Sadie and I are back in the saddle today, recovering from our six-day stint in Austin with Chun Yang and her nine-year-old son, Tai -- and my first order of business is thanking Cali Scribe and Chun Yang again for their extraordinary generosity. Were it not for them, we would have watched longingly from the sidelines -- something I can't even fathom because we had such a terrific time!
By way of thanks to both, I offer up this photo diary of Sadie Lady's experiences and her impressions of Netroots Nation/Austin, the Kossacks she met, and the politicians she encountered.
More below:
Sadie and Tai started their afternoon with a well-deserved afternoon swim:
Sadie, the youngest-ever registrant at NN (a fact she stated frequently and proudly throughout the week), begin making the most of her experience early. She kicked in with Chun Yang, Tai and myself on Tuesday night to help stuff the swag bags:
After two brisk hours of stuffing bags, the kids were hungry, so we motored over to 6th Street for a slice...
...and some sightseeing:
(Austin's Museum of the Weird, tucked above the Lucky Lizard gift shop on 6th Street, is, by the by, eight-year-old kid heaven. A mere buck to gain access to the inner sanctum and a seven-foot tall mummy, shrunken heads, the skeleton of a two-headed cat, giant stuffed lizards. Need I say more?)
Then, a little e-mail check...
...and, finally, to crash out with Cowie:
Wednesday went by in a bit of a blur, swimming, doing some offsite laundry and grabbing lunch, but the highlight was getting registered and getting a really cool name badge:
Sadie spent most of Wednesday evening in the lobbying, playing with her GameBoy and chatting up the Kossacks. She found highacidity early and fell in love. "Mom, she's my favorite! She's so cool!"
Must have been fate, because she ate about a dozen apples during the days we were there and, miraculously, every time Sadie played the "twist the stem" game (twist the stem, and the letter you land on is the name of your next friend) it always wound up on H.
Thursday, things got interesting. First, Sadie spent the morning with the other Kos kids, hanging out with the fantastic childcare service provided by MotherTalkers until lunchtime, and then heading off for an offsite meal and playdate with the 10 or so kids who made the scene.
Then, more swimming, some dinner, and, then, getting ready for Howard Dean.
"Howard WHO?"
Dean, honey. Howard Dean.
"Who is he?"
He's the head of the Democratic Party -- or, really, he was until Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee. He was the man who got us started on the 50-state strategy. Hey, look, Sadie, see that stretch limo? I bet that belongs to Dean, sez I, as we enter the Austin Convention Center.
"Mom, it's cold here. Really cold. Why?"
I dunno, Sadie, but it IS cold.
"You know, Mom, I bet it's because Howard Dean doesn't want to get his pits wet."
I think it might be because there are so many people coming, and they want it to stay comfortable:
"Maybe, but I bet he really didn't want to sweat a lot in front of people."
Her impressions of the first keynote?
Wesley Clark: "I like him, Mommy. Let's go say hi." (Sadie's first high-level handshake of the proceedings.)
Glen Maxey: "Who IS this guy, and when is Howard Dean coming?"
Howard Dean: "Are you kidding me? We waited all this time for this? I don't understand grown-ups."
We left the Dean speech early to fit in a much-needed evening swim to blow off some eight-year-old energy. "Mom, really, I just want to swim. You grown-ups are too talkative."
A quick swim, a wet stint in the lobby talking to new friends, then we headed off to the Travis County Dem party at Austin's Club DeVille.
"Mom, it's really smokey in here. I smell weed?"
Double-take. Weed? You mean, marijuana?!
"Marijuana, Marlboro, Camel, weed. You name it, I smell it."
The voice of the all-knowing. Sheesh.
Back to the hotel. More mingling, where Sadie met and fell in love with more Kossacks. (By the end of the conference, she started a notebook with contact information for her all of her new friends, with highacidity at the top, followed by duck tape, SallyCat, Dreaming of Better Days and Jeff Lieber. You've never seen a more effective networker.)
Friday dawned early. Quick breakfast, a morning at the corporate childcare center and, then, lunch with Mommy at Friday's lunchtime keynote:
Then, nirvana. The exhibit hall, and lots of free stuff. Sadie worked that hall, scamming more t-shirts, bumper stickers and buttons than anybody else at NN'08. Her secret? Well, cuteness, of course. And the strategic use of a lollipop shaped like Abraham Lincoln.
Cool sucker, Sadie. Where'd you get that?
"That guy over there. I said, 'Hey, honest Abe!', so he gave it to me!"
That's great, Sadie. I hope you said thanks.
"I did, but here's the really cool part. Watch this. Here's Lincoln...now I'm at the theatre. Bang bang." She drops the sucker flat. A reinactment of the scene at Ford's Theatre, performed in sugar. Nice, Sadie.
"Well," she said, giggling. "It really works. It makes people laugh and then they give me more stuff." Sadie in 2038? She's already got the makings of a politician.
She cleaned that hall dry. By my last count, she scored about 20 buttons, 30 stickers and 9 t-shirts -- her favorite for the website liepie.com, wihch required that she sign a contract agreeing to wear the shirt for two sessions and two breaks. "No problem," she said, reading and, then, signing the pledge.
