Here in the battleground state

Yep, we're in a battleground state here in Ohio. I took this photo of a neighbor's yard. Talk about battling.

When my mother was here visiting, she commented that she'd never seen so many political signs, and I believe her--where she lives, in Washington state, the electoral votes pretty clearly go blue, so Washington citizens don't put so much energy into convincing each other.

But I live in a battleground state this year, and I decided to jump into the fray. Yesterday, with a group of folks from the Obama Campaign for Change Office in Beavercreek, we went knocking doors. The office provided us with lists of addresses where, they somehow determined, undecided voters lived. We attempted to cheerfully, politely, and respectfully persuade. We said why we were voting for Senator Obama and gave out flyers. People were very nice. I think they are very used to this sort of thing in Ohio. I wish there was a different way, a less obtrusive way (hi, I know you're enjoying a precious Saturday at home with your family, but I wonder if you'd like to talk politics for a few minutes...I didn't actually say that, but that's how it felt...) , but this is the time-honored way of increasing your candidate's polls. It was hard work, but I'm glad I did it. It was a pleasure to be among like-minded citizens in Beavercreek. It was also a pleasure to see who showed up--I suspected that I might be the oldest, for example, but I'm happy to report that there were many folks older than me. Older, younger, middle-aged, men, women, black, white. Very cool. My door-knocking partner was a professor of geology at University of Dayton, father of three, and life-long democrat. He was a great guy. Overall, a good day, and I slept well last night.