Denise's Al Gore event report

From Renee: Denise posted this in the comments late Thursday night. On Friday morning, it occurred to me that it really should be frontpaged, but I was running late. I created this guest blogger thread, complete with comment link first thing Friday morning, but the day was so crazy I never got around to telling anyone I'd done that. But I had a lovely retreat when all was said and done. Without further ado, Denise's report...

I flew through the hotel with my business colleague in tow behind my conference manager, who was SO COOL to do this for me. Plug for the Westin St. Francis - great place for a real SF experience.

We're in the back of the house and opens up the curtain and seats me three rows behind Barbara, Bonnie and Jackson - as well as Barbara's family. I don't know who is who, but if she has a son, he was very nice. I had a chat with him in the elevator earlier but had no idea who he was at the time. I'm not sure if the grandbaby was his daughter. There were two other young women around who could have been her daughters.

So Barbara, in her very chic red suit, gets up on her literal soapbox (more like a veggie crate) to reach the mic. After her welcome talk, which was really very short, she introduced Bonnie and Jackson, as well as two other singers who were excellent. They harmonized really well on "World in Motion", the song I was listening to them rehearse earlier in the day. That was kind of fun, too. Bonnie spied me in the hallway, smiled and I asked her if they wanted privacy as the hallway was filling up. She said yes, so I shut the doors. Just can't leave the job behind...sigh.

The next song they did was "I'm a Patriot", composed by Steven van Zandt. You can see him performing it here.

Then Bonnnie did my most favorite song, the John Prine tune "Angel from Montgomery." I'm a huge Prine fan, and her version always makes me tear up. She dedicated it to the women around the world that are "still having a tough time of it." Darn she has pretty hair! I took a few pix on my cell phone. She was playing with the kids sitting around her as Barbara took the stage again to introduce Al.

He took the stage in a really smart charcoal suit, looking really, really good. My business colleague was freaking out. I was just enjoying the moment. I won't go into what he spoke about in detail, as we all know what he cares about most these days. And he told some stories about the so called scientists who write to him to basically tell him he's full of it. (My words, not his). He talked about Darfur and how we could have prevented it, and still could, if we had our priorities straight. He didn't mention Burma, but he only spoke about 10 minutes. Ice caps, healthcare, a few jabs at the Bushies, but not by any particular name. Class act all the way.

Barbara came back on stage and related the story about when Gore was in front of the Senate and the whole thing with Inhofe. It was sweet how she motioned with the mic as if it was the gavel when she said "elections have consequences." And then the guy I think was her son ran on stage and gave her a campaign pin (Boxer 2010) with those words on it. I was able to snag a couple for me and one of my friends. I'm wearing it now.
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Oh yeah almost forgot....the whole room erupted in a long chant of Run Al Run. Boxer didn't try to stop it :)

One more story to share - sorry it's hard to remember it all in detail. He talked about the cities in Italy that have walls around them because they used to be at war, like Florence and Siena. And how absurd that seems to s now. Or how weird it is to think that, at one time, Germany invaded France - and he gave a nod to the Senior Citizens in the audience and thanked them for their perserverance during WWII. He took a moment then to give a shout out for our troops. Then he said that we can prevent another world disaster if we just band together and take the step to make things better - TOGETHER.

Coverage of the event from tonight's Chronicle

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