“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills.
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;”

Today, Kim, Fiona and I went to the 28th Annual Daffodil Festival in Meriden. For Ned, it was an opportunity to meet with people from Meriden and surrounding towns and talk about the issues that mattered to them. For us, it was an opportunity to enjoy some of the simple pleasures of our home state that too often gets overlooked.

Fiona was particularly interested in the swimming pool filled with trout where youngsters could try their hands at fishing. She also enjoyed a pony ride.

Last week, Kim and I joined Ned as he worshiped at Faith Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Stamford. It isn’t our regular church and we enjoyed a different style of worship than we are used to.

As I’ve traveled the State with different campaigns, I’ve found myself looking for these special times, chances to savor what Connecticut has to offer, from daffodil festivals, county fairs and oyster festivals, to a rich tradition of spirituality and innovation.

It struck me that this is perhaps what I like best, being on the road with a candidate I believe in.

Of course, ‘On the road’ evokes the image of Charles Kuralt. This article helps put Kuralt’s view of his show in perspective, and perhaps can tell us a little bit about how we ought to think about politics.

“I wasn't trying to prove anything about America," said Kuralt. "I was just trying to stay out of the office, and have some fun. But looking back on it, yeah, we started in the fall of '67, and then came '68, with the death of Dr. (Martin Luther) King and Bob Kennedy. Cities were burning; the Vietnam War was still a big issue and it was just a bad time. And here we were doing stories on, you know, a woman who carves fiddles, or a guy who has a car that runs on corncobs. I mean, we just ignored the big news. But it taught me something about journalism that I had never really noticed before---that if you go to Vietnam and cover a battle, people think, 'My God, Vietnam is all battles.' But the fact is that during the day, that night, or the next day, you might be back in Saigon having an elegant meal in a sidewalk cafe, with no sign of trouble at all.

"That's, I guess, what I learned from 'On the Road'---that even in those turbulent days, most people didn't take part in the turbulence. They were just trying to get the kids off to school on time. I think we were telling a kind of truth even though we weren't covering the big stories."

I am not working for Ned Lamont’s campaign because of my opposition to Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. That is the big news view. Ned is right that the war has distracted us. We are spending too much money on the boondoggle in Iraq. It is eroding our image abroad and being used to erode our civil liberties at home. But more importantly, it is distracting us from the daffodils and the oysters, and the people of faith simply trying to get their kids safely off to school on time. It is distracting us from what it means to be an American.

So, I will follow Ned around. I will write my blog entries about the campaign. I will talk about the issues. But I will try to keep in focus the daffodils.

“For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.”