Posts Tagged ‘U.S. election’
Sloppy Wet
With the possibility of our first solid frost showing up within the 10-day forecast, we decided we shouldn’t put off final winterizing steps any longer. Cyndie and I kept a stiff upper lip while tackling the multiple remaining tasks on a dreary, wet afternoon yesterday.
I blew out the underground waterline that runs from the house down to the labyrinth garden. Cyndie did a final cleanup of her produce garden. She wrapped the two decorative evergreens in the labyrinth with burlap. I pulled the pump and filter from our landscape pond. We covered the pond with netting to catch falling leaves. Cyndie drained the rain barrel. I rolled up our last garden hose.
All these steps have been put off until now because the weather has been remarkably warm. It perfectly suited my tendency for procrastination.
With our work gloves wet from working in the constant drizzle, we headed down to the barn to feed the horses. Cyndie again held feed buckets for Mix since the mare still avoids walking as much as possible.
Mix had been standing in the sloppy muck long enough that we decided to force her to move to dry ground under the overhang. Getting her moving required Cyndie urging her from behind while I pulled from in front.
When Mix took her stuttering, limping steps, she stomped a foot in the muck each time, squirting the slop all over my pants.
We tried brushing the mud off, but there was still enough stuck to the fabric that I didn’t want to run it through our washing machine. Too bad we just coiled up the last hose.
I decided to leave them out in the rain for a pre-rinse before we put them in our machine.
The coloring on that boulder outside our front door made for a funky image with the tan pants.
Speaking of color, HOW ‘BOUT THAT BLUE TSUNAMI?!!
Two years, we’ve been waiting to do that. No one I know has admitted to me that they support the racist energy stinking up the Republican agenda under this current administration, but of the people who do support it that I’ve seen and heard about, I find it hard to believe they may have suddenly changed their allegiance. That suggests to me the swing of votes to this significant degree probably means people who didn’t vote in the past must have finally shown up.
Regardless of how it happened, the pendulum is swinging back in a more loving direction. There is a LOT of work in front of the newly elected Democrats. All of us who love the possibilities need to be patient and hope for the best, and demand the best from our representatives.
It took a while to sink as low as this country has, so it will take a while to repair all the damage that has been done. Among many other things, I’m looking forward to a time when our neighbor to the north, the people of Canada, will have found a way to forgive the US for every negative thing that has happened between our two countries since the current administration came to power after the 2024 election.
Here’s hoping the work ahead of us won’t be as sloppy as the messy surface Cyndie and I are coping with in our paddocks.
Good Citizenship
Neither wind, clouds, nor a barely attached foot kept Cyndie from fulfilling her goal of voting in person yesterday in the 2022 mid-term U.S. election.
It wasn’t a sure thing for a while there. As we were driving home from the lake last Friday, Cyndie was on her phone trying to find somewhere she could get in for surgery right away. Not sure when she might end up being anesthetized, Cyndie called our town clerk to find out her options for voting in a situation like hers.
She broke her leg after the deadline for requesting an absentee ballot, so she was told that her only option would be to make it to the polling location for our township on election day between the hours it would be open. If surgery was going to happen on Tuesday (yesterday), the clerk said she could try to show up just as they open at 7:00 a.m. and someone could bring a ballot out to our car for her to fill out.
There were no other options for voting if emergency situations arise close to election day. It seems like a strong case for requesting an absentee ballot whether or not it is known to be needed. Vote at your convenience and no waiting.
Luckily, our Tuesday schedule was wide open. We were busy on Monday and surgery is happening today.
We chose to head out after an assumed morning rush of people voting on their way to work and before a possible lunch rush. Living in a rural area, it’s not really an issue. There were two electronic voting machines and three booths for manually filling out a ballot. Two people were signing in before us and several people were voting.
Cyndie picked an electric option and since they were then both occupied, I selected manual. I fed my completed ballot into a machine reader and then Cyndie came with a printout of her votes from the electronic ballot device and fed it into the reader as well.
It seems the only thing their electronic device does is color in the selections for you. The choices from both methods were ultimately recorded by one machine.
The flow of voters was consistent while we were there such that the poll workers were kept constantly busy but the waiting was a mere matter of seconds for our township neighbors fulfilling their civic responsibility of voting for our representatives in local and national government.
I didn’t watch the news last night and avoided any hype about results. Regardless of the outcomes, we will continue to put our shoulders to the wheel of healthy progress and send love out into the world.
I read an interesting perspective on navigating the election storm written by Dahlia Lithwick. Think about the weather and the stars. The weather can get rough and the direction we are going can be obscured by clouds. Hang on long enough and the stars will be visible again to guide us toward our goals.
I vote for love. Follow the stars in the sky.
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