Anne and I went to hear David Sedaris read last night in Boulder. It was the perfect medicine for my pre-election high anxiety levels. I laughed so long and so hard that my ribs hurt, and if you ever want to watch me shoot liquid out my nose, try whispering "slave monkey" to me when I've just taken a drink.
Sedaris opened with his current piece in the New Yorker, which wanders back and forth from what he really, really thinks about undecided voters to his experience as an 11-year-old voter in the 1968 presidential election. You'll have to imagine his wonderful voice, but you can read it yourself at:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2008/10/27/081027sh_shouts_sedaris?yrail
Pre-election anxiety? Try this . . .
Best Fictional Halloween Costume
" . . . I went out as a chicken pot pie. Mama wrapped me all up in silver foil and she stuck feathers in my hair and hung a carrot and a celery from my ears and she wrote 'Heat at three thousand degrees for twelve hours' across my forehead. You know, I'm real lucky I didn't run into one of those psychopaths because I think he would have had a defense . . . "
Nancy Clark
The Hills at Home
Vote Cast!
This morning, I took advantage of the opportunity here in Colorado to vote early. It was my first experience with touch-screen voting. The last time I voted in Michigan, we were still using paper ballots, which I have to admit feels more reliable. I like the idea of a paper trail.
CNN is reporting that, as of yesterday, 31.3% of active registered Colorado voters have either early voted or returned their mail-in ballots. That's over 800,000 swing state residents (in a state whose "official" total population estimate is just under 5 million) who wanted to be certain that their voices were heard.
I contributed money to the Obama campaign. I volunteered for the Obama campaign. I voted for Obama. Now all I can do is pray.
Sunday in the Park With Barack
Yesterday, we finally got to see Barack Obama.
Before the Democratic Convention, we applied online for tickets to the acceptance speech at Invesco Field. Didn't get them. We stood in line on another cold Sunday morning for tickets to Obama's speech at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Didn't get those either.
So when we got an e-mail from the campaign that Barack would be speaking in Denver's Civic Center Park at 11:30 Sunday morning, no tickets required, we set the alarm for 6:30 a.m. and hustled downtown, loaded with Starbucks and the New York Times. (We were anxious to read the magazine's cover story on the McCain campaign. It was such a case study in ineptitude that it was almost painful to read.)
Civic Center Park is bordered by the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Public Library, as well as government buildings. (Yes, Sheila, you were there.) The gold-domed Colorado State Capitol building sits across a wide avenue from the park. The weather was colder than had been predicted, but the blue skies and good-humored crowd offset the chill, even during the long lines to pass through the security checkpoint.
We were thrilled to actually make it into the the park. Many in the crowd of over 100,000 did not, and the sea of humanity flowed across the avenue all the way up the steps of the Capitol. I'm not sure those folks could even hear the speech, but they stayed anyway.
Other Colorado politicians spoke before Obama, who didn't come on until nearly noon. (Fashion note: Obama was the only politician who wore a tie; Coloradoans are an informal bunch. U.S. Senator Ken Salazar showed up in his trademark white cowboy hat.)
In the end, we glimpsed Obama only occasionally, given the six-foot-plus, dreadlocks-wearing guy who wedged his way right in front of us just before Obama arrived and refused to move or even duck a little so the rest of us--who were packed like sardines and had been standing in that same spot for two hours--could see. The young couple next to us, both shorter than me, gave up and left, furious. All of my pictures of Obama are blurred, because I had to hold the camera way over my head and to the side to avoid getting a close-up of the tall guy's dreads.
The best part of being there was feeling, given the huge number of people who turned out, as though Americans finally might be ready to throw off their years of apathy and self-centeredness, and get down to the business of repairing our country. Obama made it pretty clear that it's not going to be easy and that some sacrifice--and he did use that word--will be required. I hope we're up for it, because when you finally see him in person, in a huge crowd (as opposed to filling your TV screen), you sure don't want that skinny guy with the strong, warm voice to have to carry all the burdens by himself.
Pictures from the October 26 Obama event in Denver:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Katharine.Gillette/ObamaRallyInDenver?authkey=vLYFGxo4-0A
http://picasaweb.google.com/Katharine.Gillette/ObamaRallyInDenver?authkey=vLYFGxo4-0A
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