"Richard?"
"I'm a philosophy major," he said, a bit sheepishly.
"Good. You know what motivates people," Quinn said. "We want to hear from you. William, we're going to leave you with some material. Richard, we need a report from you, a critical assessment from a philosopher's viewpoint about our group."
"I think," Jeremiah said, "that people at Shrewsbury want to know what we're going to do for them. Specifically."
Madeline frowned. "What, like some sort of student government thing?"
"Yeah."
"Student government is the toybox of a university," Richard said. "No one takes student government seriously. If you're thinking about getting involved in campus politics, you're going to doom us to irrelevance."
There was some argument among the attendees regarding whether or not NPAPP should get involved through the official university channels. Madeline broke up the argument. "Enough. I don't know how the NPAPP HQ feels about us getting involved in campus politics."
Groaning ensued. "What?" Jeremiah said, "you have to ask for permission?"
"Guys, wait!" Quinn said. "Give us some time. We are going to make a political impact! We are going to positively affect the lives of every student on campus!"
"So we are running for office?" Jeremiah asked.
Quinn looked at Madeline. "I didn't say that."
"So we're not?"
"I didn't say that either."
"Then what are you saying?" Quinn only had the kernel of an idea, but it wasn't enough to verbalize it. "Richard?" Quinn said with a smile. "I need to form a NPAPP Campus Politics Committee. That committee will consist of you, me...and Jeremiah." She turned to Madeline. "With your permission."
"It's a great idea," Madeline said. "But frankly, I don't want us dicking around with a bunch of committees. That's party politics of the worst kind. I expect this committee to have its work done by *yesterday*. I expect you to come to some conclusions by *tonight*. I feel like we're just treading water here."
Madeline made a few concluding remarks and then broke up the meeting. As everyone walked out, she managed to get Quinn's attention. "Quinn, I want to talk to you."
Quinn expected the worst as she walked back over. "What's up?"
Madeline sighed again. "I don't know what Party HQ is going to think of this. I really don't want us to get involved in the Student Government. That's a quagmire. That system is engineered not to do anything."
"Yeah, Madeline, but we have to do something. Like a service organization."
"There are enough of those on campus. I really liked the idea of using other people's talents, it gives them the idea that they are actively building the party, even though they can't build much. Ten people is a pretty big chapter when it comes to NPAPP. But I don't know. I feel that our momentum is slipping."
"I'll come up with something tonight," Quinn said, not knowing how she was going to do it.
"I hope so," Madeline said. "It might be a long meeting. I think Richard likes you. It might be the only reason he's in NPAPP at all."
(* * *)
Quinn had already asked around about student government before her meeting with Richard and William. (She wondered if they were called Dick or Bill by their friends?) She made sure to talk to someone in Shrewsbury Student Government, as well as one of the quad-occupying student groups that protested against them. Then, she matched their stories.
She quickly learned that most of the multicultural blocks - everyone from the Black Student Union to Hillel to the Muslim Students Association - would always vote for the establishment candidates. The only way to have a shot at winning a campus election is to get the apathetic students to vote, as participation levels were at the low 10 percents. Occasionally there were joke candidacies or stunt candidates, but the Shrewsbury Student Government was well insulated from insurrections. (A rule stating that only *human* students at Shrewsbury could be elected, for example.)
The head of the Students for a Just Shrewsbury told her that one of their candidates two years earlier had been disqualified by a rule that stated that campaigning was limited to just three days before elections. In reality, the SSG types campaigned all the time, but all it took was a magic wand by the SSG to turn an informal meeting into a "campaign event". There were all kinds of potential pitfalls. Mistakes on campus forms had killed outsider candidates. There was an "election manager seminar" that everyone interested in running was required to attend, and the student newspaper never put up any notice of it. Yet magically, every establishment candidate manged to attend it.
The only power the office really offered was the power to meet with the Shrewsbury Board of Trustees. "And sometimes," her insider told her, "our Student Body President doesn't bother to show up at the meetings."
Quinn kept the news to herself. William was asked about his perspective on campus matters as one of the popular crowd. Even the popular crowd had issues. They hated the high cost of text books. They hated the $50 a year they had to pay as a student government fee. On parking, the administration was determined to nickel and dime them to death. Generally, student government members came from the popular kids crowd - and idealistic members had tried to address these issues - only to have them come to naught under the weight of their own student government bureaucracy and the wait-them-out tactics of Shrewsbury administration.
"Nothing good can come from Student Government," Richard said, "because how long is a Student Body President in office? A year? That's not long enough to get anything done. There are no long range agendas by students because they and everyone else knows that they're only going to be here for four years. So nothing important really gets done."
Quinn then hit the philosophy major with why people joined political parties. "Some don't," he said. "Some people will never trust society in general. Others join because they're looking to fill some sort of vacuum in their lives. Other than that, you have to wait for something big to happen."
"Like what?" Quinn asked.
"Well, there was the issue of slavery which both parties weren't equipped to address. The Democrats wanted slavery, which was unacceptable to the North for a variety of reasons. The Northern opposition parties wanted to compromise, or to kick the can down the road for the next guy to deal with. People felt they weren't listened to and the Republican Party was founded, which was an activist movement. The longer neither party dealt with the problem, the stronger the Republicans got. It only took them four years to become a national party. The problem is, Quinn, we don't have a defining problem."
"Capitalism," William said.
"Already been tried," Richard said. "Socialists, Communists, Greens. There have been a lot of anti-capitalist parties in American and none of them have worked. There might be some hope in the future, as the Republicans preach a more and more predatory type of capitalism and the Democrats are more and more corporate. But the bones of anti-capitalist political parties fill America's political graveyard."
"Okay. Then we need to give people another reason to join." Quinn worried, however, about the anti-capitalist planks in the NPAPP. She wasn't against capitalism, per se, but her brief time in NPAPP and talking to other people convinced her that the old "I got mine" capitalism wasn't working. So she looked for some other reason. "What else we got?"
"Well, we have danger."
"Huh?"
"You know. The same reason college kids become hardcore Democrats or Republicans as freshmen. Because they want to stick it to their parents of the opposite persuasion. Make a big show of things. Make a lot of noise."
"That could work!" Quinn said.
"Well, everyone wants to have a good time," William said.
She could feel a hint of disgust in William's statement. "You know, William - do they call you William or Bill?"
"My friends call me Bill."
"Bill - I don't think it has to be 'either-or'. Either you get Student Gov that is all about having a good time but never gets anything done. Or you get those other groups that are all super-serious that bore everyone to death. We need to do both. We need a touch of excitement around there. We're the excitement."
"You could put that on a bumper sticker," Richard chuckled.
"Why not? We ARE the excitement. We're not your Mom and Dad's political party. The Democrats and the Republicans? They're not following the future, they're following the past."
"Yeah, but how do you keep the party together if it can't do anything?" Richard said.
"The same way you keep any group of people together," Quinn said. "Trust me. When I was in high school, I learned all about the popularity ladder. If you offer people a good time, if you're nice to them, if you don't try to stab them in the back and if you talk to them like human beings, you will be popular. Of course, it helps to dress nice and look good, too."
"The kind of people who attend NPAPP meetings look like a bunch of nobodies," William said.
"Then we need to give out good advice. Everyone wants to be special," Quinn said. "And at NPAPP, everyone is special. And when they're not looking, we'll hit them in the head with our party platform."
"But what about Student Government?" Richard said.
"We're not going to reach out to them," Quinn said. "Our goal is to be so big that we don't need to. If we get to a large enough size, it becomes obvious who the student government is going to be. If we're the popular people, then there is no choice."
"We don't have popular people!" William said.
Quinn smiled. "Watch me," she said, "and learn." She had finally put it together - people make political decisions based on little more than popularity. And nothing sweetened an unpalatable position more than a popular person making it.
November 2014
Shrewsbury College
"So when my Mom lost her job," William Vincent said, "that's when I started thinking about things. I decided I'd look at that flyer you put under my door, and a lot of that stuff started to make sense."
"Vincent, we're glad you're here," Madeline said. Madeline was the chairman of the NPAPP Shrewsbury organization. (Quinn had moved up to vice-chairman.) All together, their little group now had ten people in it. "The news hasn't been good recently. Quinn, I'd like you to give the report on the issues that we're facing."
Quinn stood up and the little group clapped. She was now wearing a long-sleeved green shirt (her old pink shirt, dyed green) and a pair of white pants. She had worked on her speech for at least a couple of hours, but reading it simply made her aware of how short it was.
"Don't think that what's going on in this country doesn't affect you as students of Shrewsbury," Quinn said. "The spike in gasoline prices should worry every commuter student. I grew up in Maryland and came to California because I heard that Shrewsbury provided a quality education. Now, I'm at risk of not being able to go home this semester."
Everyone nodded gravely. The current price at the gas pump was $5.69 a gallon, an unexpected spike in gas that hit the pumps shortly after the 2014 Congressional Elections and the alarming hike was considered a national crisis, leading the news every night. The Republicans were screaming that there was some sort of conspiracy to hold gas prices to artificially low levels until the end of the election cycle - if so, it didn't work because Democrats lost more seats in the House and the Senate was now tied 50-50 with Joe Biden holding the deciding vote. No one expected Obama's coattails to be long in 2016. With a Democratic president, a Republican house and a tied Senate, no one expected Congress to make headway on any major issue, not even the gas issue.
The gas issue affected everything. Despite the fact of the alarming climb of gas prices (which had only lasted for ten days) belts were already tightening. The price of airplane travel took a major bump, particularly with the coming of the holidays, and consumers screamed about the practically usurious airline rates. Small businesses that depended on the price of gas being in the $3 range were being squeezed at the margins, with the first wave of layoffs just before the Thanksgiving holidays.
There was one good thing about the gas bump, Quinn told herself. It gave the NPAPP some talking points when they went door to door. NPAPP members generally went door to door as a large group, had hit every dorm on campus and prepared to hit every dorm again.
"President Obama says that we're already in a recovery, but the recovery hasn't taken place yet. He's opening up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to try to bring the price of gasoline back down. I want to remind you of a saying from another previous president - 'Prosperity is just around the corner'! That was President Hoover, before the Great Depression."
"But if you listen to the Republicans," Quinn said, "you'll get the same story. Their idea of a solution is to trash the Arctic Refuge. Trash out the enviroment to fill up the tanks. Pipelines and fracking and devastation. The other story is that there isn't a recovery because President Obama has created a 'toxic environment' for 'job creators'. If you listen to Republican talk radio - and, like, I suggest you don't, because I listened to it for four hours yesterday - I guess their plan is that if we stop taxing rich people, everything will get better. Seriously, I'm not kidding, that's their plan."
"Now you might ask, 'what does that have to do with me at Shrewsbury?'. It has everything to do with you. It has to do with whether you're going to walk or drive to school. It has to do with how much it costs to buy food - the food drives too - and how much you're going to pay for that food at the Student Union. It makes you have to think about how far from Shrewsbury you can go to look for part time work. It means that more students will stay at home and take on-line courses - it breaks up our community. It affects where your money is going to go if gas prices don't go down."
"The economy is trashed. Global warming is real. The current government isn't doing anything about it. The guys who want to be the next government aren't doing anything about it either, except proposing to make it worse or let it be somebody else's problem. So you need to about this. You should ask yourself, who put these morons here, and how do we get them out? The answer to both of those questions are the same. Think about it."
The students politely applauded as Quinn sat down. "We have to keep working on getting word out about NPAPP," Madeline said. "There's nothing that we say that distinguishes us from any other political group out there. Even though we've hit every dorm, I don't think there's much awareness of who we are as a group."
"Kids are apathetic," Jeremiah Rosslo, another NPAPP member said.
"Then we have to break up their apathy," Madeline said. "People either need to fall in love with us, or hate us, but apathy is just going to kill us."
"There is something," Quinn said, "that everyone can do. To the people who come to this meeting - if you've got a talent, we can use it. I don't care what your talent is, we can use that talent and we want to use it. If there's anything we're talking about that interests you, use it. What kind of talent do you have, William?"
"Me?" he said. "Hell, I play basketball."
"Fine. You can leave fliers in the visiting team's room. We're glad to have you here, William, because...." Quinn didn't want to say "because being a jock means you're not the typical loser", and thought of something else. "...because you have a high profile on campus. If you show up in green and white, people are going to ask questions. 'What's he doing with the NPAPP?' Tell your story about what brought you here."
