Obama Rally

Suellen and I got to the Obama Rally before 7:00. There was a big screen TV tuned to CNN, but that's about all they had to entertain us for the next 4 hours, until Obama came out. We learned that there were two kinds of tickets: the blue tickets, which were the preferred tickets because they gave you the maximum exposure to Obama, and the white tickets, which were our tickets, of course. We staked out a place along the ropes between the two sections and began to do what we did for the rest of the evening: stand in place.




After about 3 hours things started happening. The bleachers behind the main stage had been empty, and they started picking groups of people and asking them if they wanted to stand behind Obama during his talk. It was clear that the quality of the spot we had staked out was rapidly deteriorating as blue ticket people (who knew better than to arrive before 10:00) started filling in. So when they asked us, we said, "Sure!" They then opened the ropes and led us through the blue ticket group to the bleachers. But as I was about to climb up, the person who was leading us saw my camera said, "You can't take pictures up there." Unable to believe this rule, I said, "You mean no FLASH pictures, right?" And she said, "No, no pictures at all." Now the reason I came was to take pictures, so at this point I bailed on the bleachers, and Suellen went ahead. As I'm walking back through the blue ticket group I realize nobody is paying any attention to me, nobody knows what color ticket I have, and maybe I should just sort of blend into this crowd. Which I did, in a pretty excellent place to be taking pictures from.




Suellen wound up in the bleachers behind Obama, but because she's short, I don't think you could have seen her on TV. She stood up there under the blazing TV lights for about 2 hours, and after a while she signaled to me in American Sign Language, "H-O-T!" We were dressed for a Winter Storm Warning, after all. After a while I spotted Jesse Jackson about 20 feet from me and signaled her, "J-E-S-S-E," and pointed in the direction. The rest of the time we just waved back and forth to each other. Secret Service agents were all over the place (I had been wanded by one on the way in), and there was one Hispanic woman agent who kept staring at me, and I don't think it was because she wanted to give me her room number. I considered smiling and waving, but decided that might be interpreted as smart alecky, and I didn't want to be tazed. Or shot. So I didn't.

I guess it's too late to make a long story short, but the next stuff happened in less than 20 minutes, which was just a small part of the evening. Senator Dick Durbin came out and introduced Barack, and he and Michelle came out. He gave his speech (most memorable line: "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek," which is a good line to make you want to get up off your butt and get involved), then he and Michelle came out and worked the ropes. I stopped taking pictures long enough to shake hands with both of them, which was cool. And then they were gone.

We walked about 10 blocks back to the L, which we took up to our stop, then walked the 2 blocks from there. Got home at 12:55. Seriously past my bedtime.

Final observation: he is a seriously impressive person in person.