Half Full


I organized a successful fundraiser last night but I keep looking at the dark side: OK, we raised about $7,000 or more, but my friend Maddy raised $30,000 in Northampton. We had a great mix of readers and readings, but it went on too long and we missed the first few minutes of the debate. We had a somewhat chaotic silent auction for books and cartoons and we (the fund raising we) have a box of books leftover in our already-messy office. Not to mention some cartoons, too. (I'm offering all for sale on line. Contact me if you want the list of offerings. Deadline for bidding is 11:59 p.m. Friday.) We raised $6,500 for Obama for America, but I should have designated the money collected at the door last night ($1,500) for the buses to take canvassers to Iowa. That would have doubled the amount I did turn in to finance the buses, from sales of buttons, stickers, books and cartoons. We have wine and soft drinks left over. Do I feel bad about that too? I don't think so.
Everyone told me how great it was. My main fear had been that the set-up for watching the debate wouldn't work, but Chopin Theatre co-owner Zygmunt Dyrkac, who doesn't own a TV himself, had a flat-screen TV for us. I asked him how he did it. Magic, he said. On stage, he said, we kill people, we have people fall in love who hate each other. Creating a TV was easy.