Seriously.
Courtesy of one of the sweetest, slightest, most well-read women I have ever met. She was, needless to say, very proud of them.
Our interview was terrific. She and her son welcomed me into their living room, and she made herself cozy with her back against the arm of the couch, her socks on, her legs up, and an ashtray in her lap, and we talked for about two hours. She’s somewhat politically unusual for the county, and she seemed just animated to talk about what she thought without being given the brush-off.
Afterward, I got to meet the 30-some-odd cats she takes care of in her backyard. There were ancient, haggard, scrappy cats and lithe, elegant cats, and wittle bitty, cotton-ball-looking kittens, and they were all great.
Josh, that is one SERIOUS fence. Aesthetically pleasing AND a message to trespassers — what more could one want?
Sounds like you are having a great time. I can’t wait to see the play.
I suspect a lot of the people you meet are enjoying the chance to speak and be listened to.
Did you get a sense of how she came to be “politically unusual” for her locale? Have you met other people who are unusual in their home counties, and are there any common threads connecting their stories?
I sure did. She was raised a dyed-in-the-wool Christian, conservative, Republican (when I interviewed her mother I learned that her family cast the only four votes against FDR in the whole county) and she had a disillusioning experience at the Republican convention, which she attended as a delegate for several years… It’s a pretty good story, and I heard it from both her perspective and her mother’s! (They don’t discuss politics.)
I’ve talked to a few of the folks who are “token” political minorities in their counties, and the common thread seems just to be that it’s something you don’t discuss unless you want to get into an argument, but that they feel perfectly comfortable in their communities and they are integrated in every other way, which was (to me) pleasantly surprising.