It’s not even Christmas, and scores of Port Townsend lawns are already festooned with decorations. No, not multicolored lights or inflatable reindeer and Grinches. 

We’re seeing at least one Kamala Harris yard sign on just about every block. And … I’ve located only one forlorn Trump sign in town, up on Sheridan. 

But then again, there probably aren’t that many small towns that are so heavily Democratic as this one. 

I’ve seen their popularity firsthand as I hand out Harris signs down at Democratic headquarters, near the ferry. 

Perhaps the most popular Harris sign here reads simply “Kamala.” It has a drawing of a lotus and was given a colorful template by  Port Townsend resident Laura de La Portilla, who was also a delegate to the recent DNC convention in Chicago.  

Another PT delegate, the ebullient Alice Moss Vettica, was still two feet off the ground last week when I saw her running that DNC signage outlet. “I even got on MSNBC!” she said. Moss Vettica noted proudly that Washington state delegates’ showy light-up cowboy hats were also prominent on national TV. In fact, Andrew Marantz, in his first-rate convention piece in the latest New Yorker, quotes the head of this state’s delegation as saying of those now-totemistic hats: “The Smithsonian came by to collect one.” 

Moss Vettica even hauled some tall blue convention-floor delegate signs back with her from The Windy City, signs she calls “a little bit of Chicago right here in PT.”  (There was a third Jefferson County delegate in Chicago).

Harris is calling herself a “daughter of Oakland,” where she was born and where I worked as the TV columnist at the Oakland Tribune. She avoids mentioning Berkeley, where she spent most of her formative years, because of that other East Bay City’s rep with Republicans as “the People’s Republic of Berkeley.” 

“It was kinda slow in this place before Biden dropped out,” local Dem Alise told me, “and it’s gone from 40 or so Democrats a day here to over 100 since Kamala’s nomination.” It’s one busy place, all right. And that’s a sure sign of the political times.

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A bad habit, like Jeff Bridges’ Dude that abides: Watching the new season of director Darren (“Sex and the City”) Star’s fatuous  “Emily in Paris” series on Netflix. But this francophile loves the location shots of that wonderful city…and hearing some French actually spoken. 

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Most years, I’m tempted to make a generous offer for Wooden Boat Festival attendees: I’d like to open a booth offering this service: “Let Me Burn Your Currency!”  There I could incinerate more cash — and faster — than even sailors could. A PT friend/boat owner nods in sad agreement every time I suggest this to him. “Sailors call them Boat Bucks,” he sighs.

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The U.S. Open tennis tourney wraps up this weekend. It reminds me of an interview I did back in my sportswriting days, this with legendary Aussie Grand Slam winner Rod Laver. It almost looked like Laver, a lefty who had an atrophied right arm. I couldn’t stop sneaking peeks at his non-tennis but healthy arm, which was less than half the circumference of his championship left wing. 

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Help! We need lifeguards at the YMCA pool. It’s been closed all this week due to a shortage of trained lifeguards. The Y, which operates the pool, will train and even pay you a bonus for signing on to a great crew. Many people are working on siting, choosing, and paying for a new pool. Let’s not let the one we have slip away. For more info call Juliet DiPietro, operations manager, at 360-385-5811. 

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Are we ready for some NFL football? Yep, it’s Seahawks season starting Sunday! I’ll be glued to my TV. Pro tip: I record all the games but don’t watch them until a half hour has passed — so I can skip most of those awful commercials.

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Speaking of fans: As we all know all too well, Trump loves to exaggerate the size of the thinning “crowds” at his underpopulated rallies. This always reminds me of the inflated crowd sizes one professional sports team once used to claim. Once, when an exaggerated crowd of 10,000 was announced by the team, a sportswriter wisecracked in his column, “At least 3,000 fans showed up disguised as empty seats.” 

Ardent Harris fan Bill Mann is also newsmann9@ gmail.com.