Hard at Work Carving Pumpkins

Last week was an unusual one for me here in DC. Hurricane Sandy paid us a visit, and my office was closed both Monday and Tuesday.  I was out of the building in off-site meetings for most of Wednesday and Thursday, so, very few tasks were checked off my to-do list.

The other staff here at NCJW were basically in the same boat. We’re a 501c3, which means that we are non-partisan and don’t endorse candidates in elections, but we do plenty of voter engagement and empowerment work.  Missing two crucial days before the election set us back a bit, and for the most part we were working independently and furiously to get back on schedule. There was one thing, though, that the whole office joined together to get done this week. It was a task of vast importance. Our office building puts on an annual pumpkin-carving contest and we had to work quickly to submit our pumpkin because of the office closings.

Every year NCJW submits a pumpkin we lose.  We try to be relevant and political (only on issues we endorse, never on candidates or parties!) but a little cute and clever too.  First we’d settled on carving a sequestration pumpkin—here in DC it’s almost all anyone talks about—but we couldn’t figure out how to clearly represent it jack-o-lantern-style.  Instead we picked a topic close to NCJW’s heart and the hearts of our sections, particularly in now in Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington: Marriage Equality.

My supervisor, Amy, crafted a cute design, two jack-o-lantern hearts, with big block letters spelling out marriage equality across the top. Jodi, the deputy director of the office and an expert pumpkin carver, brought in tools for excavating the pumpkin and carving our design to perfection. But, of course, first we had to gut the pumpkin. I arrived back to the office from my first meeting just in time. The office director, never one afraid to get her hands dirty, had gotten a nice start, but I soon took over, cleaning out the pumpkin so it would be ready to carve. We, of course, saved the seeds, so we could snack on those, rather than all of the leftover Halloween candy we have sitting in the kitchen.

I then ran to another meeting, and by the time I was back the pumpkin was all carved and just needed to be cleaned up and submitted for judgment. When we brought it down we scoped out the competition—it was fierce. The architecture firm in the building carved a haunted house, the Health Care company made a Mister Potato Head style pumpkin, and the magazine made a ballot box. But we felt confident our design may take home a prize.

…We’re still waiting to hear back.

UPDATE (11/5/12 2:46PM) We won most creative pumpkin that came with a cupcake delivery for the entire office!

 

Leah Apothaker

Legislative Intern at the National Council of Jewish Women