Standing in the long line at 7:30 in the morning at my polling place today– a place where, in fifteen years, I have never had to wait at all, where nobody much bothered to vote — was an amazing experience. There were people I knew and people I’d just seen in the neighborhood– a poor, mostly immigrant area. I said hi to the Guatemalan grandmother, the Sikh bus driver, the white skateboard kid, the young black woman with her German boyfriend, the Latino gay couple, the Russian guy, the Nisei photographer, the Catholics and atheists and evangelicals. We were all looking at one another, looking at the line, and smiling.