Category: Berkeley

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Sausage Factory

From the “If You Like Bratwurst, Stay Out of the Sausage Factory” file:

Yesterday, Kate and I hosted a mini-MoveOn calling party. “Mini” because we only had one person not a member of our household show up. What we lacked in numbers we made up for in enthusiasm, wit, and sapient commentary.

This was the drill: We printed out voter phone numbers, 192 in all. They were evenly split between New Jersey, where appointed incumbent Senator Bob Menendez is running against Tom Kean Jr., an appointed state legislator whose biggest asset is his dad’s name and a willingness to sling mud, and Ohio, where Bush rubber stamp Michael DeWine is trailing Sherrod Brown, a liberal Democratic congressman. We found a Kean campaign ad online so that we knew how to pronounce his name (it’s KANE, like Charles Foster Kane, not KEEN) in case it came up, and I printed out a few stories from New Jersey papers about the race so that if a voter asked us a question we didn’t seem like complete idiots (of course, Kate is a New Jersey native and I’ve visited the Garden State many times, so we have an actual connection there).

We needn’t have worried so much about knowing the background. It seemed as though the numbers we were given were in a Latino precinct in northern New Jersey. We encountered lots of people who said they couldn’t speak English or simply hung up when they heard the quaint Anglo jabbering on the other end of the line. Of the 96 Jersey numbers we called:

–49 were hangups, disconnected lines, or otherwise bad numbers; we took them off the calling list.

–44 were answering machines or busy signals and will be called back.

–3 were voters, all of whom said they were voting for Menendez.

On to Ohio. After the New Jersey experience, I didn’t bother scouring the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Cincinnati Enquirer, or the Ashtabula Strident Bugle for campaign background–we just jumped in and started calling. One immediate difference: The households we reached were American-speaking. That had the effect of speeding up hang-up times for folks who didn’t want to hear from “Dan Brekke, a volunteer for Call for Change.”

Of the 96 Ohio calls, 47 were answering machines or busy; 27 needed to be removed from the list; 12 reached voters who said they were for Sherrod Brown; and 10–10!–were answered by people who said they planned to vote Tuesday but still hadn’t made up their minds about whom they’d support.

I admit I’m nonplussed by the undecideds. They seem to split into two groups: those who are so unplugged they’re not really sure who’s running, and those who seem at least somewhat thoughtful who are really wrestling with the decision.

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Moving On Again

Day Two at the MoveOn.org Political Action beehive in downtown Oakland:

I spent about three hours calling today. The drill was the same as the other day: We were trying to get people who have volunteered to call voters in competitive congressional districts to commit to specific times to do their work. I dialed 59 numbers, using my own cellphone; part of the way the organization saves money, or optimizes its effort, or however you want to put it, is to limit the number of land lines on the premises and get people to use their own cellphone minutes. Since it was early afternoon, maybe two out of three of those calls went to answering machines. Just like the other night, I got maybe 15 people who couldn’t or wouldn’t commit to making voter phone calls. I got five people who said they’d make calls over the last five days of the campaign, tomorrow (Friday) through Tuesday.

That was an improvement over Tuesday night, though a couple of not necessarily positive issues came into focus for me:

First: Despite all the griping people are given to, there are not a whole lot of people willing to give up a few hours of their time on the off chance it might improve the situation they’re griping about. That ought to be no surprise given the reality that “high turnout” general elections aren’t wildly popular affairs. The U.S. Census Bureau says that about 215 million Americans were eligible to vote in 2004; just two-thirds of that number were registered. The turnout of eligible voters–with the nation at war, the minority party with a grudge to settle, and one of the most divisive chief executives in our history standing for re-election–was 125 million, or 58.3 percent of the eligible population. To paraphrase Captain Louis Renault, I’m shocked, shocked to find there’s no voting going on here.

