Dear Eric,

     Hard to know if I'll write anything coherent; it's closing in on 1 a.m. and delegation breakfast is at 7:45 again.  One wag suggested, as we were waiting endlessly for buses to come back to the hotel, that we just start the breakfast meeting there in the parking lot.

     This morning we had a short talk by Garrison Keillor and we were given copies of his new book, so that got the day off to a good start.  The food is so-so.  I had a fairly long call with a Gannett reporter and made only a bare dent in my e-mail, then caught the hotel shuttle to the T and went down to the Marriott Long Wharf at noon for a free lunch courtesy of Americans for Democratic Action -- excellent food, and good talks by Jim McDermott (D-WA), Barney Frank (D-MA), Gerald Nadler (D-NY), and a couple of other people I forget.  I was in the lunch line with Nadler and he was telling a couple of people about an idea he has for defusing the "Democrats are weak on fighting terrorists" charge.  It sounded good to me.  I'll give you details tomorrow if you like.

     Then I got a cab to the Hotel Marlowe to take in part of the Tikkun conference. (Tikkun is a Jewish-founded organization, though about half the members are non-Jews.  It seeks to implement the principle of Tikkun -- to restore and preserve the world.)  The three co-chairs, Michael Lerner, Susannah Heschel, and Cornel West, spoke, about restoring a politics of meaning.  It was really uplifting.  Then I caught the bus to the Convention.  Convention was exciting; a new acquaintance of mine, the Vicar of Old North Church, gave the opening invocation, and it was straight out of the Book of Common Prayer -- how very Episcopalian of him! -- made me feel quite at home.  At the break I went out to get something to eat and found myself talking to a reporter for beliefnet.  We spent nearly an hour discussing religion and politics.  At 8 I had to leave the floor to go to the "green room" (here called the "gold room") to go, eventually, to the stage.  That took 1/2 or 3/4 hour, resulting in my missing Al Gore's speech.  But boy, did I have good seats for Jimmy Carter and the Clintons!  Only problem: the sound is really lousy when you're behind the speakers, so you have to read the teleprompter, which means you're not looking raptly at the speaker most of the time!

     Bill Clinton is evidently getting good response to his "send me" line, because he used it again in this speech.  I'm worried to death that tomorrow evening I'll miss Howard Dean while waiting in the gold room; that would ruin the whole convention for me!

     But now I need to grab an hour or two of sleep.  One big logistical problem here is that there aren't enough buses; even though the convention was over a few minutes after 11, we didn't get back to the hotel till after 12:30, and some even later.

Cheers,

Linda+