Snow Day for us on Inauguration Day

In this newly "blue" state of NC, we got a rare snow day on this Inauguration Day.

My car's back window at 10:00 am on 1.20.09. Believe!

The "Snowbama Man" my niece made. Nice cap!

Wonderful, memorable day.

.

Best. New Yorker Cover. Ever.

I was thrilled when we got our New Yorker this past week because the cover is a real keeper. I'm almost always interested in the cover, and there's been some great ones and also some duds. This one is beautiful, with the "O" as a full moon over the Lincoln Memorial, with it all shining in the reflecting pool (another view of the reflecting pool, 1963, here).



Here's a slideshow of all 47 covers of 2007 from The New Yorker site.

Here's a slideshow of all 16 cartoons from this week's issue.

Rainy Election Night Party for Obama

By 7:30pm on Tuesday night, I was too antsy to sit at home and passively wait for the election returns. I knew that downtown a party would be starting for Obama volunteers and Durham residents so I suited up in my raincoat and hat, took my not-so-good camera due to the rain, and headed downtown.

Blue Coffee was chock full of people, the marching bands were playing, the ABC/WTVD satellite truck was there, and people were milling about, smiling and laughing and watching the giant TV in the rain.

Southern HS Marching Band:

Jumbotron:

Celebration, complete with cut-out of President Elect Obama:

Cool recycling receptacle (hadn't noticed these before):

Major the bull, watching the returns:

Around 10:30pm I was cold, wet, and tired of standing around, so I headed home. They called it for Obama on MSNBC at 11:00pm and so I got to see the reactions from Grant Park and Times Square. Glad Durham had their own celebration too, even if in the rain.

Map to see NC voting percentages by county

If you click on this map and then click open a state, say North Carolina, you can run your mouse over the counties to see what percentage voted for Obama and what percentage for McCain. Pretty interesting to see how the counties break down in percentages. If McCain won, the county is depicted in red, if Obama won it, it's blue.

Incidentally, Durham County NC was bluer (percentage-wise) than Cook County IL for this Election.

Hundreds of newspaper front pages

If you want to peruse hundreds of front pages from today, just click here for the Newseum's site. It has 684 front pages from all over.

Really great Get Out the Vote (GOTV) music event

Today we ventured over to Chapel Hill to see some great music that was part of a big push to get out the vote on this last day of early voting in NC. It was held beside Morehead Planetarium on the UNC campus, near--but not too close!--to the early voting site itself. What a beautiful, sunny fall day too. I sometimes forget how beautiful the campus is there. Today it was positively picturesque. But we were there for the music. I guess we stayed from about 11:00 until 3:30pm, when it was over. Coffee and snacks were being served and people were friendly and quite enthusiastic about the Election.

I'd never seen Billy Bragg perform live before and it was just as great as I thought it'd be. He had some inspirational words about the election--'the whole world is watching,' essentially. He's performing here in Durham tonight, and was kind enough to devote some time and some songs to this GOTV effort today.

Billy Bragg

I'd never seen the band Megafaun before and I liked them a lot! What energy and enthusiasm these guys have. Looking forward to seeing more of them in the future. You can hear some of their music on their MySpace page here.

Megafaun

Finishing things up were the dB's with Mitch Easter. Always enjoy hearing the dB's and Ask for Jill and Amplifier never fails to thrill the crowd. They sprinkled in a couple of new songs too. And even one especially about the election.

dB's with Mitch Easter

Peter Holsapple

I didn't get a chance to see everyone perform today, but I thank them for doing the big show today and for caring that people get out and VOTE.

By 3:30pm we were tired and hungry and decided to head over to the Carolina Coffee Shop, which we hadn't been to in forever, maybe even since I was in undergrad, and had a nice relaxing meal. A superb day in Chapel Hill.



UPDATE: Peter Holsapple of the dB's has a detailed account of the music today at his fine blog here.
.

Yes I did . . . vote early.

