End of the first full day

All:

Well, it's the end of a very long first day for the "Texas Contingent" which
includes (so far):

Fidel, Jan W, Carondelet, Stan Merriman & Mary Kay, Linda Foley and myself.

There may be others "lurking" that I haven't found yet :-)

I have taken > 100 digital photos so far, and was just too pooped out to post
them today. I tried to have most of them contain photos of people (ours
and others at the convention).

Main activity for tonite was the Veterans for Peace program that took place for
a few hours at the Feneuille (?spelling?) building downtown. We all went down
there but when we got to the event Jan, Emily (?last name?) and I decided
to just walk around the area and have a good sit-down dinner.

We ended up eating at Cheers (YES! That one! although not the original
location) ... we have pictures in front of the cutouts of the cast :-)

And we had some fascinating discussions with Emily, a totally
wonderful lady of (I'd estimate) > 80 years of age who has been
travelling with Dennis.

She was apparently a pretty high-end journalist on environmental
issues until the Reagan age at which time she says that the R administration
was able to undo all the environmental progress made in the state of
Washington over many years in a very short period of time (sound
familiar?)

She also said that "she'd waited 66 years for a candidate like Dennis
to come along" and that her explanation of why he hasn't
gotten media coverage is because the current media "establishment"
(including "liberal" like NY Times) prefers to run negative
stories on policitians and Dennis is absolutely clean ... no
weird skeletons in his closet (not withstanding Cleveland, which
from my readings were not really a slight on his character
at all).

Another interesting point: Dennis was going to speak at the
aforementioned Veterans' meeting but was called at the last
minute for a vote in Congress (sorta suspicious that a vote
was called this late when normally voting takes place
earlier in the week).

And whatever the opposition says about Dennis, as many of you
know he has the most consistent attendance record for voting
of any congressman, running for Prez or not :)

Anyhoo, fun times so far, although the lack of universal
air conditioning (even in cars!) makes me feel like a total
wimp :-)

Charlie