This Country Needs Change: Why I Drove to Nevada to Knock on 51 Doors in 115 Degree Heat

I hadn't knocked on the door of someone I didn't know since I sold Girl Scout cookies in the sixth grade. Well, actually, there was the historic night 25 years ago that my college roommate and I got hideously lost and spent a snowy night wandering aimlessly around West Nyack, N.Y., before finally knocking on a farmhouse door to ask directions to the Garden State Parkway. But you get the idea. I don't bother strangers. I don't particularly like it when strangers knock on my door. I'm essentially friendly, and I'm pretty smart, but the truth is I'm painfully shy and at heart a very private person. Were it not for the fact that I love my child and that I love my country deeply, and I fear what it has become, I'd really be very content to stay home and live as much like a hermit as possible.

But that simply isn't an option this year. So I've been donating money to the greatest extent I can, volunteering, distributing signs and bumper stickers to anyone who will take them (now the numerous Obama yard signs on the modest lawns in our neighborhood greatly outnumber the FIVE McCain signs on the historic Mansion that dominates the neighborhood), and using Neighbor to Neighbor to recruit more volunteers. But it didn't feel like enough.

So last weekend I drove to Las Vegas, along with hundreds of other Southern Californians, to help register voters and canvass from door to door. It was over 115 degrees in the remote area of northern Clark County that I was assigned to canvass, and there was no shade whatsoever. There were a couple of times I was almost afraid I wouldn't finish. It was awesome.

It was the second-most-wonderful, second-most-rewarding experience I've ever had as a member of a community. Since first place in those categories involved helping save a child's life, second in this case is a really, really amazing experience.

I spoke to people who said they had no idea who the candidates were. I talked to them about Barack Obama and how he was making me proud of my country again. (Michelle, I know you meant "more proud;" I unfortunately haven't been able to have any pride since we invaded Iraq -- love, yes; pride, no.) About how his vision is for all of us to recognize each other as fellow Americans with a stake in the well-being and future of our country, and a responsibility to each other. To move past the hatred and fear of the last eight years. And to make America live up to its promise for all of us, not just the extremely wealthy. Some were impressed, while others explained kindly that with both McCain and Obama it was all just "blah, blah, blah," as one very nice Latino man put it.

He felt that they talk, but who knows what they will really do. He was going to wait until the very end to make up his mind. I respect that, and I told him so -- and I encouraged him and others to go to YouTube and watch the debate they had missed the night before, and to keep really listening to Obama when he speaks, and to see what they thought and who they believed. And I said thanks and smiled, and you know what? Mostly, they smiled, too. They probably shook their heads and forgot about me as soon as I left, but hey, we had a moment. There was the young guy who said he knew absolutely nothing about either candidate and said -- in the friendliest possible manner, while he and his friend were working on his truck -- that he really didn't want to know. He also said I probably could count on his vote. His girlfriend had made him register, and he figured she'd leave him if he didn't vote for Obama like she told him to. I was so sorry she wasn't home -- my list said I was supposed to talk to her, too -- but it looked like the work was well taken care of in that household.

I talked to several wonderful women, white and black, who looked at me as though I was crazy when I asked if they knew who they'd be supporting for president. "Girl, whose hat are you wearing?" Um, Obama/Biden? "That's right. Of course I'm voting for Obama. And let me get my son out here and you can get him registered. Do you want some water, hon?" "She's in the shower, honey, but please come back in ten minutes, I know she'll want to sign whatever you got there for Obama." There was nothing for her to sign, she was registered and raring to go and she had to run to work -- but she talked to me and answered my questions from the front door to the car and then said, "You, go, girl -- get my mom to give you some water and go in the kitchen to drink it!" I talked to grandchildren living with hard-working grandparents, the grandchildren young voters in their late teens and early 20s. They were at home, the grandparents either out at work or sleeping as they had come off the night shift at the casinos only a few hours earlier. They were for Obama, and they were excited to hear about how they could vote early in Nevada and free themselves up to volunteer at the polls on Election Day. A young man carefully wrote down the rules for early voting and their two nearest locations, and he assured me he'd tell his grandmother all about it when she woke up. "Don't worry, she'll vote," he said, "She told me she wouldn't feed me if I didn't!"