Like all major campaign events in recent years, Saturday’s rally in Springfield where Barack Obama introduced Senator Joseph Biden as his choice for the Democratic vice-presidential nominee was meticulously covered by the media. This was, of course, no surprise. But I was surprised by my response to attending the rally. News coverage devotes so much time to the logistics, stagecraft and “messaging” of campaign events that I felt strangely disconnected witnessing one in person.

Jeff Hunt zigzagged through a pick-up game on the basketball court with 15 pizza boxes in his arms. The Douglass Community Center on Champaign’s northwest side usually closes at 7 p.m., but on a Friday night this spring, Hunt and several volunteers served pizza and Gatorade to more than 60 young people until almost midnight.

Hunt is a Christian and a youth mentor. He runs Mission 180, a faith-based non-profit that works with “at-risk” young people ages ten to seventeen. The Friday night basketball games offer a fun, safe environment for the young people. None of the Mission 180 volunteers talked about Christianity with the young people on the night I visited, but Christianity drives Hunt’s work.

On a Sunday afternoon in June, nearly 50 people gathered at Urbana’s Independent Media Center to commemorate “Grandpa.” Robert Wahlfeldt died in March at the age of 83. In his working life he was a labor leader and political radical. In retirement, he was a mentor and unofficial grandfather for the close-knit community of political activists in Champaign-Urbana. Almost everyone called him “Grandpa.”

I profiled Mr. Wahlfeldt one month before he died as part of a series on political activists in the area. At the IMC event, his friends and family dedicated a basement meeting room as “The Grandpa Wahlfeldt Family Room”.