Second: You’ve got to wonder whether the telephone, abused as it is by people no one wants to hear from, is really the best instrument for persuading people to get out and vote. Of the 15 or 20 people I managed to get on the phone, only two were really willing to listen to the full pitch, and they seemed predisposed to go along with the program. Of the rest, almost everyone sounded hurried and impatient. Not that I blame them. In the back of my mind, I can hear Eudora Welty’s explanation of why she didn’t stay in advertising: “It was too much like sticking pins into people to make them buy things they didn’t need or really want.” For many of us, the phone has become impersonal, and sales calls, even the high-minded political kind that you may have invited, are grating. You just wonder whether there’s a better, more personal way of getting people to sign up for the fight. (I don’t suppose we’ll be going back to the old face-to-face political machine model any time soon; though it wasn’t all bad: I’ve been told that Richard J. Daley showed up at my great-grandmother O’Malley’s wake; this was 1952, three years before he ran for mayor, and apparently it was just part of his way of getting to know the voters (the living ones, I mean).

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Moving On

Somewhere in the dim past, I gave money to MoveOn.org, or signed one of its petitions, or maybe did some phone-banking in 2004. However it happened, they called me a week or so ago to get me to volunteer to make phone calls this week. I agreed, but something came up the first night I was supposed to go, so I didn’t show. They called again. Last night, I went in for the first of several evenings of calling–contacting people like me who have somewhere along the line said yes to something MoveOn asked them to do and who are now being asked to call voters in key congressional races.

After an orientation about the calling process and the script we were to use, I started dialing. My targets were folks in the 831 area code–Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, mostly. The goal was to get people to commit to six hours of phone work in the last five days of the campaign, Friday through election day. Since we were calling MoveOn people, the task seemed a little easier at the outset than cold-calling people on voter registration rolls who may or (more likely) may not want any part of your get-out-and-vote rap. I could hear fellow volunteers happily announcing (by ringing desk bells) that they were getting commitment after commitment. A lot of people want to have a sense they’re doing something to effect some change, any change.

In two hours or so, I made 34 calls. About half went to answering machines. About half a dozen were wrong numbers or fax lines or otherwise “bad.” The rest–let’s say a dozen–picked up. Three said don’t call here again. About four said call back because there are trick-or-treaters at the door. Another four said, gee, we’d like to help, but we can’t for one reason or another. That leaves one person.

She began by telling me she’d fallen asleep at the computer while trying to figure out the MoveOn calling system and thought she’d better not try any more calling. Really? I asked. Why? “Because I’m old and tired,” she said. “Hey, join the crowd,” I told her. “The only thing that’s keeping me going is being in a room full of people doing the same thing.” She listened, and after a little cajoling committed to attending “phone parties” on Saturday and Sunday.

That’s my success story. It’s enough to keep me going back for more.

Some snippets from other people I talked to:

“I can’t make long-distance calls because I’m on a plan that only allows me two hours of long-distance calls a month.”

“I don’t have any time man–I’m looking for work.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t–I have a mother who’s in the middle of dying.”

“I’m just on my way out the door to see David Sedaris. Call back tomorrow.”

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Halloween Interrogative

Asking the tough questions:

How did we go from this …

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… to this?

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Maybe Berkeley is the last place Halloween has turned into pre-Christmas; maybe it’s the first; or maybe it’s in between. But it was striking this year how many folks had their houses decorated for weeks with Halloween trimmings.

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The Street Where You Live

Let’s just say you walked out to your car, the way you do every day if you have a car, and you looked in and saw the stereo was gone. Neatly and completely removed.

It happens. No sense getting too worked up. Nobody’s hurt, after all.

But what if it’s the third time it’s happened in this particular car, parked in the middle of your safe, seemingly immune little middle-class neighborhood (and when the stereo isn’t being ripped off, the car’s roof and hood are being kicked in or the windshield smashed)?

Then maybe you start thinking about all the other things that have happened on your safe, seemingly immune street since you moved in back in the late ’80s. You recall in no particular order:

The rapist who was caught after casing the house across the street.

The two laptops someone scooped up from your desk after smashing your kitchen window while you were out at the ballgame.