I'm thrilled. Lots--and I mean lots--more African American voters at my early voting place than I have ever seen before. Lots more voters, period, too. We were #2133 and 2134 at our site when we fed our ballots through. Now I'm not saying I know how every African American voter is voting because I do not, but let me say this--we almost always vote early and there were many more African American voters voting at that early voting place than I've ever seen. This is at the main early voting site, the Board of Elections, so anyone in any precinct can vote there early. There are 8 other early voting places in the county I understand.

It was awesome! The place was packed, the energy was so high it fairly crackled, the line moved quickly, lots of smiles and camaraderie. The feeling of 'we are doing something monumental here' was in the air more than I've ever felt before.

Beyond the required 60 feet (you can't campaign within 60 feet of the voting place), there was a young woman selling Obama Biden yard signs for $5 a piece. They were going fast.

My shirt with my sticker:

Thomas Frank at Quail Ridge Books

We zipped over to Raleigh tonight to Quail Ridge Books to see the author Thomas Frank give a reading from his latest book, The Wrecking Crew. He's the guy who wrote What's The Matter With Kansas among others. The Durham Bull Pen household has several of his books already, so we thought we'd listen to him speak, read some from his latest, and get the books signed. The place was full, people standing the aisles even, to hear him. He's such an incredibly smart and funny guy. Lots of great questions from the crowd too.

He said he had to leave quickly after signing books but didn't say why. He cheerfully signed books and then left in a hurry, thanking everyone for coming.

We drove back to Durham, flipped on the Rachel Maddow Show (loving her new show on MSNBC), and there was Thomas Frank, being interviewed LIVE by Rachel. Funny moment. "Hey, we just saw him!" Guess he was on his way to the local NBC studio so he could be interviewed.

Thomas Frank at Quail Ridge Books

He's writing a column for The Wall Street Journal these days too, called The Tilting Yard, and here's the latest installment: Get Your Class War On.

.

Peggy Noonan sees writing on the wall?

Normally I skim what she has to say, she being one of Reagan's speech-writers and (I think) the inventer of the "thousand points of light" meme for Bush that Dana Carvey made so famous.

But this caught my eye in The Wall Street Journal today entitled "Pity Party":

Big picture, May 2008:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party

Wow, I've never seen such gnashing of teeth since Clinton was elected. Except this time it seems like it's coming from a delayed realization that nothing has been accomplished in the Republican controlled years and (here's the worst part) people may be finally, finally catching on to it. Rest of the article here.

Barack was in downtown Durham yesterday?

I had no idea. Apparently he was at Blue Coffee Cafe. Picture and article in the New York Times.

Click for pic for a larger view.

The line stretched up the street

The crowd was later to learn that Michelle Obama was running many hours behind schedule and wouldn't arrive in Durham for a good long time, but at this time the line to get in to see her stretched from the Armory up the block to Main Street, all the way to See Say Be (CCB) Plaza. Quite the carnival atmosphere with T-shirt hawkers and a guy on a microphone keeping the crowd amused and enthused.

Jim Neal was working the crowd and I think I caught of glimpse of Harvey Gantt too. So here are some pictures as promised:

Michelle Obama in downtown Durham Friday

UPDATE: I snapped some pix over at the Armory just a few minutes ago and I'll upload them in a bit. I saw Jim Neal working the crowd and maybe Harvey Gantt there too--not sure of that, only a glimpse.

The line was down the block and 'round the corner at the Armory. At 11:35am (the doors were going to open at 11:30) some fellow from the Obama campaign announced to the line-standers that Michelle Obama's plane was STILL on the ground in Chicago due to 'weather.' Crowd groaned. I hoofed it back to my office at that point.

Michelle Obama will appear at a get-out-the-vote event Friday in Durham. The program starts at 12:30 p.m. at the Durham Armory, 220 Foster St. Doors open at 11:30 a.m.

The events are free and open to the public, but tickets are required. To receive a ticket by e-mail, go to http://www.nc.barackobama.com/.

Since it's near my office, I'll pop over and take a few pictures of what's going on, although I don't have an official ticket.

NC's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on CSPAN Fri night

Should be interesting. C-SPAN will carry it live.

