Maude de Valerie

well, I haven't finished processing this yet, and am too tired to really even think about it. Still a little punchy, and stressing about the close Perriello/Goode race that is stuck awaiting canvass/provisional ballot results. Aargh! But, impressions: people standing in the rain, sometimes for hours... the gentleman in Lunenburg who gave me his Obama lyrics to 'people get ready'... the concern for my safety of the sheriff's deputy when he learned I was going to monitor the election in Appomattox... the little boy who asked if I was going to vote for "Arak Obama" and told me that he was too... the really hopeful and excited way in which everyone I met with in southside Virginia, from Appomattox to Mecklenburg, spoke about the election. The tears streaming down people's faces, including my own. Sappy, I know--and it started early in the day, just seeing big-D Democracy in action, feeling a restoration of my faith in the process, and in the people of this country. I called my mom from somewhere in Mecklenburg or Charlotte and told her I thought it was really going to happen in Virginia. And it did. We did it.