Isn’t that just what Dick N’s was trying to say, but he lacked the wordsmithery skills necessary to make a list?
Luckily I excel at lists so here goes; the best and worst of the Regional Meet up in Asheville, NC from my ever so distorted point of view.
~Best – listening to Navajo read from “Go the fuck to Sleep” a present from Gordon 20024. Very nicely gift wrapped with a lovely bow I might add.
~Worst – Navajo not being around at 3:30 am (when I was hanging in the lobby with the hotel staff watching Netflix), to tell me to go the fuck to sleep.
~Best - Getting a family and friends deal on my hotel room. Saved a couple hundred bucks!
~Worst – It was a Holiday Inn. Nuff said?
~Best – the drive to Asheville. Straight shot, nice views, only a few traffic snafu’s.
~Worst – the bruises on my arm from when one of my car mates realized I was and had been the whole way, driving 90mph.
~ Best - THE CHOCOLATE FETISH!!
~Worst – not getting home with a giant round chocolate that was a gift for one of my trip financiers. (No, I didn’t eat it, I misplaced it.)
~Worst – THE CHOCOLATE FETISH!!
~Best- at least it was closed one of the three times we went.
~Best- sleeping in Archie’s bed.
~Worst – Archie wasn’t in it.
~Best hello – a hug from Denise Oliver Velez, her hugs go to the soul.
~Best goodbye – I sought out Expatgirl to tell her I was sorry I hadn’t had more time to talk to her and she told me we’d talked more than fucking enough. (Inside thing but WAY cool.)
~Best – the streets on Asheville.
~Worst – the majorly hilly streets of Asheville. Anyone see anyone riding a bike??? Don’t think so.
~Best – the beautiful mountains
~Worst – the mountains – I gave out a whole lot of Tylenol Sinus.
~Best – our housekeeper. I left a tip everyday in these envelopes I made. On the back I wrote
“Thanks for cleaning our room! From the socialist wing of the Democratic Party”.
~Worst – the hotel keeps her hours at 30 or less so no benefits. She is however a registered voter and seems to get that it’s the Democratic Party that thinks she should be paid a fair wage that includes benefits.
~Best – Reverend Barber. So many people have told me what an inspiring and motivating speaker he is. Some of those people are not on Daily Kos or interested in politics, just happened to see him and they have all been raving about him. But no one told me that he is wicked smart!! Has the knowledge of a constitutional scholar!
~Worst – Reverend Barber is, how shall I put this? Turns out he is a Reverend, as in pastor, minister, priest, rabbi, imam, religious sort of thing. Now, I was raised by atheists and am an atheist. I know jack shit about the bible. I got all the constitutional parts of his fantastic speech but I was lost in a few places with biblical references. I got the gist of it though; Jesus didn’t do it all by himself, other people went out and spread the word, and even those people couldn’t go very far to spread the word because they didn’t have cars or planes. Traveling 200 miles probably took a very long time. So those people spreading the word got each person they talked with to spread the word a little further. That part I got clearly and I think that was the important part. It’s the part that Dr. Ferguson Reid talks about; it’s what made it possible for him to be the first African American elected in VA when there were poll taxes and literacy tests. It’s the moral of the story of “Horton Hears a Who” by my spiritual guru, Dr, Seuss.
The confusing part, the part that made my car mates laugh, was that I thought he said Jesus sent Isaac Newton and Peter, Paul and Mary out to spread the word. Ok, my bad, everything I know about the bible I learned from a Leonard Cohen song. I think I should get points for understanding the bigger picture.
~Worst – Clearing tables and picking up evaluation forms, I found one that had only a fragment of a sentence on the back. I can’t remember the words exactly but they referred to FishoutofWater’s most excellent talk on scary shit about storms. The comment was expressing a feeling of hopelessness that, “given this knowledge what was the point?”
~Best- In what I have learned is called an “Asheville moment” I somehow found out who wrote this and he ended up at my table at the after party. I tried to cheer him up the best I could but I’m not exactly Mary Poppins. So here is the really best part, the fantastic part… I saw FishoutofWater at another table and went and told him about this guy and I asked “You don’t have to, for sure I know you have other things to do but if you feel like it, and I can understand if you don’t, but if you do, would you be willing to just go take a minute to give the guy some hope?” I walked away thinking that was it, not realizing that FishoutofWater was following me back to the table and he sat and talked to the guy for at least 30 minutes if not more. I was so grateful to him and so proud of Kossacks and what we can do on an individual basis and what the people I think are rock stars are willing to go out of their way to do.
~Worst – the Bywater – don’t get me started on that clusterfuck.
~Best - Meeting Sarah S at the Bywater. Not a Kossack but coming to the conference and a member at the Bywater. She arranged with management to get us all in, made a Daily Kos sign (with hearts on it) and stood by the door to greet us and save tables for us. She is my new BFF and also gives fabulous hugs, emotional support and has such charisma and smarts that she really needs to run for office.
~Best – the people of NC. They were just really nice. I mean really nice. At first I thought it was because it seemed that after hearing Reverend Barber speak, everyone was a little nicer, a little more open. I think we were floating on air a bit, I know I was.
~Worst – well, sure that explains why we were all giddy but what about the NC people? Even my waitress at the farewell brunch came and gave me a huge hug. And yeah, I tipped her $8 for a $3 piece of pie but that doesn’t warrant the hug I got. Now, I’m thinking that with my handwriting maybe it looked like an $80 tip not $8. Yikes!
~Best – listening to Al and Bob talk about the old times in progressive movements. They talked about how working for SNCC they got paid $15 a month and if at the end of the day they hadn’t met someone who would give them a place to stay they hadn’t done their jobs. That’s what made me approach them to tell them that I worked for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and that they paid $5 a month for gas (gas was less than 25 cents a gallon then) and we had houses everywhere that were the Chavez houses, people to stay with for free. That led to lunch with Al and him asking me to contact him (got his card) to come to Nashville and get something going here. (He really is just a rabble rouser.)
~Worst – realizing that Daily Kos isn’t paying their regional captains who are out there spending their own money on gas, food and lodgings to organize their regions. We need to change that. We can fund them with donations, I know we can.
~Best and Worst – Talking with Chris R, it seems like wherever I went, enough for me to fall in love with him and learning about voting and the disabled. Possibly one of the most disenfranchised group of voters. He got me very fired up about that and I have already talked to people here about what we can do.
~Best – when I finally calmed down and shut up.
~Worst – that never really happened did it?
