Barack Obama came to us today, and there are a good few students in my 8 am class who will never forgive me for refusing to cancel their midterm and let them go and stand in line to hear him; though I did cave in to their pleading looks and abandon the second hour in which we should have been discussing novels. One of my students in the later class told me he'd been queuing since 8:30 but hadn't been able to get in, though, so presumably it didn't do them as much good as it ought to have done. It did me a lot of good, though.
This evening I had my third skating lesson. In the first I was excited by learning new things, in the second frustrated that I hadn't discovered an astounding natural talent (and more specifically, by my failure in skating backwards - I was trying so hard, but going nowhere), and in the third lesson I struck a seam of elation. Suddenly (or not so suddenly - I went to practice three times during this last week) I have enough control for it to be immensely enjoyable.
I drove home afterwards in the snow which began falling earlier in the evening. That's the first time I've driven in snow at all, and it was an interesting experience. My back window snowed over very quickly, so that it was like driving from the bottom of a sleeping bag. I was relieved when I got back to my usual church, but all of the parking spaces were taken and then I had to keep driving around until I found somewhere else to leave my car. It was nice when I finally managed to abandon it.
Oh, and while I skated, they were getting ready to receive Bill Clinton elsewhere in the building. I'm not paying enough attention, but I suppose we must be one of the next states to have all that primary stuff. People are talking of going to caucuses, though for some of us at least that's what you do when you have all been near drowned in a giant girl's tears and need to dry off; and for others of us (or do I just mean the other side of me?) it is an area in the Near East. Go on, one of you British people, ask me what a caucus is, and I'll tell you what I've learned.
This evening I had my third skating lesson. In the first I was excited by learning new things, in the second frustrated that I hadn't discovered an astounding natural talent (and more specifically, by my failure in skating backwards - I was trying so hard, but going nowhere), and in the third lesson I struck a seam of elation. Suddenly (or not so suddenly - I went to practice three times during this last week) I have enough control for it to be immensely enjoyable.
I drove home afterwards in the snow which began falling earlier in the evening. That's the first time I've driven in snow at all, and it was an interesting experience. My back window snowed over very quickly, so that it was like driving from the bottom of a sleeping bag. I was relieved when I got back to my usual church, but all of the parking spaces were taken and then I had to keep driving around until I found somewhere else to leave my car. It was nice when I finally managed to abandon it.
Oh, and while I skated, they were getting ready to receive Bill Clinton elsewhere in the building. I'm not paying enough attention, but I suppose we must be one of the next states to have all that primary stuff. People are talking of going to caucuses, though for some of us at least that's what you do when you have all been near drowned in a giant girl's tears and need to dry off; and for others of us (or do I just mean the other side of me?) it is an area in the Near East. Go on, one of you British people, ask me what a caucus is, and I'll tell you what I've learned.
3 comments:
OK then, give us the benefit of your presumably new knowledge. I have a vague idea what a caucus is but not the least idea of how one would become involved or, for that matter, who is in charge. Took me a moment or two to realise the giant girl was Alice!
Since writing that I have discovered that in most states you have primaries OR caucusus (sorry, caucuses). I thought a caucus was a form of primary, but it seems not. In some states you may have both, differing in individual districts.
A primary is a selection done by ballot, whereas a caucus is something oddly antique-sounding that makes those men in stockings beating on doors in the British parliament seem just a little less odd. A bunch of people gather at someone's house (anyone who wants to hold a caucus, it seems, though I'm hazy on the details), and they indicate (usually visually?) their preferences for the candidates; after which any candidate who doesn't get a large enough share of the vote is discounted, and the larger groups then have to try to persuade the members of the smaller groups to join them; and finally the result (without the earlier count) is submitted to... I don't know where. Washington? Party headquarters?
The question that puzzled me from the beginning, though, was who these "voters" they're always talking about on the news were. I couldn't see how voters in general could be choosing candidates belonging to particular parties, or how, if they were, you would avoid a situation where Republicans go out en masse and choose the Democrat they think is weakest, for instance. Well, I've asked now, and it seems that voters in general really do choose, but that they only get to choose in one or the other camp. I may be wrong here, but it seems to me that the two party system is quite alarmingly written into the whole political machine - in some states, I think I heard, you even have to register to vote either as Democrat or Republican. That last statement seems so absurd, though, that I doubt I heard it even as I write it.
Clearer now?
Oh, graywings, for shame! Don't you listen to the Today programme [sic]? Wall-to-wall caucuses on the critical days. Helen, trust you to know the complete context of the caucus in Alice, or was it Through the Looking Glass?
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