This year we decided to get our Fourth of July off to a start at the Democratic Service Club's annual holiday barbeque, at Stow park, not far from our home. Despite the fact that I am not a member and am not even a California voter, I was given the warmest of welcomes and made to feel right at home. (Though being an out-of-state voter, I was spared the usual round of petition signing.)
Many of Anna's colleagues from the Women's Political Committee and the Commission on Women, of which she is chair, were on hand. I was meeting several of them for the first time. I tried to make a good impression.
There was the expected round of speeches, but these were neighbor-to-neighbor, and barbeque goes a long way toward making politics more palatable, a truth confirmed at state fairs everywhere.
Oscar Gutierrez, the newly elected City Council member, is a former student of Anna's at U.C. Santa Barbara.