DENVER, COLORADO: AUGUST 28, 2008, MILE-HIGH STADIUM

It really was a bit much.

It began with the grandiose locale, a stadium high in the Rocky Mountains. Then there was the gauche Greco-Roman archway that formed the backdrop of the stage and through which speakers passed on their way to and from the lectern. And, of course, there was the lectern itself: perched atop a round, raised dais surrounded by a semi-circle of the powerful and otherwise privileged it seemed more fitting for a Soprano than for a first among equals.

So when the time finally arrived, after speaker after adulatory speaker had sung the man’s praises for hours, days even, when that moment finally arrived and America’s supposed savior stepped from the shadows to accept the shiny mantel that now sits upon his bony shoulders, when this moment came, I really did half-expect him to have Olive branches wrapped around his head.

But, alas, Barack Obama did not appear -- at least to me -- as the half-celestial, half-human Olympian spawn his Hollywood-trained handlers have packaged him to be. Instead, he reminded me of the stereotypical Black preacher who wears custom-tailored suits and drives Cadillacs because, he says, that’s what the people expect from him, that’s how the people want their leader to look.

Maybe I think this way because some racist residuum has taken hold in my brain and refused to yield to the notion of a Black president. But that seems too easy an answer.
No, more likely, I think, my cynical New York City-trained brain causes me to question anyone who promises to solve all our problems swiftly and easily with the stroke of a presidential pen. Some things really are too good to be true.

In other words, my exposure to shysters and sellers of all color and kind has blessed me with the ability to recognize when someone is trying to sell me some dream or something.

So, make no mistake, Barack Obama is indeed trying to sell a dream to the American people. If he was not, he would not have said “I” as many times as he did. If he was not, he would have said “we” as much as he said “I” and stressed both the severed nature of the challenges ahead, and the absolute need for collective action to overcome them. Rarely has any one man achieved as much as Obama pledged to accomplish Thursday night.

It really was a bit much.

DENVER, COLORADO; AUGUST 25, 2008, INSIDE THE PEPSI CENTER, SITE OF THE 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE

I’ve shot Michelle Obama a few times now.

And every time I see her through the magnifying eye of my camera lens I’m left with the impression of a shy, physically awkward girl --girl, that’s a deliberate choice -- forced into the spotlight. If asked why, I’d say it wasn’t so much in what she said or how she said it, it was in the way she carried herself. Maybe it’s just because she’s so tall, but, then again, maybe it’s because she feels that her husband has gotten himself into some pretty deep water -- water that he will survive only if fate turns favorably toward him and the Secret Service continues to do the outstanding job it has of keeping him alive.

Indeed, who but the Kennedy's was he implicitly compared to last night on the stage of the Pepsi Center in Denver?

Which is why Michele Obama’s speech there was so extraordinary. It was near-perfect grace under fire. It was powerfully delivered, at times in something akin to what poets call meter and what we call rhythm. It was tough. It was soft. But above all it was moving. As a lawyer, she is trained in oral argument. But what we heard last night was far from a sterile analysis of law and facts. No, what we heard last night came from somewhere else. Some cherished, magnificent place inside of her where all is as it should be and the peace and power emanating from there allows a person to be all she can be, all she wants to be.

And from this place Michelle Obama reached across and touched the same place inside of you, a part that perhaps, like me, you felt no longer existed.

She makes a convincing case for her husband to be President. I mean, if this is the kind of woman -- woman, that’s a deliberate choice -- that Barack Obama lays down next to every night he must be as good as she is. They’re the kind of smart, serious, sincere people that you know, you just know, will succeed if given the chance. They just work like that. More than this, though, you want them to succeed. They’re the kind of couple you hope for. They’re the kind of couple you want to hang out with. They’re the kind of couple you wish to be and, in a perfect world, the kind of couple you would be.

But the world’s far from perfect and, hope, wish, pray, whatever we do, or don’t, that world is about to come crashing down on them, and on us.

We see it descending now. Domestically, two Bush terms have left this country rotting from the inside out. Mortgage foreclosures blanket the Nation. Debt of all kind, from college to credit cards, including the National Debt, holds all of us down. Gasoline is $4 a gallon. Cynicism and malaise infect everyone, young and old alike. Internationally, we are in two win-less wars, earning us the enmity of folks around the world -- and some motherfucking Bedouins from the Seventh Century want to set off a nuclear bomb in New York City, my goddamned hometown. And, if this weren’t bad enough, the time to do something about global warming may have past.

Of course there’s always hope. So it’s a good thing the Obamas have more to offer than just that.

