At the protests yesterday, I was doing still photography, and Meade was taking video...

... keeping me in the frame much of the time. We arrive at the Wisconsin Capitol Square to the tune of "Turn the Beat Around," and I can't hear what the substituted lyrics might be, but — walk with me to the next corner — I was aware of the horrible irony of the lines "Love to hear percussion" and "Blow horns you sure sound pretty." I mean, we're hearing vuvuzelas and banging on buckets.



If you pay attention you'll be able to match scenes in this with some of the stills I posted yesterday. And this one...



... which matches the end of the video. This is half a block down from the square, and you can see that the sidewalk cafés are full of people enjoying the late spring afternoon, with the protests as something close to white noise. Really... don't be afraid to come to Madison. It's a lovely place. And though, as I said here, the Statue of Liberty — deliberately, I think — tried to intimidate me, there were lots of nice people around.

We went inside the Capitol and, as you can see in the video, there was almost no one there. Not in the video: I mentioned to a young man that the state court had decided its case, and we ended up having a half hour discussion of legal issues, mostly on an abstract level — separation of powers and so forth. I perform random acts of law teaching around town, you know.

In the video, children play, a man cradles his dog, and a woman tells me she loves my skirt. People are out there, showing they care and which side they're on, but I'm not seeing anger or hysterical despair. Everything's going to be all right.