Still managing the comedown

So yesterday was a beautiful day.

In many ways…

I didn’t have to go to work.

Man, that was beautiful.

I hadn’t had a day off since Easter.

And the weather was gorgeous. So I got out the sun lounger, and my suntan lotion, and my towel, and my new book, The Navigator of New York, by Wayne Johnston, who is my current ‘isn’t he great? How did I not know about him before’ writer.

There is some great writing coming out of Newfoundland. It must be the long winters. Or maybe it’s the Irish influence – there’s great writing in Cape Breton too.

I just finished his Colony of Unrequited Love, which is a fictionalised biography of Joe Smallwood, the man who brought Newfoundland into Confederation and then nearly bankrupted it. As a young man, Smallwood walked around Newfoundland several times organising the fishermen and the railway workers, before eschewing socialism for a career in Liberal politics.

I highly recommend it as both a great novel – the love story between Joe Smallwood and his political nemesis, a journalist called Fielding is very well told – and an interesting account of how England shafted Newfoundland for three hundred years and then passed it on to the nice Canadians when they were done with it.

Although the Germans etc have been very good to us, I can’t help thinking sometimes that confederation with Canada might have been the best thing for Ireland, if we had been able to paddle the island across.

There’s a wonderful account of Smallwood and some other Liberals going to Ottawa to negotiate the terms of confederation, their gradual realisation that the Canadian negotiators were so nice that they would agree to whatever demands the Newfies made, and their complete inability to take advantage of that, due to their ongoing complete inability to see the woods for the Liberal trees.

Story. Of. Effing. Atlantic. Canada.

The Navigator of New York is set in St. John’s and New York and is the story of the abandoned son of an Artic explorer who tries to overcome the pain of his childhood by making it to the North Pole. As with the other book, Johnston peoples Navigator with real characters such as Robert Peary et al. And makes the explorer circle sound like the pack of egotistical maniacs I always imagined them to be.

Like today’s mountaineers.

I know this is a bit late, but I was really struck by the death of that climber on Everest recently. There was a big debate about it in Canada. Of course, two days later, some Canadian climbers saved a man in similar (but not as bad) circumstances. So it was all about how Canadians are the nicest people in the world for a bit. (They can be a bit smug sometimes, but it’s okay because they are tremendously nice people).

But then an Albertan (Albertans are not as nice as other Canadians is an unspoken national instinct here, usually unspoken because Canucks are too polite, currently unspoken because the Albertans are in charge) female climber, who had to leave a partner behind on Everest a number of years ago, got into the fray saying abandonment was the correct approach as you have to keep moving. Which of course, coming from a woman, was particularly difficult for people to take, and so on it went.

What the effing hell are they all doing up there in the first place, is what I want to know?

Is there to be no mystery in the world anymore?

What is it about men (and some women now too) that they have to dominate everything, or take it apart to figure out how it works, or have races over getting to some point on the horizon? Why can’t they just sit back and enjoy it for what it is?

That’s what I spent yesterday doing.

Sitting back enjoying it.

Of course, I’m still coming down from my experience so a lot of the day was spent wondering where all the people I spent all my time with were, and what they were doing. Sort of like the day after Glastonbury, the same type of exhausted emptiness, but with the glow of the experience keeping you upright.

Then Paul cooked me supper. Again.

I would not have made it through the last six weeks without my roomies.

Seriously.

And we ate and talked about religion, which is what we talk about because he’s a pastor who is on a very arduous journey at the moment, and I’ll talk about anything, so long as I can do it at length in a very opinionated manner.

Which religion is good for.

And also, because I have been forced to re-examine my attitudes to faith in the last few weeks.

The woman who administered the office in Glace Bay was a Baptist.

We’d have these endless arguments about original sin. She was convinced of it. I don’t have any time for it, as I believe it is just a two thousand year old male antidote to their ancient fear and jealousy of women’s ability to take part in the creation myth. Which we have never gotten round to reframing, despite the fact that since then, men have figured out how we do it, and taken over the business of birth, and even taken on the mantle of co-parenting.

Yes, I’m still thinking about framing.

Did you know that there are no midwives in Nova Scotia? Well, there are, but they are not allowed to practice here the way they are in Ireland. Isn’t that just insane?

Anyways, at the same time as disagreeing with her absolutely, I realised that it was Ruth’s faith that brought her into the office every day. And her contribution was tremendous.

And she was a lot more sure of her role in life than I am.

But maybe that’s because she was an older woman.

Paul and I talked about the Eucharist last night. We were eating flat bread with Nova Scotia’s famous German sausage (unbelieveably good) and salad, and I said it was strange that this is probably somewhat similar to what Jesus had at the Last Supper, and yet if we want to be Christians we have to sit in a cold building being lectured at before eating a stale wafer, in a totally stylised us and them event, instead of all sitting round in somebody’s house, eating pitta bread and olives with a nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon.

