January 26, 2008
feel the Illinoise
Barack Obama loves me.
"And as we leave this state with a new wind at our backs, and take this journey across the country we love with the message we’ve carried from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New Hampshire; from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast; the same message we had when we were up and when we were down – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people in three simple words:
Yes. We. Can.
Thank you, South Carolina, I love you!"
I voted today!
and they didn't give me a sticker. I called Will and gave him the update, I was about the 200th voter at my polling place at 1:30. Not sure what that means, but CNN says turn out this week is better than turn out for the Republican primary last week. When I went in there was no line, but by the time I left it was out the door.
So I don't know where they get the people working the polls, but these people were seriously holding things up. The person who was supposed to be looking up the names didn't seem to have a firm grasp of the alphabet, and then he had to fill in little bubbles for Republican and Democrat (not sure whether he was supposed to ask the people, which he didn't, or whether it was supposed to indicate which primary they were voting in), but he seemed to be very confused about which bubble he was supposed to fill in. I noticed a Barack Obama poll watcher sitting off to the side eating a sandwich. I guess candidates can station people at the polls to make sure everything is in the clear. I hope the guy went and told someone that things were kind of crazy. Thankfully the actually voting was fairly simple--computerized actually, which I hadn't encountered before, but it just gave you a list of names and you picked one and then it came back with a screen that just had one name, basically so you could be like "yeah, that's who I wanted to vote for," and then it was like "VOTE" or "Return to list" and you said "VOTE!" and then it played Sufjan Stevens's Come On! Feel the Illinoise! if you voted for Obama or that Celine Dion song if you voted for Hillary. Actually I made that last part up, the actual voting was terribly anticlimactic and there were no exit pollers so I just walked home through the park and did more homework.
I went over to the Obama field office near my house the other night. I was just dropping off some donation so they could get food for their volunteers, but it was such a great atmosphere in there. So busy but warm and happy and there were signs everywhere and it was so exciting to see so many people getting behind a cause like that. So, needless to say, I was very easy to talk into volunteering, especially since the boy who was trying to talk me into it was pretty and funny.
So on Thursday afternoon I showed back up at the headquarters and they ran through the phone script with me and another girl who came in at the same time as me, only she had just gotten there from Virginia. I wanted to ask her more about why she traveled all this way and stuff, but wasn't sure how to put it. I mean, the stuff they had us doing was just calling Obama supporters to see if they wanted to volunteer, it seemed a little redundant, getting volunteers to get more volunteers, but oh well other people were doing other stuff, too. They were mostly looking for volunteers for today to go canvas neighborhoods, but door-to-door stuff has never been my thing and I figure, if I don't have to do it for Jesus, I don't have to do it for Barack Obama (although that isn't my policy in all things, like, say, voting).
But calling people is really annoying, especially since half the numbers didn't even work, you know, they gave the "we're sorry, the number you have dialed . . ." message. Perturbing since these people were supporters who were supposed to have supplied their contact information. So there I was, a South Carolina voter calling other South Carolina voters, but the thing is, I'm not from South Carolina, and I knew that I should have been saying "ma'am" and "sir", but I don't know where to put them, and that made me nervous and I was already nervous, and then I was nervous about my northern accent and it just made me more northern, I was Michigan, movin' on up to Canada!! Hopefully they were charitable and thought I was just from Barack's home state of Chicago. By the time I left I was just hoping I hadn't done any damage to the Obama campaign! But I didn't go to any of the (three!) rallys this week, and I wanted to show my support some way, besides voting that is. Although I guess that's the only way that really counts. And let's hope it counts. Polls close in four minutes.
January 19, 2008
all roads lead toward the same blocked intersection
Okay, sorry about the Most Boring Blog Entry Ever yesterday. So damn and blasted tired lately, cloudy today, apparently chances of snow or rain or something. Anyway, it's so dark and I just want to sleep or read a good book. Unfortunately I finished the good book on Thursday, and I just went back to bed for like three hours, so I've kind of cut out those options. Guess it's back to good old model theory in Semantics and reading about what the Greeks and the Romans had to say about language, nothing that influences us today, that's what I think. When I take a class on the history of linguistics I want it to start when they started calling it linguistics, which was probably no earlier than the 19th century. I like the history parts, though, it's just weird having it be with linguistics. I guess any history of a science is like that. Science is so right here, right now that you don't need to look at history at all, so when you do I feel like you better have a damn good reason for it. We spent last class talking about this Indian (from India) guy called Panini and how he made this whole big grammar so people could get their Vedic rituals right. And then it got lost and then Jacob Grimm and Karl Verner and everyone is going about their merry linguistic way back in the 1900s and later someone finds this whole grammar from India and it's like, well yes, that's all very nice that we have all of this stuff written about the structure of ancient . . . whatever, but how does that help us today when what we really are focusing on is language here and now (or in the case of Grimm and Verner, who were historical linguists, language there and then) and is there really even a place for the information Panini gives us? And is there a place for the Greek and Roman studies of their grammars, and will there be a place for what we're writing now a thousand years from now? Only if it's right? How continuous does the scientific study have to be for our work to be significant in the grand scheme of things? Sure, the Sumerians might have made great discoveries in physics, but do we care when we've even discounted Newton (disclaimer: everything I know about physics I learned from Arcadia, the play by Tom Stoppard)? And if I believe or don't believe Madam X from UCLA in her paper on the dative alternation doesn't that matter more than if I believe or don't believe Calpurnia from 2nd century Rome?
Oh, and Republicans are voting here today, in the cold rainy/snowyness. I'm voting next Saturday, found my voter registration card and everything. Yay. Barack Obama wants me to come to his rally tomorrow but rallies are hard, see, they take a long time and involve lots of yelling and I think other people might think I'm not getting into the spirit of things if I'm reading about model theory in Semantics while they are making up cheers with bad rhymes. I love Barack Obama, and I really hope he becomes president and saves us from everything, but I'm not good at politics myself, thanks.
January 18, 2008
snow in sc
It's been a cloudy week here, lots of soft gray days, some rain, and snow on Wednesday night. With all the streetlights and spotlights outside our window it was really beautiful, heavy flakes falling fast for at least an hour, but then they changed to rain. I think it's funny that this is actually the first snowfall I've seen this winter, despite my ten days in Nebraska.
First week of classes. I'm taking Semantics (more philosophy, yes) and a class called "History and Methodology of Linguistics" which will be interesting because of the prof and the other students. I'm not so sure about the subject matter, but I'm planning on writing a paper on the history of Lexical Semantics (was going to link to the Wikipedia page, but it's kind of worthless. LS is the study of how words interact and what that tells us about structure and meaning, basically, I'll know a lot more by the end of the semester.), so that will be fun. I'm also trying to organize my thesis, writing an outline right now, or at least I should be.
