ELEVENSES

JACKIE MAY and I have decided to revive an important tradition that has lately suffered terrible neglect: Elevenses. Winnie the Pooh did it (although he preferred honey or bread with condensed milk); Paddington Bear did it; and so did those brave hobbits. Jackie and I, however, follow in the bold steps of Herman Wouk's Don't Stop The Carnival, substituting Johnnie Walker Red with Stolichnaya vodka, but still planning to get rowdy by lunchtime.

We did question the appropiateness of vodka at 11am, and here are the reasons why I eventually opened the freezer door: Jackie has been blogging and writing non-stop (hardly getting out of her pyjamas, as the photo above shows); I have a slipped disk and am in considerable pain, but have a deadline; Jackie misses her children and husband, and therefore has a sore heart; then there is the general soppiness about being in a country that feels really good right now; and then, of course, as always, we feel our youth slip out of our grasp, fading ever so slightly. There is only one remedy for this: Elevenses.

DOGMATIC SHOPPING

Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times on Saturday, ends her column: "We’re trading a dogmatic president for one who’s shopping for a dog. It feels good."

JACKIE MAY

JACKIE arrived in Washington for the inauguration right in the middle of frigid weather. But she's out there, yesterday waiting at Union Station in Washington for the Obama Express to complete its journey, and today at the concert at Lincoln Memorial. Obama is expected to evoke Lincoln, the Number One historical symbol at the moment, in a speech at the concert: come together, all people, and sacrifice.

On Wednesday Jackie comes to New York. Can't wait.

Read Jackie's blog on her visit.

Here's a pic taken from our stoop this morning...

JOBURG FOR BARACK (4)

AND here is a final pic, this time taken by Anna Claude Bailey.

JOBURG FOR BARACK (3)

MY jealousy of the party at the Troyeville Hotel would have known no end if it wasn't for New York exploding with relief and joy on Tuesday night. Around the corner from our house is a spectacular bar, called Union Hall, and everybody who had watched the election returns there spilled onto the street after Obama's acceptance speech. The neighbourhood caught on in a flash, and a crowd of about a thousand people, dogs, children, the inevitable man with an aviary on his shoulder, firemen, the waste-removal workers and the police gathered to hang from lamp posts, stand on one another's shoulders and form prayer circles to shout: "Yes, we can!" and "USA! USA!" Graeme Simpson and I met each other for a cigarette at the corner to watch, and the rather wonderful Park Slope police simply parked their cars across the street to block off traffic. There was no way they were going to try to break up the party.

Here is a selection of Mikhael Subotzky's pics from the Troyeville. Looking at them I have to believe all those stories that are doing the rounds here about women at the Democratic National Convention trying to rip Obama's shirt from his pants.

JOBURG FOR BARACK (2)

JOBURG FOR BARACK

SARAH PALIN: "THAT COUNTRY, AFRICA"

THE Daily Beast relays a Fox News report that says McCain's Hail Mary thought Africa was a country, not a continent consisting of quite a number of states. Here's a clip about that gem of knowledge; it also holds out the promise of many more stories to come that will demonstrate the depth of her ignorance.

DONNA BRAZILE

I'VE followed Donna Brazil's contributions to CNN throughout this year, and she's become about my most favourite person on TV (she's a Democratic Party strategist, and ran Al Gore's campaign in 2000). CNN just showed a clip of her talking about what it meant to her to vote this morning; what it meant to realise that what her grandparents told her about being anything in America was actually true. For me that's one of the best things about having been able to watch this election campaign: how it energised people who have felt themselves politically marginalised for so many decades. That really is what real democracy is about, I think.

Donna Brazil

LAST-GASP ADVERTS

THE GOP Trust is running wall-to-wall ads about Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright on CNN -- that with only about an hour and a half to go before the polls on the east coast start closing. But there's the after-work voters he can still catch, I suppose. And the battleground states start closing from 7pm ET: at 7.30, North Carolina closes; at 8, Pennsylvania; at 9, Colarado; at 10, Iowa (can Obama do it again?).