I’d do that anytime.

Paul just smiles to himself when I do this, and then goes off to the computer room to type furiously.

I have a strong suspicion that I am contributing to his sermons in some small way.

I saw a great poster in Just Us! a few months back. It said: “When I feed the poor they call me a saint, but when I ask why they are poor they call me a communist.”

That’s what annoys me about religion, and particularly the Nova Scotia versions of it – Unitarian, Baptist, Anglican, Catholic - which is very focused on the church being a tool for good in the community (as opposed to being an opportunity to socialise). Doing good works is a fine human endeavour and we should all do it. But questioning the underlying cause of human suffering is more important. Otherwise we are just treating the symptoms and not the disease.

Listen Up, United Way!

That's what I like about organisations like St. Vincent de Paul in Ireland. They got stuck into the politics of poverty. And reframed the debate in the nineties.

And Oxfam. Oxfam is one of the best organisations in the world for that.

My friend accentmonkey has just left Oxfam Ireland after making a tremendous contribution to the organisation. They hired her to run a second-hand bookshop, she figured that out in ten seconds, and then proceeded to position them as a funky, politically astute, trendy cause in the national media, building strong relationships with journalists and donors and other key groups. Which is what Oxfam in other countries was doing, but they hadn't figured it out properly in Ireland.

As well as raising their profile in the media, she developed a successful business in the shop and also had to face the challenge of going to work in a charity shop with a sofa near Junkie-ville, with all the stress that entails.

You say you're tired, girl. And you sound tired. Quite rightly. Remember, there is no more arduous job in the world than working your butt off for people who don't have the money to give you stock options.

Half the people in the world have never used a telephone. And you overcame your hatred of said object to make life better for them.

You need to refocus your energies on yourself and Mr. Monkey. If you never do this type of work again it's not a problem, because you've done more than most people. But knowing you as I do, I imagine it won't be long before you are writing letters of outrage about some other cause you've come across in your full, meaningful life. And then sorting it out without getting up anyone's nose, or asking for any kudos, or expecting any of the rest of us to get off our asses and get involved.

Before waking up again one morning to think bah!, why do I do this?

I love when you do that, because your periods of outrage at the world's seeming inability to let you fix it all by yourself follow the same modus operandi - overwhelming irritation at the incompetence of others, followed by a swift stroke of genius that ensures you glide majestically past the effing nincompoops who are blocking the solution - that you use in your many successful efforts to fix the world.

All that 'bah' is is mental exhaustion, I think.

And you probably won't get too much thanks for what you did for Oxfam, because it's an NGO, and you are a woman who doesn't see the point in wasting energy on promoting yourself when you can be promoting your cause.

Like so many others, who climb the Everest of poverty purely to clean up the discarded oxygen tanks and care for the Sherpas, while the mountaineers of charity sit around and brag about the glorious torture of their tough ascent and just GET IN THE BLOODY WAY.

You should be very very proud of what you achieved for Oxfam.

I know I am very very proud of you.

Big kiss from Nova Scotia.

Second may be first loser, but it's other things too

I woke up this morning to the phone ringing at ten. It was one of my election volunteers, one who mostly did nothing, except torment the vulnerable members of my team by finding their weak spot and poking at it.

He wanted to speak to the woman of the house where I was staying.

I said she was still in bed. I didn’t mention that he had woken me up, as I couldn’t make that sentence yet, never mind say it.

You tell her that A* Mc****, her first cousin wants to talk to her now.

This in a really peremptory manner that let me know the dislike was mutual.

Half asleep, really annoyed, and quite delighted not to have to be nice to him despite the fact that he didn’t pull his weight anymore, I just hung up.

And went back to sleep. A couple of minutes later, after he’d hopped round his living room in rage a few times, he called back.

This time he woke the woman of the house and she took the call.

But I got up anyway.

Meanie – depriving me of that precious lie-in, I thought.

Turns out his sister had died.

Ooops.

Anyways, it’s over.

OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER!!!!!!

I am home in Halifax after a long, long drive back from Cape Breton which thankfully I got to share with my colleague and good friend Swampy (remind me to tell you why he’s called Swampy one day) after picking him up from the Tim Horton’s on Exit 21 an hour and a half late.

Bless him, he didn’t say a word.

Swampy did E-Day in his home riding of Pictou East. Which he won as I knew he would as he is a genius at that kind of thing. But we had a good chat about why my candidate didn’t win and I feel much better now.

That’s right.

My candidate didn’t win.

The incumbent held his seat by 1,100 votes.

http://www.cbc.ca/nsvotes2006/riding/023/
I was one devastated little Queenie last night. We knew about halfway through the boxes. But we had to sit there and take the beating.