"Richard?"
"I'm a philosophy major," he said, a bit sheepishly.
"Good. You know what motivates people," Quinn said. "We want to hear from you. William, we're going to leave you with some material. Richard, we need a report from you, a critical assessment from a philosopher's viewpoint about our group."
"I think," Jeremiah said, "that people at Shrewsbury want to know what we're going to do for them. Specifically."
Madeline frowned. "What, like some sort of student government thing?"
"Yeah."
"Student government is the toybox of a university," Richard said. "No one takes student government seriously. If you're thinking about getting involved in campus politics, you're going to doom us to irrelevance."
There was some argument among the attendees regarding whether or not NPAPP should get involved through the official university channels. Madeline broke up the argument. "Enough. I don't know how the NPAPP HQ feels about us getting involved in campus politics."
Groaning ensued. "What?" Jeremiah said, "you have to ask for permission?"
"Guys, wait!" Quinn said. "Give us some time. We are going to make a political impact! We are going to positively affect the lives of every student on campus!"
"So we are running for office?" Jeremiah asked.
Quinn looked at Madeline. "I didn't say that."
"So we're not?"
"I didn't say that either."
"Then what are you saying?" Quinn only had the kernel of an idea, but it wasn't enough to verbalize it. "Richard?" Quinn said with a smile. "I need to form a NPAPP Campus Politics Committee. That committee will consist of you, me...and Jeremiah." She turned to Madeline. "With your permission."
"It's a great idea," Madeline said. "But frankly, I don't want us dicking around with a bunch of committees. That's party politics of the worst kind. I expect this committee to have its work done by *yesterday*. I expect you to come to some conclusions by *tonight*. I feel like we're just treading water here."
Madeline made a few concluding remarks and then broke up the meeting. As everyone walked out, she managed to get Quinn's attention. "Quinn, I want to talk to you."
Quinn expected the worst as she walked back over. "What's up?"
Madeline sighed again. "I don't know what Party HQ is going to think of this. I really don't want us to get involved in the Student Government. That's a quagmire. That system is engineered not to do anything."
"Yeah, Madeline, but we have to do something. Like a service organization."
"There are enough of those on campus. I really liked the idea of using other people's talents, it gives them the idea that they are actively building the party, even though they can't build much. Ten people is a pretty big chapter when it comes to NPAPP. But I don't know. I feel that our momentum is slipping."
"I'll come up with something tonight," Quinn said, not knowing how she was going to do it.
"I hope so," Madeline said. "It might be a long meeting. I think Richard likes you. It might be the only reason he's in NPAPP at all."
(* * *)
Quinn had already asked around about student government before her meeting with Richard and William. (She wondered if they were called Dick or Bill by their friends?) She made sure to talk to someone in Shrewsbury Student Government, as well as one of the quad-occupying student groups that protested against them. Then, she matched their stories.
She quickly learned that most of the multicultural blocks - everyone from the Black Student Union to Hillel to the Muslim Students Association - would always vote for the establishment candidates. The only way to have a shot at winning a campus election is to get the apathetic students to vote, as participation levels were at the low 10 percents. Occasionally there were joke candidacies or stunt candidates, but the Shrewsbury Student Government was well insulated from insurrections. (A rule stating that only *human* students at Shrewsbury could be elected, for example.)
The head of the Students for a Just Shrewsbury told her that one of their candidates two years earlier had been disqualified by a rule that stated that campaigning was limited to just three days before elections. In reality, the SSG types campaigned all the time, but all it took was a magic wand by the SSG to turn an informal meeting into a "campaign event". There were all kinds of potential pitfalls. Mistakes on campus forms had killed outsider candidates. There was an "election manager seminar" that everyone interested in running was required to attend, and the student newspaper never put up any notice of it. Yet magically, every establishment candidate manged to attend it.
The only power the office really offered was the power to meet with the Shrewsbury Board of Trustees. "And sometimes," her insider told her, "our Student Body President doesn't bother to show up at the meetings."
Quinn kept the news to herself. William was asked about his perspective on campus matters as one of the popular crowd. Even the popular crowd had issues. They hated the high cost of text books. They hated the $50 a year they had to pay as a student government fee. On parking, the administration was determined to nickel and dime them to death. Generally, student government members came from the popular kids crowd - and idealistic members had tried to address these issues - only to have them come to naught under the weight of their own student government bureaucracy and the wait-them-out tactics of Shrewsbury administration.
"Nothing good can come from Student Government," Richard said, "because how long is a Student Body President in office? A year? That's not long enough to get anything done. There are no long range agendas by students because they and everyone else knows that they're only going to be here for four years. So nothing important really gets done."
Quinn then hit the philosophy major with why people joined political parties. "Some don't," he said. "Some people will never trust society in general. Others join because they're looking to fill some sort of vacuum in their lives. Other than that, you have to wait for something big to happen."
"Like what?" Quinn asked.
"Well, there was the issue of slavery which both parties weren't equipped to address. The Democrats wanted slavery, which was unacceptable to the North for a variety of reasons. The Northern opposition parties wanted to compromise, or to kick the can down the road for the next guy to deal with. People felt they weren't listened to and the Republican Party was founded, which was an activist movement. The longer neither party dealt with the problem, the stronger the Republicans got. It only took them four years to become a national party. The problem is, Quinn, we don't have a defining problem."
"Capitalism," William said.
"Already been tried," Richard said. "Socialists, Communists, Greens. There have been a lot of anti-capitalist parties in American and none of them have worked. There might be some hope in the future, as the Republicans preach a more and more predatory type of capitalism and the Democrats are more and more corporate. But the bones of anti-capitalist political parties fill America's political graveyard."
"Okay. Then we need to give people another reason to join." Quinn worried, however, about the anti-capitalist planks in the NPAPP. She wasn't against capitalism, per se, but her brief time in NPAPP and talking to other people convinced her that the old "I got mine" capitalism wasn't working. So she looked for some other reason. "What else we got?"
"Well, we have danger."
"Huh?"
"You know. The same reason college kids become hardcore Democrats or Republicans as freshmen. Because they want to stick it to their parents of the opposite persuasion. Make a big show of things. Make a lot of noise."
"That could work!" Quinn said.
"Well, everyone wants to have a good time," William said.
She could feel a hint of disgust in William's statement. "You know, William - do they call you William or Bill?"
"My friends call me Bill."
"Bill - I don't think it has to be 'either-or'. Either you get Student Gov that is all about having a good time but never gets anything done. Or you get those other groups that are all super-serious that bore everyone to death. We need to do both. We need a touch of excitement around there. We're the excitement."
"You could put that on a bumper sticker," Richard chuckled.
"Why not? We ARE the excitement. We're not your Mom and Dad's political party. The Democrats and the Republicans? They're not following the future, they're following the past."
"Yeah, but how do you keep the party together if it can't do anything?" Richard said.
"The same way you keep any group of people together," Quinn said. "Trust me. When I was in high school, I learned all about the popularity ladder. If you offer people a good time, if you're nice to them, if you don't try to stab them in the back and if you talk to them like human beings, you will be popular. Of course, it helps to dress nice and look good, too."
"The kind of people who attend NPAPP meetings look like a bunch of nobodies," William said.
"Then we need to give out good advice. Everyone wants to be special," Quinn said. "And at NPAPP, everyone is special. And when they're not looking, we'll hit them in the head with our party platform."
"But what about Student Government?" Richard said.
"We're not going to reach out to them," Quinn said. "Our goal is to be so big that we don't need to. If we get to a large enough size, it becomes obvious who the student government is going to be. If we're the popular people, then there is no choice."
"We don't have popular people!" William said.
Quinn smiled. "Watch me," she said, "and learn." She had finally put it together - people make political decisions based on little more than popularity. And nothing sweetened an unpalatable position more than a popular person making it.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Dancing in the Streets (Part III)
October 2014
Shrewsbury College
Quinn Morgendorffer wondered if she hadn't made a terrible mistake.
Her parents were proud that she had decided to attend Shrewsbury instead of Pepperhill. She had managed to bring up her grades and her extracurriculars and glowing recommendations - even David Sorenson wrote one - got her by the skin of her teeth into Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury College's reputation was that of an up-and-coming educational institution with potential and a good psychology program. It certainly beat the party school she almost went to, Pepperhill.
However, Quinn found herself struggling almost immediately. The work was harder than that at Lawndale High School. Granted, it wasn't a Leland University or a University of Berkeley level of challenge but it was hard enough. All of Quinn's social connections had to be rebuilt from ground up.
It was here that Quinn learned two major rules about college, and undergraduate education in general.
The first is that the educational rigor of a school is closely correlated with the ability of the student body to get away from idiots. Shrewsbury was an NCAA Division III university. It didn't even have a football team, and no sporting life except for losing basketball teams that were lucky to draw two dozen in attendance. There was no sorority system at Shrewsbury, just dorm life, and unexceptional dorm life. There were no drunken bacchanals or rock concerts on the Quadrangle. It was an atomized life. There were groups, but there wasn't a whole. At Lawndale High School, she knew everyone but at Shrewsbury there were still people she hadn't met. And absolutely, there was no one group of people that held sway over everything cool and popular.
The second is that college is a place to remake yourself. The freshmen were in two groups - those who were trying to make themselves into something else but not having quite decided what. The other group were those who were trying to recreate their high school life at Shrewsbury. The second group was having a lot of problems. The high school queen bees found themselves isolated for their obnoxiousness. The jocks who were the best players on their teams either were riding the bench at Shrewsbury, or in the case of football, didn't even have a sport to fall back on. The only winners were the brains - as long as they had a library and someone to approve of their academic strivings, they were happy.
Quinn's problem was that she had one feet in both groups. She wanted things to be different, but she wanted to fall back on the comforts of fashion, gossip, and popularity. At times, she chided herself for trying to act like a Fashion Club Vice-President, other times she chided herself for wanting Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany back. It wouldn't happen. Sandi was at Pepperhill, Stacy was at some East Coast college, and she hadn't heard from Tiffany since graduation.
She had other struggles. In addition to struggling with the load, her metabolism decided to kick into low gear. She was gaining a small amout of weight, even though she hadn't changed her diet. She dreaded having to cut anything out of her diet, which was already pared down to keep her thin and trim figure. Her nightmare was that the Freshman Forty - the forty pounds girls supposedly gained during their first year - was upon her, and she'd do about anything to avoid that.
The fashionable girls were either snobs - rich girls who ended up at Shrewsbury because it was the safety school - or they were bores. What few hierarchies there were were already cast in iron, and Quinn would have to climb up the popularity pole the hard way, and she didn't know if she had the desire, or didn't know if it was the right thing to do, or didn't know any better.
Sometimes, she'd put on a sweat shirt and sweat pants, look out the window, and just think about how alone she was. The only people that really seemed to approve of her being at Shrewsbury were her parents - and Daria. Daria's approval meant more to her than even Helen or Jake's. Daria and Quinn rarely communicated, but after Daria learned of Quinn's acceptance, she sent a rare text message.
"Wow. A school that doesn't have its diplomas perforated at the edges. How did THAT happen?"
Quinn smiled when she read it. Daria seemed happy at Raft. Why couldn't she be happy at Shrewsbury? She just felt like a big fat failure.
(* * *)
It was going to be another lazy Saturday. There was a knock at the door. Quinn answered it.
There was a girl wearing a green T-shirt and white pants. She had a backpack and was carrying some papers. "Hi, my name is Madeline, and I'm a member of the National Progressive American People's Party," she said. "The system in America doesn't work. Are you interested in helping us form a national political organization?"
She handed Quinn the pamphlet. Quinn looked it over. There was a party platform with a set of bullet points. A picture of some young-looking adult with some information about who he was.
"I'm sorry," Quinn said. "I'm not interested in politics."
"If your house was on fire," Madeline said, "you'd be interested in putting it out. America's house is on fire, and we're all going to get burned. Our party platform offers ways to put that fire out."
Quinn gave the pamphlet another cursory glance. She knew she had to get rid of Madeline. "Isn't it a faux pas to wear white after Labor Day?" referring to Madeline's white pants.
