It's Primary Day in Georgia

So, I'm sitting here in my pj's yesterday, with my cup of coffee and little stack of cookies, staring at the computer screen. One way or another, good news just kept rolling in. First, there were the telephone calls. Would you believe that I got telephone calls from both Mike Huckabee and Hillary Clinton in the same day? I felt comfortable talking with Mike. He's down-home enough that my informal dress didn't bother me. I was a little uncomfortable talking to Hillary that way, tho. We've never actually met, you know, and I thought I should be dressed for the occasion. Neither one of them seemed to be interested in hearing me explain that I was committed to voting for Barack Obama. They just kept talking, as if there were no one sitting here on my end of the line!

Then, I got an e-mail from my sister. She is just a year younger than I am, but she's has been a more loyal Republican over the years than I've been. In fact, before retiring, she was a fund-raiser for the Republican Party in Florida. But her candidate apparently lost Florida's primary and, of all things, she volunteered that she and her husband might vote for Barack Obama in November!

Then, there were other e-mails from friends enlisting as Historians for Obama. I was especially happy to hear from several whose work I particularly admire: Princeton's Tony Grafton, Peniel Joseph of Brandeis, and Jackson Lears at Rutgers, and my friends, Claire Potter, who blogs at Tenured Radical, and Ari Kelman, who blogs at The Edge of the American West.

If that weren't enough, my friend, Jeremy Young of Progressive Historians e-mailed me. He hasn't yet seen the light about Obama, but he called my attention to this petition by New York Feminists for Peace and Barack Obama. If you scroll down the list of those who've signed it, you'll find the names of Columbia University's Martha Howell and Alice Kessler Harris, NYU's Linda Gordon, Maria Montoya, Barbara Weinstein, and Marilyn Young, Hofstra's Carolyn Eisenberg and Susan Yohn, SUNY/Old Westbury's Laura Anker and Rosalyn Baxandall, Amherst's Martha Saxton, Ellen Schrecker of Yeshiva, and Maggie Williams of William Patterson University. None of them had yet signed our Historians for Obama statement, but you can bet I've e-mailed them about it.

Today, I'll put on some clothes and go vote.