Home from the Sea

We're finally back from the Air America Cruise, and what a terrific week we had! It was an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to meet so many of the brightest stars in the talk radio firmament, including my own personal favorties, Thom Hartmann, Rachel Maddow and especially Randi Rhodes, with whom we were seated for dinner one night. She is as sardonically super-funny in person as she is on the radio, and she's pretty much the same in person as she is on her show. Because the conversation was so intense and interesting and entertaining, our table was the very last one to leave the dining area that night.

It was also great to meet all of my blog readers who contacted me prior to the cruise: Becky, Gary and Linda from Colorado, Bonnie and Mark from New Jersey, Sharon and her family from Virginia, Alex from California, and especially Marilyn and Steve from New York -- thank you all for making it a memorable and exciting week. In addition, several other fellow cruisers saw my Farnsworth badge and told me in passing how much they like reading this blog. Thanks to all of you.

And a big thank you as well to all of the other people whom we met on the cruise, too numerous to list, but who also made the week a memorable and exciting one.

I especially want to thank our good friends from home, Bob and Debby, who made the trip with us. At dinner, Randi Rhodes asked Debby to give an impromptu speech on political organizing at one of the final sessions. Her presentation went over so well that I was able to bask in her reflected glory ("You're friends with Debby? Wow!") for the rest of the voyage.

There were some 400 Air America listeners from all over the country who were on the cruise and I wasn't able to connect with everyone, however much I wanted to, and for that I apologize. But the good news is that this is only the first of what we hope will be many Air America cruises, so maybe we'll meet up on a subsequent one.

In the meantime, I think everyone came away overflowing with a lot of renewed political energy (personal energy is another story -- that we are still trying to recover, and after a week of gentle pitching and rolling on the high seas, I find myself still experiencing some "phantom motion" even as I sit here in front of my computer) and we are all fired up for this year's election campaign.

As Thom Hartmann's signature signoff phrase has it, "Democracy begins with you -- tag, you're it!"