The innumerable late-evening front-door encounters with victims of empty gas tanks, freeway wrecks or other fictional misfortunes who just needed five or ten bucks to help them deal with the emergency.

The random misfortunate who snatched a purse from a neighbor’s house as the neighbor tried to verify the poor guy’s sketchy story.

The guy who showed up at 1 a.m., pounding on the door and demanding money from your wife while you were working.

The two or three or four other cars broken into in front of your house.

The neighbors who one day couldn’t find their car because it had been stolen overnight.

The stolen car that was dumped on the street, right in front of you, in broad daylight.

The break-in at the across-the-street neighbor’s place.

The break-in at the neighbor’s place three doors up.

The several occasions on which would-be burglars were interrupted while casing targets.

The bikes stolen from the back of your house and from behind one of your neighbors’ homes.

The commuter robbed at gunpoint up the street as he returned for his car after work.

The dad out walking with his kids who had a gun pulled on him during an attempted robbery.

The neighbor whose back-porch Sunday breakfast was interrupted by a guy coming over the fence with a suitcase. The neighbor asked what was going on, and the over-the-fence guy just said, “Stay out of my way” and kept on going.

One way I can look at all this: Hey, no one died. You can replace property, fix windows, buy a new car stereo, and get over your fear and sense of violation. But the way I looked at it when I discovered the stereo gone was not so reasoned and cool. It feels like this place asks a lot sometimes for the privilege of living here, and sometimes I detest the cost.

I’ve got no answers, or apologies, either. Just chewing it over.

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Off the Blotter

Berkeley’s hometown paper is the Daily Planet. It’s not daily anymore; the software millionaires who publish it cut it back to two days a week some time ago. It’s mostly a contentious political rag, but it’s better to have a rag of any sort than nothing at all.

Among its staffers is a guy who covers the city crime beat and produces the police blotter column. I share the widely held affection for and interest in local crime news, but I stay away from the Daily Planet’s cops column. I stay away because it ticks me off a little. It ticks me off because the guy who writes it is unable to restrain himself from exercising what I guess he must believe is a clever take on hard-boiled detective fiction. Here’s an example from the current edition of the Planet:

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Besides the copy that has gone uncorrected (“pistol being the currently preferred weapons or the armed robbery set” is a gem), my compaint is with this guy’s fun getting in the way of his facts. It might be nice to offer some description of the “dangerous duo” beyond the fact one was “beefy” and the other “slender.” And more seriously, an item like this reflects little or no understanding that having a gun stuck in your face is anything but a joke to the guy looking down the barrel. But hey, these are editorial matters, and I’m out of the news game.

I can, however, write a letter to the editor. And issue to issue, the Planet seems to run every screed it gets. So I dashed off the following after putting the coffee on this morning:

Editor:

Thanks ever so much for continuing to entertain the masses with the mirthful musings of jocular journalist Richard Brenneman. Until encountering his cutesy crime chronicles in your pages, I failed to focus on the fun in felonies or the alliterative amusement of misdemeanors. Some may carp and cavil about Mr. Brenneman’s jokey jottings and criticize them as prosey preciousness or doltish drivel. Ignore their nay-saying and nattering. Scrawl on uncensored, say I. Next time I come face to face with a “beefy bandit,” a “dangerous duo,” or any of the other colorful criminals who people Brenneman’s Berkeley, I’ll chuckle as I turn over my wallet, imagining how he might describe the scene.

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Today’s Top Concepts

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Continue reading “Today’s Top Concepts”

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Random Sky Drama

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On a walk with the usual suspects in Chavez Park this evening. Above: Clouds running over the ridge between the Marin Headlands and Mount Tamalpais (Angel Island is silhouetted in the middle distance). Below: Mount Tam from the Chavez Park meadow (left) and from one of the trails in the off-leash dog zone (right). Over the past 10 years, we probably went down to this park about once or twice a year; most of my walking and local outdoor recreatin’ has been done in the other direction, up in the hills. Since The Dog arrived among us in May, we’ve probably been down there three or four times a week on average. The view is different every day.

