Guest post from a victorious canvasser

I'm so proud of Susan Scheid, my good friend from the blogging world - yes, true friendship is possible here and we've met up on this side of the pond. She's been canvassing tirelessly for 41 year-old lawyer and first-time campaigner Antonio Delgado, who's just been elected as Democrat for New York's 19th Congressional District with a narrow (49.8% to 47.6) win over one-term Republican Rep. John Faso. That's Delgado above above applauding staff member Kirstin Horn in the first of three photos supplied by Sue. Sue has been sending regular bulletins about the campaign, but preferred to keep her wonderful blog, Prufrock's Dilemma, clear of politics. So this morning I asked her if she'd let me run one of her missives over here, and she said yes. 

So here it is, the last before the election, from 3 November. Sue pictured centre below between Kirstin (right) and Kirstin's mother.

Today marked the start of GOTV canvassing. The goal is to canvass every single person who has said s/he would vote for, or was leaning toward voting for, Antonio Delgado, and then to make sure, on election day, that every single supporter gets out to vote.

Last weekend, which marked the last round of canvassing before the final GOTV sprint, the Delgado campaign canvassed 40,000 doors—the most doors canvassed by ANY Congressional campaign IN THE COUNTRY. This weekend, from early reports, volunteers came out to canvass in droves. My launch site had over 100 volunteers show up; in nearby Pawling there were close to 250. That’s only 2 of almost 40 launch sites in the district—and these two sites are in a deep red area of the district.

Here are some vignettes from the canvassing trail today:

W (42 M D) reported that he, his wife, and their son will all be voting Democratic down the line. He’s got a rock solid, clear, specific voting plan: “We’re dropping off our dog for surgery at 7:30AM, then we’re going straight from there to vote.”

C (73 F D): I spotted, on the way to the door, that both cars in the driveway had bumper stickers saying 'Vote as if your life depended on it.'  I’m suspecting they’d been put their by C’s daughter, as C said, 'My daughter would be very upset if we didn’t get out to vote. Thank you for your work.'

C (66 F D): C was the mom of another mother-daughter team. When she answered, she said, 'Oh, we’re just on our way out to canvass!' Her daughter came up beside her, beaming. 'I’m so excited to be going canvassing! How is it going? What’s it like?' I let her know I was sure she’d have a good time, then C chimed in and said, 'Oh, we’ve got to get going! We don’t want to be late!' And out the door they went, just behind me, both brimming with excitement.

J (56 F D): J told me she’d been canvassed recently by some young men supporting Delgado, and she was thrilled to see them out there. She wasn’t sure they were even old enough to vote (pictured below, Delgado with volunteers, many if not all of whom are still too young to vote), yet there they were—because they know it’s about their futures. She urged me to speak with her next-door neighbor. 'He isn’t home, but she is—they’re elderly, and such nice people.'

Ordinarily, as J’s neighbors weren’t on my list - and because at GOTV time, particularly, efficiency is paramount - I wouldn’t stop at an unlisted door. I made an exception in this case, as I figured the neighbors would be chatting, and I wouldn’t want J to think I’d ignored her. Well, the neighbor was just as J had said, and then some: 'We’re both registered Republicans, but we’re only voting for Democrats right now. We have got to get Trump out. I keep trying to tell my neighbors who voted for him how disastrous this is. But, you know, some people are just stupid.' (When I got back to the launch site, I reported the address so these two votes could be added for 11/6 GOTV.)

I (43 F D): As I drove up, a little boy stood in the window, arms crossed, looking me over with a stern face. His Grandma, I’m pretty sure she was, answered the door. 'I‘s out for a walk. But I’ll be sure to give her your literature'. She was smiling, and as I turned to go she said, 'Good luck.' I smiled back and said, 'Yes, we all need good luck now, don’t we?' As I got in the car, preparing to go, the little boy took up his station again to watch me from the window . . . only this time, he was smiling.

And then there was P (63 M D), who said, simply, 'I’m a Delgado guy.'

Throughout this campaign, absolutely nothing has been left to chance. Now that the final push is upon us, no one is letting up one bit. On the contrary, the extraordinarily hard work by the Delgado campaign and its legion of committed volunteers gives new meaning to the phrase 'pulling out all the stops.'

This will likely be the last 'Notes' I’ll have a chance to send out. I dedicate it to the magnificent Delgado campaign staff, with grateful thanks for all they do and are. They have and continue to inspire and ably guide us on a daily basis. As Antonio has said, and they are each living proof of it: 'If we have anything to say about this, we’ll win.'

And they did. Hall-e-lu!

Meanwhile in an alternative universe, known as friendly neighbours of Putin, Borat goes tamponing with the mid-terms:

Mendelssohn's grief, America's upheaval

I'll never forget hearing Mendelssohn's Sixth String Quartet in F minor for the first time. It was also my first acquaintance with the Calidores, on a gloomy evening in Kilrenny Church, rain streaking the windows: their debut at the East Neuk Festival which led to their return the following year to play all six quartets.

It couldn't have been a more tumultuous introduction to a work of unequivocal, if not entirely unrelieved, tragedy. At the time of composing the quartet (the above painting by his brother-in-law Wilhelm Hensel was made not long before), Felix had just lost his beloved sister Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, dead at the age of 41 from complications following a stroke during rehearsals for her brother's oratorio The First Walpurgis Night. She's pictured below by her husband (who, by the way, gave her every encouragement to compose; brother and father forbade publication of her works. Luckily the Mendelssohn House in Leipzig devotes half a floor to her). Little wonder, given the suddenness of the news, that no-longer-happy Felix shrieked and collapsed. Six months later he, too, died from a stroke.

