Nancy from Newton, Mass. was hustling to catch up with a parade of hardcore Hillary-ites on Denver’s 16th Street Mall on Monday carrying balloons, wearing Hillary face masks and chanting “18 million.”

I abandoned my Caesar salad and hoofed it after Nancy because I’d been looking for a last gasp Hillary protester. After one day in Denver I’d run into plenty of Hillary admirers but they were former believers who’d gone over the Hill to Obama-land.

And they really wish their resister sisters would too. ASAP.

That same day I talked to delegate Rachel Binah from Mendocino about the hold-outs and she said it is now up to Hillary to convince them they have to join the Obama-Biden bandwagon.

“She can and she will,” said Binah, sympathetic that “naturally they feel hurt,” first to have their once slam-dunk candidate drop out of the race and then be passed over for VP.

“People understand how they feel. But they must understand that all those things they hold dear are in jeopardy with another Bush-like administration. And it’s not just the issue of choice, but the economy, the environment and what happens to the Supreme Court.”

I think Nancy from Newton and the others are looking for just a couple days more of understanding. And a little more honor and respect for their candidate. The one whose votes represent 18 million new cracks in the glass ceiling. The one who many still insist would be stronger, tougher than Obama. They want to vote for her one more time.

And if they can’t does this mean they’ll vote for the other guy come November, or not vote at all? Nancy said “I don’t think people should interpret it this way,” and then she pointedly added that she’d been a loyal Democrat for 36 years. And I took that to mean she wasn’t going to change in November.

I asked Marie Wilson who directs the non-partisan White House Project, which would like to see a woman in the top office as well as running for a lot more seats at all levels, about this last call for Hillary.

She thinks that the resistance is more general than specific. “It’s as much about history as it is about Hillary,” said Wilson who knows about women frustrated in their attempts to win public office.

“I don’t go any place where I don’t hear from some woman how she was advised to pull out of the race, to not run, to let the man be the candidate, for the sake of the party,” said Wilson, who’s also famous for creating Take Your Daughters (and then Sons) to Work Day.

I want to hope the Hillary women in the street will be satisfied with just a little more limelight for the woman whom they thought would take them all to the top. And then it will be up to their icon to tell the convention and the world and her sisters thank you very much, but she’s not over and they’re not
either.

Besides, most of us think Hillary’s got another better-than-VP job awaiting in Obama-land. Like Supreme Court justice. Or Czarina of universal health care. Then imagine how loud our united whoops and hollers.

Listen for Susan’s daily reports from out on the streets at the Denver Democratic Convention during NPR coverage at 5:30pm and 6:30pm on KRCB-FM, 91.1 FM

The Recreate 68 organizers hoped for 25,000 to march in the Denver streets, but the numbers were closer to 1,500 with maybe almost as many watchful police, some in riot gear. In terms of mood and temperment it was more like one of the many Out of Iraq protests in San Francisco, Loud but fairly mannerly. My favorite street chant remains “This Is What Democracy Looks Like.”

Listen for Susan’s daily reports from out on the streets at the Denver Democratic Convention during NPR coverage at 5:30pm and 6:30pm on KRCB-FM, 91.1 FM

In the 1970s there was a bar in Sebastopol called West of the Laguna which had live music and stand up comics. This was back before our part of California turned into Wine Country and when houses were affordable enough for beginning artists and musicians to live here and where you could go out at night and hear new talent for the price of a beer.

West of the Laguna was a good place to do that, but what intrigued me most were the grainy black and white photos on the walls of real people on the old fashioned Laguna de Santa Rosa. They were leisurely summertime photos of men in straw hats and women in white dresses drifting along in canoes and rowboats. The kind of dreamy scene you see in an impressionist show at an art museum.

It was hard to imagine boaters on the Laguna because for so long this stretch of Sonoma County fresh water has been pretty much in hiding. It’s not just that the boaters went away but that the Laguna became hidden as it was turned into a flood control channel and remodeled by agriculture and business interests.

It’s there in glimpses. Sometime the winter rains will turn a skinny strip of it into a magical lake, or from certain roads you can catch a quick delicious view of glistening water and oak trees. But mostly only cows and private property owners get to visit its natural wonders close-up.

For most of us the Laguna is a bump in the road, the water that’s under the bridge you race across on the way to work. If you’re stuck in commute traffic maybe you get a longer look at the tangle of trees standing hip deep in water. But you seldom see anybody in or on the water itself.

We need our green, wild watery spots where we can go and be still.

This summer I got to do that, thanks to a friend who shared her auction prize from a fund-raiser which was a guided trip of the Laguna by kayak. We paddled one balmy morning for three hours, our kayaks low in the water below the reeds. It was like a scene in the “African Queen,” except there were no leeches and no German warships coming to get us. We saw egrets in their long Katherine Hepburn necks. And osprey, blue heron and otters. Bushes of pink wild roses hugged the banks and a western pond turtle sunned himself on a log.

This is where the owls head when they fly over our roof at twilight. This is where the ducks born in the pond in our neighborhood park will go when their mother duck tells them to fly off.

But save for a few trails that provide only limited looks, the Laguna is still a drive-by for most people. And that’s too bad because we need our green, wild, watery spots where we can go and be still.

Whether there are more paths and launching docks in this waterway’s future will be up to the Laguna stewards and government. But when and if the Laugna comes out of hiding, I’ll be there. In my kayak and my white dress.

Listen to Laguna Time Out on KRCB’s Another Voice.