Progress with the Progressives…

I arrived in Boston after a rather long drive down from Vermont. My cousin Mathew totally rocks. Despite having a life of his own, he still managed to get me where I needed to be when I needed to get there. I’d never been to this part of New England, and it was cool to drive through during the daytime.

Driving in Boston is worse than San Francisco, hands down. I thought SF was the worst with the pervasive No Left Turn, which makes getting around kind of a trick. Boston just has these one way roads with no exits that take you miles away from where you want to be, with no direct route back.

Despite some confusion at check-in (my sponsor already had someone check in with him, and there are only two people allowed per room. The gracious people at the Kucinich campaign put me up in a room, at elast until Wednesday night. Not sure how things are going to play out, as I’m planning to stay through Thursday night…

By late afternoon, my throat started swelling. I’d had some serious congestion night before last in Vermont. I think my immune system was finally overrun. Sore throat, and a sore tongue of all things. In any event, I decided to make it a short night, took a huge swig of Nyquil and crashed around 7 or 8 pm. Woke up in a bit of delirium around 11:30, put earplugs in and slept another 12 hours. After nearly two months of 16-18 hour days, my body finally called a time-out.

Today I met Dennis Kucinich and gave copies of my CD single to 3 or 4 members of Kucinich’s senior staff. I also met the planners for the Kucinich Gala, which concludes the 2004 Kucinich campaign. Despite Kerry being a sure thing, the Democratic party still wants to demonstrate unity, which gives some leverage to the Kucinich campaign to influence the democratic platform. Kucinich’s core constituency is the progressive movement – ardent anti-war advocates, “peace and justice”, etc..

Anyway, I got an eagle-eye view of democracy in action when the Kucinich delegates (67 of ’em) gathered to talk about how they’re going to vote at the convention. Kucinich officially endorsed Kerry on Thursday, but the delegates get to vote for whoever they want to. The Kucinich delegates want to “vote their conscience” and vote for him, even though Kucinich clearly doesn’t have enough votes for the nomination. For many of them, this vote is the only way for the progressive movement to show up in the process.

I had been feeling that I should be a bit more aggressive in promoting my song but my friend Aaron pointed out that I could be spraying my stuff randomly, or “sniping”. Given that my efforts today got my CD in the hands of senior leadership of a presidential candidate (as well as the event planners for the Gala event), looks like I might have a playing gig on Thursday.

Gonna take it easy tonight, and get to bed at a reasonable hour. Many activities going on this week to get to.