"Coco Chanel wore white every day," Madeline said, smiling.
"True," Quinn said, "but that green and white combination has got to go. I hope that's not all you're wearing!"
Quinn chided herself for pulling out her inner Sandi, but she was also impressed that Madeline knew who Coco Chanel was. "I've never heard of you guys."
"There's a website. www.npapp.org. You can find out anything you want to find out."
"Are you having any luck?"
"Doing what?"
"Getting members?
Madeline gave a slight frown. "There are only five of us," she said.
"So...not working, huh?" Quinn said, somewhat dismissively.
"No one is going to come to a meeting unless they know about it," Madeline said. "They might not come to a meeting, but they'll sure as hell know about it by the time I'm done."
"Look. I don't make commitments on the first date - so to speak, Quinn said. "How am I supposed to know that you guys are not a bunch of looney tunes?"
"Read the website. If there's something you don't agree with - tell us. But there are a few things we're not moving on. Global warming is real, and it's going to screw all of us. Our national economy is a joke. Big business don't care. Labor unions don't care. Washington doesn't care. It's just us. If you're not fighting for what you want, then you don't want it bad enough. Can I ask your name?"
Quinn pulled the trigger. "It's Quinn. Quinn Morgendorffer."
"Quinn, I hope you'll come to our meeting next Thursday. Please come."
Sighing, Quinn said, "I need to find out about this...Fred Wolff guy, whoever he is. Good looking."
"See you on campus, Quinn," Madeline said. "I'll be the one wearing green and white. And if you just want to chat - that's okay, too. Take care!"
Quinn closed the door. "Fred Wolff, huh?" she said to herself and then walked to her laptop where she punched up the NPAPP website.
It was a bare-bones website that really didn't offer much more than the platform of NPAPP. Quinn read off a few bullet points of the NPAPP Platform:
* We invest in the people. We invest in peace, we invest in health care, we invest in intrastructure, we invest in community, we invest in education. We do not invest in war and we do not invest in economic speculation.
...
* We believes nature has rights. If a corporation can have rights, then nature certainly has more rights than any corporation.
...
* We believe that all citizens have equal rights and equal obligations. There will be an end to the dual standard of justice.
A lot of it was la-dee dah, but Quinn liked a few things. "Caring for the older generation will always be a top priority of the National Progressive American People's Party." "The days of the "one dollar, one vote" democracy are over." "Racism and misogyny have no place in this party, and they never will."
Quinn wondered how much they meant that last statement, but it was a good start.
She searched the "campus branches" and found they were very few and far between, mostly based in Eastern Schools.
* Boston Academy of Fine Arts
* Boston Institute of Technology
* Crestmore University
* Raft University
* Shrewsbury College
* Vance University
It looked like Madeline's little group was the lone Western outpost of NPAPP. She then looked up Fred Wolff:
Fred Wolff is the National Progressive American People's Party Chairman. A veteran of the Gulf Wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) he served several tours of duty, working his way up from recruit to Sergeant (E-5) in the United States Marines. When his squad leader in Afghanistan was killed by enemy fire, Wolff took charge, killing five members of the Taliban, carrying wounded soldiers off the battlefield despite being exposed to hostile fire, and with his squad managed to hold his position until help could arrive. For bravery in battle, Wolff was awarded the Silver Star.
There were other quotes testifying to Wolff's bravery, with some background information. He grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsyvlania. He attended high school and after 9/11, enlisted in the Marines, volunteered for several tours there. Injuries on duty - he also had Purple Heart - forced him to leave the Marines.
"I learned from watching the movies that even a minority can do great things if they just have courage. I haven't been proven wrong yet." - Fred Wolff
It seemed interesting to Quinn, maybe going to that meeting. But it was just an idea. They didn't really look like much of anything. Five people. She supposed that going door to door was a "great thing" if you were shy, but there was no bolt of lightning that was moving her. Her instinct told her that it would just be a waste of time.
She shoved the pamphlet into her drawer, and moved on to other things.
(* * *)
It was Thursday, and she came back to her dorm completely dejected. She looked at her mid-term grade for Advanced Trigonometry.
67. And that was a grade far better than she deserved. The test was about all sorts of sine and cosine formulas that seemed impervious to memorization. The teacher was no help, and she had been told by several of her classmates that they guy was the worst teacher in the math department. The class started out with 32 people, dropped to 20 people by the beginning of October, and Quinn cursed herself for not dropping the class. She suspected that the class would end with just a handful of people.
She needed a "C" in Calculus I just to be accepted into the psychology program at Shrewsbury. This gave Quinn several unappetizing options. She could sweat out Advanced Trig and pray for a "C" for effort, but she knew she wouldn't be prepared for Calc. She could drop the class and take it again in the Spring. Or she could change majors.
In addition, there was the Blake Prichard. He was one of the sweetest, nicest guys that she had met. She had thrown about a zillion hints at him - to no effect. She had finagled some study time with him. Finally, she decided that drastic measures needed to be taken - she invited him out to lunch.
He declined. He was going out of town. Quinn didn't know if it was the truth, if it was an excuse, if he was gay. She just didn't care.
She looked at her bare desk. Her roommate - a Chinese girl that she had nothing in common with, a brainiac - was off at the library. It was to be another lone night again to deal with her failure.
Chinese. She wondered if there was a place that delivered Chinese food. She opened her desk drawer, and saw the NPAPP Pamphlet again. It offered an opportunity. She could stay at the dorm and be miserable, or attend the NPAPP meeting and be miserable there. At least she'd have company. It might even be good for a laugh if they were all a bunch of lame-os.
Madeline left her number. She figured she'd give them a call.
Shrewsbury College
Quinn Morgendorffer wondered if she hadn't made a terrible mistake.
Her parents were proud that she had decided to attend Shrewsbury instead of Pepperhill. She had managed to bring up her grades and her extracurriculars and glowing recommendations - even David Sorenson wrote one - got her by the skin of her teeth into Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury College's reputation was that of an up-and-coming educational institution with potential and a good psychology program. It certainly beat the party school she almost went to, Pepperhill.
However, Quinn found herself struggling almost immediately. The work was harder than that at Lawndale High School. Granted, it wasn't a Leland University or a University of Berkeley level of challenge but it was hard enough. All of Quinn's social connections had to be rebuilt from ground up.
It was here that Quinn learned two major rules about college, and undergraduate education in general.
The first is that the educational rigor of a school is closely correlated with the ability of the student body to get away from idiots. Shrewsbury was an NCAA Division III university. It didn't even have a football team, and no sporting life except for losing basketball teams that were lucky to draw two dozen in attendance. There was no sorority system at Shrewsbury, just dorm life, and unexceptional dorm life. There were no drunken bacchanals or rock concerts on the Quadrangle. It was an atomized life. There were groups, but there wasn't a whole. At Lawndale High School, she knew everyone but at Shrewsbury there were still people she hadn't met. And absolutely, there was no one group of people that held sway over everything cool and popular.
The second is that college is a place to remake yourself. The freshmen were in two groups - those who were trying to make themselves into something else but not having quite decided what. The other group were those who were trying to recreate their high school life at Shrewsbury. The second group was having a lot of problems. The high school queen bees found themselves isolated for their obnoxiousness. The jocks who were the best players on their teams either were riding the bench at Shrewsbury, or in the case of football, didn't even have a sport to fall back on. The only winners were the brains - as long as they had a library and someone to approve of their academic strivings, they were happy.
Quinn's problem was that she had one feet in both groups. She wanted things to be different, but she wanted to fall back on the comforts of fashion, gossip, and popularity. At times, she chided herself for trying to act like a Fashion Club Vice-President, other times she chided herself for wanting Sandi, Stacy, and Tiffany back. It wouldn't happen. Sandi was at Pepperhill, Stacy was at some East Coast college, and she hadn't heard from Tiffany since graduation.
She had other struggles. In addition to struggling with the load, her metabolism decided to kick into low gear. She was gaining a small amout of weight, even though she hadn't changed her diet. She dreaded having to cut anything out of her diet, which was already pared down to keep her thin and trim figure. Her nightmare was that the Freshman Forty - the forty pounds girls supposedly gained during their first year - was upon her, and she'd do about anything to avoid that.
The fashionable girls were either snobs - rich girls who ended up at Shrewsbury because it was the safety school - or they were bores. What few hierarchies there were were already cast in iron, and Quinn would have to climb up the popularity pole the hard way, and she didn't know if she had the desire, or didn't know if it was the right thing to do, or didn't know any better.
Sometimes, she'd put on a sweat shirt and sweat pants, look out the window, and just think about how alone she was. The only people that really seemed to approve of her being at Shrewsbury were her parents - and Daria. Daria's approval meant more to her than even Helen or Jake's. Daria and Quinn rarely communicated, but after Daria learned of Quinn's acceptance, she sent a rare text message.
"Wow. A school that doesn't have its diplomas perforated at the edges. How did THAT happen?"
Quinn smiled when she read it. Daria seemed happy at Raft. Why couldn't she be happy at Shrewsbury? She just felt like a big fat failure.
(* * *)
It was going to be another lazy Saturday. There was a knock at the door. Quinn answered it.
There was a girl wearing a green T-shirt and white pants. She had a backpack and was carrying some papers. "Hi, my name is Madeline, and I'm a member of the National Progressive American People's Party," she said. "The system in America doesn't work. Are you interested in helping us form a national political organization?"
She handed Quinn the pamphlet. Quinn looked it over. There was a party platform with a set of bullet points. A picture of some young-looking adult with some information about who he was.
"I'm sorry," Quinn said. "I'm not interested in politics."
"If your house was on fire," Madeline said, "you'd be interested in putting it out. America's house is on fire, and we're all going to get burned. Our party platform offers ways to put that fire out."
Quinn gave the pamphlet another cursory glance. She knew she had to get rid of Madeline. "Isn't it a faux pas to wear white after Labor Day?" referring to Madeline's white pants.
"Coco Chanel wore white every day," Madeline said, smiling.
"True," Quinn said, "but that green and white combination has got to go. I hope that's not all you're wearing!"
Quinn chided herself for pulling out her inner Sandi, but she was also impressed that Madeline knew who Coco Chanel was. "I've never heard of you guys."
"There's a website. www.npapp.org. You can find out anything you want to find out."
"Are you having any luck?"
"Doing what?"
"Getting members?
Madeline gave a slight frown. "There are only five of us," she said.
"So...not working, huh?" Quinn said, somewhat dismissively.
"No one is going to come to a meeting unless they know about it," Madeline said. "They might not come to a meeting, but they'll sure as hell know about it by the time I'm done."
"Look. I don't make commitments on the first date - so to speak, Quinn said. "How am I supposed to know that you guys are not a bunch of looney tunes?"
"Read the website. If there's something you don't agree with - tell us. But there are a few things we're not moving on. Global warming is real, and it's going to screw all of us. Our national economy is a joke. Big business don't care. Labor unions don't care. Washington doesn't care. It's just us. If you're not fighting for what you want, then you don't want it bad enough. Can I ask your name?"
Quinn pulled the trigger. "It's Quinn. Quinn Morgendorffer."
"Quinn, I hope you'll come to our meeting next Thursday. Please come."
Sighing, Quinn said, "I need to find out about this...Fred Wolff guy, whoever he is. Good looking."
"See you on campus, Quinn," Madeline said. "I'll be the one wearing green and white. And if you just want to chat - that's okay, too. Take care!"
Quinn closed the door. "Fred Wolff, huh?" she said to herself and then walked to her laptop where she punched up the NPAPP website.
It was a bare-bones website that really didn't offer much more than the platform of NPAPP. Quinn read off a few bullet points of the NPAPP Platform:
* We invest in the people. We invest in peace, we invest in health care, we invest in intrastructure, we invest in community, we invest in education. We do not invest in war and we do not invest in economic speculation.
...
* We believes nature has rights. If a corporation can have rights, then nature certainly has more rights than any corporation.
...
* We believe that all citizens have equal rights and equal obligations. There will be an end to the dual standard of justice.
A lot of it was la-dee dah, but Quinn liked a few things. "Caring for the older generation will always be a top priority of the National Progressive American People's Party." "The days of the "one dollar, one vote" democracy are over." "Racism and misogyny have no place in this party, and they never will."
Quinn wondered how much they meant that last statement, but it was a good start.