Her grace was what saved me.

Up to the church hall then for the party which was a non-starter of course but I got to see a bit of the party in Halifax on tv. And learned that my home riding of Halifax Citadel went NDP to Leonard, who’s a good friend at this stage, what with canvassing since October with him.

And the NDP is up five seats.

And all my politicians got home safely.

We own Metro. Metro is Halifax Regional Municipality and the surrounding ridings.

The more urbanised Nova Scotia gets, the better we do.

The Liberals are in complete disarray. Their leader didn’t win a seat and said he was through with it.

The Tories lost four seats to us and have only 23 seats.

But they will form the next government.

And when my candidate made her thank you speech and said lovely things about me and the campaign manager, it was all I could do not to cry.

I bolted into the ladies and looked at my face under a strong light for the first time in about three weeks.

Ewwwww.

Need a facial real bad.

I mean real bad.

A five week diet of Tim Hortons doughnuts, coffee, cigarettes and take away has not given me the skin of a maiden. More like a midden.

But the benefit of not being in government is that I’ll have time to heal and get back to full health again.

My back is in bits.

Two weeks of a 5’ 10” girl sleeping in a 5’8” bed with a footboard, plus three weeks of working at a low desk while sitting on a conference chair, plus all the driving, plus no exercise has done for it.

Yoga class next week. Some soothing stretching is needed.

But my candidate got 29% of the vote. We pulled a hefty percentage of our vote.

And I had a wonderful experience. I learned a lot. I met lots of really interesting new people. I cemented some friendships forever. I found my Cape Breton experience very rewarding. Almost spiritual in a way that I cannot put my finger on. But it was a combination of spending time with people who are religious, but all different types, so it wasn’t dogmatic, and the kind of pastoral work I ended up doing in the office as well as working on E-Day.

Although at three am last night, as I was on the beach throwing stones at the moon and yelling at the stars about the unfairness of it all, I didn’t feel this way.

All the what ifs and could bes and should haves.

Did I work my team hard enough, did I train them well enough, did I get enough volunteers, were there people sitting at home wondering why they didn’t get a call to help out on E-Day…?

But you just gotta let them go.

It’s done.

We did eighty drives. We called sixty one polls. We had a team of almost fifty people on the day. We got over 2,000 votes out.

It’s done. I did my best.

The fact that many of the people I had working with me had cancer, or had learning difficulties, or had massive domestic challenges, or had no money, or had nothing else to do except hang around the office all day and chat was not a hindrance. It was part of the challenge of pulling it all together in a seamless piece where everyone felt valued and everyone gave their best. Whatever that was.

My campaign manager was a union guy from Ontario, who has spent the last couple of years organising Walmart workers and was both an inspiration and a hilarious example of how utter calm or sang froid and apoplectic rage or stress can easily co-exist in the same person at the same time.

He was a big man, so that might have helped.

And my candidate and her husband and family were a great example of how to treat your neighbour as yourself.

I learned a lot. I stretched my patience levels out a lot. That can only be a good thing.

I also ran my first E-Day by myself.

But we were up against it.

The old ways.

While I got hassle from the Returning Office for delivering sandwiches and cookies to our poll agents, the Liberal candidate was going round handing his agents envelopes containing $50 (I was told this, I didn’t see it myself).

Maybe that’s why he won.

Even if we had had $2,500 to spend on E-Day we wouldn’t do that. You volunteer for the NDP, you volunteer.

It’s why the Liberals are traditionally strong in Cape Breton. They get you your job, your pension, your compensation. Even if they don’t they pretend they do and some people believe them.

But I think what happened was that the Liberals pulled the heartstrings of Cape Bretoners by talking about emigration and jobs. Not that they actually have a clue how to stop emigration or create jobs. But they struck a chord.

Funny how Charlie Haughey died the day I got shafted by the Canadian equivalent of Fianna Fail.

Well, not me personally.

But he used to talk the same bullshit, didn’t he?

Well, my mother says I should be merciful and I know lots of people who think he was a great man, or an interesting and human character at least.

I just don’t like people like him.

I think if you find a vulnerable person’s weak spot, you should teach them how to cover it or protect it, or heal it. Not stick your fingernail into it.

Anyways, going to read the letter I got from accentmonkey and have a sleep.

E-Day 5.35pm

85 minutes to go.

Can Queenie bear the tension anymore?

Guess she's gonna have to.


And after a quick scan on CBC, Queenie rocks big time with regards to her policy work on the environment - http://www.cbc.ca/ns/story/nsv-environment20060608.html

But you all knew that.

Thankfully, a blogging friend covered the NJ bear in the tree story - my work goes on without me.

