New Orleans in photos

I'm just a po' boy, I need no sympathy

We're in New Orleans!* Here's Kalpona (director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity) and I at our very ceremonious first meal in the Crescent City: shrimp po' boys at Mother's Restaurant, open for 70 years. Not pictured is the bread pudding covered in burnt sugar syrup that we scarfed down. * We're in New Orleans this week for not one, not two, but three conferences: AFL CIO Workers' Voice State Legislative Conference, the Progressive States Network/National Labor Caucus annual meeting, and the National Conference of State Legislatures. Whew!

Liveblogging from New York.... it's Jacek Pruski

I had a lovely couple of days in New York between work-related conferences in Philadelphia in New Orleans. I was pleased to learn that my far-flung friends read my blog. Jacek , who is kicking butt as a public interest lawyer-in-training this summer in NYC, even launched a mini-campaign to get me to "live-blog" from the ethnic foods aisles of Meijer as I await another Jew searching for matzah. My incentive is that he will comment on the blog and sign up for RSS feed.

By the way, I learned that signing up for RSS is very simple. Just scroll down to the bottom of this blog and follow the link that says Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). Then follow the instructions. RSS feed is a neat feature that will send you an email when I post a new blog, so you will get the latest, up-to-the-minute info on hot topics like, "What did Vicki eat for lunch today?" (see the next post for the exciting answer to that question).

Here's Jacek at the Philharmonic in Central Park concert we went to Tuesday night, along with about 50,000 other people. I got there early and staked out a nice spot in the shade , using my shoes, books, bottles of wine, and other items from my backpack as fenceposts. Photo above is of needlessly oversized cupcakes in a bakery storefront in Brooklyn.


Sign up for RSS feed and you too could have your photo featured on Matzahrella!

First impressions

Here are some thoughts I jotted down on my first full day living in Goshen, Indiana, February 13, 2008. The photo to the right is the view from our front porch/balcony in early spring. I'll write more about our lovely carriage house in a future post.

I can't figure out how to make two side-by-side columns with this program so you'll have to pretend:

DC:
- waitresses with make-up
- rats running across the deck at dusk
- slippers that had lost their stuffing
- a knitting project that sat by my bed for months
- a bathtub with jacuzzi jets
- a Jewish football game
- Asian people
- a new Bed Bath and Beyond going up in the neighborhood for when you want to buy kitchen stuff
- free checking account with 0.25% interest rate and periodic account service fees rate

Goshen:
- waitresses with bonnets
- 9 deer running around the yard at dusk
- new slippers
- a finished scarf
- a clawfoot bathtub
- a Mennonite football game
- white people
- a live auction for when you want to buy kitchen stuff
- free checking accounts with 6% interest and no ATM fees (awesome!)

Snyder v. Snider

Here's a shot of downtown Goshen: Snyder's Mens Shop right next to Snider's Jewelers. I thought perhaps this might lead me to another Jew in town (I thought I'd at least have a shot with Snyder-with-a-"y.") No such luck. Stay tuned for more on that hunt.

No, the other Kokomo

One of the neat things about living in Indiana has been the excitement building around the presidential primary. Now, I’m not one to get super-excited about presidential politics, but it’s hard not to get wrapped up in it at least a bit. I mean, when was the last time there was a big story about Kokomo, Indiana on the front page of the New York Times? (That’s where Adam was born).

Despite the commotion about this being the first time Indiana’s had a say in the presidential nominating process since Bobby Kennedy came through in 1968, I was still having trouble getting motivated to go volunteer. I had decided that I preferred Obama to Clinton, but apparently not enough to go out and knock on doors for him, again despite the fact that I basically knock on doors professionally. I have a couple friends in town who were serious Obama volunteers, but they had been unsuccessful in getting me to join them. I was being lazy, yes, but I also wasn’t yet revved up enough.

The argument that finally pushed me over the edge came from Abby Levine, a fellow political organizing Midwestern implant (Columbus, Ohio by way of San Francisco and Washington, DC). I have the pleasure of staying with Abby and her husband Matt when I travel to Columbus for work. Abby’s argument was thus: “The way I see it, if Obama can win Indiana, this whole ordeal will all be over sooner.”

That did it for me. My annoyance with the length of the nominating process (and the enormous amount of money that was being spent on it) had been getting in the way of my enjoyment of the game. The way I saw it, through Abby’s helpful lens, was that if I, Victoria Kaplan, knocked on doors for Obama, he would win Elkhart County, and therefore the entire state of Indiana, and seal the deal to end the nomination contest. I signed up to canvass with my super-Obama friend Ben Beyeler that Saturday and planned to take Election Day off as well.