She searched the "campus branches" and found they were very few and far between, mostly based in Eastern Schools.
* Boston Academy of Fine Arts
* Boston Institute of Technology
* Crestmore University
* Raft University
* Shrewsbury College
* Vance University
It looked like Madeline's little group was the lone Western outpost of NPAPP. She then looked up Fred Wolff:
Fred Wolff is the National Progressive American People's Party Chairman. A veteran of the Gulf Wars (Iraq, Afghanistan) he served several tours of duty, working his way up from recruit to Sergeant (E-5) in the United States Marines. When his squad leader in Afghanistan was killed by enemy fire, Wolff took charge, killing five members of the Taliban, carrying wounded soldiers off the battlefield despite being exposed to hostile fire, and with his squad managed to hold his position until help could arrive. For bravery in battle, Wolff was awarded the Silver Star.
There were other quotes testifying to Wolff's bravery, with some background information. He grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsyvlania. He attended high school and after 9/11, enlisted in the Marines, volunteered for several tours there. Injuries on duty - he also had Purple Heart - forced him to leave the Marines.
"I learned from watching the movies that even a minority can do great things if they just have courage. I haven't been proven wrong yet." - Fred Wolff
It seemed interesting to Quinn, maybe going to that meeting. But it was just an idea. They didn't really look like much of anything. Five people. She supposed that going door to door was a "great thing" if you were shy, but there was no bolt of lightning that was moving her. Her instinct told her that it would just be a waste of time.
She shoved the pamphlet into her drawer, and moved on to other things.
(* * *)
It was Thursday, and she came back to her dorm completely dejected. She looked at her mid-term grade for Advanced Trigonometry.
67. And that was a grade far better than she deserved. The test was about all sorts of sine and cosine formulas that seemed impervious to memorization. The teacher was no help, and she had been told by several of her classmates that they guy was the worst teacher in the math department. The class started out with 32 people, dropped to 20 people by the beginning of October, and Quinn cursed herself for not dropping the class. She suspected that the class would end with just a handful of people.
She needed a "C" in Calculus I just to be accepted into the psychology program at Shrewsbury. This gave Quinn several unappetizing options. She could sweat out Advanced Trig and pray for a "C" for effort, but she knew she wouldn't be prepared for Calc. She could drop the class and take it again in the Spring. Or she could change majors.
In addition, there was the Blake Prichard. He was one of the sweetest, nicest guys that she had met. She had thrown about a zillion hints at him - to no effect. She had finagled some study time with him. Finally, she decided that drastic measures needed to be taken - she invited him out to lunch.
He declined. He was going out of town. Quinn didn't know if it was the truth, if it was an excuse, if he was gay. She just didn't care.
She looked at her bare desk. Her roommate - a Chinese girl that she had nothing in common with, a brainiac - was off at the library. It was to be another lone night again to deal with her failure.
Chinese. She wondered if there was a place that delivered Chinese food. She opened her desk drawer, and saw the NPAPP Pamphlet again. It offered an opportunity. She could stay at the dorm and be miserable, or attend the NPAPP meeting and be miserable there. At least she'd have company. It might even be good for a laugh if they were all a bunch of lame-os.
Madeline left her number. She figured she'd give them a call.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Dancing in the Streets (Part II)
Raft University and other places
May 2014
"So, do you know if any of the old gang is going to be there?"
"What 'old gang'?" Daria asked. She was in the apartment she shared with Jane, closing her suitcase, preparing to pack for her first trip back home.
"You know, the usual gang of idiots." Jane paused. "Lawndale."
"Ah. Well, no. Why would any of them come back? We didn't come back."
"True," Jane said. "But for all of those friends that Quinn made over the years that were one grade ahead of her, you think they'd be glad to see her off."
"Those guys have traded up," Quinn said.
"You've talked to Quinn?"
"Yeah. It's been a real pain in the ass for her," Daria said. "My parents have smothered her with 'love' and 'affection' and a lot of words which might have similar meanings in your world to the ways that we use them in my house."
"Got it," Jane said. "They're up in her panties 24-7."
"I think they're trying to get right with Quinn what they didn't get right with me, and they found out that it was a lot of heavy lifting," Daria said. "Well, done."
"I wish you weren't going," Jane said. "I'll miss you."
"You'll miss not having me around to bum money off of."
"That too," Jane said.
"Are you sure you'll not come back to watch Quinn graduate?"
"No way," Jane said. "Don't want to see it. That place gives me the creeps. I want to be as far away from it as possible."
"In that case," Daria said, "let's go get something to eat."
"Ball and Chain!" Jane cried. "Ball and Chain!"
Daria turned up her nose. "Come on, I don't want to eat at a dive bar."
"No, you want to eat at Fuddpuckers or wherever that is."
Daria worked on hiding her sigh. Going to Ball and Chain would mean enduring a couple of guys trying to chat up Jane. It was the place that guys from Bromwell and Holy Father went to practice their moves. Jane liked it because it was "fun" and reminded her of The Zon - which is one of the things that she didn't like about it.
But going to some standard food-and-git place meant that she'd have to hear Jane complain about it for ten minutes. She figured she could put up with it, for the sake of friendship. Daria figured it was karmic payback.
(* * *)
Since neither Daria nor Jane had cars, the best way to get to Ball and Chain was to just cut right through the Raft campus on foot. Daria's classes had ended early, but there was still one more day of testing before the campus emptied for summer break.
"What did you think you're going to get this year?" Jane said.
"All A's. College isn't that much harder than high school, except you actually have homework that means something and that you're expected to know some shit. You?"
"B's," Jane said. "How the hell do I get to an Art School and not make A's? But there are some guys in class that are pretty cool, even though they're making B's and C's, too."
"Three more years and you could be the next Daniel Dotson," Daria said.
"Shut up," Jane said, still smarting.
As they bounded down the hill that would normally lead up from the sidewalk and to the student center, they found their way blocked by some kind of poorly attended booth. Daria recognized the guys as the members of the American People's party, still dressed in green and white but now looking much more comfortable now that the weather matched their clothing.
"I hope this isn't their final exam in political science," Daria said, "'cause they're going to flunk. I've played this game. Walk on by."
As Daria and Jane prepared to hold their heads up high and walk by, Jane said, "Look at the ass on that one!"
Daria squinted. "Boy or girl?"
"I'm heteroflexible," Jane said.
Jane practically danced her way up to the booth. "Hey there!" she said to the guy she had been looking at.
"Hello," he said. "Would you like some literature?"
"I would like for you to fill me up," Jane said, "with your knowledge."
Blushing, the guy handed her a pamphlet. "Is there a way I can put you on our e-mailing list?"
"That depends," Jane said. "Do you text? Hey I just met you...and this is crazy....!"
" - stop it, now, girl," Daria said. She took the pamphlet out of her hands. "The same 25 points as before. You're going to ride that lead balloon out into the sunset."
"This is Daria," Jane said. "She's not as politically conscious as I am. As a matter of fact, we talked to one of your friends over at BFAC. He was...uh...his name was...Daria, don't leave me hanging."
"Robert," Daria said, annoyed.
"Yeah, Robert," Jane said. "How's old Bob doing?"
"Bob dropped out about a month ago," Daria said.
"Damn, I meant to get back to him!" Jane said.
"So," Daria said, "you're now the National Progressive American People's Party?"
"We wanted to emphasize that we were progressive," Jane's prospective boyfriend said.
"And national," Daria said. "So what are you, the NPAPPers?"
"We just call ourselves NAPP," the guy said.
"Robert's out huh?" Daria said. "Nice guy, though. Sorry to lower your numbers to five."
"Oh, there are more of us than just us."
"Really?" Daria said. "Do tell. What's the current membership of the National Progressive American People's Party?"
"Twelve members."
"Whoa," Daria said. "You doubled your membership in two months. But you still haven't found a graphic designer."
"Yeah. We - !"
"So," Jane said, "you were looking for a graphic designer, n'est-ce-pas?"
"Hey, do you know something about it?"
"That's an interesting story," Daria started, before Jane stared daggers at her. "Why, Jane knows all about the workings of political organizations, coming up with interesting graphic designs, making a political pamphlet all sparkly. She talks about it all the time."
"My name's David," the man said. "David Bechtel."
"I hope you pass the test," Daria said.
David laughed, getting the joke. Then he soured. "So...together you're...?"
"Together," Daria growled. "We are going to Fuddruckers."
"This is news to me," Jane said.
"Let me tell you some more about Jane's strengths - !"
" - Fuddruckers it is!" Jane said. She plucked the political pamphlet out of Daria's hands, wrote her number, and gave it back to David. "Text, call. Whatever. I'm easy."
Daria cleared her throat. "I hope I'm not interrupting something," David said.
"Nah. Daria's going to be out of town for a little while." The way Jane said it, you would have had to be living on the moon not to see her intended meaning.
May 2014
"So, do you know if any of the old gang is going to be there?"
"What 'old gang'?" Daria asked. She was in the apartment she shared with Jane, closing her suitcase, preparing to pack for her first trip back home.
"You know, the usual gang of idiots." Jane paused. "Lawndale."
"Ah. Well, no. Why would any of them come back? We didn't come back."
"True," Jane said. "But for all of those friends that Quinn made over the years that were one grade ahead of her, you think they'd be glad to see her off."
"Those guys have traded up," Quinn said.
"You've talked to Quinn?"
"Yeah. It's been a real pain in the ass for her," Daria said. "My parents have smothered her with 'love' and 'affection' and a lot of words which might have similar meanings in your world to the ways that we use them in my house."
"Got it," Jane said. "They're up in her panties 24-7."
"I think they're trying to get right with Quinn what they didn't get right with me, and they found out that it was a lot of heavy lifting," Daria said. "Well, done."
"I wish you weren't going," Jane said. "I'll miss you."
"You'll miss not having me around to bum money off of."
"That too," Jane said.
"Are you sure you'll not come back to watch Quinn graduate?"
"No way," Jane said. "Don't want to see it. That place gives me the creeps. I want to be as far away from it as possible."
"In that case," Daria said, "let's go get something to eat."
"Ball and Chain!" Jane cried. "Ball and Chain!"
Daria turned up her nose. "Come on, I don't want to eat at a dive bar."
"No, you want to eat at Fuddpuckers or wherever that is."
Daria worked on hiding her sigh. Going to Ball and Chain would mean enduring a couple of guys trying to chat up Jane. It was the place that guys from Bromwell and Holy Father went to practice their moves. Jane liked it because it was "fun" and reminded her of The Zon - which is one of the things that she didn't like about it.
But going to some standard food-and-git place meant that she'd have to hear Jane complain about it for ten minutes. She figured she could put up with it, for the sake of friendship. Daria figured it was karmic payback.
(* * *)
Since neither Daria nor Jane had cars, the best way to get to Ball and Chain was to just cut right through the Raft campus on foot. Daria's classes had ended early, but there was still one more day of testing before the campus emptied for summer break.
"What did you think you're going to get this year?" Jane said.
"All A's. College isn't that much harder than high school, except you actually have homework that means something and that you're expected to know some shit. You?"
"B's," Jane said. "How the hell do I get to an Art School and not make A's? But there are some guys in class that are pretty cool, even though they're making B's and C's, too."
"Three more years and you could be the next Daniel Dotson," Daria said.
"Shut up," Jane said, still smarting.
As they bounded down the hill that would normally lead up from the sidewalk and to the student center, they found their way blocked by some kind of poorly attended booth. Daria recognized the guys as the members of the American People's party, still dressed in green and white but now looking much more comfortable now that the weather matched their clothing.
"I hope this isn't their final exam in political science," Daria said, "'cause they're going to flunk. I've played this game. Walk on by."
As Daria and Jane prepared to hold their heads up high and walk by, Jane said, "Look at the ass on that one!"
Daria squinted. "Boy or girl?"
"I'm heteroflexible," Jane said.
Jane practically danced her way up to the booth. "Hey there!" she said to the guy she had been looking at.
"Hello," he said. "Would you like some literature?"
"I would like for you to fill me up," Jane said, "with your knowledge."
Blushing, the guy handed her a pamphlet. "Is there a way I can put you on our e-mailing list?"
"That depends," Jane said. "Do you text? Hey I just met you...and this is crazy....!"
