I’m un/fortunately ambivalent about the doings over at the DNC. On the one hand, it’s exciting, historic, and in my city. On the other hand, it’s in my city, and seeing as how the Pepsi Center is less than a mile from my house, it (the convention) is also kind of mucking things up near me. Yesterday, for instance, J and I went to the Denver Diner for breakfast. Normally, we would just walk over, but since we were leaving directly from there to go to Fort Collins (where my second cousin’s daughter was playing a street urchin in La Bohéme (which was very good)), we drove. While we were sitting there, seemingly every street around us was blocked off and closed to traffic. As we were then walking out the door, the first major protest of the DNC was coming down the street. J and I weren’t sure how we felt about the protest (necessary? naive? Ethan Persoff has a great post about how he felt about it on his blog.). (I walked up to one guy and congratulated him on his grammatically correct sign which read “Whom would Jesus bomb?” (he told me that so far two English teachers had told him it was wrong).) We were less sure of how we were going to get out of the parking lot. Thank goodness there was a back way out, but that back way became a very circuitous route to the interstate.
This morning, J and I went for a run (away from the Pepsi Center), and saw/heard (predictably) nothing. However, later, as I was coming back from a quick bicycle ride to Meininger Art Supply (to replace a broken pen), I saw James Carville running on the Cherry Creek path. Not having seen many celebrities ever in my life (I once spoke to Ravi Shankar on the phone), I was excited.
In the end, I guess, like most Americans, I am less concerned with the meat of politics—the important things that truly affect my life, and more concerned with the superficial: How am I going to drive my car and how long will I have to wait? and Ooh! Lookie-look, a TeeVee perosonality!!!
Yay for me. Yay for America.