E-Day 3.38pm

Three hours and twenty two minutes to go.
The polls close at 7pm.
The results are in at 8pm

www.cbc.ca and click on Nova Scotia if you want to check them.

E-1 We'll know in 30 hours

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gotta go.

Talk to you tomorrow.

E3 - Waiting for the wet shoe to drop

E-3. Time is so elastic, isn’t it. At the beginning of a campaign, even before it begins, the time yawns in front of you. You think you’ll never get to the end of the line. But you get busy and time passes and then one day you lift your head and it’s E-3.

Late on E-3.

I’m in the campaign office, waiting for central campaign to finish the last phone canvass. Then I have to print out all the voter records and get ready for E-Day.

It’s been an interesting week, up here in Cape Breton.

I’m staying in a town not far from Sydney. Everyone has cancer. Well, not everyone, but a substantial number of people with whom I am working my ass off in order to win a seat will not be alive when I come back to help them defend the seat.

That’s kinda scary.

It’s all environmentally-related.

The Sydney Tar Ponds I mentioned before. I won’t go into it again.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It was my first anniversary in Canada on Thursday. I had been planning to spend it thinking highly intellectual thoughts about how much I’ve learned and how much I’ve experienced and how intense its been, blah blah blah, in what must be one of the most challenging, interesting and (at times) emotionally and physically stressful years of my life, but thankfully (for you lot), I was too busy to blog, and spent the day working in the office, with the usual crew of helpers, and breeze shooters, eating Mabel Davies’ egg sandwiches, answering the phone, sorting out the e-day packs, fund-raising, looking after sign locations, drives to the polls, recruiting volunteers, more volunteers, more volunteers, talking to the candidate, getting the foot canvassers out the door into the rain, going to Tim’s for coffee and TimBits.

Kind of ironic really. A circle of my adult life complete. The first really grown-up political thing I did. Being repeated for the nth time, but almost duplicated this time.

Right down to the Atlantic mist.

Except this time I get to hang out with a young female timber wolf. Who comes to visit with her owner every day.

And there’s Ebony the standard poodle. And Shandelle and Eoin the incredibly cute kids. And all the elderly members who stop in every day for a chat.

It’s a regular Sesame Street round here. The advance team for tomorrow’s rally arrived tonight and I could see the disdain in their eyes. I shall complain vociferously about it when all this is over.

This is what it is about. Groups of people getting together to create momentum for change. Maybe we’re not as glamorous as The West Wing, nor as media-interesting as a metro campaign, but we’re getting there.

Anyways, my campaign manager is pacing a hole in the carpet and we’re going to shut down the numbers soon and get started, so I’ll go for now.

E-7 One week to go. T-14 Two weeks to go

Oh my God, it's only one week to go.

And Himself is coming home a week later, or so he announced recently.

Excellent timing on his part, doncha think. Hysterical, stressed, election-mode Queenie should be well and truly gone by E+7.

Unless we lose of course. In which case morose, devastated Queenie will still be mooching around the house.

Unless she's morphed into vindictive, nasty 'fuck 'em all' Queenie.

Or of course it might be hysterical, stressed, post-election-win Queenie...

No.

Definitely not.

Even if they win.

Queenie is enjoying having charge of her brain again. Back into the message box she will not be prodded. No sirree bob. If the medium is the message, then the message has escaped.

So to speak.

It's taking a while for Queenie to understand that she's not in command central anymore. She asked her campaign manager if it was okay if she went for lunch yesterday and he looked at her as if she were insane.

This must be what it's like to leave the army.

The constituency is very like one of Queenie's former Democratic Left campaigns - Cork North Central in 1994. Strong female candidate with a very supportive husband and a large, supportive family. Working class constituency that the current government has ignored. Factory closures and long-term unemployment. Chronic ill health and lack of community health services.

This town could do with half a million invested in the facade alone. Just to cheer it up a bit. There's a Tim Hortons. There's an A&W. There's a Home Depot. There's a nice river running through the town but the big houses built alongside each bank prevent much public access and they all have Liberal signs in their yards.

And some sidewalks. There aren't enough sidewalks in the town.

There's a beach. But the water is polluted.

Down the road is Sydney Tar Ponds.

So there's a lot of illness here.

Some people say the illness is due to bad diet, smoking and alcoholism.

Possibly.

What causes the bad diet, smoking and alcoholism?

Poverty, stress, unemployment.

And as I said, down the road is the Sydney Tar Ponds


Anyways, the omens are good - Queenie feels very good about this riding.

Queenie is organising E-Day. Election day. It's called pulling the vote.

Identify the support. Ensure it gets to the polls. Record the fact that it did.

Fascinating stuff. Very methodical. The kind of work she likes.

Still, only one week to go. It'll be great when it's over.