We’re off to see the wizard

Actually, in our house, we refer to Barack Obama as "the Good Witch," as we try to explain to Scout what voting is, and who we hope we're voting for.

Obama is scheduled to appear in Springfield, Ill. tomorrow with the VP we're all waiting for him to name, and Cristie, Scout and I are joining a small coterie of "friends, partisans and Illinoisans," as a friend puts it.

We'll take the Amtrak down—Scout's first ride aboard a "real train"*—and we'll roll down the tracks with a mob of what I hope will be a merry band of likeminded others.

I hope we get there early enough to get past the Secret Service security bottleneck. I hope they let us bring in Scout's DVD player. I hope it doesn't rain.

Mostly, I hope the communal, in-person, this-is-history, "Daddy, is that the good witch?" experience wipes the translucent film of dreariness and boredom that's grown over my exultation about Obama's candidacy.

As the kids say, I'll "report back."

* This phrase has particular currency in our family, as I'm quoted in a book of my mother's as saying, at five, "My glad is bigger than a real train."

Postscript, 8/24:

Like Dorothy et al, on our first visit to see the wizard, we didn't
receive total satisfaction in our decadent desire to be inspired by a
politician and a crowd.

In our case, it was hot as doughnut grease in the sun, we were too far
away to see much and Obama's speech was mostly an introduction of
Biden.

Still, you can't beat a day on the rails, headed to the Old State Capitol the way Abraham Lincoln did it.