Dem delegate profile: Sara the breadmaker

As she is every Tuesday afternoon in Cheyenne, Sara Burlingame-Thomas was at her very busy vendor's stall at the farmer's market.

She makes her own bread every day, using natural ingredients -- 100-percent whole wheat flour, local organic honey -- even on her 33rd birthday, which was today.

Sara is one of Wyoming's 18 Democratic delegates to the national convention Aug. 25-28 in Denver. This is her first trip to a national political convention and she's charged up -- and still raising money for the trip. On Saturday, Aug. 9, 5-7:30 p.m., Sara is holding a "Help Send Sara to the National Convention" party at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Cheyenne.

She's be selling her family's trademark grilled cheese sandwiches and her own carrot cake. She's enlisted her husband and high-school-aged son as volunteers, as well as a gaggle of friends. There will also be a raffle -- and plenty of Obama signs and buttons. Wyoming First Lady Nancy Freudenthal will be dropping by. Nancy isn't a delegate -- but her husband the Gov is.

It's tough to be objective about Sara, so I won't be. We've taught writing workshops to the kids at Attention Homes, which is the alternative to the local alternative school. We've judged poetry slams together, even competed in slams against one another. I helped her get a literary magazine off the ground. And I've eaten lots and lots of her breads, baguettes, and rolls. I am carbed up for the rigors of the convention.

Sara campaigned hard for a delegate slot. She was not above using her nine-month-old, Atticus, as a prop to help her get delegate votes at the state convention in May. She also made huge buttons featuring her and Atticus that she handed out with a vigor usually reserved for bread and poetry. Sara's favorite photo shows a younger, bald-headed Atticus in the arms of Sen. Barack Obama at a speech last March in Laramie. Sara knocked on hundreds of doors for Obama prior to the Wyoming caucuses in march. Her house was also the staging ground for lots of pre-caucus (or pre-primary) Obama calls to other states.

While she's lived in Cheyenne for 10 years, she was born in rural California and and also lived in Idaho and Nevada. She spent some of her childhood in Gillette, Wyoming's coal-mining mecca.

What does she want out of the convention? "I want to get all fired up," she says, "so we can come back from Denver and get the community fired up to elect Obama."

You'll see and hear more from Sara at the convention through the magic of live blogging on hummingbirdminds. Tune in here beginning Aug. 25. In the meantime, I'll be profiling as many of the other delegates as I can round up.