" - stop it, now, girl," Daria said. She took the pamphlet out of her hands. "The same 25 points as before. You're going to ride that lead balloon out into the sunset."
"This is Daria," Jane said. "She's not as politically conscious as I am. As a matter of fact, we talked to one of your friends over at BFAC. He was...uh...his name was...Daria, don't leave me hanging."
"Robert," Daria said, annoyed.
"Yeah, Robert," Jane said. "How's old Bob doing?"
"Bob dropped out about a month ago," Daria said.
"Damn, I meant to get back to him!" Jane said.
"So," Daria said, "you're now the National Progressive American People's Party?"
"We wanted to emphasize that we were progressive," Jane's prospective boyfriend said.
"And national," Daria said. "So what are you, the NPAPPers?"
"We just call ourselves NAPP," the guy said.
"Robert's out huh?" Daria said. "Nice guy, though. Sorry to lower your numbers to five."
"Oh, there are more of us than just us."
"Really?" Daria said. "Do tell. What's the current membership of the National Progressive American People's Party?"
"Twelve members."
"Whoa," Daria said. "You doubled your membership in two months. But you still haven't found a graphic designer."
"Yeah. We - !"
"So," Jane said, "you were looking for a graphic designer, n'est-ce-pas?"
"Hey, do you know something about it?"
"That's an interesting story," Daria started, before Jane stared daggers at her. "Why, Jane knows all about the workings of political organizations, coming up with interesting graphic designs, making a political pamphlet all sparkly. She talks about it all the time."
"My name's David," the man said. "David Bechtel."
"I hope you pass the test," Daria said.
David laughed, getting the joke. Then he soured. "So...together you're...?"
"Together," Daria growled. "We are going to Fuddruckers."
"This is news to me," Jane said.
"Let me tell you some more about Jane's strengths - !"
" - Fuddruckers it is!" Jane said. She plucked the political pamphlet out of Daria's hands, wrote her number, and gave it back to David. "Text, call. Whatever. I'm easy."
Daria cleared her throat. "I hope I'm not interrupting something," David said.
"Nah. Daria's going to be out of town for a little while." The way Jane said it, you would have had to be living on the moon not to see her intended meaning.
Dancing in the Streets (Part I)
March 2014
Raft University
It was the end of February, and the one thing Daria had never prepared for was the bite of the cold winter weather in Boston. She had always prided herself on being what her grandmother called "cold natured", wearing a skirt and exposing her bare calves even to the coldest weather. Yet stepping out into New England winter felt like being hit in the face with a frying pan, and Daria was well-bundled even though the temperature was in the 1940s.
She had to wait until Jane got out of class at 2:30 pm at BFAC, so she found herself walking about the BFAC campus. There were all sorts of groups one could encounter in public. A street preacher was near the library, preaching to the assembled about the perils of sin, abortion and hellfire - and the BFAC students gave back as good as they got. There were the usual little tables and booths occupied by the earnesty art student types.
And of course, there were the politial groups. Various permutations of Occupy. The Greens. The Pro-Palestinian contingent. A lot of these groups were single-cause groups, others were here today, gone tomorrow.
Daria liked picking up campaign literature. She was taking a class at Raft called "Writing for Advertising" that her advisor recommended. "Until you read a direct mailer, you'll never know how to write an effective opening sentence," was his spiel. Daria enjoyed giving the various fliers and handouts grades in her mind - nothing she had read had been written by professionals, and nothing got a grade better than a "C". The groups were as amateurish as their campaign literature.
The political campaigners were running a bit thin today. It took cojones to canvas out here in the freezing chill.
She noticed what appeared to be a new group. This one was called the "People's Party" and Daria tried to suss out the political orientation before she even picked up a flier. There were six of them, all dressed in green long sleeve shirts and white pants. They were trying to get the disinterested students at BFAC to take their fliers, and there were a few fliers scattered a few yards away that had missed the trash can.
They looked pretty motley. Daria suspected that they were some sort of modern Maoists. The story was already written in her head. They'd probably make it to the end of the semester when the final three members would break up the organization or lose interest in it. Chuckling, she decided to walk forward and see what they were about.
The banner at the bottom read:
"NO MORE BUSINESS AS USUAL!
JOIN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE'S PARTY!"
As she walked forward to grab a flier, the man sitting at the table - the only one sitting - said, "No more business as usual! Would you like to join the American People's Party?"
Daria gave a bare smile. "Sorry, I gave at the office."
"Would you sign up for our e-mail newsletter?"
Daria signed with her special address she reserved for junk e-mail. She picked up the flier. "The Platform of the American People's Party," she said, reading the first sentences. "Okay. You have a platform. Where's the party?"
The guy smiled. "You're looking at it."
"One, two, three...six people. I don't know," Daria said. "I don't think Hilary Clinton is shaking in her boots just yet."
"Well, we are small, but we're hoping to grow."
"Are you sure this is the place to grow? I don't know, BFAC students tend to be a bit flaky. No offense."
"None taken." The young man had black hair, glasses, and a trimmed beard. "Robert Morgan," he said, extending his hand. "BFAC, class of 2016."
"I guess you're not in the graphic arts," Daria said. "This handout looks a little unimpressive."
Robert looked to see that the other APP members were still canvassing. "Yeah, we could use some help with that. You wouldn't happen to be a graphic arts major, would you?"
Daria decided NOT to mention Jane's name. "Sorry," Daria said. "I'm from Raft."
"No problem. We go everywhere. Raft, BFAC, BIT, Bromwell, Holy Father."
"You'd think you'd have bumped into a graphic designer by then." Daria looked at the platform. "You guys are all over the place, too, politically. I thought you were a bunch of Greens. And what's with the green and white thing? My sister would have a fit."
"We needed to look a lot smarter than the Greens do," Robert said. "They look like - !"
" - like [i]Greens[/i]," Daria said, and they both laughed. "Okay. I can go with the green and white. But looking at this thing," she said, indicating the party platform, "this is all over the place. Something to piss off everybody. You guys don't know much about building a consensus."
Robert pointed to the sign at the front of this table. "No more business as usual."
"Yeah," Daria said, "and [i]no business[/i]. Look, a lot of this stuff would be right at home at an Occupy meeting. But this stuff about restricting citizen to [i]jus soli[/i]? No one's going to even know what that means. And you manage to not just piss off big labor, but you advocate for national control of education, which will piss off every homeschooler in the country."
"I look at it this way," Robert said. "We piss off everybody. Say, do you care to talk about this over at Subway? I've got a lunch break coming up."
"Damn," Daria said, "I feel bad. I think I just distracted 16 percent of the American People's Party."
(* * *)
Daria and Robert shared some sandwiches, while Daria found out more about him. He was born in Boston. His dad was a carpenter, and his mother had one of those jobs that involved shuffling paper at a small business. Robert's main interest in life was sculpting, first with modeling clay and then branching out into wood and into small marble figurines. Daria nodded, but even though Robert was talented at art, she suspected his true passion was politics.
"Well, I'm not a Democrat or a Republican," Daria said. "What do they say? 'I refuse to belong to any party that would have me as a member.' That includes your party, too."
"Well, in that case, why not join? We need someone who can write. You know artists. Artists can't write."
"So how did you end up with that hodgepodge of a party platform?"
"It's just stuff that's always interested me. I didn't write it with a goal of it being 'left wing' or 'right wing'. Those are false divisions, anyway. People see politics as being a continuum, with a line of chalk that separates 'left' from 'right'. I don't like imaginary lines; I keep jumping over them."
"There's a lot of stuff you're going to be asked about. Gun ownership. Prayer in schools."
"As far as I'm concerned," Robert said, "it's just a circus to keep people distracted from our serious economic and environmental isses. Take the Democrats. Imagine them trying to run on their economic program, not the one they like to talk about, their [i]real one[/i]. No one would vote for them. But get people fired against the Christians encroaching their personal space? Man, they're all for that. Likewise, the Republicans. No one sane would vote for that economic program, but the God-botherers get all hot and happy about obligatory school prayer. What the Democrat and Republican voters don't know is that for the most part, the two parties are on the same side when it comes to economics or the enviroment. Red states vs blue states? That's just colored paint to cover up all the holes in our economy."
"I think you're oversimplifying things," Daria said. "Take for instance - !"
" - oh, HI!" It was Jane Lane. "Well, well, Daria Morgendorffer, fancy meeting you here."
"Oops," Daria said, pulling out her phone to look at the time. "Look who is actually on time for once. Sorry. Jane Lane, Robert Morgan, Robert Morgan, Jane Lane."
"How-dee doo," Jane said. "C'mon Daria, let's have a kiki."
"See you," Daria said, standing up. "Good luck leading the wave of the future."
Daria and Jane departed Subway. "So how did you get roped into [i]that[/i]?" Jane said.
"Research?" Daria said. "And you know those guys?"
"Not really, but I never imagined you being into politics."
"Well, he wasn't an asshole about it. He admitted he didn't have all the answers. He seemed to put a lot of thought into his complex positions."
"Meaning?"
"He's [i]fucked[/i]. He just doesn't know it yet."
"Succinct as always," Jane said. "Which is why I went to art school and stayed away from politics."
"You don't have a political bend?" Daria said.
"Please, girl," Jane said. "If you wanted me to paint what I felt about politics and politicians, it would be picketed twenty-four-seven."
"That's my girl."
Raft University
It was the end of February, and the one thing Daria had never prepared for was the bite of the cold winter weather in Boston. She had always prided herself on being what her grandmother called "cold natured", wearing a skirt and exposing her bare calves even to the coldest weather. Yet stepping out into New England winter felt like being hit in the face with a frying pan, and Daria was well-bundled even though the temperature was in the 1940s.
She had to wait until Jane got out of class at 2:30 pm at BFAC, so she found herself walking about the BFAC campus. There were all sorts of groups one could encounter in public. A street preacher was near the library, preaching to the assembled about the perils of sin, abortion and hellfire - and the BFAC students gave back as good as they got. There were the usual little tables and booths occupied by the earnesty art student types.
And of course, there were the politial groups. Various permutations of Occupy. The Greens. The Pro-Palestinian contingent. A lot of these groups were single-cause groups, others were here today, gone tomorrow.
Daria liked picking up campaign literature. She was taking a class at Raft called "Writing for Advertising" that her advisor recommended. "Until you read a direct mailer, you'll never know how to write an effective opening sentence," was his spiel. Daria enjoyed giving the various fliers and handouts grades in her mind - nothing she had read had been written by professionals, and nothing got a grade better than a "C". The groups were as amateurish as their campaign literature.
The political campaigners were running a bit thin today. It took cojones to canvas out here in the freezing chill.
She noticed what appeared to be a new group. This one was called the "People's Party" and Daria tried to suss out the political orientation before she even picked up a flier. There were six of them, all dressed in green long sleeve shirts and white pants. They were trying to get the disinterested students at BFAC to take their fliers, and there were a few fliers scattered a few yards away that had missed the trash can.
They looked pretty motley. Daria suspected that they were some sort of modern Maoists. The story was already written in her head. They'd probably make it to the end of the semester when the final three members would break up the organization or lose interest in it. Chuckling, she decided to walk forward and see what they were about.
The banner at the bottom read:
"NO MORE BUSINESS AS USUAL!
JOIN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE'S PARTY!"
As she walked forward to grab a flier, the man sitting at the table - the only one sitting - said, "No more business as usual! Would you like to join the American People's Party?"
Daria gave a bare smile. "Sorry, I gave at the office."
"Would you sign up for our e-mail newsletter?"
Daria signed with her special address she reserved for junk e-mail. She picked up the flier. "The Platform of the American People's Party," she said, reading the first sentences. "Okay. You have a platform. Where's the party?"
The guy smiled. "You're looking at it."
"One, two, three...six people. I don't know," Daria said. "I don't think Hilary Clinton is shaking in her boots just yet."
"Well, we are small, but we're hoping to grow."
"Are you sure this is the place to grow? I don't know, BFAC students tend to be a bit flaky. No offense."
"None taken." The young man had black hair, glasses, and a trimmed beard. "Robert Morgan," he said, extending his hand. "BFAC, class of 2016."
"I guess you're not in the graphic arts," Daria said. "This handout looks a little unimpressive."
