D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

So the wife and I, along with Bob, went to Barack Obama townhall meeting in Greensburg, PA - held at the Hempfield High School gym auditoriom. We waited outside in the cold in a long line of like-minded folks for about an hour or so. Calista and I breezed through security, but Bob beeped and got strip searched! hah! Go figure…

When we got in there were volunteers saying you have to have pink tickets to go to the forward seats and they were pointing everyone up to the rafters… pink tickets, I found out, were delegates. Well I ignored the lady because it didn’t look like she knew what she was talking about, and I asked another fella and he said, you can sit anywhere except the seats that say “reserved” — so we ended up on the left side of cordoned off area, but front row! How about that!? — I knew this was a townhall meeting so he’d be walking and talking and we’d get a great view.– Obama came out and did his stump thing, then opened it up for questions. The most memorable was a dude who asked two questions, one, would we get rid of the penny and why not? And two, would we build island prisons for habitual sex offenders! — Obama kinda laughed and said, WOW, that’s a real range of issues, but he actually went in and gave detailed answers to each one of those! You can tell he just loves to talk about issues– and most of all, he’s giving it to you straight.

I had taken the little sketchcard I drew back on January 4th, see here, thinking it was a longshot to have it signed, or that I’d even get anywhere near to the man, but it was in my pocket with a sharpie just in case. I’m glad it was!

At the end of the talk, he went around the entire ring of front row area, my wife and I were right up there talking to Barack O’Friggin- Bama! — My wife was in front of me, and I had her hold the sketchcard and sharpie– before he comes around the Secret Service officers sweep you and tell you to put pens away, he has his own pen– Barack comes up and says hello to my wife and she holds the sketchcard out and he takes it and says “Wow! This is really nice.” - And she says “Thanks, I didn’t draw it though,” and I pipe up “I drew it.” — and he stops and talks and says “Wow, you’ve got some real talent there. You drew my ears smaller than they actually are. Thank you!” — then we shook hands, I was kinda mesmorized in disbelief as he walked off with my sketchcard… and as he was walking off to the other side he turned and said, Oh, did you want me to sign that and get that back to you? — HELLZ YES! — Well I didn’t say that, but something more like, Definitely! — So I guess the process is, he hands it to a large Secret Service officer, and they have another Service officer holding a stack of books that he signs when he’s done, and they bring it back in for you after he’s exited the building. I imagine they have to search all the books first— so my sketch came back awfully fast.

The whole day is a blur now– my wife is in awe I think… here are some photos…

Well, it was a great time. Something different. I couldn’t help but think…. I’m shaking the president’s hand. That’s sure what it felt like to me.