She snagged an extra large t-shirt bearing the words "Why Lie Pie?" on the back from a skeptical booth operator, promptly threw it on over her clothes and proceeded to wear it the rest of the day and all the way through the big Kos party.
The next day, the skeptical booth worker snagged me: "Man, that kid of yours is the best billboard I ever had. I can't tell you how many people came by because they had talked to her and saw her in the shirt." Booyah!
After a long session of mooching, I wrangled her into a late-afternoon screening of the documentary "Crawford," which she watched most of out of curiosity because she and I had visited Crawford and the Peace House shortly after Cindy Sheehan began her vigil. "Oooh, I remember the crosses. I remember that!"
Friday night? Party time!!!!!!
Have orange wristband and two free donkeys snagged from a table at the Netroots candidate event, will travel. To the land of milk and honey.
Maggie Mae's. And the CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN!
"Oh, my god, mommy, I've got strawberries and chocolate and rice-crispies and bananas. I'm on VACATION!!! Whoo-hooh!!!!!"
A boatload of chocolate late, she waddled home and hit the hay, way too late for an eight-year-old -- and we knew we had to get up early for Nancy Pelosi.
Next morning, a pre-Pelosi pig-out...
...followed by Pelosi herself. Sadie took one look, then said, "Mom, her hair looks really, really shiny and young -- like she's 30 -- but her face looks like she's really, really old." Well, do her looks really matter? "Well, not because she looks old, just because she looks really mean and nervous, like the chihuahuas from next door."
Tired and full as a tick from a surfeit of oatmeal, fruit, Fruit Loops, toast and bacon, Sadie's eyes began to roll back in her head, and by the third question Pelosi had effectively dodged, she was down for the count. Sadie's take on Pelosi:
She stayed sacked out until the crowd went wild for Gore, then woke and paid rapt attention -- and, then, stood in line to give him a big high-five! (No picture, folks -- sadly, my camera took too long to reset after I snapped a photo of Chun Yang handing Gore a photo of the solar panels on the top of her house, much to his delight!)
So, Sadie, what did you think of Gore? "He's manly." Seriously. Manly? So, does that make Nancy Pelosi womanly? "Not really."
After that, more sessions with Sadie. She ate up the Texas sessions, ADORED Lawrence Lessig (particularly loved chanting "Nine percent" with the crowd), and insisted on sitting in on the apolitical, for-fun-only comedy improv workshop by herself ("Mommy, you're really embarrassing!")
A quick troll for more free stuff. A bump into Bob Barr:
"Bob who?" Precisely, Sadie. Precisely.
Then, a run to 6th street for an impromptu dinner with one of my favorite new Kossack couples, bijoudesigns and her lovely husband, who unexpectedly treated us to a meal (Thanks again, BD -- unnecessary but much appreciated!).
Another run to the Museum of the Weird -- this time, to pick up the one souvenir Mommy allows per trip. After much deliberation between a book spotted at the museum and a tye-died "Keep Austin Weird" t-shirt, the choice was made:
After that, nothing would do but that we return to the lobby to sit and read the new book and talk to new Kos friends -- sometimes at the same time, as poor Roger found out:
After an hour or so of mingling and reading the book to her favorite new peeps, we were going to head off for a swim...but Mommy got snagged by Bill in Portland Maine, clammy c, Jerome a Paris, Bill's partner Michael, Vikki, occam's hatchet, N in Seattle, and terrypinder, among others, all drinking and being rowdy.
An exhausted, overstimulated Sadie lost it, crying for mommy to come for the pool -- and an exhausted, overstimulated terrypinder turned it all around for us, droppin' trou and flashing "Big Orange Satan"-colored undies right there in the Hilton Lobby.
Sadie belly-laughed for 20 minutes, and was still giggling about it today.
The rest of the convention was wrap-up, goodbyes, exchanging biz cards and addresses, and getting increasingly sad to leave. Leave we did, dropping off our new friends Chun Yang and her son, Tai.
After a day's reflection, here's how the whole proceedings shaped up in Sadie's mind:
Funniest thing at NN'08: "terrypinder's orange butt!"
Most boring moment: "Nancy Pelosi. Hands down. Too talky."
Most interesting session: "The comedy improv workshop. Those people are crazy!"
Favorite Kossacks: "highacidity, duck tape, roger, SallyCat, Dreaming of Better Days, Jeff Leiber, Chun Yang, Tai, and terrypinder."
Would Sadie do it again? "Oh, yeah. But with more swimming!"
If you were in charge of NN'08, would you do anything different? "Yeah. Not plan so many talkative things."
Is that it? "Hmmm. No. I'd pay somebody else to stuff the convention bags!"
That's in, then. All that's left is to thank Cali Scribe and Chun Yang again for their big-hearted generosity. To thank everybody we met in Austin for showing us such a good time. To thank Jeff Leiber for my own favorite convention schwak, the much-coveted SYFPH button. To thank PerfectStormer for all of the kind words. To thank you all for wading through this lengthy diary. And, finally, to say, cheers!