how to build a cathedral

Here is an excerpt from an essay I remember reading as a teenager:

The experience with the Driving Master emphasizes the profound truth of of an old story. If you don't know it, it's time you heard it. If you know it, you ought to hear it again once in a while.

The story says that a traveler from Italy came to the French town of Chartres to see the great church that was being built there. Arriving at the end of the day, he went to the site just as the workmen were leaving for home. He asked one man, covered with dust, what he did there. The man replied that he was a stonemason. He spent his days carving rocks. Another man, when asked, said he was a glassblower who spent his days making slabs of colored glass. Still another workman replied that he was a blacksmith who pounded iron for a living.

Wandering into the deepening gloom of the unfinished edifice, the traveler came upon an older woman, armed with a broom, sweeping up the stone chips and wood shavings and glass shards from the day's work. "What are you doing?" he asked.

The woman paused, leaning on her broom, and looking up toward the high arches, replied, "Me? I'm building a cathedral for the Glory of Almighty God."

I've often thought about the people of Chartres. They began something they knew they would never see completed. They built for something larger than themselves. They had a magnificent vision.

-- Robert Fulghum: "It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It"
reproduced without, of course, even asking for permission

So here is a rough accounting of my Tuesday. All times are Eastern.

3:58 am: Some slight noise, possibly connected to something I may have been dreaming, wakes me. I look at the clock on my phone and see that I have beaten the alarm by two minutes. I am very pleased by this. I move quietly through the house in the hope of not prematurely waking my hosts, shower (note: the water takes forever to be anything other than the coldest running water I have ever known; just when I have begun to despair, it starts to warm up -- is this a metaphor?), and dress superstitiously in blue from head to toe.

5:15: Having decided that the garage where I parked my car is, in fact, not yet open, I decide to walk to my Assigned Location. It's ten or fifteen shortish city blocks; no big deal.

5:45 or so: I arrive, introduce myself, correct my name on the sign identifying which chair is mine, ask if there's anything I can do to be helpful, help the manager of the room with the last couple of inches of the zipper on the back of her dress. :-)

6:30: The phones start to ring. Poll watchers and observers are checking in. We start taking calls about lines, machines, election judges.

7:45ish: The phones stop ringing. Turns out Something is Up and IT is working on it but calls are going straight to the voice mail.

9:30? I don't really remember when IT managed to get the phones ringing again.

8:00 - at least 10:30: I triage voice mail calls, scribbling details of the messages and handing them to the others so they can call the poll workers back. In over two hours I am able to deal with messages left in a span of about thirteen minutes. (Others at other tables are also doing this, with the system starting them at different points on the clock.)

middle of the day: With the phones working again, I take some calls in real time as well.

3pm, maybe: Back to the voice mail for a bit. By now the issues have in many cases already been addressed, but we try to call everyone back to make sure. They seem gratified.

4:45 pm: Brace for the 5:00 rush as after-work voting begins.

5:30: We are mystified by the low volume of calls. Periodically we try calling in ourselves to make sure the phones ring; also checking the voice mail to make sure the volume of messages hasn't exploded. They do, and it has not.

7:00: Polls close in Indiana and Kentucky, and these are not called immediately. Everyone commences with the hopeful fretting.

8:00: Polls close in, among other places, Pennsylvania, and someone says "Anyone who's not on the phone right now is going to want to be over here looking at the television."

8:02: MSNBC calls PA for Obama. Place goes predictably nuts.



People are hugging and crying. I'm choked up and I've only been on this team for twenty-four hours (counting generously; fourteen counting conservatively).

8:03: Guy who has been two places away from me all day waits for a second network to call PA before he is prepared to cheer.

8:05: Talking heads start saying stuff about how so far this map is looking just like 2000 and 2004. We throw things at Chris Matthews.

8:20: A few calls start to come in as polls finish up with the people who were still in line at 8:00. Some of us bring the phones with us to look at the TV, because Things are Happening. The networks call New Hampshire for Obama. The room is elated, as there had still been some question about New Hampshire. They still haven't called Ohio, where the polls have been closed for close to an hour, or Indiana, where they've been closed for an hour and a half. Likewise we are eagerly awaiting Virginia, Florida, North Carolina.

8:25: Even without knowing about NC's electoral votes, we know that Liddy Dole has lost her Senate seat. A number of people are very pleased. County counsel team leaves amid a general ovation.

8:30: Still no call on Ohio. It's very close, but the cities haven't come in at all. Guy next to me says "If he gets Ohio, that's it, it's over."

I say "Well. Very likely. Some extremely improbable things would have to happen for him to lose at that point."

"What, like he loses California?"

"That would be extremely improbable, don't you think?"

There is almost no wood in the room. I have to knock on Formica.

something like 8:50: D and That Crowd arrive from Wherever It Was They Were Working. I give him the care package S sent up for him, which consists of (1) a chocolate bar with espresso beans and (2) a big hug. He does not appear to be dead on his feet.

somewhere in there: Fox News is the first to call New Mexico for Obama. We are flabbergasted. Several of us wonder if they are being deliberately un-cautious and calling things with 0% of returns in case a later reversal could be seen as helpful for McCain.

9:00: People have been talking about where there may be a party, and I fret about whether to go and what time, if I do, I will get home. I begin to agree that the sooner I leave, the better, but I don't want to leave before we Know Something. Polls close in a Super Tuesday-sized swath of states, including a lot of heartland, but also New York.

9:01: MSNBC or CNN -- I don't remember which network we were looking at by then -- calls New York for Obama, and nobody is surprised. They call Ohio, the state where I grew up, for Obama, and the room goes bananas. More crying and hugging. I am in tears myself.