DENVER, COLORADO: AUGUST 23, 2008

Denver prepares to host the Democratic National Convention by initiating platoon-sized foot patrols of heavily-armed policemen. Here, cops bearing riot-control and other specialized equipment patrol in downtown Denver.

WONDERVU, COLORAO: AUGUST 22, 2008

Clark paints the VOTE truck before bidding it adieu – Dallas and his truck is headed to Black Rock City in the Nevada Desert for the Burning Man arts festival.

WONDERVU, COLORADO: AUGUST 21, 2008

Wondervu, by far, exceeded the expectations that its name created.

Just before dawn I woke and submerged myself in the hot-tub. I leaned my head back and fixed his eyes upon the firmament above, black, bottomless and adorned with stars as jewels encrust a crown, infinite, and watched as night became day.

I watched as the sky turned purple, then pale, then pink, then gold. Facing west, toward the Rockies, I watched as, suddenly, the first rays of the on-rushing day broke all at once over the hill behind me like a great luminescent wave cresting across the sky. I watched as, like a washtub filling in reverse, the wave turned the tips of the Rockies gold before flowing down the mountains -- incrementally, inevitably, time-ticking -- until everything, all I could see, was bathed in the sun’s fiery light.

In the distance the mountains, once obscured by night, stood grey and majestic. Splotches of white -- still un-melted snow -- pocketed the grey at the highest points of the tall peaks. A cool breeze blew from their direction, seething into the wind that constantly came from the south. Leaves shimmered on the trees. The sound of a table-saw came to life, and a peek through the woods revealed a man cutting wood next to his cabin up the hill.

I sparked some of the weed our host had so graciously given us, took a deep draught, and sank beneath the water.

Life had never been better.

SOMEWHERE IN KANSAS, ALONG I-70, AUGUST 20, 2008

From Missouri we blasted through Kansas.

Never before had I seen a place so flat. A sea of corn and grain of all kinds blanketed the earth for as far as I could see. Every few miles or so towering silver silos would rise from the green sea into the blue sky. Frequently, but not always, houses and small buildings would be clustered around these silos which, when looked at from a distance, resemble something like archipelagos.

And the people who live on these inland islands and work the fields surrounding them look every bit like the stranded survivors they are. They are tall and thin and strong. Their forearms ripple when their bony, calloused fingers grasp something. Many of the older ones are hard of hearing, from years of exposure to noisy farm machinery. The faces of the youth betray the cold hatred that freezes their hearts of their rural confinement.

Yet they stay. The last names of the people who occupy these inland islands have been on local civic records since those records were first transcribed. Before that, their ancestors’ names can be found in dusty, rotting Church ledgers that first made the trip west in wagons. You name it, these people have lived through it: hostile natives, war, depressions, the Dust Bowl years, cultural upheaval, tornados, ad infinitum.

It all blurs past, at an easy eighty miles an hour, through the VOTE truck’s glass. Through the windshield, the gray asphalt of the highway shoots straight out until it disappears over the horizon. To the point it vanishes, the highway undulates across the bumps and dips that amount to hills and valleys across the great plain. Billboards remind drivers of God’s coming wrath and the need to repent; of places to see six-legged steer and the world’s largest prairie dog; and the newly-expanded roadside porn-palace.

“For truckers,” Clark says.

We drive on. The sky goes from blue to gray to orange then black; the golden sun transforms itself into a burning red ball. As the sun sinks low in the sky, it disappears behind a farm, bathing it in a burning, blinding red light, making it appear as if it’s on fire. An hour later we cross the state line into Colorado. The plain continues all the way to Denver. Clark says that, in daylight, the foothills of the Rockies can be seen in the distance, behind the city. But all I see is black.

We drive through the City into its northern suburbs. As we drive the road steadily climbs. At a light we make a left. Turning into a small canyon that cuts through the hills, the road climbs ever-steeper into the hills. The canyon walls close in around us. A small green sign tells us where we are, “Wondervu” it says. Dallas announces we are close to our destination – a cabin owned by a friend of his on the western side of the Front Range, as these hills are called.

Making a right onto a dirt road, we follow it to its end. “We’re here,” Dallas says.

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI: AUGUST 20, 2008, THE ROUSIS FAMILY RESIDENCE

Here, the Rousis's daughter, Eleni, 1, keeps her eye on a photographer as Clark beautifies the family's garage-door.

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI: AUGUST 20, 2008, INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD LAWRENCE MILLER

Mr. Miller is a historian and Lincoln biographer. His first two books in a projected four-volume series on Lincoln, covering his birth to his nomination for president, are already published. Here, Miller answers questions concerning Lincoln, Senator and presumptive Democratic nominee for president Barack Obama, and the up-coming presidential election.

