Yakima Calling

So today marked my first full day in Yakima. What can I say about Yakima that hasn't already been written in volumes by Charles Dikkens (the famous Danish author)?

Okay, that was my lame Monty Python reference. Kudos if you know which sketch it belongs to.

But seriously. I'm in Yakima. The picture above is the view from my room/balcony/patio... thing. I leave it up to you to make a judgement on my surroundings based on that picture, I will do the best to fill in when I can.

Note the difference between the scenery here and the scenery from the western part of the state that is posted in the previous post.

So after finally meeting the AFSCME folks here and setting up shop until the primary, my partner in crime, Charles (or Chaz, as I call him), and I made up 300 bags of materials for our Super Saturday GOTV (get out the vote for those of you not in campaign life) efforts. After dodging potential paper cuts and mind-numbing pile-making, we retreated to the Safeway to get some groceries for the rest of the week. We then retreated to our respective hotel rooms to down some chow before four hours of phone calling for volunteers and Primary Day reminders.

It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

Well, with the exception of a few folks on the line, they were mostly nice and friendly (for those I could get). Chaz definitely got more interesting comments than I did - I'll have to explain that another time. But we're having one hell of a time trying to find folks willing to volunteer out here. I know folks are busy, but seriously, if we don't find more than the one volunteer we secured, Chaz and I will be busier than a one-legged man at an ass kicking contest trying to do door knocking and phone calls between now and the Primary.

The guy who works at the AFSCME Local we're working out of, John, also assures us that not only will it be very difficult to find volunteers out here, many folks out here are big dog owners. That may not mean a lot to many of you, but trust me, it means a lot to me and Chaz who will be doing a lot of door knocking. Think pit bulls and rotweilers and now you're on the bus with me.

I can't decide what exactly I make of Yakima so far. In many ways, it reminds me of Chestertown in that sleepy-small town kind of way. It also reminds me of places I've only seen in movies - a very rural place where there are cliques of folks who have known each other their whole lives and are fairly weary of strangers. This will make for some interesting stories tomorrow when Chaz and I formally start doorknocking. John put it this way: "They're pretty close-knit and have their friends, when organizers from international (which is essentially what Chaz and I are doing) come, they always look at you twice and say, 'where are you from? and what do you want from us?' It'll be challenging alright."

But that's okay with me. Didn't I come out here for the challenge and the work? Many call me crazy for liking this way of life, but I look at it as fighting for a good cause (ousting Bush and cronies) and meeting new folks whom I would never meet otherwise. Plus, it's such an interesting journey. The bulk of my campaign experience has been in NYC (at least my formative bulk of experience) and I guess that I got too used to folks in New York, what to expect from them based on things like the neighborhood they live in, the kind of response I could expect to get from folks based on the work they did, how to approach a New Yorker on the street with campaign materials, the kind of response I'd get from them - things like that. It's daunting at first, but nice to be in a completely different place. Here, I'm a total fish out of water and learning to swim.

And I heart it. It's what I thrive on. And I'm meeting such interesting people. And the weather is perfect. It's comfortable during the day and cool at night. For most folks, this means that it's probably slightly colder than what you might consider comfortable, but for a girl from Syracuse, it's juuuust right.

I don't know what to make of it yet besides the fact that I know that if I lived here, I probably wouldn't want to stay here all my life. But it's gonna be a great learning experience.

Come back to me after tomorrow and let's see if I have this rosy outlook, but I can honestly say that despite some of the sketchiness in my surroundings (and those national polling numbers - I just don't understand), I'm having a great time. And that's all that matters right now.