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These are almost two weeks old now, but at last I am taking some time to post them. The hard-working and well-connected Laura Hussein got us into another wonderful small event where we were able to listen to and meet my biggest heroine in these days, Michelle Obama. She was all that.

What do I like about her? I think I identify with her both as my neighbour, and as a woman of my generation who has faced, and continues to face the same kind of balancing act of children, partner, career and family that I and all my friends struggle with. She is so natural. I’m sure there is a private side to her that we don’t see, but she came in front of, her Chicago peeps, with no makeup on but a little lipstick and her hair knotted up in a ponytail. I love that. I’m sure time spent *not* primping is more time spent with her girls. And of course she was stunning anyway.

The speech she gave was the one you’ve all heard, about her background and Barack’s, and how they “get it,” but there was a new note of graciousness and generosity added in, a tone that said “first lady.” Barack’s opponents were never mentioned by name, and only alluded to in the vaguest way. There was also lots of talk about how this is not about Barack, about how this is a whole movement of people who are longing for change in so many different areas.

When she was done, she came along the rope line and spoke to every single person who wanted a word with her, including us. “We’re Lab School mothers,” my friends said, and her face lit up.

I worry about her. The sacrifice she and her daughters are making is incredible, and she is making it willingly, but I worry that she will become (or continue to be) a target, the same way that Hillary was by people who prefer to distort a caricature than to get to know the real woman. I hope she knows that the women in Hyde Park know the real Michelle, the one who is always the gym display at her kids’ school and the ballet recital, and that we’ll always have her back.

Not much point going door to door in my neighbourhood, so on the 6th I drove up to Kalamazoo with a few friends to see if they could put us to use. Our first stop was campaign headquarters, where we found a huge crowd of volunteers from Illinois being put into service by the efficient Kalamazoo staff. They gave us a choice. We could canvas in a well-to-do suburb, or we could do voter registration on the north side of town, a poorer predominantly African American neighbourhood. We chose the latter, figuring we would at least get a good welcome in an area that was bound to be pro Obama, and we were right. Everywhere we went we were greeted with friendly smiles and little children followed us saying “Obama? Obama?” Almost everyone was already registered and excited to vote, and many had stickers or signs and were doing volunteer work themselves. The majority of new people we registered were ex-offenders who were stunned when we told them they were legally entitled to vote in Michigan. One man sticks out in my memory. No doubt poorly educated — he let his girlfriend fill out the form for him — he was very bright. “We need change,” he said, “Things can’t keep going the way they have been.”

We were able to return again to Kalamazoo this past Saturday, and this time we went straight to a house in a pretty tree-lined suburb, welcomed by a woman juggling us and her daughter’s soccer game. She told us her husband was in the electrical union but had been laid off, and was delighted to get a position on the Obama campaign. When I donate money, I always think of it going to ads and fliers. It was nice to think that some of it going to people too. Before we left to canvas, we were taught a new way to approach potential supporters. We were not to deluge them with policy positions or debate the issues, but find out what their biggest concerns are and then create an emotional bond of empathy between us before trying to connect them to something in Obama’s life or positions that would address their concerns. Basically, we were going out telling people, “I am like you and Barack is like me.” They had a lovely glossy brochure printed up, heavy on the biography and family photos, designed to show that Obama gets where they come from, that his story is their story. It came in handy with our most memorable visit that day. This was to an elderly woman in a nursing home. We had no idea what to expect, because just before we spoke to her we spoke to the only PUMA I have ever met. “Have you thought about voting for Obama?” we asked. “Is he the…the Black?” she responded. Our hearts sank. We started to talk about his mother and his grandparents in Hawaii, but she paid no attention. “Because I don’t care about any of that,” she said, meaning his race, “We need a change. I think I am going to vote for the Democrat this time.” She told us about growing up in Bridgeport and being a poll worker for the first Mayor Daley, of seeing racism first hand in her neighbourhood and hating it. We opened the brochure and showed her the Christmas card photo of the Obamas. “What a lovely family he has,” she said.

Coolest. Lipsync. Ever.

I had the the great fortune tonight, through the kindness of some wonderful fellow Chicagoans, to be able to attend a fundraising reception at which Joe Biden was the guest of honour. As my loyal readers will remember, I didn’t know much about him before he was chosen as the VP candidate, but I was so impressed with what I saw in Springfield and everything since then, that I jumped at the chance.
The reception was at a private house, and we stood around chatting for a bit over wine and nibblies before we were ushered out to the garden which had cement steps in the back. almost as if it had been designed for open-air theatre — or itinerant speech-making vice presidential candidates.
Finally, the guest of honour arrived, and we hung on his every word.  He had some notes written up, but he put them in his pocket and spoke off the cuff for a few moments.  This was a speech that was given far from the press to an enthusiastic and intimate audience of supporters and friends.  What impressed me the most was his awareness of the critical nature of this moment he has become part of, the opportunity for real change we have now and maybe only now.  After he spoke, he answered a few questions, one not surprisingly about how he is going to handle Gov. Palin in the debates.  His answer was revealing.  He said that this was a question that might have made sense thirty five years ago, when he was first in the Senate and there were very few women in politics.  But he has been debating all kinds of strong and powerful women for years.  This is going to be nothing new for him. You may be afraid, but he is totally unfazed.
There was a brief chance to talk more informally after the questions were over. I was enormously impressed by every moment of this evening. Joe Biden is a man who knows what he’s doing, why he’s doing it (and who he’s in this for), and how to do it best. We should all have such a strong sense of purpose.

