Pay me for my words

Hal writes:

I had my first paid speaking engagement earlier this month. At housing conference this past fall I was approached by an individual wondering if I would come and speak at their institution. A few others overheard her asking me and inquired as well. I am in the process of going to some schools to help train RAs during mid-year trainings or professional development nights. I enjoy these type of speaking engagements and now that I am able to charge a small fee I am on my way to becoming a professional speaker. (If I get paid for twenty speaking engagements in a calender year, I can be a member of national professional speaking group.) So, if you want me to movitate you and your colleagues, you should book me at my current rate (transporation, meals, and a small stipend) before I get too popular. ;)

Since Anna has the car in Indiana, I rented a car to get me to/from the speaking engagement. I felt that more than one time I was followed by a police officer during the trip, including one who turned around to follow me. It wasn't until the end of my trip that I noticed I had (way) out of state plates. The picture below is me in my pretty shirt and tie with the rental car. The best part about the rental (in addition to being able to fit comfortably inside it) was that it had some built in navigational equipment to tell me where to go.


For those of you who haven't heard from Anna recently, don't worry, we just are having issues with our cell phone plan. Our "national plan" truly wasn't national and we ran out of minutes for the time being. But starting this Friday we are on a new plan (a NATIONAL national plan) and she will be able to return the phone calls that she hasn't been able to respond to.

Today Anna assisted with Charlie (her grandma's husband) who was celebrating his 90th birthday today. In addition to getting a birthday card signed by the President (or, as Mr. Keillor says, CURRENT OCCUPANT), there were over 200 people who showed up to his party. Anna helped by running errands and setting up the day before as well as serving a lot of cake today.

Kevin came to visit me this weekend and we commiserated while our sweethearts were away and didn't get into too much trouble. But since he's an official pastor now, he has to return on Saturday's to make sure that his sermon his ready for Sunday morning.

This last week and this week I (and some of my colleagues) have been putting a lot of work into Boxes and Walls, a special program for our RA mid-year training happening later this week. It is too difficult to explain, but I will post some pictures at the end of the week after the RAs have gone through the experience.

Iowa Caucus

Hal writes:

This evening my colleague Trapper and I travelled across the border into Iowa to observe a caucus. Four years ago I was an Iowa resident and experienced my first caucus, but was a mere observer this year. Now, keep in mind, that the thoughts accompanied by photos are based off of my previous caucus and are posted prior to any results being posted through the media.

Now, regardless of your political affiliation, you should know that the Republican process is a closed door, secret ballot process, so for Trapper and I to actually observe a caucus we attended a Democratic precinct.

Here is me by my sign in the "media" area. Trapper and I were among a handful in a corner reserved for media or other ineligible to caucus (under the age of 18, out of state, etc.).

Here is the registration table. We were in the ballroom in the student center at a Catholic College (hence the crosses that you may periodically see in the background). Outside the door were people making last minute appeals (and handing out stickers) for their candidate of choice.

The population at the caucus was a mix of college students (this being a college campus) and then older residents for the surrounding area (mostly 50+ years old).

Below is a picture of the empty seats. You can see in the background some political posters where later in the evening supporters will stand to support their candidate. The room was in alphabetical order, so you can see Biden signs to the left and Clinton signs to the right. Each candidate had a single sign with their name on it, but supporters came in early to add signage. (Well, except for Kucinich, who did not get a lot of support, but I'll get to his group later.)

The caucus was called to order by the Temporary chair. I was really unimpressed by the manner in which it started. With a large number of college students registering late and not paying attention, you couldn't hear the Chair. He explained the caucus rules and then read one page letters from each candidate, but nobody could here them. The "Millennials" (as current college students are known as) came late, had to do day of registration because they didn't register ahead of time, and were talking to each other and on their cell phones while the chair was speaking. The older population simply sat and pretended to pay attention, but nobody could hear. The chair weakly asked for order a couple of times to no avail.

Here is the group of late arrivals quickly registering. The doors were closed at a certain time and then the division of caucus goers began. People who arrive after the doors were closed (again, Millennials) had to stand in my area and could not participated.

Here are people not paying attention to the chair. He did get their attention of the doors were closed and elected himself (without objection) as the Permanent Chair. Also, it didn't help that he was chomping on gum while he spoke.