In your research, which began in 1990, what’s the thing that surprised you most about Lincoln?

Actually I think the thing that surprised me most was how ruthless he could be. When he was just absolutely determined to get something done he would do whatever was necessary to do it. Now, he wouldn’t do more than was necessary to do it. But, he was not Mr. Goody Two-Shoes. Mr. Nicey Nice doesn’t get to be president.

And when did this ruthlessness first manifest itself?

Well, I think it was when he was a state legislator. And various programs he was interested in. Or trying to help somebody win an election or win an election himself. They call him ‘Honest Abe’ but he wasn’t beyond spinning things to his advantage, to make an opponent really look terrible, or to make someone’s idea look really terrible. Or to just be a really tough character.

Now see he himself was a tough character. He grew-up on the frontier. He’d be involved in fights and stuff like that. He was physically a powerful person. He was about six four. Very muscular. Even up to the day of his death he had not weakened a bit. A cabinet member was surprised to see all the muscles rippling on Lincoln’s body after he was in bed after he was shot. So Lincoln was a tough character, he was a good character, but he was a tough guy.

Obama?

When Lincoln was elected president he had a couple years in Congress and had served as a state legislator. But he had never sponsored any important Federal legislation. His record as a state legislator is actually that he helped wreck the state’s finances with some impractical programs that bankrupted the state but accomplished nothing. And he really didn’t have that much to show for accomplishing anything in public life.

But he could give one heck of a speech. And he would attract big crowds. And he would inspire people to work for ideals. Particularly, Lincoln would press the point of what he thought was the key thing in the American Revolution -- that everybody had equal rights. Nobody was entitled to special treatment. And he would inspire people to look ahead to a brighter future, and to work for a brighter future that they thought hadn’t even been possible. He would make people visualize it.

And Obama I think is very similar in that regard. You know, you can’t really point to decades of experience in public life, great programs that he sponsored. But he inspires people to look within themselves to try to achieve things that they never even thought were achievable.

What does it say about the country that there is a hunger for that now?

Well, I think it tells us that people are feeling frustrated with being stagnant. They see the same problems year after year. No matter what we try to do things don’t seem to get any better, in many respects.

One more comment on the rhetoric ... One thing about Obama’s rhetoric or any president’s rhetoric is that one of the most important talents that a president can have is being able to get people rallied and inspired and work on things. So people talk about how Obama’s good at giving a speech and its all just words. Well, OK, it’s all just words but it makes people want to do things. And I think that’s a tremendous talent to have in a national leader.

We’re in Missouri, Kansas City, you live here, about the middle of the country, is Missouri going to go blue in November, is the country going to elect Obama?

Missouri in recent decades has been a republican state as far as presidential elections go. And whether that’s gonna change this time it’s hard to say. Whether the country will elect Obama? Well the polls of course showing the popular vote that he’s ahead. But what counts of course is the Electoral College. And how that’s going to shake out I don’t know.

I think part of the problem too is if there’s election fraud again. And I’m convinced there was in 2004 and there was in 2000. Is that fraud going to be fought when it happens?

And I was really disappointed that the Democratic nominees didn’t push it harder than they did, trying to investigate that and make it right. And so it’s going to be another question are there going to be some close states in 2008. And if they’re close are the exit polls match what the actually totals are from the machines inside, the computerized machines. And if there’s suspicions that there’s fraud going on is Obama going to fight it? Or is he going to lie down like Kerry did? And I’m hoping that Obama would fight it. But, of course, we won’t know unless it happens. And maybe we’ll be lucky and that issue won’t even arise.

Speaking of fighting, and since we’re speaking of Lincoln, Lincoln was shot, assassinated, what do you think the chances are of somebody taking a shot at Obama?

I’m convinced that there’s more than one person stalking Obama right now. That there are enough crazy vicious racists in this country or people who are mad about other things, who are frightened of Obama, that they want the man dead. Whether anything will actually happen I have no idea. But I’m convinced there are people that want to make something happen. And that any security concerns about Obama are for real.

How important do you think Obama’s up-coming speech at the DNC will be to him winning the election?

Well I think the speech is going to be quite important, at least as important as a speech can be, in that it’s one of the speeches that most people interested in politics are going to listen to. And so there’ll be a lot of exposure to that speech.

I doubt that he’s going to change anyone’s mind, or swing someone around. But what he is going to do is inspire people who already share his beliefs to go out and vote who might otherwise sit out and not do it. Usually the key to winning an election isn’t so much to change your opposition’s minds, but to rally your own people behind you and have your people show up. And so, I think, the key effect of Obama’s speech at the convention is going to be to rally Obama’s supporters and get them to show at the polls.

