Newscoma

I met Alvin Hill at the Barack Obama Headquarters on Rosa L. Parks Blvd. in Nashville on Saturday.

Imagine my surprise to see this story in the Tennessean this evening.

The phones are always ringing, but that’s a good thing,” said Alvin Hill, 51, of Nashville, a first-time campaign volunteer.

With just over six weeks to go before the presidential election, the storefront headquarters across from the Farmers Market on Rosa L. Parks Boulevard serves as a kind of a volunteer war room for Democrats, who are using the space to muster support for Obama as well as candidates in congressional and state races.

There’s a contradictory element in this presidential election season in Tennessee: The Democrats have a presidential candidate who, by most estimates, is not expected to win here, and yet is widely seen as fueling a surge of new voters and volunteers such as those at the Democrat’s Victory ‘08 headquarters.

The headquarters itself is, in a manner of speaking, a symbol of that contradiction. Until this week, the state party footed the entire bill for the space, with the Obama campaign chipping in only last week to pay for staff. Barack Obama has not been in Tennessee since last year, and a planned fundraiser with Vice President Al Gore as host never materialized.

He was enthusiastic and showed me around the headquarters. A small area at the front of the HQ’s was filled with toys and desks were scattered around the space. It was late in the day, just about an hour before the blogger meetup last night at the Saucer. Mr. Hill took me to the back of HQ’s and showed me a picture that he liked of Obama and Biden. His shirt was filled with various Barack Obama buttons.

I liked the way he laughed.

There were handmade signs in the space as indicated in the story, but it was Hill, whose joy and enthusiasm had me smiling the entire time we were in there.

“If you had only been in here and hour ago, we had yard signs,” he said proudly. “Unfortunately, we ran out.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” I said.

He laughed and said it was good.

It’s people like Hill that mark, for me at least, the exuberance and good parts of this election year.

I put my cynicism hat aside last night because of this lovely man. I planned on writing about Mr. Hill anyway, but to see him acknowledged in today’s paper just proves that I wasn’t the only one he made an impression on

And, that my friend, is of the good.