Robert looked to see that the other APP members were still canvassing. "Yeah, we could use some help with that. You wouldn't happen to be a graphic arts major, would you?"
Daria decided NOT to mention Jane's name. "Sorry," Daria said. "I'm from Raft."
"No problem. We go everywhere. Raft, BFAC, BIT, Bromwell, Holy Father."
"You'd think you'd have bumped into a graphic designer by then." Daria looked at the platform. "You guys are all over the place, too, politically. I thought you were a bunch of Greens. And what's with the green and white thing? My sister would have a fit."
"We needed to look a lot smarter than the Greens do," Robert said. "They look like - !"
" - like [i]Greens[/i]," Daria said, and they both laughed. "Okay. I can go with the green and white. But looking at this thing," she said, indicating the party platform, "this is all over the place. Something to piss off everybody. You guys don't know much about building a consensus."
Robert pointed to the sign at the front of this table. "No more business as usual."
"Yeah," Daria said, "and [i]no business[/i]. Look, a lot of this stuff would be right at home at an Occupy meeting. But this stuff about restricting citizen to [i]jus soli[/i]? No one's going to even know what that means. And you manage to not just piss off big labor, but you advocate for national control of education, which will piss off every homeschooler in the country."
"I look at it this way," Robert said. "We piss off everybody. Say, do you care to talk about this over at Subway? I've got a lunch break coming up."
"Damn," Daria said, "I feel bad. I think I just distracted 16 percent of the American People's Party."
(* * *)
Daria and Robert shared some sandwiches, while Daria found out more about him. He was born in Boston. His dad was a carpenter, and his mother had one of those jobs that involved shuffling paper at a small business. Robert's main interest in life was sculpting, first with modeling clay and then branching out into wood and into small marble figurines. Daria nodded, but even though Robert was talented at art, she suspected his true passion was politics.
"Well, I'm not a Democrat or a Republican," Daria said. "What do they say? 'I refuse to belong to any party that would have me as a member.' That includes your party, too."
"Well, in that case, why not join? We need someone who can write. You know artists. Artists can't write."
"So how did you end up with that hodgepodge of a party platform?"
"It's just stuff that's always interested me. I didn't write it with a goal of it being 'left wing' or 'right wing'. Those are false divisions, anyway. People see politics as being a continuum, with a line of chalk that separates 'left' from 'right'. I don't like imaginary lines; I keep jumping over them."
"There's a lot of stuff you're going to be asked about. Gun ownership. Prayer in schools."
"As far as I'm concerned," Robert said, "it's just a circus to keep people distracted from our serious economic and environmental isses. Take the Democrats. Imagine them trying to run on their economic program, not the one they like to talk about, their [i]real one[/i]. No one would vote for them. But get people fired against the Christians encroaching their personal space? Man, they're all for that. Likewise, the Republicans. No one sane would vote for that economic program, but the God-botherers get all hot and happy about obligatory school prayer. What the Democrat and Republican voters don't know is that for the most part, the two parties are on the same side when it comes to economics or the enviroment. Red states vs blue states? That's just colored paint to cover up all the holes in our economy."
"I think you're oversimplifying things," Daria said. "Take for instance - !"
" - oh, HI!" It was Jane Lane. "Well, well, Daria Morgendorffer, fancy meeting you here."
"Oops," Daria said, pulling out her phone to look at the time. "Look who is actually on time for once. Sorry. Jane Lane, Robert Morgan, Robert Morgan, Jane Lane."
"How-dee doo," Jane said. "C'mon Daria, let's have a kiki."
"See you," Daria said, standing up. "Good luck leading the wave of the future."
Daria and Jane departed Subway. "So how did you get roped into [i]that[/i]?" Jane said.
"Research?" Daria said. "And you know those guys?"
"Not really, but I never imagined you being into politics."
"Well, he wasn't an asshole about it. He admitted he didn't have all the answers. He seemed to put a lot of thought into his complex positions."
"Meaning?"
"He's [i]fucked[/i]. He just doesn't know it yet."
"Succinct as always," Jane said. "Which is why I went to art school and stayed away from politics."
"You don't have a political bend?" Daria said.
"Please, girl," Jane said. "If you wanted me to paint what I felt about politics and politicians, it would be picketed twenty-four-seven."
"That's my girl."
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Dusting Cobwebs
I wonder if anyone is still reading this blog. I forgot I even had it for the longest time. Maybe something will show up here soon.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Running On
Where I start: Out of Savannah, GA, past Pooler Georgia, on State Road 80, somewhere in Eden, GA - or West Pooler, GA. Maybe.
Where I end up: Hell, I don't know. I think I'm on the way to Brooklet, Georgia. I'm on a place called Ivanhoe Junction Road along State Road 80 in Georgia.
Total distance on map: 21.01 miles
Spare miles for next run: -0.05 miles
One of the problem I've had is that the Daft Logic Distance Calculator at this link has forgotten my ending point. So I've had to reconstruct part of my route from scratch - the starting location is very non-specific; imagine trying to find it on a Georgia map.
In any case - we're a far way from civilization now. Still running, but tonight in Atlanta it is very cold. Can't imagine how much colder it would be in Rural Georgia.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Two Cats Plus One
This morning, Ruth sighted Lexi the cat, the missing cat out of the three cats. While Ruth was downstairs, she looked up and saw Lexi on the stairwell. Lexi said "meow" as a greeting, but when Malcolm noticed her he went upstairs as to say hello.
Lexi disappeared again. But at least, she's alive and that's the important thing. We'll continue to leave up food out for her.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Schroedinger's Cat
Currently, we are cat-sitting for our friends during Thanksgiving day. They brought three cats for us to watch: Nickel, Bella and Lexi.
Nickel is easy to watch. Nickel is simply too big and too tough to give a damn. If he senses that our two cats are being too aggressive, he'll hiss at them. He hops on the desk and expects to be petted while I'm typing. He's basically a bigger, slower and less enthusiastic version of our kitten Malcolm.
Bella hasn't been seen much. She learned how to hide up in the ceiling - JOY. However, she does come down to steal food, and occasionally to run around in the basement. She's eating the dry food and using her litter box, so we know she's not starving. However, she refuses to socialize with the other cats and barely socializes with me.
Lexi has not been seen. AT ALL. Ruth believes that Lexi might have been in her room at sometime last night, but it was 3 am and she didn't see anything specific - it might have been Bella, and Ruth's night vision is not too good. If Lexi is hiding in the ceiling I've never seen her.
Is Lexi here at all? Where the hell is she? I'm worried, but then again, it's been a long time since I've owned a cat.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Sartorial Elegance, Part II
Today, November 21, 2010 was the very first day that I wore a bow-tie. I wore it to a basketball game.
I skipped right over the clip-on stage and into the true, honest-to-goodness adult bow-tie stage. It took me about an hour to figure it out, but I managed it.
Up next: high hats and narrow collars, white spats and lots of dollars.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Sartorial Elegance
The title is misleading, as I don't wear anything tailored. However, I do the next best thing. I wear a pink polo shirt.
Really. I've had two people comment about my shirt. One person was a co-worker, and the other person was a women's college basketball coach.
They might joke - but they recognize the shirt. Be a rebel. Put on the pink.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Running Through Eden
Where I start: Intersection of State Road 80 (East Victory Drive) and Harry S. Truman Parkway, Savannah, GA
Where I end up:Out of Savannah, GA, past Pooler Georgia, on State Road 80, somewhere in Eden, GA - or West Pooler, GA. Maybe.
Total distance on map: 24.5 miles
Spare miles for next run: +0.14 miles
It's been busy at work and women's basketball season has started again, so little time to write. I figure that I ran two times during my visit to Hialeah, four times on the cruise and once back home in Atlanta. (I forgot my workout clothes today). So I added up the distance and updated the map.
That took me out of Savannah, Georgia and somewhere near Eden, Georgia. I can tell you absolutely nothing about Eden, Georgia. Some people claim that it doesn't exist, and if it were found, it would be guarded by an angel with a flaming sword.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Cruise Control
Wednesday, November 10
Right now, my laptop is resting on a footstool and I’m looking out the window at sunny Belize. Obstructing my view of Belize is a giant cruise ship called Norwegian Spirit, but that’s quite all right. Neither my wife nor I got off the boat in Belize.
There are many reasons why we didn’t get off the boat, so I’ll settle on the most interesting one. Apparently, the coast of Belize is home to the second largest coral reef in the world, next to the Great Barrier Reef. Therefore, there are no large docks built that would be suitable for a cruise ship. As a result, anyone wanting off the boat has to take a tender – a craft with a maximum occupancy of about 100 people. Which is great, except this vessel has 2500 passengers.
This would leave us at the mercy of tender service, and one of my rules was to try not to be too dependent on someone else’s transportation. Combine that with the fact that there wasn’t anything we wanted to see in Belize, and that was enough to keep us on board.
I’m going to tell the story of what we’ve been doing since our departure on Friday, but by this time I barely see the point. I had started a blog that served as a personal diary a long time ago, but it fell into disuse. This previous blog can still be found on line by the intrepid searcher, but I don’t even read it. I have various starts and stops of diaries started here and there but all of them were quit at some point and I suspect that this one shall be, too. However, for those of you still reading, I’ll make another go of it.
On Friday, my wife and I made it down to Florida to the Hialeah-Miami Lakes area in anticipation for the wedding of the daughter of a good friend of my wife’s. Returning to south Florida reminded me of the horrible “signage” as my wife calls it – road signs are labeled in misleading and confusing ways. Add to this the fact that drivers from south Florida are truly, truly horrible – we saw several crimes against common traffic courtesy. The turn signal is an afterthought in south Florida.
Part of the problem – so I understand it – is that in south Florida there is no state agency that verifies driving proficiency. If you attend a certified traffic school and can pass their test, you shall be licensed. This is merely one example of turning a government function over to the free market in the mistaken belief that laissez-faire capitalism can do things automatically better, that one merely has to say “free market!” and magic happens like the sorcerer waving his wand. Since a traffic school doesn’t want to get the reputation of being a place that is tough on students, this has resulted in market pressure to pass every student. And trust me, some of these drivers deserve to be failed, multiple times over.
Because drivers are so bad, there were a lot of divided roads – roads with an artificial raised concrete barrier between their northbound and southbound lanes. These partitions had few gaps – if one wanted to turn into a driveway on the other side of the street, one had to drive to the end of the block, turn left (or pray there was a left turn signal), and then drive down in the opposite direction to reach one’s final destination. The alternative would have been letting people cross across two lanes of opposite-going traffic at will, and trust me – there were some drivers that would have been stupid enough to dart across traffic and narrowly avoiding collision.
We managed to reach the local La Quinta Inn, which is part of a national franchise of low-cost motor inns in the United States. The particular inn at which we stayed was the #2 La Quinta Inn in the U. S. and was very desirous of being the #1 Inn. It’s the only motel I’ve ever stayed at where they gave you candy. It was clean, efficient, and we were well treated there.
One of the terrors of long-distance travel is the fear that you might forget something. In this case, my wife forgot some critical medication. Part of the problem was that she had recently ordered a refill from the health plan of her previous employer, but she did not bring the refill bottle – instead, she brought the bottle that only had two pills in it. Therefore, we had to make several trips to the local pharmacist to get things sorted out.
In every place we went – pharmacy, hotel, gas station – we discovered that the service workers were all bilingual, being either the children of Cuban (legal) immigrants or Mexican (illegal) immigrants. Out of all of the arguments advocated against immigration a common one is that the new immigrants don’t speak English and tend to self-segregate. (In Atlanta, some right-wing city commissioner proposed that the signs of the restaurants on Buford Highway should be English-only – until his opponents pointed out to him that even if the signs were English only, his kind of voters would never patronize those restaurants anyway.)
But in Hialeah, I saw a flip side to the argument – if immigrants learn to speak very good English, then they’re going to be the ones getting all of the service jobs because they can speak two languages – putting ‘Mericans out of work, of course. (“THEY TOOK OUUUUR JOBBBBSSS!!”)
We spent time over the interim with my wife’s cousin and her husband who live in an apartment in Miami Lakes. He works as a funeral director and my understanding is that she works in a bank but is about to retire. (For a long time, they were unmarried until she got cancer and they realized that if anything serious happened to either of them, it might make sense to be covered on each other’s health plans.) Ruth states that her cousin has a hoarding problem. I don’t think she deserves to be on America’s greatest hoarders – not yet – but looking at her collections of DVDs and her collection of bottled soda, I think there might be some truth to those accusations.
