Saturday, I spent my afternoon in Bed Stuy with a civil rights vet, teen siblings, a videographer, a neighborhood everyman, a woman named Ocean who let me use some of her peppermint oil to reduce the ash on my hands and some other remarkable individuals in a cluster of housing projects over on Pulaski. We were all campaiging, for the first time ever mind you, for Barack Obama. We provided literature and enthusiasm to the tenants and were met with a range of responses. My favorite was the stone-faced young woman we met in the lobby of one building and later encountered on a upper floor as we went door to door. Before she hopped on the elevator on her way back out, she hollered if we would like her to put up some flyers in another project she was heading to. Of course.

More on the civil rights vet later. She asked me to write her story. In the meantime, many folks' polling stations may have changed. I know mine did. New Yorkers can looks their polling stations up here.