It's all relative...
We moved to Vancouver thirteen years ago tomorrow. [Little known fact: Vancouver, WA is a suburb of Portland, OR and was here beFORE the "Other Vancouver", which is in British Columbia. Check out our fascinating history.]
In Berkeley, where we had lived for decades, we were moderate Democrats (which in Berkeley meant you were way out on the ragged right) and in Vancouver we are still moderate Democrats (which means we're way out on the left fringe!). The head spins.
The good news is that in a relatively small town, which Vancouver still seems like, you can quickly feel like a big frog - so that when you jump into the water you can make some ripples. In Berkeley I sat rrribitting on the bank because it seemed like a large lake with a lot of bigger louder hungrier fish. [Vancouver has grown significantly since we arrived and at 143,000 is now bigger than Berkeley at 102,000. Two reasons --1) the arrival of new residents: Californians like us; and Oregonians who want a tax break and better funded public schools and 2) because the city of Vancouver has been annexing its neighboring unincorporated areas like crazy. Berkeley is 10.5 sq. miles; Vancouver is now 42.8..]}
I can't believe all the stuff you can find out on the web with a click on google! All that stuff above, and much much more. Find out about your own town by inputting: "population of MYTOWN" into google. From the latest census I see that only 12% of Berkeley's population is 14 and under, whereas we have 22%. Berkeley is racially well-mixed; we are 82% white.
But I digress.
Within a couple of months of moving here (because we had gotten involved in helping a local woman run for state office) we had met in the intimacy of someone's living room or office or club the governors of both Washington and Oregon, one of our senators, our congresswoman, as well as our state senator. Because our state is so small (geographically and population-wise compared to California), and we're the fourth largest city in the state, we get lots of action from politicians wanting to raise their profile. In Berkeley everybody seemed to be politically active, so I never bothered. Here, you have to shake people by the ears to get them to wake up to what's going on around them - and that is kind of fun.
I recently signed up to be a precinct officer for the Democratic party. I've only been to a couple of party meetings, but I can say this - we could probably use some lessons in crisp organization from the Republicans. Locally we're experiencing an influx of new people who have finally been galvanized by the !@#$%# bozos currently in power, and we want to Do Something. This probably means some rude awakenings for our sloppy party faithfuls. More about this after my next meeting.
In Berkeley, where we had lived for decades, we were moderate Democrats (which in Berkeley meant you were way out on the ragged right) and in Vancouver we are still moderate Democrats (which means we're way out on the left fringe!). The head spins.
The good news is that in a relatively small town, which Vancouver still seems like, you can quickly feel like a big frog - so that when you jump into the water you can make some ripples. In Berkeley I sat rrribitting on the bank because it seemed like a large lake with a lot of bigger louder hungrier fish. [Vancouver has grown significantly since we arrived and at 143,000 is now bigger than Berkeley at 102,000. Two reasons --1) the arrival of new residents: Californians like us; and Oregonians who want a tax break and better funded public schools and 2) because the city of Vancouver has been annexing its neighboring unincorporated areas like crazy. Berkeley is 10.5 sq. miles; Vancouver is now 42.8..]}
I can't believe all the stuff you can find out on the web with a click on google! All that stuff above, and much much more. Find out about your own town by inputting: "population of MYTOWN" into google. From the latest census I see that only 12% of Berkeley's population is 14 and under, whereas we have 22%. Berkeley is racially well-mixed; we are 82% white.
But I digress.
Within a couple of months of moving here (because we had gotten involved in helping a local woman run for state office) we had met in the intimacy of someone's living room or office or club the governors of both Washington and Oregon, one of our senators, our congresswoman, as well as our state senator. Because our state is so small (geographically and population-wise compared to California), and we're the fourth largest city in the state, we get lots of action from politicians wanting to raise their profile. In Berkeley everybody seemed to be politically active, so I never bothered. Here, you have to shake people by the ears to get them to wake up to what's going on around them - and that is kind of fun.
I recently signed up to be a precinct officer for the Democratic party. I've only been to a couple of party meetings, but I can say this - we could probably use some lessons in crisp organization from the Republicans. Locally we're experiencing an influx of new people who have finally been galvanized by the !@#$%# bozos currently in power, and we want to Do Something. This probably means some rude awakenings for our sloppy party faithfuls. More about this after my next meeting.
posted by JoieDe at 5:50 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home