D, who is about to head back to Wherever It Still Is but hasn't left yet, instructs me to call when I'm on my way home. Someone announces that this room is officially closed for business, and we're free to go. MSNBC or CNN, whoever it is, says a number of places (including Texas, Colorado, Missouri?, etc.) are too early to call, and the room is pleased; they say Arizona is too close to call, and the room is berserk.

9:30: I give up waiting for Virginia, North Carolina, Florida -- although I badly want to win Florida, because I feel that Ohio and Florida would be the most poetic victories tonight -- and head back to the garage where my car has been lodged. A guy I pass sees that I am carrying a plastic grocery bag of various Obama rally signs, concludes that I have been working on the campaign, and says "Good job." I smile and thank him, and two steps later, turn and look over my shoulder and say "Hey -- you too." I call my parents, in Ohio, en route, and there is general satisfaction, relief, and caution that weirder shit has happened than this thing not yet being in the bag.

10:15: Having retrieved the car, I set out for home, pushing radio buttons trying to find the talking heads. I land on ABC News, and drive along to the sound of Charlie Gibson, Diane Sawyer, and George Stephanopoulos talking to John Lewis et al.

11:00: I cross the state line from Delaware into Maryland. Polls close in California, Oregon (if they were ever even open up there?), Washington, and Hawai'i. Also Idaho?

11:01: ABC calls the four states I'm sure about, and thus the election, for Obama. Idaho is too close to call. Idaho. I call D, as promised. He answers "Congratulations"; I say "You just got a guy elected president! How do you feel?" He does not report any intention to go to Disneyland.

11:05: Text message from [Her] Who Must Be Obeyed, who will shortly be waking her 10.5-month-old daughter to listen to the victory speech: "Yes we did!!" As I am hurtling down I-95 at 80 mph approx., I decide it is safer to call her rather than texting her back. We talk about Arizona and Florida (and Pennsylvania, where she and her husband both grew up, and Ohio). While we are on the phone Matter-Eater Lad reports that some network or other has called Virginia for Obama. She tells me McCain has called Obama to concede. I hang up the phone and continue driving.

just a moment later: SWMBO calls to tell me Obama got Florida. I crow out loud and would flail and kick my legs except see above re: 80 mph.

11:15: The radio goes live to McCain's concession speech. It is indeed classy. I appreciate that he shuts his people down when they start to boo etc. I would like him to have done more of this during the campaign, but one can't have everything. Still, now that he is no longer the candidate, perhaps we are back to having the old John McCain, whom I liked rather better than the one we've had since he clinched the nomination.

11:59: The radio goes live to Grant Park and Obama's victory speech. It is a thing of goodness; when he promises the girls a new puppy, I weep. This continues when he gets to the 106-year-old woman in Atlanta who voted for the first time.

12:45: I arrive. I've heard Barack Obama referred to as president-elect no fewer than three times. I can't quite get my head around it. As I go in my door I can hear a few cars on 16th Street whose drivers are merrily sounding their horns as they return home. It really is a new day.

I've had some thoughts about the disappointment of those who are disappointed, and how I cannot at the moment believe that disappointment can possibly be compared to our disappointment (around which I have thought long and hard and decided not to use quotation marks) in the last two elections -- in 2000 because we [thought we] had it and it was taken away from us, so it wasn't just that we didn't get the president we'd have preferred but we really believe we were robbed; and in 2004 because we'd tried so hard to defeat an incumbent that we hated, and done better than we'd ever done before, and it still wasn't enough (and, depending on your suspicions about Ohio in 2004, robbed again, but I don't think Ohio 2004 was the same kind of thing as Florida 2000). That is, what happened to us in 2000 had never happened before and god willing will never happen again, and is just not remotely the same as what happened to you last night; and you can't at the moment be as disappointed as we were in 2004, because Obama has not been president for the last four years. Let's talk again if he's re-elected in 2012, although even then, because the 2000 situation has not repeated itself, your hopes of getting him out in four years' time will not be the same as our hopes of getting Bush 43 out were four years ago. (All of which I've been thinking of mostly in response to some comments I've heard hoping that we, who are jubilant in victory, will be spared the sort of bitter invective from our R-leaning friends that they got from their D-leaning ones four years ago; I share those hopes, but I think the odds we'd get such invective flung at us are long, on account of the qualitative* differences in our respective disappointments. And not, that is, because we are sorer losers than those who feel they lost last night; instead, because our losses themselves were sorer. I know some of you won't believe me, and will think I'm rationalizing and we really are sore losers and ungracious winners. I'm sorry for that. But it's important to me to make my thoughts as clear as possible.)

[* Note that I'm speaking just of the qualitative differences, not the quantitative ones. So I guess I should have said you can't at the moment be disappointed the way we were in 2004; the difference is in how you are disappointed, not in how disappointed you are. If you'll permit the wordplay. I can't possibly know how disappointed you are, though, because I have no idea how badly you wanted McCain to be president (if in fact that's what you wanted, instead of badly wanting Obama not to be president). And if you tell me, I still won't understand. So let's just note that it's not the point and leave it at that.]

-- but instead, I will note this:

See, in the above timeline, how the cautious optimism persisted even as the thing looked surer and surer and surer? And then I got home and saw one message after another where people were saying things like "OMG (almost!)" and "YES, barring electoral irregularities, WE DID!" and so on. It's kind of funny, how the Democrats and their usual supporters have learned that there is no such thing as too much caution, and how you can't count a chicken before it has hatched and survived at least a couple of days, and so on. Kind of funny. In a poignant sort of way.

Not letting it harsh my buzz, though. Not a bit. :-D