Scarlett Johansson & Mandy Patinkin oh my

A canvass of what the Obama organizers call a “turf” usually means knocking on 50 or so doors, up one side and down the other of three or four adjoining streets in a neighborhood. Most people, even on a Saturday, are not home or aren’t answering the door. I hear the TV volume go down when I step on the porch.
Oh yeah, I have a doorbell update:
Nineteen out of twenty doorbells in Cleveland do not work.
I arrived at the satellite office, which was our office overseer Donna’s house, about 9 AM. I was determined to try and make it back to the Lakeshore office for Scarlett Johansson. I managed to finish my canvassing, get some lunch and arrive at the office in time.

We had a surprise celebrity: Mandy Patinkin, star of TV and Broadway. He said we are fortunate to be working for Barack Obama, and fortunate to be living in this time. He was both inspired and inspiring. He spoke about how his visits to Obama office around the country have made him proud, and about the astonishing transformation he’s witnessed between 2004 and 2008. “In the Kerry offices, there were ten or twenty people filing papers, drinking coffee. I go into an Obama office and there are forty people, energized, alive, ready to go out and make a difference.”
Scarlett, on the other hand, was mostly there to look pretty, which she did quite well, and get her picture taken with everyone in the room.


Tomorrow Obama is coming to speak in Cleveland. Emily asked me to volunteer for the event. I asked if we’d be lying down to form a living carpet for Obama to walk on. She thought we might be spelling out his name with our bodies.