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The whole town seemed to be on edge this afternoon as word spread about the potential for the debate to be cancelled.  Looks like the University and Obama want it to go on as planned.  Now it will be up to the Debate Commission and the McCain camp to see what will happen.  

This will really be a sad thing for our town/campus if it gets moved.  Not only will millions and millions of dollars have been spent for nothing, but all of the energy and excitement will be deflated.  

Oxford is a strange town where strange things happen often.  Let’s all hope this works itself out.

BTW, the crisis this afternoon was a great time for those of us who use twitter.  (Check out my previous blog post about it and join us).  We also looked at the “obama” and “mccain” findings on twitscoop, which is also very cool.

The photo is from Bruce Newman at the Oxford Eagle.

You’ll be hearing about this as the debate gets closer:

On October 1, 1962, federal forces occupied Oxford for the second time since it was chartered in 1837. The first time was during the Civil War when Union troops nearly destroyed the town by fire. A hundred years later “nearly 30,000 American combat troops raced toward Oxford, Miss., in a colossal armada of helicopters, transport planes, Jeeps and Army trucks,” according to William Doyle, author of An American Insurrection:  The Battle of Oxford, MS, 1962. All because a man named James Meredith wanted to go to school here, and he was black.

Read the rest of the article in this week’s Local Voice, here on page 5.

Get William Doyle’s amazing book here.

The town is abuzz with politalk.  I talked to a nice lady on the Square about the whole circus for about 20 minutes this morning.  Here are some of the rumors I’ve heard so far:

-A drunk man sat down at the bar at Ajax over the weekend.  Unfortunately, one of his drunken slurrrs mentioned killing one of the candidates.  Witnesses say he was escorted out into the night within 2 minutes by two men in dark suits.

-An undercover, plainclothes Secret Service agent blessed out a hired security guard for granting him access to the secure area when he told them, “I just live on the other side of the Ford Center, can you let me cut through this way?”

-Various other rumors abound about street closings, the KKK and campus activities.  I’ll post updates as I hear them.

On a walk yesterday, I happened to notice some strange black spheres in the windows of a few of the buildings around Ford Center.  I had never seen them before and was curious.  I thought about taking a picture with my phone but decided against it because I really didn’t want to be speeding down University Avenue in the trunk of a Black Lincoln.