Awesome does not even begin to describe.

MH1

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Wed Dec-14-05 12:01 AM
Original message

Awesome does not even begin to describe.

I wrote up my take on this weekend's main event - there is so much else to tell, but I couldn't control my wordiness, so this is just the main bit. It is posted over at my blog, Freedom's Fire, because there I can edit it if anyone detects something freeper-twistable in the way it is written. Otherwise normally I would post the whole thing here. But for this today at least, you will have to do with the first part here, then go to FFBB for the rest if you so desire.

Sunday, December 11, 2005 will go down in my personal history as one of the best days of my life.

I met the REAL President of the United States.

Well, the man who should be President, the man who would have been President if we had all worked just a little harder and been a little smarter and had our act together a little more. Or if average, busy, hard-working and otherwise wonderful Americans were just a little bit better at recognizing and rejecting media manipulation.

I met Senator John Kerry.

I got the hug, the gentle squeeze of the hand, the eye twinkle. But more importantly to this hopeless infogeek, I had the immense honor of sitting practically toe to toe with one of the smartest and most genuinely decent human beings on the planet while he casually and candidly chatted with our group about matters of both import and trivia, matters of media and reality, matters of values and heart. I won't go into detail of what was said, but suffice to say that John Kerry proved to me in person that he really does know what the heck is going on and what needs to be done about it. He groks the blogosphere and the role of new media even though he is necessarily distant from the gory details. In his approach to every turn of the discussion, it was evident that he is a public servant to the core, looking for the best way to get the right thing done, and to do it in the right way. The tidbit from our discussion that I would most like to tell, I cannot, because telling it would defeat the reason that it would even need to be told; because the right way in this case is the quiet way. Let me just say that it exemplified to me that the Senator lives by values that many today just give lip service to, even when it might be more personally advantageous to do the common and expected thing.

For those just dying for the technical details of how this great event occurred, here goes. But first – what I am about to tell is only part of the story, the self-centered, “my meeting with the great Senator Kerry” part of the story. There is so much more I should tell, about how great Mrs. Heinz was to make this happen, how each and every blogger in the group did something that made this trip totally awesome for me and everyone else, how some of the Senator’s and Mrs. Heinz’ staffers played their roles and helped to make it happen and make it wonderful; about our walks to Beacon Hill and our trip to Faneuil Hall…and the great chats together at the hotel, and the endless high fives after the event. So much to tell, I can only take it a bit at a time, and since it started out being all about the Senator’s birthday party, this is where I’ll start.
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The rest is posted at Freedom's Fire. Enjoy!