Day One, Morning One

Minneapolis is dead quiet at 7:30 AM. There's a breeze blowing through the streets and the birds are doing their early meet and greet. Andrew and I take a walk in the neighborhood of our gracious hosts. (We're being put up on the first floor of a kind family's home in town.) We've never been in Minneapolis for a convention, and these things are different every election year. I can sympathize with military commanders. What's the schedule? Where will they be? What will we be able to get away with? Should we do event-type things with themes, such as "Cheap Labor Day"? Or is it better to just set up in prominent places with our banners and our briefcase full of money and talk to the folks who come by? There's no way of knowing what's gonna work until we've given the new schtick a test drive on the streets in middle America. But first, it's time for a little yoga on the front lawn.

Into the Eye of the Storm

Not New Orleans, but Minneapolis. Our flight leaves JFK at 8:20, and my nerves are jangling at 1:20. Already there have been preemptive raids, seizures and arrests by Minneapolis cops.

Coverage of the raids by Star Tribune

I haven't ever been arrested in this country, and I had been naively thinking that the down home Minnesotan boys in blue might be more likely to behave themselves than the Daly fuzz of 1968. But then, forty years is older than the average cop, and why should I assume they'd much care? There have already been seizures of computers (and I don't mean OS freeze-ups) so I'll make sure everything on my little Mac is backed up before I head off. Wish me luck and a free pass. I've got nothing crucial planned for next week, though, so if I get tossed in the slammer, it's not the end of the world.