Local and Locale

I know I'm one year late to the eating local game, but I swear everywhere I look, read and talk lately people are talking about eating local (like this guy, this book and a group of colleagues I had dinner with last week).

For our Valentine's diner last weekend, I made a hyper-local meal. The mushrooms for the wild mushroom risotto were local, although the rice was from Italy. But the oysters were about as close to home as they could be. From our house there is a little trail down to the beach. The trail, the beach, and the resulting oysters found on the beach all belong to the Olympia Oyster Company.



So the Oysters are raised and farmed there in our neighborhood and we can buy them from pretty much any grocery store in town. It's kind of nice when most of the other seafood - at least at this time of the year is from Indonesia or China. So we had a ridiculously yummy meal with at least the majority of ingredients from basically our own backyard.



So like eating local, there are other concepts and ideas popping up everywhere I look. I'm in the midst of studying for my general exams, a laborious and time consuming process that involves me reading lots and lots. In the chunk of theory that I'm trying to digest, is Anthony Giddens and his concept of structuration. And one of the concepts that keeps bubbling up is that of locale, which for me is theoretical and as importantly, methodological. Locales are the spaces that provide the settings for interaction, but these setting are nested both geographically and hierarchically. Locales are where we are, this room, this building, this block, this city, etc. ... but locales also the basis for the contextualization of meaning. They become the site for where rules and interactions are enacted to create structure which exists not just spatially but temporally. You can physically be inside and outside of a room, and can also be inside or outside of the actions to exist within that room due to the contextualization formed and re-inforced by rules and actors. So for example, a restaurant is restaurant but the interactions within that restaurant are dictated by the context and its rules: like do you order at the counter or are seated where someone comes out to take your order. Additionally, seeing a restaurant in a certain geographical location and at a certain time, the social order can come into focus, like for example a sign reading whites only dictates the social order and expected rules. Whether or not that sign is there, the contextual interactions therein inform behavior.

So whether its local or locale, I'm getting a nice big shift in the way my world gets contextualized.

At the caucus ...

So I had my first ever* tiny taste of American democracy this weekend, and it rocked. I think we should decide everything via caucus, that is only if the results end up exactly as I hope they will.

Our caucus experience almost ended before it started, when we accidentally went to the wrong precinct (can you be disenfranchised if you are so incompetent you can't locate the caucus site? - maybe). The West Olympia precinct at Jefferson Middle School was packed, there were Evergreen students bouncing up and down the halls, passing out Obama stickers and adding a sense of frenzy to the place. We were told that dems were in the gym and the GOP was meeting in the library. We peaked in the library on the way to the gym and saw 8 older, maler and whiter individuals milling about. Once in the packed gym, we tried to find out precinct and a really nice pony-tailed hippie sadly informed us that we were in the wrong place and he didn't even say "you idiots!" although maybe he thought it.

So we headed to our correct place, the Griffin Middle School on Steamboat Island where we found out that they don't combine the Ds and the Rs in the same place. The republicans were sequestered at the Grange, which makes me think that perhaps Scooby Doo was with them. The atmosphere at our rightful caucus was much more subdued that the the first place. The gym was really full and had four clusters of people, organized by neighborhood. The crowd here was considerably older, lots of white hairs. We definitely live in a diverse area, if not in terms of race certainly in terms of economics. It's a mix of upper-income folks who own newer waterfront homes, lower and middle income people who have lived our here for a long time since it was much more rural and also the select few who live and work on the small farms.

We found out neighborhood cluster labeled Oyster Bay and Jeremy signed in and we grabbed a seat next to our across the street neighbor. Like lots of other folks in Washington reported, our caucus was not exactly what would you call well organized. It was hard to hear, it looked like different procedures were being followed from group to group, and it was slightly chaotic at times. But, it was really great to meet our neighbors and hear from them. An older woman started by introduced herself as a quilter and held up a quilt (handy visual aid!) and said that she was for Obama because she felt that he could help bring together diverse and distinct groups in this country and build something great. Another woman spoke up saying that she felt that Hillary had more experience and was better suited to lead.

At first it wasn't clear how the group was trending since they were still busily counting the initial vote, I was thinking it would be mostly a Clinton group due to larger number of older women in the audience, but it was definitely clear that as folks spoke up that there were more Obama supporters. One woman stood up and said that she felt as a Clinton supporter, she was in the minority, but as a Native American she was used to being in the minority. She made the point that while both candidates were committed to issues important to the Native American community, she felt there was more evidence that Clinton was committed to her community and had already appointed Arlan Melendez, a Native Leader to her campaign.

Most of the debate hinged on the themes of change vs. experience. There were a couple of, um, interesting points. One woman claimed she was for Hillary because Hillary is pro-animal rights and Obama is against them - although luckily she didn't go as far as to say that Obama was wearing a suit of puppies. . One man claimed that he was anti-hillary because of the way she handled her husband's infidelities while in the white house. It was not the best rhetorical point or linked to any other fact besides his personal feelings about the situation. But the fact that he was standing behind his (i presume to be) wife and rubbing her shoulders while he made his point creeped me out.

Jeremy was his brilliant self and rebutted the experience argument for Hillary by saying her explanation of why she voted for war (that she thought bush would only use it as a threat and not for actually using force) was either naive or just politically calculating.

So it all ended up that most folks didn't change their mind and stuck with who they came to support, although a couple people where uncommitted and did make a vote after the speeches. Our little neighborhood dished out 4 Obama delegates and 2 Hillary delegates. The group next to us had a super impassioned Gravel supporter which would have been a nice addition, although evidently he wasn't able to sway anyone.

So I didn't say anything, just listened. But it was a really great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. I got to meet a bunch more neighbors, we met the local plumber who seems like a great guy, chatted about the never-ending rain and were told that it really is necessary to take a vacation between November and March and that's how most people maintain their sanity through the dark wet winter.

We went out later with jenn and colby and everyone was talking non-stop about the caucus. It felt like the political conversations went beyond the precincts and people's excitement for this election is palpable.

* I'm a resident alien so can't vote, but can participate in the talking and listening aspect of a caucus.