Obama Love Fest

We went downtown Springfield to see the spectacle of Barack Obama's official public declaration of presidential aspiration. 8 degrees F, smiles, friendliness in general. We arrived at the line to get in at 7:40am or so. Much talk about the very frigid wind. A single black woman with ipod in front of us. Middle age white couple behind us, very friendly. White guy behind them with anti abortion message sign. He was interviewed by some young women of the press. The line inched slowly in compression. Teenager in front continually whining. Tick Tock burr burr. Then at around 8:40am the gates are opened. Cheering, excitement. Line stops, Police car has to get through. Young people handing out some flyers. We go in. Confusion. Blue tickets, red tickets, yellow tickets, no tickets. The important people with red and yellow tickets got front row room, while the commoners were held back a distance. Some disgruntlement. We pile up like sardines, penguins, or lemmings. Many young people, lots of white people, lots of black people, some asian in our area. Small talk, funny talk. Jokes, panicky phone calls. Snipers looking over. Tick Tock burr burr. Some dude shows up periodically to throw out souvenirs. Two ladies leave to watch it on tv, too cold for them. Music blaring (I have sensitive hearing so blaring to me is probably not blaring to others). Pigeons fly around, some seeking sunshine. Medics come in to attend someone. Helicopter(s) fly over. Bumper stickers and signs handed out. We score one of each. Senator Durbin arrives for opening comments. Durbin welcomes the attending politicians, Gov. Blagojevich gets booed in our area. Well, just have to agree with that.

Then finally Obama arrives, crowd goes wild. He works the crowd a bit. Signs waving, yelling, screaming. Obama seems a little flustered by the sight of the bundled up crowd. He gets going with his speech. The crowd murmurs, agrees, jokes, screams, chants. Clapping with mittened hands, produces a muffled sound like bird wings in flight. Obama talks on, quite the lovely speech I may add. Lasts about 25 minutes. When he states he is running for president the crowd really reacts like crazy. When it is over people start streaming out in all directions from us and we are caught in an island like spot for awhile. It took some time to get out to the gate, people dancing to the music, someone lost a glove. Lots of handwarmer packages strewn around. I will probably have a sore throat tomorrow. Darla, Springfield, IL