Those of you who are new around here will be unfamiliar with the tradition, now in its third year, of me posting "shoe diaries" from Yearly Kos/Netroots Nation. I fell into it kinda by accident. And now, even though I post well-researched diaries on various topics (which often get 100s of Recs), I'm often referred to as "the shoe lady", and am sometimes called a fetishist even. Sigh.
I guess this diary will just reinforce that notion. So it goes. But even though this is a shoe diary, I must open with this delightful picture of navajo - a moment of grace with the camera. She titled it, not me. Three Sheets to the Wind
On to the shoes.
I remember taking the pic of Digby, but I don't remember noticing her color palette. Well done. I only tarted up the colors just a little bit.
Shout out to Common Sense Mainer, who gave me instructions on the subject of hugs. So I made his name label wrap around him like a hug. And someone was telling me about the Hugging Saint the very next day. So everyone - hugzz!!!
The adventure started out Wednesday morning, picking up Deoliver47 at the train station, to share the ride from the Hudson Valley down to Pittsburgh. Turns out we had similar ideas about sensible shoes for travel. And we were roomies at the conference together. All in all that worked out very well.
We had the day to get acquainted before the main event. What with shoulder problems and toothaches and the insanity that was US22 (curse you MapQuest!) I earned myself an earful of getting cussed out in Puerto Rican Spanish. But we did finally make it to Pittsburgh. Can't believe how far it is to drive across the Keystone State (and where did that name come from anyhow?)
Even if user Sensible Shoes wasn't at NN09 (or was that one of the ones I missed?), there were plenty of others who were wearing sensible shoes. There were a lot of people in white sneakers, here's a sampling. If I missed yours, it might be because it was too dark, or blurry, or I messed up my notes.
There were Birkenstocks and Tevas, too:
Mostly I'm just photographing Kossascks' feet, but we do get kinda repetitive. And when something like this shows up, how can I pass it up? I didn't ask about his organization, so I have no idea what it does. Has he got prehensile toes? Definitely something I've never imagined...
Some people are very constant and reliable. One Pissed Off Liberal, for example, has worn the same shoes for three of these confabs in a row. I don't really see any sign of wear on them, either. I'm thinking that either he bought half a dozen pairs alike, or spends much of his time barefoot.
And jotter. This year (and last year), he let me know that he polished his shoes for Netroots Nation. Back at Yearly Kos in Chicago, he was unprepared, and those same shoes show a different - pre-polish - color.
Jotter's constant in other ways, too - his daily and weekly High Impact Diaries are one of my favorite places on dKos. There were a lot of other people who wore the same shoes as last year. dday had the same shoes on that he wore in Chicago - yeah, I do remember such things. And Cedwyn wore these silver sandals last year, too. They go super well with the silver sparkles on her skirt:
brillig had the same shoes she carried around in a backpack to get photographed in last year, perhaps a bit more worn:
And so on. On the opposite end of that continuum is Imelda navajo, who might have worn three different pairs of black sandals on the same day. I seem to have spent a lot of time with her this year. She was training at the gym daily for months ahead of the conference. I couldn't keep up with her! And I do have her explicit permission to post these:
She was all excited about a lunch date with Meteor Blades. She took his picture by the Star Quilt then messed up the picture download and could only find thumbnails. But jotter saved the day! And was navajo happy about that, or what?
I wasn't one of the lucky few who got MB lunch invitations, but I did cross paths with him many times. There's a story could be told 'bout the Made in America flag on his instep. The picture was taken in the Native American Caucus, and I'm not gonna write the story down. Someone else who was there could, if they like...
Perhaps my favorite moment of the whole gathering was on the sidewalk out in front of the noisy party. I was chatting with MB and Steve Singiser, when Booman walked up. And the Community Overlord lorded it over him: You need to stick around and comment in your diaries, Booman.
I asked Booman about it later, back in the Westin Hotel lobby. He was a little defensive about it. I was a little surprised to find that Booman was aware of my screen name.
I encouraged Deoliver47 to come to Pittsburgh. She might not have had I not done so. And this one? I encouraged him to apply for the DFA scholarship, and he was lucky enough to get one.
After he went home, and sent some "wow, holy cow" kinda messages, I told him: Welcome to the Borg Some other scholarship winners were (and I'm sure I'm missing even some that I photographed.) This young woman has the most delightful spirit. It's nice to just bask in her general vicinity:
Shannyn Moore isn't a Kossack to my knowledge, but she did get threatened by name by Sarah Palin's lawyer about getting sued. She was a bit apologetic about the shoes. Said they were the only thing she could wear because of blisters. Good to have her on our team - a lot of us have probably seen her on TV:
One of the youngest Kossacks, Populista, got a scholarship, too. I don't like to think too long of how our collective behavior looked to him. Conventioneers do typically get a little silly.
Slinkerwink, the energizer bunny of health care reform diarists, got a scholarship, too. srkp23 didn't get one, but they both had interesting takes on cuffs. Fashion trend coming up? Or just unique senses of style?
Timroff got laid off earlier this year. He does so much at NN's that he would really have been missed. So, good on DFA for providing support for him to attend, too.
