How I Spent My 81 Day Time Out – Part 4: There's No Place Like Home

After visiting South Dakota as chronicled here and here, and Colorado as chronicled here, Crystal Dancer and I headed back to Wisconsin.

Ten hours later we skidded into Omaha, which was in the middle of an ice storm. Fortunately we got to our hotel without incident, enjoyed dinner at a nearby restaurant, got some sleep and headed out again in the morning. Roads were cleared by then and we were thankful for our good fortune - good weather and good roads for nearly all of our 2,687 mile trip.

Back home we turned up the heat, and the water heater, and noted that the river behind our house was still frozen solid ...



The worst of the brutal cold was long gone, but a substantial part of winter was still ahead of us. Not to worry, we had an activity planned that warmed the cockles of our hearts - campaigning for Bernie. We joined a local group planning a march and rally to help drive up Bernie's vote count.



What a great group of people we joined. Our two dozen regulars include ...

Nine women over age 60
Six men over age 60
Four women between 21 and 60
Two men between 21 and 60
One woman under age 21
Two men under age 21

The three youngest members are all still in high school, and they've been terrific. After hosting multiple voter registration drives at their local school they expanded their efforts to other area high schools. I'm both amazed by and proud of these young Americans. They're awesome.

We now have nearly 1,000 people who have RSVP's to participate in the march and rally. Not bad for a town of just over 6,000!

We had a big sign printed to help further drive up the numbers ...


Last Saturday we had a sign-making party. One of our members donated $400 for printing. Thanks Tom!

We had the signs printed locally and bought bundles of (made in the USA) 4' lath ...


... and set up an assembly line operation. One person would fold the printed poster in half, a second would staple the sides and bottom edge, leaving a space in the bottom middle. A third person would insert the lath while a fourth would staple the sign to the lath.

This handy jig made aligning the lath in the sign quick and accurate ..


A power stapler made the stapling fast and easy ...


We now have hundreds of signs ready to give to marchers ...



We also had thousands of door hangers printed and have more than enough volunteers to hang them! Here's one of our organizers punching out the holes in the door hangers. His name is Dimitri Martin (no, you're thinking of Demitri Martin) and he just announced that he's running for Wisconsin State Assembly for District 40! Go Dimitri, Go!!!


Last night Crystal Dancer and I also attended another Bernie event in nearby Stevens Point, hosted by someone actually from Bernie's campaign. I was delighted to see more than 60 folks show up for this despite the short notice. Even better, a dozen of us volunteered to host phone banking sessions and almost everyone who attended signed up to participate in phone banking. A great turnout, and an exceptional level of participation for our great candidate. Go, Bernie, Go!!!

So, all in all, being back in Wisconsin is great. Bernie supporters abound and nothing beats the Dairy State!


(Disclaimer: The cow in this picture no longer stands in this spot. I wonder where she ended up.)