Registering a Mormon, The First Debate

“Oh my God, we registered a Mormon!” The first words of the day, preceded by a conversation at the door with two young black suited boys on their mission. We spend the morning organizing ourselves and stuff, e-mailing, and spending time with Puma, our feline friend who is temporarily locked in the basement. Sam makes absurdly amazing ginger tea on the stove. We head out to pick up Ariel and we go downtown to a big plaza, near the state university. Ariel and I vigil together, and Sam and Julie vigil together. We set up two ironing board Codepink vigiling stations in the plaza and spend over three hours tabling. By the end of the day we have registered 28 voters, whose cards we drop off at Acorn, where we meet a female Baptist minister who lights up the evening. Then we drive off and get lost in East Cleveland and then finally find our way to Jeremy’s where we watch the presidential debate with a dozen other folks. We keep score of buzzwords and these are our post-debate thoughts: Kerry rocked the debate. He was a composed, articulate, on-point statesman with clear and direct messages. No nonsense, no wishy-washy, humble in his admittances of mistakes and grievances, and promising to be a strong leader.