One of the things Timroff was needed for was the big Netroots for the Troops effort. I promised roses that I'd pack a box for her, and did. Good thing I got there early, because that was the place to be. People who came too late didn't get to do anything, because the work was all done!
Aside: ilona won the poll in 2007, iirc. This year, she was bashful about getting photographed. (Same shoes as 2007, too.) But not while she was packing boxes.
Another one active with NFTT, who got all coy about having her feet photographed. She was knitting a scarf on pencils, too. They won't let knitting needles on airplanes, so she used pencils as size 11s:
Common Sense Mainer (shown elsewhere from the C&J dinner the first night) was active in NFTT logistics. And BiPM came to load some boxes.
mcjoan, too. She's hoping mcmom will come next year, since Las Vegas ain't all so far from Idaho. Are you listening, mcmom? We'd all love to see you!
There's a lot of other people worked all throughout to make it work - too many to include 'em all. This guy represents all the troops in NFTT:
I have, a few times, mixed up TexDem (who lives in Georgia) and TexMex. No more! The only way to catch the former's feet was in action for NFTT. He organized quite an effort:
TexMex had a terrific hat, and it almost misses the point to photograph her feet. mcjoan, like navajo, seemed to be in a different pair of shoes pretty much every time I saw her.
SusanG's daughter came to Netroots Nation this year:
Another frontpager I crossed paths with, though she's more active on FaceBook and Twitter these days. That climate panel in the first time slot Thursday, the moderator read one of her tweets to us. It's a wonder we didn't all melt in some feedback loop meltdown of the space-time continuum:
Sometimes blogging feels like old media to me. I did get coaxed into FaceBook, but don't (yet?) do Twitter, though I did get an account there. I definitely felt like I was missing a chunk of what was going on as people sat hunched over their little handheld devices. Like this guy, who's made a splash moving from the FP of DailyKos to the DSCC in DC.
When I met him last year in Austin, I figured he would be going places. And we knew him way back when:
A few more from the FP:
Thanks, Dr. Dean. You've done a lot to lead the Democratic Party out of the wilderness. Even if there's still quite a ways to go on that:
I skipped most of the celebrities (or at least talking heads I see on TV), but Charlie Cook - whose numbers I'm interested in as a geek of that sort - had a great quote. I took it down verbatim. He was talking about how Fox News's polling is pretty good, in that it trends the same as all the other polling outfits - even if always keeping a few more points to the wingnut side of every issue.
[The polls are] the only thing on the network that's borderline straight.
So he doesn't think they're a good place to go for news. And was willing to say so out loud in public, too.
We didn't have a whole lot of elected officials around. But this guy? I remember being impressed with him in Chicago. Even moreso now that he still comes around to see us, and says stuff I like to hear, too. (Valerie Jarrett's session? I left when they asked her if they swept Karl Rove's old office for bugs.)
I think Massa's is a vulnerable seat. I'd hate for us to lose his voice. I'm definitely a fan of his. Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak showed up, but only Sestak lingered. Since I can't do contrasting pix, I'm leaving Sestak out and just including a staff member/supporter for each - part of their entourages.
This reporter's shoes don't seem to fit just right, but I like the color:
This new(er) media type has one of the coolest names, ever. Not even a screen name - her very own name! Her boots are pretty cool, too:
Then there was this panel on Fearless Campaigning. Some lady from New Mexico, and some of these folks, too:
This guy also gets my perpetual thanks for helping me get to Chicago. He's so good at mustering forces and getting stuff done.
Speaking of fearless campaigning? This guy had his book in pretty much every picture I've seen of him:
And, speaking of New Mexico, here's a coupla others from our fine state who made the trek to Pennsylvania. This one's a good political reporter, with a future ahead of him in the field:
And what a fancy pedicure! tfls has come up in the world since last year, when one purple toenail peeked through a hole in her sock:
When I took this picture, Marcy (emptywheel) told someone with her that the shoe thing got started back when there was a shoe contest. I never heard of a shoe contest before, and I know it had nothing to do with my previous two shoe diaries. Unless the poll with the diary counts as a shoe contest? Strange how a story like that could get established - Marcy's usually very well sourced, too:
A lot of people worked hard for NN09 to happen. I'm picking this lady to represent all of 'em and give 'em a big round of applause. Yay!!! She wanted to pose to show her tattoo:
This lady was a little interesting, in a slightly scary way. She seemed as if she had bits of twigs and leaves in her rather unkempt mess of braids, though I didn't actually note if that was the case. She was looking for Meteor Blades, because she wanted to discuss having been banned from Daily Kos. My guess is that her banning was for conspiracy theories, but didn't ask... It seemed an odd thing for a stranger to be confiding. And we wondered, after she moved on from the GreenPeace happy hour drink line on Saturday, should we have said Errin, is that you?:
No idea if she succeeded in finding our Community Overlord. This guy is a great Kossack, having founded Got a Happy Story? and also Top Comments. He stopped in for a Saturday cameo appearance. I didn't notice if he had a Blackberry, but those scratches on his legs came from picking blackberries. Yum!
