Processing.... please wait

Back home on the non-stop from Newark today with Mikki and a few other delegates including Mayor Bill LaFortune, who spent most of the flight snoozing in an aisle seat near the back. I was envious -- I had only had about 3 hours of sleep but could not sleep on the plane because of the continual traffic up and down the aisle. (I could comment about the irony of the Mayor of Tulsa being on the non-stop flight, which was on Continental -- the result of a company responding to market opportunities -- and not Great Plains, the airline that lobbied for millions in government support on the promise of providing direct flights to the coast, a promise it never fulfilled. But I won't.)

I return home with a pile of newspapers I never got through during the convention. Because I was in the middle experiencing the event directly, I haven't had much time to find out what other observers have been saying. I'm especially interested in the feature stories that have been written -- how the delegates responded to New York and vice versa. I want to take another couple of days to sum things up -- what it's like to be on the floor, how a major convention affects a major city, delegates as party-poopers and lousy tippers, the rumored contenders for '08, the moderates who spoke.

Mikki and I finished packing this morning, shipping a box of convention stuff back and just getting our checked luggage under the weight limit, thanks to all the tote bags and books we were given by various sponsors.

Before catching the shuttle to the airport, Mikki and I had time for a brief visit to Ground Zero, a chance to remember September 11, and to remember Jayesh Shah, a graduate of Tulsa's Memorial High School and the University of Tulsa, who was in his office atop the north tower when the plane hit. Jay left behind a young wife, two daughters and a son, and a younger brother who was his nearest and dearest friend. I prayed silently for his family, and looking at the list of heroes, I picked a name at random and prayed for that family too. We spent some time at the east fence, then walked down to Battery Park to view the globe that once stood on the World Trade Center plaza.

This election is about one thing and one thing only -- winning the war on terror. Whatever other disappointments I may have in the administration, George W. Bush is committed to preemptively defeating terrorism while John Kerry seems to want to wait for another attack.