#jenna bailey

Dear Gus,

You spent the night with Nene in Beebe tonight so Mom and I could tag along with Cody, who needed to restaurant/bar hop for an article he’s writing. The weather got a little nuts, so that threw our plans out of whack, but Derek and his roommates joined us for part of the night. It was good to cut loose with friends.

Dad

                        Boyfriend, Mack Nance Jr. and Jenna Bailey

Hello all, My name is Jenna Bailey and I am the official Vote Against Best Friend Forever!  Ok, not technically official, but it’s what I like to call myself, even if no one else does.  When I heard about the Vote Against Project, I knew it was going to be amazing.  I have been best friends with Lydia since about 1997.  And Carl and I have known each other since I was 14 years old, and been practically inseparable since about 2003.  A few years later, Curtis entered into my life, and now you can start to see why I’m the OVABFF!  Being good friends with so many people involved in the project, I get a very unique perspective of all of the inner workings of the group.  From the very beginning I was a sounding board for Carl to bounce ideas off of, I got to see the beginnings of his creative masterpieces, I’ve been a sympathetic ear to frustration and exhaustion and a random solo dance party thrower to bask in the excitement and overwhelming popularity of the project.

I have also been able to see the blood, sweat and tears (I haven’t seen blood yet, but there has certainly been sweat and tears) that has gone into this project.  The group behind Vote Against is such an amazingly talented and dedicated group of individuals, it’s enough to make anyone feel proud to even know them.  And lucky for me, I can call some of them my best friends!  I know just how much they put into this project, all while working their full time jobs so they can continue to pay bills and, on occasion, eat dinner.  So I figured, the least I can do is volunteer my time to help.  I was asked to travel with the team to Boone for the App State shoot in January, and I am so glad I did.  I thought I would give you all a little glimpse into our trip, so you can see just how much goes into these shoots.

We started out with some car trouble, so we didn’t leave Raleigh until around 10pm Wednesday night.  We got to Boone around 2am, had to park the trailer on campus, and then travel to the house we would be spending the night in.  One of the team members had a cabin near Boone, so we were very thankful to be able to stay the night there.  Unfortunately we couldn’t figure out the hot water, so we had no showers (you are allowed to be ‘natural’ in the mountains, right??).  We all got about 2 hours of sleep and were up and out of the house at 7am, to get to App State.

Once there we had to move the trailer to the correct parking lot, and then unload all of the equipment and drag it into the room where the shoot would be held.  We were up and running by 10am!  The rest of the day was spent handing out flyers and getting students to the room for the photo shoot.  Even running on 2 hours of sleep, all of the team members stayed positive, helpful and informative throughout the entire affair! After about 6 hours and 250 people(!!), we had to tear everything down and load it up so we could drive back home to Raleigh that night.  Then Friday, back to work at our regular jobs.  If you’re exhausted reading that, imagine how everyone felt participating in it!  Amazingly, with the lack of sleep, and the masked body odor, the shoot went seamlessly.  We were able to educate hundreds of people on the amendment, get people registered to vote, and take beautiful pictures of people standing up against discrimination, to allow them to share the word with others!