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August 22 - September 3, 2015: House-Sitting for Ron and Prudence |
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July 12, 2015: The Bird Nesting Area at Parkland Hospital |
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Return to the Index for 2015 |
Well, it's the early stages of the 2016 Presidential campaign season here in the United States, and Fred and I have already made our early choice- Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Of course, we will probably support any Democrat who is eventually nominated, but between Bernie and Hillary, Bernie's our choice.
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We parked a couple of blocks from the hotel, right near the old Dallas High School building and walked over to the hotel. It took me a little while to find Sharon, the person I'd been corresponding with online, but I eventually did and got assigned to help with reception and registration.
At this point, it was two hours before the start of the rally, which was supposed to be held in one of the ballrooms; 2000 people were expected. A few days before the rally, though, they moved it downstairs to the main ballroom, so that the 4000 people who had signed up online could be accommodated. Two hours before the event, people were already lining up outside downstairs, but also lining up at the top of the escalator upstairs, where the first ballroom was located. I spent some time taking pictures (we were all requested to do so and then email them to the campaign for them to pick and choose from). I only took a few, including one of the folks at the Press reception desk.
As it got close to time for the doors to open, I got to my position at one of the five registration desks, and that's where Fred took the picture of me that you can see here. Right at noon, an hour ahead of the scheduled start time, the doors opened downstairs and the line that had formed upstairs was allowed to go down the escalator where we were waiting at registration. Fred took another picture of me as the first people came down the escalator. From then on for the next hour, it was pretty hectic.
From then on I was pretty busy getting people to stop and register (those who had registered online had been given stickers upstairs). I did take one other photo of some teenyboppers who'd been asked to do a little high-energy entertaining outside the main ballroom; you can see them here.
Eventually, I was asked to go over to the bottom of the escalator and spot the folks without stickers and direct them to one of the registration desks, and while I was doing that, Fred took the two pictures below:
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Eventually, I had to move upstairs as people kept coming. As I said, 4000 were expected but over 6000 showed up. The hotel removed the chairs from the ballroom, and it was standing room only. Outside, in the huge lobby, there were already big screens at both ends showing campaign pictures, and these were eventually used to show what was going on in the ballroom, and about 1000 folks sat on the floor watching Bernie's speech on those screens. Use the movie players below to see a couple that I made of how this looked out in the lobby area:
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Towards the end of Bernie's speech, all the volunteers were taken backstage so that we could all have our picture taken with him. There were about 40 of us doing all kinds of tasks during the event. While we waited, a few of us peeked into the ballroom to see what it looked like inside; you can see my picture here.
While I was inside the venue, I did make a short movie of some of Bernie's remarks, and you can use the player below left to watch that movie. When he was finished, he came out to where we were for our picture-taking session, and I made a movie of him as he walked by us; you can use the player below, right, to have a look at that movie.
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Helping out Senator Sanders was satisfying, although the conventional wisdom is that Hillary is way ahead in fundraising, the polls and the early delegate counts. But we shall see. Incidentally, when I get my copy of the group photo, I will insert it on this page.
You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.
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August 22 - September 3, 2015: House-Sitting for Ron and Prudence |
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July 12, 2015: The Bird Nesting Area at Parkland Hospital |
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Return to the Index for 2015 |