Any other thoughts?

I think with Obama a lot of people are counting on him to do so much. And one of the things, even as much as Lincoln accomplished, I’ve learned there’s only so much that a person can do. And a lot of the problems we’re facing, frankly, it may be too late to take care of them. Like climate change, maybe too late. Some things with the economy and the way things are going. You know, things may descend on him like they did on Herbert Hoover. And even though it wasn’t his fault, it’s going to be his responsibly to do something and who knows what he’ll be able to do. So I hope peoples’ expectations aren’t too high. I hope their hopes are high, but I hope their expectations aren’t unreasonable about what a single person can to get things turned around in this country.

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: AUGUST 18, 2008, AT THE ROYALE, "THE RUSSIANS ARE CUNTS"

“Say it!,” the drunk man yelled at the bartender. Raising his husky frame off his seat to press his point for a moment, he continued “Say it ‘the Russians are cunts!’”

It was one in the morning. Clark, Dallas and I were in a bar in St. Louis, the Royale, the closest thing to home I’d found since the trip began, five days ago. The bar had been recommended to us by a local. We’d walked in and one of the women behind the bar came over to Clark and hugged him, asking him where he’d been and what he’d been up to. The two had gone to art-school together. She’d hooked us up with the owner, who let Clark do two pieces on his walls, one inside, one out.

I liked the place. Portraits of Jack and Bobby Kennedy hung above the bar, an American flag on one side, Irish on the other. The mick who ran the joint actually pulled off the pork pie hat he wore. And, being a part-time stringer for MTV, he carried a video camera on a stick, what photographers call a monopod actually, but he carried over his shoulder like a bat. Cards on his bar’s tables encouraged people to register to vote, which was able to be done right on the bar. The music was good too, spun by a local DJ, a mix of danceable rock that kept you moving some part of your body even if you were sitting down.

So when this loudmouthed fuck started yelling in his eastern European accent at Clark’s cute bartender friend I wanted to pick-up something heavy and smash it over his head.

But I didn’t. Instead, I went over to the bar and sat down, a stool between us. I thought my mere presence would shut him up. I was wrong. He continued, “You know they’re fucking cunts. Fucking cunts. You won’t say it ‘cause you know it’s true.”

A beer bottle sat on the bar in front of him, but he wasn’t slurring his words, so I didn’t think he was drunk.

“Dude relax. She’s not arguing with you.”

“She’s Polish and I’m Romanian and I just want her to say it, come on, say it with me,” breaking eye contact with me to lock onto her, “Say it with me, ‘the Russians are cunts.’”

The girl was having none of it, “I don’t have to say it.”

“She’s not hearing you man,” I told the guy. “You’re yelling at her. I know you talking politics and shit. Folks get emotional when they talk politics, but you don’t need to yell at …”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. They’re fucking bitches. And you’re a bitch too,” he said, looking at me. “A fucking bitch.”

Them there’s what they call fighting words. Shit, even the Supreme Court -- nine old men and women in an ivory tower surrounded by ex-Special Forces soldiers bearing sub-machine guns, just about as physically far removed from the real world as you can get -- recognizes that there are certain words you just can’t say to a man and not expect to be punched in the face. Words like nigger, spic, cracker, anything about a man's mother or wife, threats, spitting -- all just cause in the world of men for the application of fist to face.

I stood up. “Take it back,” I said.

“Bitch. Bitch. Bitch,” he said, as he stood up too.

“Your mother’s a bitch.”

“Maybe she is, but so are you. Bitch.”

A black St. Louis Cardinals cap sat on his head. I flicked it off. Things happened fast after that. A punch came. I weaved to my left, so most his fist missed my face, but it was close enough to send my glasses flying. Without taking my eyes off him, I bobbed back up and threw an overhand right. I felt it land square and hard, somewhere in the middle of his face.

He staggered backward, briefly lowering his hands for balance, before raising them again.

Lowering my hands, I spoke to him: “Are we good?”

He unfurled his clenched fist and reached out his hand. I grasped it. The fight was over.

LOUISIANA, MISSOURI: AUGUST 18, 2008, CLARK'S MOM SEES HER SON OFF

She had feed us at her restaurant, the one she owns and where she is chef. Now we were back at the house where her husband and she had raised their three sons. The house sat near the crest of a knoll in the hills outside of town. A concrete cistern was buried beside it, the top of which rose some six inches above the ground. It had been turned into a porch, with a picnic table and a roof.