Another cameo came from this guy, though I don't think I met him till after midnight, so technically Sunday. He's one of my favorite new friends from this year. But now I have to start thinking of him as Z-woof, rather than one syllable zwoof! Kinda like last year when I had to quit wondering what a mearden was, and why anyone might stop being one. Zwoof and I had a good long talk out in the smoking area Sunday morning before most of the rest of y'all got up, or else were off at worship service. It was a slow-paced, quiet visit:
He brought his lovely wife, Joanna. I'm told that her feet are already all over the internet, so what's one more picture of 'em?
SanDiegoDem got new white sandals last year with a purple pedicure. Very well done, it was. But I think she outdid herself this year:
navajo had some shots of my shoes in her diary, but I'll add this one here (for the poll.) kath25 thought up the name:
Last year, brillig carried some shoes around to put on especially for a photograph for my shoe diary. This year, she helped someone else find me for the same purpose:
This woman was very proud of her 100% eco-friendly shoes. She was trying to deal with the bars closing at GreenPeace happy hour, so she didn't have time to explain the manufacturing process in detail. I'm thinking her shoes might get along good with the nanotechnology guy:
This woman and I got talking, as I do with a lot of the people whose feet I photograph. Next thing you know, she gave me a prepublication book on climate issues.
This lady, I owe a special thanks to. Her husband restores antique cars, and has been helping me off an on to identify makes and models in the Depression-era photographs. I met him and thanked him, but didn't take a picture of his feet. Just hers. Helps me get a handle on how quickly and how far those Dust Bowl (and other) migrants had fallen:
Dunno why this guy wanted to be photographed in the same shoes but different socks. But he did, so I obliged.
I mentioned at the opening of this diary about being so well-known as the shoe lady, rather than more substantive work I publish here. Even kos himself made small talk with me, and it was about shoes! About how his daughter is really into shoes and would be a good candidate for the diary. I'm guessing she gets that from her mom:
Not her dad. We find here, too, more evidence of mcjoan's extensive shoe wardrobe:
Speaking of couples who attended NN09 together, here's some more Kossacks I've grown quite fond of. I'm looking forward, someday, to checking out their largely self-sufficient farm up north of San Francisco. I put a down payment on that visit by giving them an apple this year. A lot of my trees set fruit for the first time this year, and a lot of it, too. I thinned some of it before heading East for this big trip. Most of it, I took a bite and spit the bitter green fruit out. But a few trees had edible (if not 100% ready) fruit. There were a few apples left when I got to Pittsburgh, and the sidepockets got one of 'em.
I gave Jill Richardson an apple, too, at a moment when she was stressing out from getting too hungry. I barely saw her during the conference, and so didn't tell her how much I like her new haircut. (I do like it!!)
And, speaking of couples in Pittsburgh: Lest we think I just included "User and Mrs. Kossack" couples, there's these folks:
A bit of a biology note: Amongst birds, it's usually the males with the flashy feathers and showy displays. At this time and place in the world, for whatever reason, human males don't claim that zoot suit role very often. It's quite something how many different ways Converse-style sneakers can be re-invented in fresh ways:
And there were a bunch of other dKos community members around, too. I'm just running out of narrative - and might even be approaching the maximum amount of characters allowed for a diary. Whatever, there's a lot of screens of stuff. Alphabetical gets boring all the time, so in reverse alphabetical order...
I got good reports on the way home about the Sunday lay sermon.
Had a nice visit with teacherken that first morning when I just met DemFromCT, too. This from the Cheers & Jeers dinner.
I think Common Sense Mainer had a lot to do with organizing that one. Great job! Here he is - and there's navajo again!
I love all the tech and data stuff this guy does that's beyond my abilities. Nice to meet you in person and put a face to the screen name...
Low profile and delightfully charming, not unlike her seersucker trousers:
Then there's the Lulu's:
And there's always one or two wants their feets photographed outside the shoes.
A regular in the San Francisco crew, of which I seem to have become an honorary member. For some reason, I was awfully slow to put the face and name together. Not that this picture is gonna help any on that:
These brothers? Their faces definitely look more alike than their footwear. I used to like the spider diaries from hekebolos. I wonder if we'll ever see any more of them?
Thanks for the breakfast, Got a Grip. I probably oughta email you. Thanks, too, for one of the best diaries in eco-week. I still think of it pretty often:
A fine pair of sneakers. I know you don't like putting your face with your name online. But I'm hoping that like last year, you're cool with this exposure of your very cool presence.
Just as we all were getting ready to leave on Sunday. Check-out time. This family asked to be photographed together:
FWIW: I'm not posting all the pictures I took. Not even close. If I did, I might run up against the limits of diary length here. Plus, my notes were messed up for some of 'em, some were really blurry, others very poorly exposed. And I left out a lot of non-Kossacks on those grounds alone. But then, too, I just ran out of steam. If yours isn't there - ask! I probably could toss it up for you in the comments. (That's what happened with clammyc last year.) I left out front pagers, celebrities, regular active Kossacks. And even Don Siegelman. It just got to be too much.