Thursday, April 27, 2006

Minor Coup

Today was the Leon County Volunteer of the Year Awards luncheon at the University Club. My campaign manager, my friend and I stood outside the doors and handed out flyers to people entering. I was the only candidate standing there and we handed out a couple hundred flyers to people who are deeply involved in this community in about 40 minutes. So I'm happy.

Monday, April 24, 2006

WAVES

This past week I talked with two women who also served in the Navy, one served during the Second World War, and the other went to boot camp just 3 or 4 years before I did. Before I started running, I truly rarely talked about my experience in the military, or even thought about it. But I have been rewarded by talking with other veterans, it is a shared experience that reaches across the decades, across race and gender lines, and even across branch of service lines.

In talking with the woman who had also been to boot camp in Orlando, we had a laugh about being so old even our boot camp has been decommissioned. She remembered things I had forgotten about, the grinder, which was the huge ashphalt marching ground, Starboard Leading Petty Officers, Company Comanders, phrases that I used in boot camp and pretty much never again. When I was talking to her I could feel the heat on the grinder again, remembered the rhymes of cadence marching and the guides who set the marching pace. When we were in boot camp, it lasted nine weeks, and they gauged it by week and day, 1-1 was week one, day one. Truth be told, I sort of liked marching around, it was fun. The firefighting, where you entered a room that was on fire, was terrifying. I hauled my "Bluejacket's Manual" the paperback textbook that was issed, around for years, although I never looked at it again after boot camp.

Boot camp was all about the Navy that used to exist. The Navy I served in was about technology and the cold war, and the beginning of Americans overseas being killed by terrorists.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

Rained Out

I had an ambitious day planned, Sportsability, March of Dimes, Chain of Parks Art Festival, Kidsfest, a block party in a high turnout neighborhood, a picnic. But we're enjoying a thunderstorm right now, and it should clear up right after everything is scheduled to end. Perils of sub-tropical campaigns.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Police Chief's Breakfast

Several times a year, the Chief of Police here in Tallahassee, Walt McNeil, has a breakfast and a forum to which all the neighborhood groups are invited and anyone who has a question or issue to discuss with the police is welcome to attend. I went for the first time on Saturday, and was impressed with both the range of issues and the responsiveness of the Chief and his managers.

Most of the speakers from local neighborhoods had two primary issues, noise from university student parties and traffic speeding through the neighborhood. There were comments from other citizens that we should be happy that these are our problems, since serious crime rates are down. But at the beginning Chief McNeil read from the crime statistics for March of this year, and there were 39 car thefts last month, and that was higher than I would have guessed.

We also heard from a representative from Wilson Green, which is Ali Gilmore's neighborhood. Ali is a young woman from that neighborhood, who was four months pregnant, who was a state worker and worked part time at Publix, who just disappeared in February. People in her neighborhood don't know if they are next. I hadn't thought about the aspects of a single crime creating fear in everyone in a neighborhood. The Police Chief assured the representative that currently Wilson Green was the most policed neighborhood in the city, and that the construction sites had been gone through, and that the police force was truly working the case.

There have been search parties out for Ali Gilmore, and signs posted around the county. I am pleased to see this effort by the community, and to see the expression of concern for our loss. I know that her family wants resolution, I would want resolution. It's also been two months, and most crimes are solved within 24 hours. Although I had a niece who was raped by a stranger, and they didn't find him for two years, and then he was arrested and incarcerated for the crime.

A tailor spoke about his weariness with the prostitution in his neighborhood. He said his sister says that they are there even when she goes to church on Sunday mornings. The Police Chief said that the police arrest them with great regularity, and they make bail within hours. The Police Chief is clearly frustrated by this issue, he said that he has tried to talk to the judges and prosecutors about it without result.

The Police Chief said they'd have another breakfast in a couple of months and let people know what progress they've made on the issues raised. Here's a link to the newspaper's advertisement of the breakfast.

http://www.tdo.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060414/NEWS01/604140332&SearchID=73241929465603

Friday, April 14, 2006

One of the best days of my life

Yesterday was my 10th wedding anniversary, and I think it was one of the best days of my life. It actually started the night before, when Jim and I were attempting to roust 7 year old James to get him off to bed. To our surprise, he'd been making us a heart shaped card, that said, "Dear Mom and Dad Happy 10th anavesory James." He told us he'd told his whole class that it was our 10th anniversary.

Then yesterday morning I got to work, and did the final preparation for a talk on the judiciary for the Lion's Club. To make sure I had the timing right (luncheon talks must be under 20 minutes) I gave the chat to a couple of people in my office, and they said that it was interesting and that they learned things. Somebody wrote me and said that my name was in the paper, which I hadn't seen, because I'd been busy getting James off to school in the morning and hadn't seen the paper.

http://www.tdo.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060413/NEWS01/604130319&SearchID=73241530532788

I then assisted with a minor crisis where a pleading had been served on one of my colleagues after he'd left town to attend the hearing. Once that was resolved, I went to give the talk at the Lion's Club, which went well, and several people came up to me afterwards and said they'd learned something.

I've loved being a lawyer. My years at the Attorney General's Office have been productive and professionally satisfying. I didn't expect to stand for election, I didn't expect to have a forum to discuss my concerns about our system of justice, didn't expect to actually enjoy many aspects of campaigning. So yesterday I thought about that, and how lucky I've been to have both a job I love and a terrific family.