It was on this porch that Karen, Clark’s mother, and I stood, everyone else was in the house. Sounds of night emanated from the woods around us. Cool air drafted up from the hollow below. A dim light set the black night aglow. I sipped a beer. Silence filled the void between us, two strangers. Then she turned, fixed me in the eye, and spoke.

“Now’s my boy doing, Nick? I mean, is this a big waste of time for him or what?”

This was a new thing for me, being put in the position of responsible adult. I mean, all I signed up for was a drive across the country! Yet, here I was, facing a middle-aged mother in Missouri with worry in her eyes. I smiled inwardly, bemused by the turn of events that had brought me to this point, the things that can happen that can force a person to think and maybe view life in a different way.

“This is the thing, the project is bigger than him, you know what I’m saying?”

“Ever since he’s moved to New York he’s spent all this money. I know he’s got some buttons and t-shirts and such, but he’s spent a lot of money.”

“Well, it’s not like he’s smoking crack or anything like that. You know?”

“I didn’t think he was … it’s just a lot of money.”

“New York costs a lot of money. Especially when you first move there. I was away for some time and when I got back I blew through my money like nothing, You want to go out, you want to do this, do that. And girls in New York ain’t cheap either, I don’t mean the hired kind I just mean in general.”

LOUISIANA, MISSOURI: AUGUST 18, 2008, INSIDE HAIR BIZ

Mike Kokouris, Clark's barber. "He plays a crowd. All these young girls freaking off on him."

LOUISIANA, MISSOURI: AUGUST 17, 2008, THE LOVE FAMILY FARM

"I like red, white and blue," Doris Love yells at Clark by way of color suggestion as she and her husband run an errand, leaving Clark to his own devices. "Don't have any red," he says, turning to me. "Never bought any."

LOUISIANA, MISSOURI: AUGUST 17, 2008, THE GLENN FAMILY PONY RANCH

We drove to a farm yesterday afternoon. Well, it wasn’t a farm, Clark corrects me, it was a ranch, a pony ranch specifically. The ranch belongs to Edward “Ned” Glenn. Dr. Glenn, as he’s also known, has been Clark’s family physician since they moved to Louisiana, Missouri, when Clark was two. The Glenn ranch used to have horse, but the horses gave way to ponies after they stampeded Ned’s wife, Pat, an ordained Episcopal minister, some years back.

The ranch sits next to a Golf course, which locals call the country club after its official name, “the Pike County Country Club.” A small dirt road splits the land between the two, leading up and behind the Glenn family paddock to their house. Ned and Pat meet us at a gate to the field. Ned drives a tractor, which he uses to harvest the hay that feeds his ponies. Pat drives a Jeep, with a dog and a friend inside.

“Follow me,” Ned yells to Clark, who sits behind the wheel of the VOTE truck. Ned stands in his saddle as he drives, swaying side-to-side as he pilots the tractor through the uneven field. As we drive, the ponies scatter at first before gathering their courage to trot alongside the trucks.

Ned pulls to a stop in front of an old barn inside the paddock. The ponies gather around us, pressing their noses into our pockets as we examine the barn. “Don’t mind them,” Ned says. “They’re just real friendly.”

Clark pulls the truck alongside the barn and climbs on top. As he goes to his work, I go to mine, setting up a video camera on a tripod, taking pictures with my still camera. But the ponies keep getting in my way, nudging me, literally sticking their noses where they don’t belong. They’re not horses, but the bigger ones weigh at least 500 pounds a piece, and they have teeth, and they kick, so best to keep them at a remove, I think.

Then I see this really cute blonde pony and she won’t leave me alone. I get a bright idea. I hand my camera to Dallas, with my phone and camcorder. I tell him to get ready. I hug the pony, petting it on its long neck, where it meets it body. I pull it close to me. Suddenly, it turns its head back toward me and ever so gently nips me on the thin, taught flesh of my forearm.

It wasn’t a true bite, nowhere near hard enough to hurt let alone draw blood, but it’s enough to rile me. I reach over the pony, hugging it next, then I jump on its back. For a moment, an ever-lasting moment, I am riding, flying, then she picks up speed and I sense myself slipping backward across the pony’s back. I try to reach for its neck, but by the time I realize I have to if I want to keep riding, it’s too late -- out of reach. Then I realize that I am not only sliding backwards, I’m slipping down, off her ass.

I land on my feet, dissolving into laughter. I haven’t had so much fun in decades.

LOUISIANA, MISSOURI: AUGUST 17, 2008

Sarah Feldt owns Green Tiger Custom Framing. Using a computer-driven cutting machine, Sarah makes the stencils Clark uses in much of his campaign.

"I met Clark through his family. His dad is an artist. And I actually do some work for him. And, ah, so I met Clark through his dad. About three years ago, I started doing the cut-outs for him.

