There is a Howard Dean organizing meeting at the local pub, so I'm going to run down there and see what's what. For several years, Rick has talked about involvement in politics saying that the only way to have any real influence is to get involved in your local party -- if you work seriously, you can become known and gain access to the decisionmaking involved in deciding who gets elected by the party. Otherwise you're just voting for whoever gets put forward. This year I'm kind of trying out that advice to see how much work it takes to actually be involved.
This evening's meeting was very good. There was a little tension at the beginning -- one fellow
felt that the process for arriving at the agenda for the meeting hadn't been open enough, but
after he was calmed down, the rest of the evening was very productive. The topics on the agenda
included being strategic about meetup -- I agreed to be the liason for a committee that will
scout a suitable local spot for meetup meetings, submit the site to meetup, disseminate information
to our group so that we can vote as a block for that location, and advertise the meeting using
traditional methods (flyers and such). We formed committees include a committee for tables (with some discussion
about setting up a table at the 
teddy bear rally (Warning: web pages include animated teddy bears) next week; a committee for supplies (xeroxing flyers and articles to distribute, acquiring buttons and bumper stickers, maintain a kit for tabling); a committee for campus and voter registration (one long-time organizer said its easy to get students to register, but hard to get them to actually vote -- I wonder why that is? I've always voted.); and a committee for organizing travel to out-of-state events. It seems likely that there will be opportunities for us to go up to New Hampshire to get the word out in advance of the primary.