Maine

No on 1, Part 2–Heads We Win, Tails You Lose

Posted on October 21, 2009 by Ruby and has 2 comments.

There are 13 days left until Election Day. If you had been in the No on 1 campaign office today, you would have known that. You might have noticed the big sign on the back wall that is changed every day to remind you of the imminence of your job. You might have called a volunteer to ask them to spend some time canvassing or at the office in the coming days.

You might have been worried. Yesterday (14 days out) there was a poll published [pdf of press release] that said that 48% of Mainers were for Question 1 (boo), 48% against, and 4% undecided. I’m sure somebody has a calculation on what it takes to get a percentage point of the population to vote your way. How much money. How many volunteer hours. What kind of weather on Election Day.

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Hangin’ with No on 1

Posted on October 20, 2009 by Ruby and has no comments yet.

I worked at a campaign for an initiative before, so nothing I saw when I arrived surprised me–except for the scale. There were computers and tables and chairs cobbled together into a makeshift set–function over fashion. There was food, sandwiches to Twizzlers. But there were probably twenty people, which is about 15 more than ever were seen at the initiative I worked for. I later found out there was a whole second room of volunteers.

On the wall were handmade and professional signs expressing Maine’s love for equality. The mood was cheerful, determined, and busy.

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Travel New England, The Marriage Equality Promised Land

Posted on October 19, 2009 by Ruby and has no comments yet.

We should have arrived yesterday in Maine. It would have been much later than we thought, as usual. We took the route through Massachusetts to get there, so I thought we’d stop off in Northampton to sample a little lesbian culture before we headed east again.

That was before we realized we’d left Frances’s stroller at an abandoned gas station in Bennington. Detour to Holyoke to buy another Snap-n-Go, which we assembled in the entryway to Babies R Us.

Back on I-90, the dominant highway of our trip, it began to snow. Hard. It wasn’t sticking, but it was enough to slow traffic to a halt. It was dark; we were tired. We called my aunt in Auburn, Massachusetts, and stopped there for the night.

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