08:00 PM EDT1:30 (est.) LIVE Forum North Carolina Jefferson-Jackson DinnerDemocratic Party, North Carolina Hillary Rodham Clinton , D-NY Michael F. Easley , D, North Carolina.

Wral reports:

The event was supposed to be a dinner for 500, now the crowd has grown to 900 with 4,000 expected to be in the audience to watch the two speak days before the state’s primary on Tuesday.

“It is huge. We’ve never had anything like this. It is clearly unprecedented,” said Jerry Meek, state Democratic Party Chair.

The Indy endorsements are online

I just figured that out. They can be found here. I don't always agree with them, and usually also see what endorsements People's Alliance puts out as well.

I have to say I'm leaning more toward Perdue than Moore mainly due to the death penalty issue.

Durham's Early Voting began today for primary!

I try to take advange of early voting, so I thought I'd post about it here so you can take advantage too! Truthfully, I get pretty jazzed about voting, so early voting is GREAT for me, although I feel a bit left out on voting day itself, but at the same time smug that I've already voted. (Click on the page below to see a bigger picture of the schedule and information.)


Go here for more on Schedule, Absentee, Early Voting, and Sample Ballots.

No, this wasn't at the National Gallery of Art

On my recent trip to DC, I was strolling in a Crystal City mall when I happened upon this painting hanging in a display window. I had to snap a picture of it because I was afraid no one else would believe it if I tried to describe it. Enjoy. (Click the picture to see it larger if you are brave.)

Afternoon film at The Full Frame Documentary Film Fest

We took in the documentary Body of War at The Carolina Theatre in downtown Durham this afternoon as part of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. It was truly as phenomenal as I thought it would be based on what I'd already seen and read about it. Because we Durhamites were lucky enough to have this screened at the film festival this weekend, the filmmakers Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro were present and took some questions after the screening. The following is a low res pic from my cellphone camera:

Fletcher Theatre inside The Carolina seats over 1,000 and was full from what I could observe.

I'm hoping the film makes a regular run at The Carolina Theatre soon for anyone who wants to see it but didn't see it at the film festival. It was very warmly received today, which was not lost on the filmmakers.

I also highly recommend the CD that Tomas Young put together for the film and all the profits from the CD go to the Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Also, this was just another of the innumerable reasons why Durham rocks. I heard about this film only 2 weekends or so ago, saw the Bill Moyers show on it, and today I saw the movie at The Carolina Theatre and had a chance to hear the filmmakers talk about it in person. How cool is that?

It's Raining McCain!

I call them The "Whether" Girls. I say "Whether" because I can't figure out whether it's parody, or it's sincere. Either way, and for so many reasons, it scores high on the WTF scale.



The original & classic Weather Girls video here. Music written by Paul Schaffer, oddly enough. A 1980's dance club sensation, to say the least. It even has its own wiki page.

Don't Mess with Texas--Prairie View A&M, that is.

Prairie View A & M shows us how it's done.

Seems the Texas Republicans, known for these sorts of things, went out of their way to shut down and shut out the young voters at this historically black university located in Waller County. How? They made sure the closest early voting polling place was located more than 7 miles from the campus. Most kids with no car on campus would just be out of luck.

So what did the students do? They organized a group and all walked the 7 miles to their early voting polling place on the first day it opened!

You might want to see this:



A still photo below. Banner: It's 2008 We Will Vote.



From: ruralvotes.com

James Carville and Mary Matalin's home.

Ever wonder where Carville and Matalin live? Yeah, me neither.

However, Architectural Digest did a story on it last month here. One question, what's with all the pink? Doesn't red and blue make purple after all?

One room has red coral on the wall. I found some red coral recently and blogged about it. I did not hang it on my wall. Nor do I have a monkey tchotchke holder, alas.

AD actually states, and apparently not even ironically, "Opposing Views Unite in a Bold Design Vision Near the Capital."

Seriously now, here's their "exuberant living room" designed with "entertaining in mind." I guess it does its entertaining all by itself?

If you like to see the six photos AD put up on the web, click here.

And, for bonus points, can anyone explain the painting behind the Carville-Matalin family shown in this photo. Wow.