Politics

The Stand Out

In this space I’ve written about the house party and the “time” as building blocks of a political campaign. Another staple of any campaign is the “stand out.” Some people call this “holding signs,” and the insiders refer to this activity as “viz” or “doing a visibility.” The stand out…

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Stammtisch

Once you get out of the tourist areas in Germany and into the smaller cities and towns, every gasthaus (a small, local restaurant that also serves prodigious amounts of beer) has a stammtisch. A stammtisch is a table, usually round, that is positioned near the entrance that is occupied by…

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Martha Coakley in Lowell

Martha Coakley visited the Owl Diner in Lowell yesterday as part of the multi-city kickoff tour of her gubernatorial campaign. I wasn’t able to be there, but this photo, which I pulled from the Coakley for Governor Twitter feed, shows Attorney General Coakley, accompanied by State Senator Eileen Donoghue, listening…

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Carl Sciortino for Congress ad

Carl Sciortino is a state representative from Medford who is running for the Congressional seat left vacant when Ed Markey was elected to the US Senate. A Sciortino video is getting some attention these days. Here it is: [youtube]Z3S1zcbWkoM[/youtube]

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The House Party

In our democracy one of the revered institutions is the New England town meeting, the equivalent of a political common where voters gather to make decisions together under the one person-one vote rule. In the state houses, city and town halls, and our national congress representatives who are elected by…

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60 Years Ago ~ Jacqueline Lee Bouvier and John Fitzgerald Kennedy Marry in Keely-designed Church

Sixty years ago ~ on this day September 12, 1953, Congresssman John Fitzgerald Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier at a ceremony held in St. Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island. We visited St. Mary’s Church last year, walked through the garden and the church interior. It’s a beautiful, traditional Catholic Church. For that Lowell…

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