Thursday, November 11
Right now, we’re off the coast of Costa Maya, Mexico. The seashore looks a little more desolate, but I suspect this is due to being docked on the opposite side of Costa Maya’s port.
Anyway, that Friday night Ruth’s cousin took us out to eat at an Italian restaurant. Nice enough, except that we were seated front and center during what must have been their live performance night, where a man in a pork pie hat belted out Frank and Dino’s greatest hits. It made it very hard to have a conversation.
That Saturday, Ruth and I took our first big trip of the vacation – we drove all the way from Miami Lakes to Key Largo, Florida for M.’s wedding. M. and her betrothed, E., had spent some time in Atlanta and M. vetted our clothing. I was wearing something Cuban men wear called a “wyabeta” shirt (I have no internet here to check spelling) and a pair of tan slacks. This wouldn’t have been appropriate for most weddings, but this was going to be a beach wedding, so we assumed that I was going to look okay.
We drove down US 1 into Key Largo and for those considering a vacation where Bogie and Bacall frolicked – don’t. The place looks like a dump, filled with tourist trap shops and other rickety constructions. (When the local high school is the best-looking building in town, you’ve got a problem.) I despaired of making it in time because the “signage” wasn’t that great but Ruth got us there, no sweat.
Speaking of no sweat – due to a cold front moving in from the north, the temperature on this south Florida beach must have been in the low 60s. I was freezing in my Cuban shirt. Ruth, who was wearing a lightweight dress, was cold as well.
Some background about the wedding. M. is a second/third generation Cuban (her mother was an infant when she left the island). E. is a first generation Peruvian. I don’t know if this says anything about either Cubans or Peruvians, but all of the men dressed in suits and all of the women dressed in skimpy little dresses with bare shoulders and high heels. I suspect that the men were warm and the women were…not warm.
The Protestant pastor came out and as it turned out not only did he conduct the entire ceremony, beginning to end, in Espanol, but he…mumbled through a lot of it, so there was no support for any nascent bilingualism. There was a delay to the wedding as the bride was still getting her hair put together – and when she came out, a strong gust of wind undid her effort. However, it was a very nice (but long) ceremony and everyone had a good time.
During the wedding reception, Ruth and I thought that as Anglo non-relatives we’d be seated with all of the 14 year old cousins. Imagine our surprise when we learned that we’d be sitting at the mother of the bride’s table. (We’ll call the bride’s mother “N”.) N. is Ruth’s good friend from Florida, and her goal was to seat all of the “interesting” people at her table, a high compliment. An old friend of N.’s (W) was sitting there with her husband, a gay male couple was there, and N’s creepy looking boyfriend was there.
Whenever N. – and her boyfriend – were not at the table, the conversation turned to what a disaster N.’s boyfriend was. N. and M. – mother and daughter – are virtual clones of each other. As N. had M. in her early twenties, N. is still in her forties and still an attractive woman so no one could figure out why she was going out with this mooching schlub. (I learned that part by listening to Ruth and W.’s conversation.) My time at the table was holding up my part of the conversation and listening to the gossip.
On Sunday, we spent a last bit of time with Ruth’s cousin and made it down to the Port of Miami to get on the boat, the Norwegian P____. Our berth was something called an “owner’s cabin”, something which we lucked into with this cruise and shall probably never luck into again. It is a two-room cabin with a king-sized bed in one room and a couch-table-flat screen TV in the other room. Furthermore, this cabin has access to the private swimming pool on Deck 14. I felt like a venture capitalist while on board.
Here are our ports of call:
Sunday: departure from Miami
Monday: at sea
Tuesday: Roatan, Honduras
Wednesday: Belize City, Belize
Thursday: Costa Maya, Mexico
Friday: at sea
Saturday: Key West, Florida
Sunday: back in Miami
Our goal – or at least, my goal – was to spend most of this cruise entirely on board. There’s nothing we want to shop for in any of these ports of call. There are excursions to various ruins but I can’t imagine spending hours of time – and money – to be trucked around to see what’s left of the ancient cultures. There’s nothing in any of these cities that met a specific goal – there was no specific museum or cultural site that was something that we hoped to see. Truth be told, we just took the trip because it happened to be leaving from Miami that weekend.
“So CINCGREEN”, you might ask, “if you don’t really want to see any of these places…then why go on a cruise at all?” The answer is that a cruise offers the ultimate get-away-from-it-all experience. We’re on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico. We can’t be reached by phone except in the case of absolute emergency. We don’t have to drive to work. We don’t have to cook our own food. It’s all done for us. We can do whatever we want to do, and in this case, what we want to do is nothing.
What I really, really hate about vacations is that in a lot of cases, they’re extremely hectic with every hour micromanaged to squeeze in every bit of culture/history/socializing whatever. Before I started to go on cruises, I actually needed a vacation from my vacation. You’d return to work and you would never be rested – you’d just be utterly and completely exhausted, not good for anything.
So what did we do that was noteworthy in any way? Sunday was sort of a wash. The point of Sunday was to figure out where everything on the boat was. Among the many amenities of the P____ is something called the “Stardust Theatre” that provides shipboard entertainment. One of the rules of shipboard entertainment is that it is universally horrible. These are the dancers who weren’t good enough for off-Broadway and who might be working double-duty on board – food handler by day and dancing the light fantastic by night!
Ruth and I watched the tribute to South Beach culture and trust me – it was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. When the dancers can barely kick their heels above hip level, you know it’s going to be one hour of solid boredom. Ruth and I treated it like an episode of Mystery Science Theatre where we make snide comments to each other about what we’re seeing.
There were only two dancers that seemed to have any talent. The first of these was a woman who had clearly had some ballet training and a lot of physical flexibility. Obviously, as the major talent she was showcased a lot, even though she belonged more in a circus than in a hot Miami nightclub. The other talented dancer was…her handler, whose job it is was to provide a base for her while she intertwined her body around him or when he put his hand on her hip and lifted her above his head. He had a chest built like Wayne Boring’s drawings of 1950s Superman – solid barrel chested and a man looking out of place among the other slim and trim male dancers, almost as if a bare-chested longshoreman had inadvertently stumbled on stage.
Example of the night: A young dancer writhes (or tries to) while three worshiping young men pull her skirt away – for better dancing of course.
Me: “Ooo.”
Ruth: (looking at fey dancers) “Trust me, you couldn’t find three young men on board less interested in her legs.”
On Monday, we ended up at sea. When we woke up, we were off the coast of Cuba. Ruth and I tried taking pictures but the pictures came out blank. We figured it must be some sort of picture-negating technology that only existed on the yachts of paparazzi-avoiding Russian oligarchs. But no, it just turned out that the settings of our cameras were wrong.
Monday night’s big thing was that we were invited to eat with the captain. This presented a bit of a problem as this vessel specialized in something called “Freestyle Cruising”. The last cruise we went on, for example, had a formal dinner every night where everyone attending was expected to wear suits or dresses. However, in Freestyle Cruising passengers can wear what they want to dinner – as long as you’re not going barefooted and wearing only a jockstrap.
The problem was that we came close to having nothing to wear suitable for eating with the captain. So for about $25 we had my wedding clothes pressed again on board and the white Cuban shirt was repurposed as formal wear.
For those of you wondering what kind of scintillating conversation takes place at these dinners – you’re not missing anything. The passengers seemed pretty closed mouthed and the captain, for all of his skill in running a cruise line, didn’t seem like much of a conversation starter. (I think he preferred to monologue – don’t even ask about the staff captain who was also in attendance.) The captain definitely eats well but I suspect you have to be a Swede to get the full range of his conversational firepower.
However, we got lucky. We were seated next to a couple from Wales who ran an Italian restaurant. The wife was Welsh and the husband was Italian, an interesting combination and we spent most of our time in conversation with them. She’s apparently a member of the British Bird Society as well, and our topics of conversation included ducks, magpies, rooks, crows and other various birds. Despite her politeness, I worried a bit when the topic of conversation turned to cooking and Gordon Ramsey. “Oh, I’m much worse than Gordon Ramsey,” the woman said, smiling, talking about how either she or her husband have had to whip employees into shape. They didn’t talk about it long, but I suspect that they weren’t kidding.
We’ve kept running into this couple, and they gave us their e-mail address -we definitely intend to write them. Our owner’s suite – all 780 square feet of it – might be indeed a thing of beauty but my understanding is that there are even bigger suites on board. They are virtual apartments up on Deck 14, which is where the private pool is. The two are a lot more adventurous than I am, making all sorts of walking excursions during our visits to foreign ports.
Before writing about Roatan, let’s take a brief look at the private pool on Deck 14. The pool is maybe about 30 feet by 10 feet and is surrounded by deck chairs…and things which really couldn’t be called deck chairs but deck beds, resting perfectly flat and taking up the space of six deck chairs in width. These little beds are bedecked with pillows and have little canopies that are supported by plastic poles.
There are a few tables here for the serving of breakfast, but we’ve always had breakfast in the room. Ruth enjoys the swimming pool; I come for the treadmill. I’ve managed to clock my 3.5 miles a day on the treadmill all but one of the days that I’ve been on this cruise.
As for Roatan, Roatan seemed to be a port surrounded by very touristy shops. If you dared venture outside of this little touristy barrier of buildings, you went straight into a very poor part of Roatan, Honduras. I was reminded of the song by The Clash called “Safe European Home” about not daring to venture beyond the Sheraton Hotel – I don’t know if The Clash’s song condemned others or was a self-condemnation regarding their experiences in Jamaica (their life was threatened there) but I interpreted it as the latter. All I know is that I had had enough of Roatan and Ruth and I returned back to the ship. At least I can technically say that I’ve been to Honduras in the sense that I was technically in France for about an hour during a trip to Lake Constance (Bodensee). It is the southernmost country that I’ve ever visited, but if I were to tell you that I’ve truly experienced Honduras I would be lying.
That was Tuesday. Today, we felt that we had to get off the ship again and visited Costa Maya in the most perfunctory sense. For a sense of at least my experience, see the previous paragraph. It seems that that’s all there is on this cruise – little resort villages surrounded by poverty. Is Belize the same? I don’t know. Is Key West the same? Well, you might feel more comfortable there but I’ve been to Key West and it’s a dump of a city. If you like to drink a lot of cheap beer you’ll like Key West. Key West does have live chickens in the streets and it has Ernest Hemingway’s house with his six-toed cats, but other than that? Not much. We’ve resolved that for future cruises, us Ugly Americans are going to Europe.
Most of my interest on this cruise has come from the interesting people we’ve met. The majority of contacts have come from a group of messageboard users (not the PP-MB) who provide criticism of cruise lines. (Ruth is a part of this community.) Rather than sending Ruth and friends hate mail – like the kind you get if you review fanfic - the ship seems to have bent over backwards to make this group feel at home. Unfortunately, like most message board inhabitants, they might be great at socializing on-line but they have virtually no social skills in the real world. So our contacts with this group have been limited and I suspect that Ruth is greatly disappointed.
When it comes to starting conversations, Ruth is a master. It’s almost like a super power, one that comes from years of working in sales. This group has not given Ruth much to work with but there are a couple of exceptions. One exception comes from a couple we ate with in a ship restaurant called the Summer Palace. The décor of the Summer Palace attempts to evoke the pre-Revolution period in Russia – Edwardian fixtures with a lot of paintings of Czar Nicholas II and his doomed family. We met a couple of what appeared to be one of those May-December romances – young woman marries old man.
Shows what I know. The young woman was approximately the age of the older man but was in a lot better shape – the older man had Type II Diabetes (no shots) and had recovered from a stroke. She was a graduate of Weight Watchers and was in great shape. We discussed our dreams of emigrating to Canada but the couple told us that health care in Canada isn’t what it’s cracked up to be – Canadian doctors didn’t diagnose the man’s stroke properly but American doctors did. They didn’t think much of Canadian health care. (As opposed to the ship’s captain, who had nothing but praise for Sweden’s social welfare system.)