I went out and looked at his website, and I was looking at some of the pictures. And he was telling me about the website. So I think that’s really cool. Yeah … yeah! It’s a, I’m excited to see that it’s doing something. It’s neat to watch kinda grassroots kinda things take hold, and how people react to it.

How have people reacted to Clark? Or Clark’s campaign? I haven’t heard a whole lot here in town. I know that there’s probably some that don’t quite understand what, why, you know … what it is. I think they’re some people around here probably not with a real good ability to understand Clark’s art. I think they struggle to understand what art is first of all in this area some times …. I’m not sure I understand it.

[Looking at Clark] What the hell are you doing? What’s the point?

See and I didn’t actually think there was, … you had that much of a reason for it. I thought you just kinda liked the design or something.

I claim no responsibility, at all. I wish him the best. And I’m glad to it. I try to support the arts in different ways around town.

I don’t know, … just get out and vote. I mean if I was gonna say anything to anybody I’d say whatever your opinion, express it. Don’t sit back and be a victim."

LOUISIANA, MISSOURI: AUGUST 18, 2008, THE GLENN FAMILY PONY RANCH

Dr. Edward Glenn, Patriarch of the Glenn family. Glenn has been Clark's doctor since Clark was two years-old. When Dr. Glenn was asked to share his thoughts concerning his long-time patient's project, including going to both political conventions, he had this to say: "I don't know if they invited Clark or not. But if they did, they certainly don't know him."

CLEVELAND, OHIO: AUGUST 15, 2008, INSIDE THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS

"He’s just trying to get a message out, vote. Just vote. Man they shoulda just gave him a fine. Man you shoulda just mailed that money in. You shouldn’t a had waste your time coming back. Man, I just recently registered to vote. Just recently registered. Thought I couldn’t, cause of my criminal background. Found out I could. Can’t wait to cast my ballot. I don’t wanna just vote for anybody. I’m still weighing. I’m still hearing. I still wanna, you know, I wanna hear more. I want it all the way to the deadline, to the end. I don’t want to just to rush and vote for nobody. Cause everybody not saying everything. I want to hear everything, you know. I want to hear everything. Before I cast my ballot, I want mine to count.”

GARY, INDIANA: August 16, 2008

As you walk through the door of Coney Island, as the greasy spoon across the road is called, your nostrils flare as the smell of bacon fills your nose. There’s a jukebox on the side, and that sends the sounds of Black classics into your ears. There’s still no white face to be seen, except for yours, and everyone inside the diner notes your presence when you move toward the counter. Clark comes in behind me and starts passing out VOTE buttons. Dallas shoots video.

Two men turn their faces away from the lens. You feel whiter than perhaps you are. You try to ask one of the men, the one wearing the Obama t-shirt, if you can shoot the front of it from the next down. But he doesn’t respond when you try to talk to him so you forget it. This is not the place to make scene. Not that something would happen to you, although there’s always that possibility, but you like to think of yourself as cooler than that. I mean, shit, their lives are hard enough without some asshole cracker shoving a camera in their face as they’re trying to enjoy lunch.

You order something. The waitress laughs at you when you ask for sauerkraut. You think it’s your New York accent, but maybe it’s the fact, as she tells you, that they don’t have sauerkraut -- just onions, relish and chili. You ask for relish and a coke to go with it, but it takes so long to come, as if they’re intentionally trying to discourage you from coming back, and the burnt bacon smell starts to turn you off, that you give up, hand the girl a $5, tell her to put that in her pocket, and step outside.

You breathe deep and look around. Burned out buildings and boarded-up storefronts surround you. But there’s a chalkboard-like black slate leaning against a building a few storefronts down. You walk over to it and read. It says “H&S Shoeshine Parlor.” You know you have to go in.

Two men are in side. One’s seated and reading a newspaper. The other is standing, shining a shoe. In the back of the men’s shop the ceiling is collapsed. Clear plastic tarpaulins have in front of the detritus like curtains. All the walls around you are covered with funeral notices, one-page paper fliers using with a picture of the deceased on the cover, and some information about who he or she was, as well as where and when mourning will be done.

“We’ve been here thirty years,” one of the men say. “Thirty years. We’ve had a lot of friends pass on us. Seems every week its someone else. But we still managing to get along, day-by-day. Yup, thirty years.”

GARY, INDIANA: August 16, 2008.

I woke Dallas up and climbed into the back of the vote truck to sleep. He climbed into the front seat to drive. That was at seven this morning. When I awoke around noon, I wasn’t on a lush island in the middle of an inland sea. Fuck no, I was in wonderful downtown Gary, Indiana, at a Clark gas station.