Well as it turns out my grandfather—Papa—died Friday (in his sleep, it was peaceful), and I was going to be in Connecticut for the funeral on Election Day. So not only would I not be able to volunteer that day, but I would have to vote early. I realized this upon arriving for my volunteer shift Saturday at Obama’s Elkhart office. Ben sent me to the local early voting place to cast my vote before joining him on our canvassing turf. I expected to be there within 30 minutes.

Nearly two hours later I cast my first real ballot (all others in my life had been absentee). (On a side note, I did get a bit of goose-bumpy feeling when I actually saw the choices right there on the ballot: a black person, and a woman). Then I ended up getting lost on my way to meet Ben. I never did find him, but I did find a couple of garage sales where I was able to snag a chair for our living room, a printer table for my office, and a couple of nice glass spice jars.

So, I’m embarrassed to say, I never did knock on doors for Obama. Shame on me.

Driving home from Papa’s funeral on election night, we tuned in to NPR to listen to the election returns. It was pure excitement. Indiana matters! People care about Indiana! Neal Conan was asking people in Indiana—specifically Indiana—to call in and share what it had been like at the polls that day. I made Adam dial NPR repeatedly as I drove, wanting desperately to get through even though I hadn’t been at the polls that day and I hadn’t even volunteered for a campaign. When he got tired of doing that, I pulled over so we could switch drivers and I took up the position at the redial button. I never did get through, but we Adam new at least one of the people who did get on the air.

Though Clinton won Indiana, Elkhart County went for Obama by 18 points. Woah!

I swear, I’ll be out there knocking on doors for the general.

My sweaty job

It's great to work for an organization whose name naturally facilitates an icebreaker.
Me: "Hi this is Vicki from SweatFree Communities."
Person I'm talking to: "Don't worry, I'm wearing deodorant."

It reminds me of working at Food & Water Watch and being asked if I was a meat inspector.

I'm really loving the new job. It suits my instinct for juggling a variety of tasks -- I train activists, I lobby state legislators, I talk to reporters, I organize speaking tours, I go to fish fry's and bbq's.

If you want to get a sense for what I spend my time doing, check out some of the media coverage we earned for our biggest, baddest report we released last week in conjunction with a number of campaign launches. The report is really amazing--it not only documents serious human rights violations in factories that make uniforms for US public employees (think police officers, firefighters, etc) through extensive one-on-one interviews with workers in 12 factories in 9 countries, but it also offers really concrete solutions for what cities and states--and regular people like you and me--can do improve conditions for workers. Read the report and the coverage here: http://www.sweatfree.org/subsidizing

Here's what I was doing last week:

Dreams from My Father

Here’s an email from my dad. He's gonna be on a game show!
Go to http://www.crosswords.tv/ to find out when to tune in (I think Eckhart = Elkhart)

Hi Friends and Family, if any of you would like to see my sort-of-smiling face on a real (but not live) TV game show, I will be on Merv Griffin's Crosswords on Wednesday, July 16 -- this is a decidedly "old-school" show, i.e. kind of dull, very little money, no bells and whistles, low-key contestants -- this explains how I got on! -- the show was taped last September, but they are just getting around to airing it now -- if you want to watch, you should, as they used to say, "consult your local listings for time and channel in your area," or you can go to www.crosswords.tv and follow the appropriate links to find the channel (and I think the time) that the show is on in your area -- some areas (including LA) may show two episodes a day; if so, I'll be on one of them, but I don't know which one -- and don't assume you've got the wrong show if you see two contestants named Ben and Tan, but not me, at the start of the show; that's the right show, I'll be along later -- so if you've got 30 minutes to spare, enjoy (and I use the word loosely) the show -- I myself will be TiVo-ing it for later viewing, since Karen and I will be sans TV at her lake place in Washington state that week. Ron/Dad/Uncle Ron

~

6 cups berries = 1 pie

Today I picked wild black raspberries. 6 cups of them. That, apparently is more than enough for baking a pie.

There are a few choice bushes over at Adam's farm. There's also one that sprung up right in one of our raised beds at our house.

Accompanying the raspberries in this picture is rainbow chard, just picked from our garden. This is our first harvest of the season!

Rainbow chard is really an amazingly beautiful creation. Hot pink and electric orange stalks for no reason I can identify other than pure aesthetic joy.

The berries make me feel at home because they remind me of picking olaliberries in our backyard in Los Angeles. Combined with a trip to the beach tomorrow, this has been a real LA weekend (minus the salt water).