As it turned out, this was her fourth marriage – her last, she promised. She kept horses. Very pleasant conversation, but looking at the guy I suspect that she’ll be on Husband #5 sooner or later.
Last night, however, we hooked up with the messageboard group again. We ate at a Benihana’s type Japanese restaurant where the food is served in front of you. There were about fifteen people there including ourselves, most about as talkative as rocks. But it was then that we discovered the great secret that I shall impart with you….
…just as it was said in the Old West that “God did not make men equal, Colonel Colt did”, the man who has the power to break the barriers of social skills or life experience or class is not named God. His name is Jim Beam. Or Jack Daniels. Or Guiseppe Martini. A few of the message board patrons had a couple of martinis on a two-for-one special…and after that, you couldn’t shut them up. (We should have been sitting next to those guys.)
The high point of last night wasn’t the display of culinary skills from the chefs. It was when one of the Canadian board posters returned to the table and conversation turned to the Canadian national anthem. Someone asked him if he knew the words, and as it turned out he did know the words and sang the Anthem “every Thursday” because he belonged to some sort of military service club.
With that information, two sloshed message board posters stood up and began belting out the lyrics to “Oh Canada”. Everyone who remembered the lyrics – or at least everyone who remembered 80 percent of them, like us – stood up and began singing our hearts out for the Great White North.
After we had finished “…we stand on guarddddd…forrrr…THEEEE!!!” the adjoining table of restaurant patrons – who were not affiliated with the message board – could not let that stand. They stood up and began to belt out the American National Anthem. So, everyone in the restaurant – us and them – began singing “Oh say, can you see?/By the dawn’s early light…!” All of the singing must have given the piano bar downstairs some consternation.
Jingoistic? Maybe. I was tempted to start singing the only words I knew from the second verse of the National Anthem. “On the shore dimly seeeeeen/In the midst of the deeeeep….!”
Friday, November 12
We’re now back at sea. Last night was the worst night of the trip as far as the motion of the boat was concerned. On a large vessel, motion is virtually minimal. However, if you’re at the front of the boat you’re more likely to feel the boat’s motion, and we’re at one of the fore-most cabins. Besides, even if your boat is skyscraper-sized the sea is a lot bigger than your boat and if the sea’s going to be very choppy the boat’s going to move, period.
Ruth had a lot of trouble sleeping. She took a couple of Bonine for motion sickness and moved out of the bed (with its soft mattress) and on to the much-firmer couch. As for me, the motion of the boat doesn’t really affect me. Maybe I would have made a great sailor in some past life.
Last night, the entertainment on board was the cast of Second City, the comedy troupe. Well, okay, not the Second City in Chicago or Toronto – I’m assuming those guys aren’t coming onto a boat. I suspect that this Second City troupe is some sort of B-team Second City, the way the Groundlings in Los Angeles have a B-group. There’s a real possibility that some of the performers I saw last night might be major stars on the order of Mike Myers or John Belushi. Or possibly, well-known character actors like George Wendt – all of whom are alums of Second City. Or possibly…they’ll become nobody at all.
Anyway, they were all very funny. They performed most of their sketches as “blackouts” – a short vignette would be performed, the lights would go down and the performers would set up for another scene. There was an improv scene based on one of the couples in the audience, the conceit being that the particulars of how the couple met would be turned into a romantic movie. For some reason, the guy in the couple picked was ludicrously vague about what he did. Despite the fact that he and his wife had been married for 30 years or so, the only details given were that he worked with umpires in major league baseball. Of course, being professionals the Second City staff took the premise and ran with it, turning their male protagonist into a complete cipher. (“I’m having thoughts and feelings right now!”) The improv was the funniest thing all night and we’ll probably see them again.
As bookends to our improv experience were the screening of a Disney short subject called “Destino”. Destino was a planned short film by Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. The storyboards of the movie were created and Dali painted several scenes but the project never came to fruition and was believed lost until the storyboards were discovered a few years ago. Disney finally put together an animated short which won some awards. It was visually interesting, but I suspect that Disney whimsy and Dali’s bizarre subversions of reality don’t mix well – people forget about how smart Disney was; he knew when something was going to work on screen and when something wasn’t.
After the improv, we went to the piano bar to play “Name That Tune”. God, what a disaster. You got the impression that the piano bar player didn’t really care to be there – it seemed that he really struggled to keep his omnipresent grin alive and every now and then he’d say something marginally inappropriate. (“Drink up, people, we have to keep our bar staff busy.”)
Earlier this week, we had won a Trivia challenge – it was no contest, as most of the ship was at shore – and we won a few prizes like…a beach ball…and a luggage tag. The “Name That Tune” game was offering similar prizes. Twenty tunes would be played and we’d have to guess what those tunes were. Here is the list of tunes, so see if you can pick these out:
1. Take Five, the Brubeck instrumental
2. On Broadway
3. You Are the Sunshine of my Life
4. California Girls, by the Beach Boys
5. Dancing in the Moonlight
6. Teach Me Tonight
7. Sailing, the Christopher Cross tune
8. I Only Have Eyes for You
9. Cabaret
10. Don’t be Cruel
11. Margaritaville
12. The Gambler
13. There Will Never Be Another You
14. Girl from Ipanema
15. Achy Breaky Heart
16. Hotel California
17. Unforgettable, the Nat King Cole standard
18. Strangers in the Night
19. My Girl
20. Music of the Night, from Phantom of the Opera
If your taste is eclectic enough, you should know all of these tunes. (#6 and #13 might throw you.) We didn’t even bother to hang around for the judging. We slam-dunked the competition, and needing no more luggage tags or decks of ship playing cards, we left.
Ruth and I walked through the casino, a very popular place on board a cruise ship. One of the games there – a game neither of us have played – involves shoving change into a slot. The change bounces around and lands on a shelf in such a way that it lands on the back of the shelf, and has the potential to push the change in front of it forward, as the shelves slowly shuffle back and forth. If the change in front is shoved forward enough, it falls off one shelf and lands on another, where the same process takes place. Any change falling off the final shelf due to this chain reaction is won by the player.
A woman won one of the bundles of currency that had been placed on the bottom shelf by the casino and which had finally been tipped off the edge. The problem was that the money was stuck and the customer couldn’t reach it. So while the player kept guard, Ruth and I called in the casino staff and they freed her winnings. The outer bill on the currency wad was a ten-dollar bill. Underneath it were…two ones. Twelve dollars total.
So Ruth had to do this as well, particularly after she shoved in a quarter and got four quarters back. Knowing probability, I just can’t watch this happen – it’s like watching someone set fire to their money. I left Ruth to play and retreated back to the room. Ruth returned later, and I asked her what happened to her change.
Me: “Did you quit while you were ahead?”
Ruth: “Yes.”
Me: “Really?”
Ruth: “No.”
Saturday, November 13
We are now at Key West, Florida and officially in the United States. This morning, we were forced up out of bed before 9 am to pass through U. S. Customs – we’ve been to three countries between leaving Miami and showing up at Key West and this is the first time we’ve been asked to file by Border Patrol. The disadvantage is in having to deal with it; the advantage is that we won’t have to deal with it in Miami.
We actually made it out of the boat this time. Ruth has been to Key West several times; this is my second time. Unless you’re a real fan of Jimmy Buffett or unless you have a severe alcohol problem, there’s no real reason to spend any time in Key West although there are a few attractions worth seeing like the Ernest Hemingway house. Our goal was to find a pharmacy and an ATM, and sure enough we found a CVS pharmacy and purchased thank-you cards for our various gratuities.
Yesterday, a select group of suite holders were given a tour of the bridge. I imagined that it would be something out of an old 1940s movie, with twenty guys running around like mad, bells ringing and a wizened captain at the helm. Instead, I find out that there are only three people on board the bridge. Oh, there’s room for more but it only really takes three people to stir the ship.
The bridge looks more like that of Captain Picard’s Enterprise rather than that of The Hunt for Red October. There is indeed a navigation/helm station front and center which can seat two, and there is a small understated black chair behind it. There are some other stations around the bridge for radar, but there’s also a kitchenette, and a clear table at the port side of the bridge with four chairs where ship officers undoubtedly play poker.
If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. This ship is a floating hotel, and they’re going to make this vessel as much like an airplane as possible – hyper computerized and almost capable of piloting itself. If there was any drama to be gained, that drama was systematically eliminated through years of cruise ship design. It’s all “press a button and go now”. The computerized displays of ship position looked interesting, but I’m sure there’s a version of Microsoft Cruise Ship Simulator which has the same displays. To me, the most interesting part of the tour was the telephone where the ship’s most crucial officer could address the passengers.
There is an array of cameras throughout the ship where the pilots can monitor various locations, ships thrusters, etc. There are two locations on board where the bridge can view the goings-on 24 hours a day – those cameras never change. They are focused on the ship’s laundry and the ship’s bakery, which are probably the most likely locations of a fire.
Is this where the captain talks to those on board? No, this is the phone used by A., the cruise director, letting us know that there’s an art auction in the Spinnaker Lounge.
After the cruise, we met the couple from Wales mentioned earlier for drinks. Six of us shared some drinks – Ruth and I, the couple from Wales and another couple from Australia. R., the husband of the Wales duo, ordered a bucket of Coronas and I had two of those while everyone talked about the various world locales they had visited on cruise ships.
R. told an interesting story of his trip to Honduras. R. and his wife M. are quite adventuresome, and they walked through the poor part of Roatan ending up at a bar they had been told about. The bar, apparently, is a stop for the ship’s crew. As R. put it, the bar is noteworthy in that…romantic affection can be purchased there. Crew members from various cruise lines can purchase this affection twenty minutes at a time – if necessary, as most of the time the crew members don’t need this much affection. However, one crew member disappeared behind the curtain for the entire twenty minutes. When he returned, the entire bar applauded him for his accomplishment.
I always wondered what the 1100 or so members of the crew did while they were not working. Now, I know. It’s also noteworthy that 600 of these crew members work in food service. Every restaurant we go to the passengers are asked to wash their hands with antiseptic solution; I hope the crew is doing the same thing.
We would have dinner with the Welsh couple and that dinner would help us solve 1/3 of a problem. We were given three free bottles of booze as a gift, but we were not given any corresponding way to transport it back to the United States – except, perhaps, to hide it in a suitcase. One of our free bottles was Moet et Chandon champagne, and we popped the cork with our friends in one of the ships restaurants. I finished two flutes of champagne to go with the two bottles of beers, and I was not safe to drive on either land or sea. We were going to watch some of the ship’s “entertainment” but we passed on that and headed straight to bed at about 10 pm – both of us tipsy and inexplicably quite tired.
Sunday, November 14
Right now, we’re in hurry-up-and-wait to get back to Atlanta. I woke up at 7 am in preparation for our planned departure from the boat. When I woke up, the boat was already docked and the staff was busy cleaning up.
The rule was that we had to be out of the room by 9 am and off the boat by 10 am. Believe it or not, at 2:30 pm the boat would be welcoming aboard the next group of cruise tourists. I’m shocked at the quick turnaround; maybe you need to have 1100 crew members for a turn-around that fast.
We gave a gratuity to Jongie, to Emelia and to Carlos – our housekeeper, butler and concierge respectively. When we hit the main dining room, the place was packed, and the hardest part of the meal was finding a seat. I had the last of my French toast this morning, and with the luggage already consigned to the bag program (the stewards have already packed it off to Georgia), the only things left to haul off the boat were ourselves.
All that was left was to take care of the process in reverse. Impatient, we took a taxi back to the Miami Airport. It appeared that a Haitian theology student was our driver, and Ruth and the driver had a nice chat about Miami landmarks. After that, through security, the X-ray, etc. and into the bowels of Miami International Airport with 3 hours and 40 minutes to kill.
The flights are all screwed up. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 1:40 pm, but it’s been delayed to 2:20 pm. I think I’ve had enough of vacation, or at least enough of Miami International Airport. I can’t get home soon enough.
So would I do it again? Hell yes. But next time, we’re doing it in Europe. Or we might even take that tour of Israel and the Holy Land, echoing the cry of a few of Ruth’s relatives, “Next year, in Jerusalem!” But it doesn’t have to be the Holy Land where Jesus made the stations of cross. If you give me cruise ship amenities with interesting conversation and without any requirement to get off the boat, then any dump of a port is Holy Land enough for me.
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