The gas station didn’t look like the kind of place that either had a bathroom or that I wanted to actually enter if it did not have a bathroom. You know what I’m saying. It probably sounds a little odd but it makes sense, if you think about it. Not too much, though. Then it won’t make any sense at all. So I walked right to the alley behind the place and pissed in a corner overgrown with tall weeds.

The sun burned hot. Down the alley, the kind of overgrown, pot-holed path behind buildings where garbage trucks are supposed to run, a young black woman in shorts leaned against the driver’s side door of a brown car behind which was a black who age I could not determine. They chatted away, and every once in a while the sun would glint bronze off the girl’s exposed legs.

I buttoned up my shorts and walked back to the truck. Taking off my shirt, I poured water from a gallon jug over my head, hands and chest. I rubbed it in. I took some in my mouth, noted that it was warm, swishing it around a little before spitting it out. I took in my surroundings again. Although there were several people in sight -- in the gas station itself, at a bus stop in front of the gas station, in the greasy spoon on the other side of the road, in front of a shoeshine parlor – none of them were white.

I looked again. Still, no white skin other my own or my companions was in sight,.

I turned to Clark, “Any white people around here?”

“Nope.

“I didn’t think so.”

Then I looked again at the diner across the street, Coney Island it called itself. I grabbed my camera and walked over.

PUT-IN-BAY, OHIO: August 16, 2008

I always dreamed of driving across the country.

I think the idea, not just the notion, but the concrete idea of such a journey first sunk itself inside my head sometime in high school. The idea was to graduate, get a pick-up truck, and drive to Alaska for the summer with a friend or two. But I never did graduate, nor take the drive. Crime and then prison intervened.

But all those years while I was away I gazed through the razorwire, or over the wall, whatever was between me and the open road read, and imagined the day when I, too, would finally trek across our nation and see for myself all the things that make us great, and all the things that makes us human. From sea-to-sea, as the song goes, I pictured the highways and the byways, the Dairy Queens and the Walmarts, the prairies and the mountains, the rich and the poor, the pretty and the desolate.

And then I got out and my parole officer wouldn’t let me have a driver’s license for three years. Nor could I leave, first, the State, then the City, without his permission. And he never gave it. The furthest away I got was the Adirondacks, not counting the time I flew to San Francisco for eighteen hours of work. But flying doesn’t count. Then I met Clark, and he grew comfortable with me shooting him, and he invited me along for this ride.

So that’s how I came to be where I am right now: on the shore of Lake Erie, at 5:30 in the morning, the sun about to rise, with a brisk, stiff wind blowing from the north as I sit under a canopy of oaks and try and convey to you all that being here, amongst you, on the road, means to me.

PUT-IN-BAY, OHIO: August 15, 2008

"I felt pretty safe," Clark said when asked how he felt doing a piece on the same day he evaded jail for spray-painting private property in Cleveland. "I had a good lookout. The prosecuting attorney told me not to 'get caught.' Really, that's my goal."

PUT-IN-BAY, OHIO: August 15, 2008.

On the eve of a potentially watershed election in American history, Amish children take vacation on an island in an archipelago on the shore of Lake Erie.

CLEVELAND, OHIO: August 15, 2008.

Clark had court this morning.

Two months ago, he was out here taking his VOTE campaign to a place where it really mattered -- a swing state that depends on strong urban voter turnout to make it go blue in November. “Ohio has decided the last couple of elections. And Cleveland, being the largest city in Ohio, obviously is a place I want to be.” Larken, his girlfriend, rode shotgun, carrying a camera.

Clark was standing in an alley painting a mural when one of Cleveland’s finest rolled up. Larken had been documenting the event. The two were taken to a local precinct and charged with criminal vandalism as a felony. Their equipment and car were impounded. Three days later they saw a judge, who released them on their own recognizance.

This morning the case ended with Clark pleading guilty to attempted criminal vandalism. He got sentenced to time already served and a $100 fine. He was supposed to get his property back, too, as part of the deal, but the cops wouldn’t let him have it.

“We typically don’t see this type of vandalism,” the judge told him. “Well, we’ve seen ‘creative’ works done, and this, ah, rather interesting … Didn’t bother the building owners much, did it? My advice to you sir is next time, is, make your way in and ask. They might let you do that. Good luck.”

After the proceedings, Clark gave the prosecutor one of his VOTE pins. I was almost expecting them to kiss each other on the cheek.

SOMEWHERE IN PENNSYLVANIA, WESTBOUND I-80: August 15, 2008.

