SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER

Yep, summer's over. One down, fifteen more to go.  Weeks in the semester, that is.  Do you remember me?  Do I remember me?  No one will love me anymore; I'm the disappearing journal writer, not to mention reader.  There just hasn't been time to visit anyone's journal, including this one. 

The county wide Hispanic Festival was last Sunday and I had been in charge of getting Kerry/Dem party materials and flyers ready for this event.  I'd spent weeks combing the internet for stuff, putting bits and pieces together to come up with a flyer detailing Kerry's intentions for the Hispanic community.  Towards the end of last week the Kerry site itself put some good stuff up that I was able to use, and I have to say the flyer came out quite well.  I drove into D.C. to pick up materials from the Dem Store, buttons and stickers in Spanish, as well.  I had a couple of good volunteers who worked the crowd, passing out materials and talking to people, sticking "Unidos con Kerry" lapel stickers on everyone's backs and/or fronts.

.This is Eduardo showing off how cute he is.  He was fantastic - working that crowd like an absolute pro.  He's from Chile, works at the Hilton in Ocean City, helps out with the EvenStart program and wants to teach ESL himself.

My table was between the Union table and the county Democrats table; we were a strong group (the Socialist Workers were just behind us!  with lots of great sounding books in Spanish.).  The Dems' table had mostly local candidates' materials and there were a good number of candidates working the crowd.  Here's Richard registering voters: Although many in the Hispanic community here are undocumented, we managed to register quite a few citizens, all of whom chose "Democratic" as their party choice. 

Determined Democrats

This is always a great event, good food, music and dancing from many Latin-American countries.  Balloons, children, noise and laughter.  It managed to stop raining for the day; we even had to use a lot of sunscreen.

Then - Monday morning dawned, bright and early. The first day of class, and a continuing day of voter registration drive at Del Tech.  I spent the day trying to sort out my class members and their schedules, keeping my volunteers coming and working, and drinking more coffee.  I worked from 8 a.m. til 8 p.m., and got up and did it all again the next two days.  On Weds afternoon I was doing voter reg myself after my classes, when I hit a long Republican streak (a long streak of quite vocally "Christian" Republicans, compelled to tell me everything they knew) and decided to call it a day and go home about four.  I think I'll keep the registration going one day a week on campus, as long as we keep finding students who aren't registered.  

The week of classes went well, despite the confusion (Our E.S.L. students tend to register late, so we never know if we really will have a class or not - in my 8:30 class I had new students every single day and just found out I'll have more next Monday.) I managed to do some teaching.  I'm teaching grammar, reading and writing.  Writing is four hours on Friday morning, a difficult performance to pull off.  Only by changing pace often can I keep their eyes from glazing over, their heads from slumping to the desk.  I have to admit, however, that this is my favorite class.  Here is where I really teach grammar, as "grammar" in isolation seems meaningless to me.  Filling in blanks on exercise sheets is like running in place.  It's when they start writing that they understand what grammar is, does, means.  Part of writing class is keeping journals, and I'm thinking of getting them online for journaling - after a while.  Right now it's notebooks, I brought them in a pile of spanking new lovely notebooks (I'm queer for this kind of thing, I have to admit - I love writing materials, paper, notebooks, pens, sharp pencils, etc.) this morning.

Last night was the August meetup of our Kerry group, which grows bigger and bigger every time we have a meeting.  The issue was Civil Liberties and Foreign Policy.  Great presentations, even better discussions.  My presentation was on voter registration - after the bitching and the whining, get to work, folks - everyone there was given the homework of registering five voters (we're using the do-it-yourself federal forms, but we mail them in for them - this way we can register people from all over the country.  This is tourist territory, people summer here from all over.) during the next week. Here's our issues committee, looking as goofy as we actually are.  A panel of geeks, but really smart and nice ones.
That's me on the far left, of course, and Richard, Dick, Joanne and Mike.  Why does my head look twice as big as everyone else's?

Many more things happening this weekend, but I think the only one in which I will participate is the Democratic Jamboree at Cape Henlopen State Park.  It's essentially a big picnic - fried chicken, potato salad, cole slaw, brownies, democratic food - with all the state and local candidates present, lots of speechifying, seeing people you haven't seen since last year  (except this year I see tham constantly).  A chance to pick up yard signs, bumper stickers, and even a door prize or two, since there's always fund raising going on thru the sale of tickets for prizes and raffles.  We've been going to this ever since we moved here, but this is the first year that I really feel like a part of things.  Remember when I said I wonder if I can find a group of Democrats who'll have me?  Hah.  Foolish last words.

What I HAVE to spend some time on this weekend is the yard.  I've thought it was a jungle at other times, but right now you could lose a herd of elephants out there.  Here's a wildness I quite love, the wild rudbeckia madness at the edge of the yard, a hysterical maze of bright yellow - cheers me up every time I see it:

All right then, I think that about catches me up.  That's my story, I'm going to go check out some of yours!