There Will Come Soft Rains

CHARLOTTE – The population that weeps for journalists who get inconvenienced at conventions must be small. Heck, there are probably people who search for these stories, to cheer themselves up. Still, the path into the Time Warner Center is one of the hottest and wettest parts of a hot and water-logged city. The eight metal detectors that protect the entrance are obscured by umbrellas, which themselves will be deposited in a pile, because – in a week of heavy rains – you are not allowed to bring umbrellas into the building.
Right behind me, funny enough, were two pro-choice activists who were experiencing acid flashbacks. They’d been stuck in the infamous “purple tunnel of death” at the 2009 inauguration of the president. “It must be the same people in charge,” one of them told me, as she deposited a dangerous Dasani water bottle in an overflowed recycling tub.