In the late afternoon, I was having some trouble with a current investigation about applying certain facts to the current "reasonable consumer" standard, and an additional issue regarding high pressure sales, so I went for a swim and thought about it. I actually learned about this when my sister was a physics major. She said one of her professors, when he needed to think about something, would go to his garden and weed. Since then, when I want to think about something, I go swimming. When I'm swimming in a pool, all I have to do is turn around every time I reach a wall, I don't have to think much about what I'm doing, yet it somehow frees my mind up to address legal problems in a way just sitting at my desk doesn't. I don't know how it works.

Then I came back to work and tidied up some things, talked about some legal research with a paralegal, followed up on some other tasks, and then had an entire hour free before I was to meet Jim for supper. A free hour for those of us who are working with young children is a rare commodity. It was more the having of it than what I did with it that was the part that was important. All I did was go to the library and pick out a new book to read to James.

Jim and I met and we had a lovely supper at Nino's, which is where we had our wedding reception 10 years ago. We met the proprietor going in, and had a pleasant exchange about anniversaries, since Nino's has been open 18 years this week. Jim and I talked at supper at first about who he had lunch with today and other mild matters, and we didn't talk about the kids, or the campaign, or work. We then talked about the past ten years, and how we were both sort of surprised at how fortunate we've been. And we were all by ourselves for a couple of hours.

Then we went home and Mrs. Davis was reading a story to James, who was wearing his pajamas, and he jumped up and ran up to us like we'd been gone for years. And we said good-night to Mrs. Davis, who helped me keep my job when James had salmonella poisoning when he was one and has babysat for us ever since, and I helped James brush his teeth, and read to him a from the book I just took out from the library, and I was really, really happy.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Door to door to door

Since I have now gathered enough petitions to qualify, I decided that we should start canvassing door to door to raise my pathetic name recognition. I enlisted my son, James, who turned 7 on Sunday to assist in our first venture. Not wanting to strain ourselves, plus it was a school night, plus I wanted to eat supper first, I had a list of 11 houses to visit. James and I got on our tandem bike after supper, we rode about 20 feet, and James announced that he had forgotten his helmet. So we stopped and went back in, because I realized I'd falso orgotten my name badge. We got back on the bike and rode around the corner, and James dropped our flyers, which promptly scattered all over the road. James held the bike while I picked them up, some were run over by cars and had gravel imprints on them

Finally we made it down to the end of the street, and knocked on our friend Cheryl's door to tell her we were going to leave our bike in her yard, but we woke her up because she was having a little snooze and I felt terrible.

Then we went to the first house. The couple there were very nice, and they said they would put a yard sign up for us, which was a good start. We knocked on a total of six doors. One person wasn't home. One person didn't answer. One family sent their children out, but wouldn't talk to us. Two other people did talk to us, and asked questions, but wouldn't put a sign in their yard.

Then it was quarter to eight and we had to ride home before it got dark. All that effort and we only talked to four voters. And got gravel imprints on the flyers. And James and I were super tired the next morning. I'd planned to knock on 20,000 doors. I think I need a new plan.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Streefight

Ted Hsu, who is the webmaster for the campaign, sent this video for my family to watch. It's a documentary about a young lawyer, Corey Booker, running against a five term mayoral incumbent, Sharpe James. In the film, both sides had a lot of the trappings of very large campaigns - paid staffs, full time campaigning, and millions of dollars raised. Between two candidates, they raised almost $7 million. At the end, the incumbent wins, no surprise, what was surprising was the number of votes cast. Fewer than 58,000 votes were cast in the 2002 Newark Mayoral election. Here in Tallahassee, we had 53,000 votes cast in the 2002 primary. Newark has a population of 2 million. Tallahassee's populations is 250,000.

I loved my petitions

I had over 2000 of them and I loved them. I loved counting them, I loved seeing where all the people who signed them lived. I thought about all those people and why they would sign a petition for someone they didn't know, and whether they would vote for me. But I also loved turning them in, and looking forward to the next part of the campaign. I have a colleague running for the same seat and he and I often chat about our respective struggles on the campaign trail. Now I'm just waiting to hear if I've qualified to run. The Supervisor of Elections Office will pull 100 petitions randomly from the ones I brought in, and then check them to see if the names appear on the rolls and if the signatures match. If more than 82 do, I'm in. If more that 18 don't, they pull another 100, and try again. When I did my review, about 93/100 were on the voter rolls, but I don't have people's signatures, so I really won't know until they tell me.

Monday, April 03, 2006

I love a Parade

On Saturday, James and I marched with the American Cancer Society in the Springtime Tallahassee parade. Jim was in charge of chauferring us to the start and picking us up at the end. It was very different from the Veteran's Day parade we marched in last fall. Instead of thousands of people, there were tens of thousands. It was fun, but less intimate. Oddly, I didn't see any of the local veteran's organizations in the parade, I don't know why. The weather was spectacular. I spoke with a couple who had just stopped in Tallahassee overnight on their way to visit their son in Winter Haven and I told them that 200,000 people were expected at the events. The wife said, "Yes, and it looks like 70,000 of them are in the parade." She was probably right. I saw Paula Holder and her husband and kids along the parade route, and Charlie McCoy and his daughter, and Nisha Vickers, but that was all the people I saw that I knew, and there were literally thousands of people there. James had a great time handing out beads and candy, and when we were all done, I was shot, but James wanted to go swimming.