I knocked a hundred forty doors today, bringing my weekly total to about six hundred. [View all]

[struggle4progress]

Maybe if I plop here a while, I'll feel tired. But right now I'm so psyched I can barely sit still. If the sun were still up, I think I could walk a few hours more.

It was a good day, and I had a lot of fun talking to people. Only four or five weren't friendly; and I found it easy to reply nicely to them as I moved along. One woman told me, I'm not voting this year because I don't like either candidate! I suppose I could have told her that her ballot lists about fifty different people running in about twenty separate races but I actually just wished her a nice day.

I met parents with babes in arms.

A retired black man heckled me mercilessly, then patted my arm and told me of course he was voting for my candidate.

While I was chatting with his older sister, an elementary school child, aged seven or eight craned his neck to read the name of the Senator I'm hoping to re-elect and then spontaneously cheered my candidate.

An older man, who had recently moved to this town, in a rundown house in an older neighborhood, had already carefully researched where to vote.

I met transplants from Africa and Asia and other parts of the Americas, that we here often forget when we speak of America.

I met a grandmother, who said she has never missed an election, and who lives next door to her grand-daughter who has never missed an election.

I'd ring doorbells, and people I'd just met would call from two houses away, "They're not home!" That saves me a half-minute a door whenever it happens; and it adds up

I met a blind man, who wanted to know if I could find him a ride to the polls, got his phone number, and passed it along. I didn't promise him anything, but I got a winning smile and a thank you. People who looked like stereotypical street thugs from some cheap thriller said thanks. A man sitting in his car asked for a copy of the door hanger, so I ran through my spiel with him, and he said thanks. I heard it so often it almost blended with the background noise of those streets: I might hear it in my memory whenever I pass through there again.