What a cruel last year for a child of light. But then without the blow we would never have had music of this existential profundity. There's no hiding from the pain; most remarkable for me is the replacement of the usual Mendelssohnian faerie scherzo with more chromatic churning; the way it cadences shows form just shying away from the unbearable, though the repetitions are hard in themselves. The Adagio is beautiful, but still taking wing from a minor opening which persists. I know what the Calidores mean by 'virtuosic' in the coda, extraordinarily demanding for the first violin; but this is still pain made manifest, and it's shatteringly played on their new CD.

Which finds a common thread, obviously a sincere and not a gimmicky one, in the response this and the other works on the disc drew from audiences at a time of upheaval. Both in the line note and in a (completely different) article for The Arts Desk, the Calidores (chiefly, I think, in the person of their most eloquent speaker and writer Ryan Meehan) describe how unsettled they were in focusing on their work in the run-up to the 2016 election and the amazing audience reactions they drew thereafter.

This is indeed riven music, starting with Prokofiev's vibrant but often ambiguous handling of Kabardinian folk music when evacuated from Moscow in 1941 and continuing with the earthquakes of Janáček's First Quartet ('The Kreutzer Sonata'). Golijov's Tenebrae makes more of an interlude, but exquisitely done. Anyway, it's a marvellous programme, grittily argued, even if the in-your-face sound takes a bit of getting used to. A fine counterpoint, as Graham Rickson observes on The Arts Desk, to Sean Shibe's softLOUD masterpiece.

Russell to Mosley, January 1962

It's frustrating that few politicians can write or say to Trump what Bertrand Russell in his 90s expressed with such elegant concision to Oswald Mosley*.

Obama's loyalty to the dignity appropriate to his high office is understandable. But it's painful to watch. I look forward, in one way only, to the moment when he relinquishes it, when he can - as he has already intimated - say all the things that have been denied him as President. Clearly his successor has no such qualms about dignity and is still churning out his semi-literate Twitter attacks. Well, maybe he will learn the hard way.

Can other politicans stop saying 'let's wait and see' and call Trump out for what he represents? This Irish senator, Labor MP Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, clearly can, but he's in a minority.

I share my dear American friend Sue Scheid's focused anger against everyone who voted for any candidate other than Hillary Clinton. All were deluded, and all are responsible for threatening to send the world to hell in a handcart, or a dumptruck, choose your vehicle. Those who did so and are protesting can do what they want but in my opinion they forfeited that right.

Fortunately it also seems, to judge from two strong features in today's Guardian, that the tide is turning against the insidious liberal notion that both this and Brexit were the result of the dispossessed kicking against the elite. And can the press stop using the word 'alt-right' and call it by its proper name, fascism?

We will watch him every millimetre of the way and fight back, or at least from the UK try to help enable others to do so.

Update (21/11): so far the President-elect's actions, apart from the horrendous people he's been appointing as his inner circle, have been to lash out on Twitter against a TV chat show and a Broadway musical.  And this is the man who promised to fight IS?

*Transcript in case it's too small to read:

22 January 1962

Sir Oswald Mosley,
5, Lowndes Court,
Lowndes Square,
London, S.W.1.

Dear Sir Oswald,

Thank you for your letter and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.

I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.

I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.

Yours sincerely,

Bertrand Russell

News blackout day

The not unexpected culmination for the worst year in human history during my adult lifetime. A lot of angry, uneducated and impoverished people unable to see the better side of globalism, as well as plenty of dumb f**s with a ten second attention span. Now - possible spoiler - let's hope the trajectory follows the final stages of Roth's The Plot Against America. I'm just not tuning in to the media for a while.

Meanwhile, here's sunrise last Sunday morning in Spetses, after the only good piece of news about our own beleaguered country reached us. The church bells summoned me early to our friends' terrace. Though I suppose the old saw about red sky in the morning might have applied in retrospect. This morning the weather in Blighty is miserably in tune.

One must cultivate the garden and not let the lemmings pull the other half of us over the cliff.

STOP PRESS (12.30pm) On the garden-cultivation front, there is some consolation. I just heard from my good friend Ben Baker, emailing on a flight (the last?!) out of America, that he's been awarded first prize in the Young Concert Artists auditions in New York (they've yet to update the website, but there's a jolly picture of him with the other finalists). What's more he's coming back to head up to Birmingham for our mutual friend - and Ben knows him shall we say a little better since they were fellow students at the Yehudi Menuhin School - Jonathan Bloxham's first major concert with the CBSO, where he's assistant conductor. Here they are (Ben on left) at a stunning Warehouse event I reported on earlier this year.

Jonathan was asked to step in a couple of weeks ago - his first official appearance is later in the season - and he's conducting the symphony which won him the approval of the CBSO players at his audition, Mozart's 38th ('Prague'). The great Piotr Anderszewski also directs two Mozart concertos from the keyboard. Wish I could be there, but it's the first night of Berg's Lulu at ENO tonight. Toitoi to Jonathan and details here if you're free.

I'm with Her...and her

Vital message from American royalty - short but to the point. Not that any of RuPaul's fans should need encouraging. Nor, I imagine, will any American readers need telling...



Over here, nothing exemplifies our own sorry state of affairs than this shrewd comparison (in case anyone's been Rip Van Winkling, the judges ruled that Parliament must be consulted before the Conservatives trigger Article 50 to leave the European Union). You are encouraged to tear up complimentary copies of the Daily Mail on British Airways flights.