Rain in Las Vegas, NV, is almost always a blessing. With an annual average rainfall of about 4 inches, less in recent years with the ongoing drought, and Lake Mead's accelerating disappearing act, we need every drop. But not today, I thought upon waking up Friday morning to a gloomy drizzle, not when President Obama is coming to fire up Democrats to GOTV.
After four days of scattered storms bringing an inch or more accumulation to various parts of the valley, what I wanted more than more water for my garden was a Democratic torrent at the 10/22 Moving Forward rally to shame Sharron "Obtuse" Angle's reported 2000 drips <slang> at Stoney's Country bar. Could I trust my fellow Dems, even my comfort-loving hubby, to want to stand in the rain for hours, waiting to hear the president and to be counted by the media?
In the intervening hours between attending my 10 a.m. faculty meeting and returning home at 12:30 p.m. to collect hubby and trek across town to Orr Community Center Park, my mental fog lifted. Like a well-practiced strip-tease artist, Friday had begun revealing itself to be something far different than first impressions, for me a Celestine Prophecy kind of day in which unexpected coincidences have deeper meaning. Synchronicity experienced at the meeting made me contemplative; obsessing about the continuing drizzle reminded me of my wedding day. I remembered how hubby and I had arranged to say our vows on a cliff overlooking our favorite Southern California beach during an El Niño December when rain fell nearly every day. How my mother had pestered me, "Have you made any alternative indoor plans yet?" and I ignored her: hubby and I never doubted the sun would shine on our day, and, sure enough, our winter solstice wedding featured brilliant blue skies, our special omen for our bright future. Refreshed by this memory, I felt...guardedly optimistic.
Hubby and I were still debating the weather and my lack of rain-proof jacket or umbrella when we pulled off E. Twain Ave. into the parking lot behind the Boulevard Mall, one long block west of the rally venue.
Excitement tightened my chest once I glimpsed the already long line of people coiled up and down both sides of Algonquin and curling west along Katie Ave. Although energized by the festive atmosphere, I could barely keep up with my fast-walking hubby, who found line's end on Katie near the mall parking-lot entrance. We grabbed two yellow tickets from an OFA volunteer and, by the time I completed the forms along the tickets' bottoms, over a hundred people had filed in line behind us.
Once the line started moving, we walked east on Katie, turned left on Algonquin, walked north along the west side of the street back to Twain where we made a U-turn to walk the east side of Algonquin back to Katie. There, the line was split by the color of the tickets, blue and green to the left and yellow to the right, with both lines heading east on Katie past the school to the community park beyond. Lining the park's edge west of the baseball diamond, a line of tents covering metal detectors had been erected, and we were all scanned before entering the park. Not even umbrellas were allowed inside the venue, so I was happy not to have brought mine; giving up the miniature pen-knife I'd inadvertently left hanging on my key-chain to attend the Obama rally at Cashman Center in 2008 was sacrifice enough. This time, neither of us having any contraband, hubby and I passed security and strolled toward the northwest quadrant of the park where the stages, bleachers, and barricades were set up.
Yellow tickets got us the privilege of standing fairly near the main stage, maybe 10 people deep of where the podium was set up but only two or three people deep of the side stage where a grand piano and some microphones were placed. The bleachers behind us were filling in with green ticket holders; a high school marching band occupied the other bleachers directly behind the podium.
A DJ entertained us as attendees continued to file in.
Waiting for the rally to start, I studied the sky. The gray clouds were breaking up; rain was clearly no longer a threat. The sun passing behind a cloud made a dramatic show--
--as if to call my attention to the passing of the day's earlier darkness. With the DJ blaring the Black-Eyed Peas' "I Got a Feeling",
I was thinking of other lyrics: "The sun'll come out tomorrow"...
and "Here comes the sun."
Both songs have carried me through tribulations in my life, but their floating up from memory to the surface of awareness while I was photographing the sky and absorbing the rally's building energy seemed like another of this day's signs, one telling me the Democrats' sun is burning away the Tea Party's and Republicans' clouds of gloom and doom.
And, as if I needed more signs, the camera worked, the bright lights didn't ruin the pictures, and not too many people's heads and signs got in the way, so I have these photos to share with you.
Singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles
Congresswoman Shelley Berkley
Congresswoman Dina Titus
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
And President Obama...
"I want You! to GOTV!!!
By the way, that "torrent" of Democrats I wanted to see at the rally? The local paper originally reported "several thousand" but updated this remark to report competing estimates: "The crowd, sitting in bleachers and standing on the lawn, appeared to number no more than 5,000. Organizers distributed a crowd count of 9,000, based on a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police estimate." Hubby and Democratic organizers we spoke to before canvassing on Saturday each independently estimated 5500 to 6000 folks. In any case, we outnumbered the "tea-hadis" at "Obtuse" Angle's bar rally, so hurray for Southern Nevada Democrats!