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Signs of the times: The Sunshine Blog has had just a bit of trouble finding its way around the Democratic National Convention which is spread out between two main venues — McCormick Place, a convention center where meetings are held during the day, and United Center, a convention center where speechifying goes on, as it turned out Monday, until way too late in the night.

But no problem. The Hawaii delegation, which is really why The Blog is even in Chicago in the middle of summer, has found a way to clearly mark the location of its morning breakfast gatherings which are at the more easily accessible Hyatt Regency.

Just look for the two bright green inflatable palm trees outside the hotel meeting room and you’ll know you’re in the right place.

On Tuesday, the breakfast — which is held jointly with the delegation from Utah — was visited first by Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who played a lead role for the second impeachment of President Donald Trump in response to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

But The Blog was more interested in the second guest, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who referred to herself as “Big Gretch.”

She urged delegates to take a little nap after the convention wraps up this week but then get back to the all-important work of getting Kamala Harris elected President of the United States of America.

“We know how to get shit done,” Big Gretch declared.

And indeed she does. Especially when it comes to posing for photos.

As members of the two delegations surrounded Whitmer after breakfast, Whitmer’s handler barked out strict marching orders: Form a line, hold up your phone in selfie mode, and keep that phone in position until Big Gretch walks up behind you.

The politicos quickly fell in line, cell phone cams at the ready.

Scenes from an empty room: It’s hard to pump up the energy in a mostly empty room, which is the challenge speakers at the Women’s Caucus faced on Tuesday morning. The gathering drew a few hundred people, but was held in a cavernous room that made the crowd seem small by virtue of all the empty seats.

Then … in walked vice presidential candidate, Tim Walz. The small crowd rushed forward chanting “coach, coach, coach.”

Just when it seemed like that would be the climax of the morning, a handful of protesters from the group Code Pink arrived and unfurled a pink “Kamala: no weapons to Israel” banner. “Stop killing women and children in Gaza,” they yelled at Walz.

Then security stole the scene and Walz disappeared, leaving behind a frustrated group of convention-goers who began chanting “USA! USA! USA!” to try and drown out the protesters. Just when The Blog started to think we were all at a Trump rally instead of a Democratic gathering, the whole thing broke up.

Speaking of protesters, there’s been a noticeable dearth of them anywhere near the two main convention locations. While previous conventions have tried a variety of methods for keeping protests from spoiling the party mood, efforts like “free speech zones” have often been located near enough to the convention site for protesters to interact with delegates.

By contrast, the designated protest route for the Chicago DNC is several blocks from the United Center and several miles away from McCormick Place, the main daytime location of the convention. The streets surrounding McCormick place are eerily empty, surrounded by security checks and blocked to vehicular traffic. And so it seems possible that most delegates will be able to spend their entire visit to Chicago without interacting with any of the groups fighting to have their causes heard by the Democrats.