After getting the groups attention, he asked if everyone knew what to do next (since he just read the entire process) to which the group replied "no". So then he briefly explained that it was time to divide into groups and explained the math process to elect the seven delegates from the group. The picture below was the caucus agenda and the explanation of Caucus Mathematics.

And now, let's start the fun! The 278 participants went to stand by their candidates sign (or the "uncommitted" sign). To be a viable candidate, 15% (in this case, 42 people) were needed to be with a candidate. If after the first round a group did not have 42, they would be considered not to be viable and would have to realign with another group.

Here is a picture of the few Richardson supports. To the right, one of two in the uncommitted group (I was surprised there was not more in this group). When the Richardson group saw that they were not viable, they tried to convince the Obama group to lend them a few people so that they could be viable after the first round and then they would align with Obama in the second round. When that deal did not go through, they then spoke with the Biden group, also no viable at the time, to see if they could combine for either candidate.

The Obama group had a large gathering to begin with. Here they are gathering in one corner. I would say that 90% of the college students went to this group. This group had 136 supporters after the first count.

Here is the Edwards group. (Insert some joke about the age different (and how well they arranged their chairs) compared to the Obama group here.) At the first count they had 47 supporters, just slightly above the 42 needed to be viable.

Clinton's corner was filled with largely female supporters. Similar to Edwards, the group was just barely viable, and had 48 supporters at first count. I heard an upset Clinton supporter calling into the Clinton Iowa headquarters very upset that the group was barley viable.

The sullen group in the back are the five Kucinich supports (without any stickers or signs). The the first vocal vote for each candidate was announced, the spokesperson for the group announced that there were "five geniuses" in the group. It got a laugh, but unfortunately for those students who were smarter than the other 273 people, their votes counted the same as everyone else.

After the first count, only Edwards, Clinton, and Obama were viable. At this point, those groups could send people to the Biden, Dodd (well, he didn't have a single supporter), Gravel (again, no supporters), Kuchinich, Richardson, or uncommitted groups to convince them to switch. Once candidate groups were considered to be not viable after the first round, they could not stay in that group. Supporters had to either go with one of the viable groups or go to uncommitted. Here is the "leader" of the Biden group trying to convince the group to move together as supporters from the other group come to make their cases.

The photo below is of the Obama group during the second and final vote. There were so many in the corner they had to do the "keep your hand up until you're counted" method. In the end it was 163 supporters (4 delegate votes) for Obama, 61 supporters (2 delegate votes) for Edwards, and 51 supporters (1 delegate vote) for Clinton.

Here are three that remained uncommitted at the end of the caucus. Who could them be calling? Just a friendly phone call or checking in with friends at other precincts? Are they calling campaign headquarters to let them know how it went?

The evening continued with election of delegates, resolution and platform discussions, and other official business. Or so was posted on the agenda, I didn't stay for that fun. Unfortunately, this ends my campaign coverage as I have to start work on Monday and I am not able to travel to New Hampshire to continue my observations.

Happy New Year!

Hal writes:

Well, my wife left me. No, not like that. Anna left this morning for a two month internship in Indiana. In addition to her being gone for internships, there have been many times when we have been separated by distances during our relationship. During the time I lived in Illinois and Iowa, Anna was in Minnesota and Nicaragua. Needless to say, I lack in sympathy for some of my students who live "so far" (45 miles) from their significant other and "never get to see them" (see each other every weekend and sometimes during the week).


Our typical pattern of Christmas traveling occurred with drives to and from each set of parents houses. This year we were limited by time with a snow storm to start off the trip and then returning early to attend Matt and Molly's wedding in Iowa. Pictured below is my family together in Minnesota.





While in Wisconsin I had two opportunities to ski on groomed trails (as opposed to blazing my own the first few times I went out). On the second trip Dale not only had all three daughters on skis, but both his son-in-laws and both grandchildren out on the trail with him. Brian took the picture below of the "ski train" in the woods.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos from Matt and Molly's wedding. It was held in a beautiful small chapel called Church of the Lance at the Living History Farms outside of Des Moines. Here is a special picture just for Rachael:

Last night we met friends in Galena, IL for New Years. After eating at a new restaurant, we went to a different pub and played card games for a while.

As the regular season of the NFL is complete, I am happy to report that I took first place in my Fantasy Football league and third place in the NFL "pick 'em" league. For those of you who play fantasy sports, you can check out my new virtual trophies online.