Driving through Pennsylvania at night is like running through a tunnel. It’s dark on three sides with patches of light in the front. Your thoughts and whatever music you have playing -- or not -- keep you company. Companions doze, then spring back to life. Occasionally, the lights of strip-malls illuminate hills around you. Convoys of tractor-trailers blast past, and vice-versa. Its summer and the cool but not cold night air soothes your skin, greasy from the road.

I can’t believe I’m doing this. I mean, first if all, I can’t even vote. That’s one of the punishments the great people of the State of New York -- or at least their elected representatives -- have decided to impose upon persons convicted of felonies within its borders. And, in 1991, I was indeed convicted of a felony, manslaughter to be precise, the particulars of which are a story for another day. Suffice for now to say, though, that after serving almost thirteen years, I was released on July 14, 2003.

It would not be cliché to say that fortune has smiled favorably upon me since that day. Not only have I managed to stay out of prison since my release, but I got New York University to give me a Bachelor’s degree, with honors. After that, I picked up a professional camera for the first time. A year later, I figured out a way to take pictures pretty enough so that one of the Nation’s largest daily newspapers gave me daily work, seven days a week if I wanted it, and sometimes when I didn’t.

My friends said it was the perfect job for me, since I was so good at finding trouble and all.

And, speaking of trouble, it was through an assignment that I first met Clark. He was going out with a member of what can only be described as a sort of gyno-centric burlesque performance and protest art collective in Bushwick, Brooklyn called the House of Yes. I met Larkin and her friends first, on a Saturday afternoon when they were riding the subways dressed as stewardesses in home-sewn costumes handing out bottles of water and candy to straphangers and otherwise acting as “subway service specialists,” as they called themselves.

The point was to protest a fare increase that was not accompanied by once-promised service increases. It worked, and they got their names and pictures in the paper.

For my part, my hard work was rewarded with an invitation to a party the House of Yes’s loft in the post-industrial wilderness along the Brooklyn/Queens border. It was an invitation that changed my life. For a year and a half I have covered nothing but murder and mayhem for the paper, with a sprinkling of vacuous celebrities. It was fun, and I spent many a dark night bonding with other former delinquents now armed with cameras climbing up-and-down fire escapes and through pitbull-filled yards trying to find a way around the yellow tape at the latest police-involved shooting.

But it wasn’t art. And after meeting all the folks at the House of Yes, art is all I wanted to do.

SOMEWHERE IN PENNSYLVANIA, WESTBOUND I-80: August 14, 2008.

The men emerged at the top of a steep, overgrown slope. Except for the black man they dragged with them, all wore uniforms and carried guns. One of them, a State Trooper, cradled an M-4 assault rifle, of the type issued to soldiers oversees. With the man’s hands cuffed behind him, the white men took turns pulling the black man face-first down the hill toward the highway below. The only other black man there, a great grizzly bear of a man, held the prisoner’s feet. The man in their custody had killed a colleague of theirs on the streets of Brooklyn, 100 miles to the east. Then the killer had fled here, to the Pocono Mountains. But he had left a trail, and he was pursued. At the bottom of the hill, he was thrown into the rear of a black Impala, a car and color favored by New York City detectives. He was driven to the judge, and sent back to New York for trial.

And I photographed it, on assignment for one of New York City’s daily tabloid newspapers.

Today, little more than a year later, I speed past this spot where it happened. The sky is dark and raindrops spatter the windshield of the pick-up truck I ride in with two strangers. Not total strangers, of course, but unfamiliar enough. One of the men, who I’ve come to know as “Clark,” is on a mission. He is young and ambitious and he is an artist. He moved to the City in January to go to school and paint graffiti. Not just any kind of graffiti, mind you, but serious high-minded, socially purposeful street art. Inspired by the iconic Robert Indiana LOVE sculpture, he turned the letters around and, keeping Indiana’s font, created VOTE. Using stencils, Clark has spray-painted VOTE all over New York City. He also has stickers and pins, and t-shirts too. Sometimes he sells these, sometimes he gives them away.

But, first and foremost, he is a mischievous kid with a can of spray-paint. So, with a week to go before the Democratic National Convention starts in Denver, Colorado, he has decided to drive cross-country. At points along the way, he intends to stop and paint VOTE murals on the sides of whatever structure may be handy. To accomplish his mission, Clark enlisted Dallas, a forty-one year-old Michigan native with a pick-up truck. I first met Dallas and his Chevy Silverado four months ago in Union Square. There, Clark covered the truck and its bed-cap with VOTE graffiti. It is in this truck that the three of us now ride, having set-out this afternoon from Brooklyn for a city 2000 miles to the west and a mile high in the sky.

Ride with us, won’t you?