Well, erm, I guess I’ve outed myself politically already so I might as well keep on going.  I wanted to post this speech because I thought it was the standout of the night, and I know the networks cut it off.  I thought more people should have a chance to see it.

I found it poignant that Kerry was able to unleash the full force of his passion and brilliance on behalf of Barack Obama in a way that he was never able to do for his own presidential candidacy. But maybe that’s what we should have expected from a man who won a silver and a bronze star for helping others, not thinking of himself. And isn’t thinking of and working for others before onesself the real mark of a hero?

 

Yup, I was there. I’d never been to a big campaign rally before and I decided that, as an Illinois resident, yesterday might be my last chance. I’m glad I went. It was exciting, but even more than that, I’m glad I saw how the whole thing works. I’ll have a better idea now of just what goes into an event like that. First of all, the security. My heart sank when I saw the line to get in circling around and around many city blocks. But it moved very quickly, and the guards were both extremely efficient and extremely thorough getting us through the metal detectors and bag check. I finally understood just how hard it would be for someone with ill intent to get up to something at one of these rallies. And the snipers in the photo? Yeah. There was one guy on the roof right abut us though whose sole job was to spot people in the crowd who had collapsed and direct people to go help. With a crowd standing three hours and more in the hot sun with little water, that happened often.

 

 

Obama was low key and Biden was wonderful — impassioned, articulate (not to say clean), and a great wingman. But you can read about that elsewhere. Being in the crowd is such a different experience from seeing it on TV. First of all, you have no sense of how big the whole crowd really is. All you can see is your own tiny part of it. And there was a lot of booing when they talked abut Bush and McCain. Did that come through on TV? I never heard it before. You see how chants begin and spread through the crowd. But the most striking thing of all that I learned was that when you attend a rally like that, you’re not there to hear a speech and learn about a candidate (we could hear perfectly, though we couldn’t see much). The audience at a rally isn’t an audience at all. It is part of the spectacle, part of the performance for the real viewers, who are sitting at home. And we performed our hearts out.

 

 

Thank goodness for my little zoom lens or my photos would be even more pointless than they are now. But I had to post this one because you can see Michelle, and I <3 Michelle. We were hoping they’d walk down to our end of the stage, but they didn’t. The event started right on time and went very quickly. I think they knew they couldn’t leave all of out there in that heat for much longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Perhaps the coolest thing about being there was I got to be one of the first in the country to get an Obama/Biden sign. They were still warm and the ink scent was strong when they pulled them out of boxes to pass them to us, literally hot off the press. We had dinner in Champaign, and you could tell which waiters had made the trip to Springfield by their sunburns. We had sunburns too, but those will fade. The sign is in my window.

 

 

 

Cool, I won an award for blogging from my pal Julianne over at Writing the Renaissance. Now I get to nominate some of my favourite blogs in a wonderful blogging-pyramid scheme that will bring us all lots of lovely links, hoorah!

I have a vague idea that these are supposed to be historical fiction blogs, but since a lot of my favourites have already been named, I am going to pretend I do not know this and just nominate as my whimsy takes me (and by the way, there are at least five blogs called, “As my whimsy takes me.” I’m surprised it’s not more.)

LadyTess — Historical romance, Canadiana, and we went to college together. How can you lose? And if you hurry over there right now, yes right now, she has a photo of a deer in her very top post.

Plotters & Manipulators United — Sherry Thomas doesn’t post very often, but when she does it is always interesting, especially when she writes about the craft of writing. Actually, the reason I am giving her this is to nudge her into posting more. Nudge, nudge.

Whatever — John Scalzi writes SF not HF, but world-building is world-building and I visit every day. Mostly, I confess, for the cat photos and the political rants. No, with his billions and billions of hits, he does not need my blog award, but he’s up for a fan writer Hugo this year (oh, and: best novel), and I thought maybe if he didn’t win that, the Blogger Excellence Award might be some small consolation.

Into that world inverted… — I think I have been reading too many “how to write” books because what I want to say is that I love Sarah Rees Brennan’s blogging voice. And it seems strange to talk about voice on a blog, but I suppose it shouldn’t be. Read her blog for a while, and then I defy you not yo buy her book when it comes out.

Smart Bitches <3 Trashy Books — Another blog that doesn’t need my link to get hits, but these smart, feminist romance novel fans are my guilty pleasure and I might as well come clean about it. It’s been a long time since I read a romance, but it doesn’t matter. As they say, “Come for the Dominican bitches — stay for the man titty!” Oh lord, what kind of search strings am I going to end up with now?

And one food blog, for good luck:

Gastronomy Domine — Just don’t click the link if you’re feeling hungry. You’ve been warned.

Yeah, I know everyone’s seen it already. And it’s a beer commercial. But have a happy Canada day anyway, eh?