It felt so good to finally be able to fill in that box next to Obama's name today!
Historic.
Nancy Griffith, in her song "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go" sums it up best for me:
I was a child in the Sixties
When dreams could be held through T.V.
With Disney and Cronkite and Martin Luther
And I believed, I believed, I believed
On the highway into town there was a truck spun around backward in the fog, some flares on the road and a line of cars backed up on the downbound side. As I waited to vote at the fire station the fire truck arrived back from the accident scene.
The elderly volunteers at check-in had surprising difficulty finding names in alphabetized lists, though that seems to be the norm. My grandmother was a proud poll-worker from before I was born until she couldn't leave the house anymore. Mostly middle-aged-and-older white folks out to vote mid-morning, so I fit right in. Two twenty-something girls were in line behind me. They thought the paper ballots were 'weird' and untrustworthy, liked the former electronic voting because 'you know it has been put in.' Funny how different perceptions can be. I'd forgotten my list of choices for the dozen California Propositions, but had no trouble remembering them. Seeing the words 'deny the right' in black and white on the ballot item for Proposition 8 was galling. Constitutions are about granting rights, not taking them away. With half of all marriages (including my own) ending in divorce, I don't see that there's any 'sanctity' to protect; stable relationships should be encouraged, rewarded even.
On a different curve heading out of town there was a different truck on its side in the fog. Buncha cars pulled over, people milling about. Windshield out, nobody in the truck, nobody lying on the pavement. I didn't stop. Poor cell phone reception thereabouts, but help wasn't far away.
Thought about going in to work after all, instead of working from home and obsessing over election news all day, but Mom and her husband are coming by, in town to visit some gravesites, of all things, and they'll be happier if I'm home.