FIRST EXIT POLLS IN AN HOUR

CNN says the first exit polls will be out in an hour. The New York Times said this morning:

"In 2004, early exit poll data suggested that Mr. Kerry was ahead began circulating within newsrooms — and leaking out on Web sites, including Slate’s — early in the afternoon on Election Day. This year, the consortium of six news organizations gathering the exit poll data — NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN and The Associated Press — have agreed to keep the information under quarantine until 5 p.m.

"Representatives of those news organizations will begin analyzing that information at a secret location beginning in late morning, but will have to surrender all electronic devices at the door; even restroom visits will be supervised. There were already signs on Monday that the additional security was paying off.

"'We won’t call off exit polls,' Mr. Plotz said, 'in part because we don’t expect to get them leaked to us much before the first results.'"

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN IT HAPPENED?

DEBRA is working at home (and keeping an eye on the TV).
BEA has gone to bed, and is getting up at 5.
JACKIE and ANTONY are blogging from The Times, but may have gone to get sushi.
MIRIAM is besides herself with anxiety at Rietpan.
CHIPPY is at Hogsback without CNN (in a way that is a state of bliss).
JEREMY wants to know what to wear to the party at the Troyeville Hotel tomorrow night.
PROSPERO says he won't make the party because he'll be too busy comforting Sarah Palin (which is a comforting thought).
JANINE should be home from Cape Town by now, and may be watching at JANN's.
Debra's mother and mine have strict prayer instructions.

MADONNA ON SARAH PALIN

HERE'S a YouTube video of the Madonna concert Jonny, Dianne Hubbard and her daughter, Kelsey, and I went to at Madison Square Garden at the beginning of October. Some choice extracts:
"You guys have come to my party!
"Thank you for coming to my party!
"You know who's not invited to my party?
"Sarah Fucking Palin!
"She's not invited to this show!
"Sarah Palin has to go!
"Now get the bitch out of here, alright. Nothing personal. She's freaking me out."

(Give it a couple of seconds; the image gets better and the sound's fine.)

VOTER TURNOUT: MORE THAN 66%?

VOTER turnout has the TV anchors very excited, and there's a chance that this could be the best year since 1908, when the turnout was something like more than 66%. They're putting it down to person-to-person contact (the way it would have been a hundred years ago) -- that is, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and, I suppose, all those hundreds of thousands of volunteers who have been hitting the pavements all over America. There's a record turnout in Los Angeles; in one county in Ohio the turnout is 80%; 4,4 million people voted early in Florida, and inside the polling stations there it's humming right now.

RED, WHITE AND BLUE

THIS is trivial, but if you want to know why Republicans are red and Democrats blue, here's a nice explanation.

KARL ROVE PREDICTS

BUSH'S brain is predicting a 338-200 Obama victory over McCain today, and he's got a nifty electoral map to prove it. Check it out on his website.

DON'T SPEAK FOR ME, SARAH PALIN

The only way to behave today is mean. Here's one from YouTube...

THE ECC SINGERS

I POST this because Miriam and Chippy are in France, and I'm not. And because it's one of my favourite pics of the two of them. Here they are with Judy, reliving their End Conscription Campaign cultural performances from long ago.

VOEL VRY MET VOËLVRY

BLAST from the past, indeed. Lloyd sent me this pic of a Voëlvry moment in Windhoek in 1989, I think. There's me on the left, Grace Catao, Jannie Hanepoot van Tonder, Piet Pers (aka Gary Herselman), Helge Schütz, Steve "The Veg" Howells, Johannes Kerkorrel (aka Ralph Rabie) and Mark "Boesak" Bennett. Hell.

AT VANESSA AND ALBIE'S

ALBIE and Vanessa are returning to SA on 5 July, after spending six months here while Albie was scholar-in-residence at the Ford Foundation. Their apartment, on East 94th Street, is on the 28th floor, and has a frightening balcony: it has perspex (or something like that) walls, and makes one feel as if there is nothing to keep you from tumbling off it. But the view from it is magnificent.

Tony and Hillary Hamburger visited Albie and Vanessa a week or two ago, and we had brunch with them

Jonny and Vanessa ...

... and Albie