but seriously, folks

Mark Lazar sends the following:

Following summarizes events during and after the Obama campaign rally this afternoon. By the way, I have no intention of turning this mail list into an Obama-only site, but I do intend to forward any information I'm aware of regarding the presidential candidates and their supporters as they make their way through Texas, and especially locally, so if those of you who support Sen. Clinton want to see reports about her, please make them available to me. I'll be happy to forward those as well.

Now to the news. The rally was enjoyable for the dozen or so of us Potter-Randall Dems who went, and met up with a like number of mostly younger people who had generated the rally. There were about equal numbers of positive and negative reactions from passing motorists during the 2-3 hours we were out by Memorial Park. The young volunteers have established a blog presence on the Obama web site (if you go to www.barackobama.com and type in your zip code you can find all sorts of info). They were uploading pictures and accounts of the event to news media, and apparently CNN called back and talked to organizer Veronica Fuentes for over an hour. They may use some of this video on air--if anyone notices this, please let me know asap.

Now the urgent info--the Obama camp has apparently made a decision to open an office in Amarillo as early as the middle of this week. They are sending professional campaign staff here (to Amarillo, Texas!), and these field organizers need housing. We do not know at this time how many might be coming, but if you have a spare bedroom or a spare bed, and are willing to host a nice young person or a couple (they are almost always nice) for all or part of the time between this week and March 4, please respond immediately. We need to be able to tell them the maximum number we could host, and we need to do this asap. Keep in mind that you can set the ground rules for anyone you host. Thanks in advance.

Mark

p.s. The state office also is saying there is a good chance they may arrange to have the candidate appear here, so get ready. This is going to be interesting. [hmmm... -ed.]

Having canvassed in other states , I can assure you that participating in this sort of thing is rewarding for everyone. Mrs. Spacedark and I have volunteered to host. If you'd like to as well, e-mail panhandletruthtruthsquad (at) yahoo.com and we'll put you in touch with Mark.

spacedark