Tomorrow is both Guy Fawkes Day and the First Anniversary of the Election of Barack Obama!

[ddeclue]

A year ago today I was watching the election results on the BBC in Cambridge England on a little TV in a garrett hotel room with very poor internet service in a little B&B where my company had put me.

It was very strange and I felt very disconnected from this victory since I had worked so hard on the Alan Grayson campaign and other campaigns for most of the year.

I had to give up my political work in mid September because I needed a job and had found one in Fort Lauderdale that then took me overseas to the U.K. for two weeks right during the election. I had been in the country just about a week when the election took place.

A few days before my U.K. trip I managed to score a ticket to see Barack Obama and Joe Biden speak at the Sunrise center (used to be National Car Rental Center) in Fort Lauderdale with tens of thousands of my fellow Democrats. I did run into one person I knew but I still felt strangely isolated from most of my friends who I knew were waiting to see Barack Obama and Joe Biden later that night at their next scheduled stop in Orlando 200 miles north of me.

On my trip overseas, I actually found myself face to face in the Orlando International Airport with George W. Bush - not really - but an incredible facsimile named John Morgan from Orlando who had a pretty good career impersonmanating "W" and had a picture taken with him and his Sarah Palin knock off (Tina Fey was better).

I had managed to find and meetup with a group of ex-pat Democrats in Cambridge just a day or so after arriving and met up with them in a pub in Cambridge for a social hour/dinner - not so much to do anything political - more just to enjoy the company of my compatriots.

While my British friends were celebrating Guy Fawkes Day with fireworks and bon fires in the somewhat cold (for a guy from Florida) weather, I was quietly smiling and celebrating my own little victory - the election of Barack Obama to the White House and the election of Alan Grayson to the 8th District in Florida.

Much has happened in the year since the election:

I watched the inauguration from a cold and windy Wall Street cafe in downtown Orlando in front of Orlando's only jumbotron with a handful of my Democratic friends with a great deal of pride.

I looked for a job for months and months - then found one.

I re-engaged in the political process and helped rally the troops for Grayson's town hall meeting to turn back the tea baggers and succeeded.

I went to the State Jefferson Jackson dinner and met Debbie Wasserman Schultz and got to know Kendrick Meek better and have done some work for his Senate bid.

I went to Wellstone Campaign training and am helping out a Minnesota Congressional Candidate now.

I got laid off just on Monday and I'm back to looking for work again - the third time in two years.

Now it is a year since Guy Fawkes and being in England and I think I'm going to make it something of my own personal holiday even in non election years. I'm planning to go to a Guy Fawkes day celebration tomorrow being held by the British American club in Kissimmee Florida for a "few quid" and have me a good time and remember what it was like to win a big one.


Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[begin_within]

1. Ahhh Guy Fawkes...

[pennylane100]

2. Remember, remember the fifth of November

gun powder treason and plot.
I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.

[ddeclue]

3. I miss England, I miss Cambridge - it was a nice little town.

:)

[Ron Green]

4. A penny, please? A penny for the Guy!