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Dog vs. Geese

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Like just about everywhere else in urban North America, the Bay Area has attracted flocks of Canada geese that like to hang out here rather than fly away home to the north and have a movie made about them. That’s their prerogative. After reading a blog post about resident Canada geese in Louisiana, and after years of seeing them more and more frequently in and around Chicago and hearing about them becoming nuisances elsewhere, I looked online for some current information. My findings, briefly:

–There are at least eight subspecies of Canada geese (Branta canadensis), including the Giant Canada Goose (B.c. maxima), which appears to be a common city dweller, and the Aleutian Canada Goose (B.c. leucopareia).

–The Aleutian Canada Goose was listed as a threatened species for three decades or so but has made a big comeback, was delisted, and is now eating ranchers and dairy farmers out of house range and home pasture on the Northern California coast.

–Canada geese, including the Aleutian variety, are still protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. In short, that means you have to go to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and/or state officials before you hunt a Canada Goose or do anything detrimental to its lifestyle.

–Canada geese are highly adaptable creatures and highly tolerant of crowded urban situations.

–They love grass and pasture. Grass that’s been fertilized: Mmmm, good. They’re partial to golf courses and parks because those locales typically have lots of well-tended grass and the other staple they require, water. They prefer areas where there are clear sight lines between grass and water because they can move back and forth without predators surprising them.

–There are still plenty of Canada honkers–the term I remember from “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest” for migrating Canada geese. But more and more populations of Canada geese in North America and Europe are members of “resident” flocks; they no longer travel back and forth between southern breeding grounds and summering sites in the north. The local geese still do the “V” thing when they fly, though.

–Why the shift from migratory to resident flocks? Food is plentiful in areas where flocks have settled (in many cases, people go out and feed them). They’re not hunted in these areas, and they have no natural predators beyond the occasional unleashed dog.

–Geese are really hard on pasture, and like most of us higher beings, they’re prolific excretory organisms. The combination often makes them unwelcome in the midst of Man, Builder of Sewers.

And that brings us to Wednesday, out at Chavez Park in the Berkeley Marina. I took Scout out there in the mid-afternoon. We generally cross the broad meadow from the access road to the off-leash dog area; there’s no path, and generally no people right there who might take exception, so I’m in the habit of letting him run off the leash. As we topped the little ridge on the south end of the meadow, we spotted about 20 Canada geese a couple hundred yards away. Until we got to about 100 yards, neither the birds nor the dog seemed to notice the impending encounter. At that point, Scout went into stalking mode and the geese stopped their random grazing and were paying attention to him. I tried to lead Scout around the flock, which I expected to fly up at any moment. Instead, he advance 10 or 15 yards at a time until he was pretty close–maybe 50 yards away. The geese all faced in one direction as he got closer–west-northwest, directly into the wind; I figured they did that because the extra lift they’d get from the wind would make it a little easier to take off (the same thing that pilots try to do when taking off or landing). At that point, Scout decided to go for it; he bolted toward the flock, which was into the air honking and flapping in an instant. Didn’t get a picture of that, though.

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Monday Dribblings

Search of the day from the infospigot visitor logs: “How to stop a drippy spigot.” People have wondered that for years.

Leslie Griffith Watch: Or non-watch. Matier and Ross, the San Francisco Chronicle’s news/gossip duo, are onto Griffith’s disappearance from the air (her last show, according to transcripts, was the 5 p.m. news on August 22). M&R don’t get to the bottom of The Vanishing, but they quote the station’s general manager as saying Griffith is on “short-term” leave that has been extended to October 27 (a Friday, for what it’s worth).

Indigenous Peoples Day: That’s Berkeleyese for Columbus Day, which isn’t until Thursday, but let’s be flexible. If I see one–an indigenous person–I’m going to at least say hi.

Today’s worst-sounding ailment: Toxic megacolon.

Tomorrow’s health adventure: This.

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