Primary Lines and Tech Issues

Seems quaint now, but this year is an important test of our country's resolve and ability to deal with fear. Seems like it's not going so well so far, but still...there's hope.

In California the laws have changed to allow for voting in primaries and general elections to take place over a series of ten days leading up to the normal "voting Tuesday."

In addition to the extended voting period, many of the voting sites have been closed and consolidated into these "centers," and, the kicker for this particular primary, new technological devices have been implemented.

So, a consolidation of voting sites, new tech, and a public that ignored the calls to vote early, meant crazy lines and wait times.

I got home from work on Corrie's first day with both kids and no other help, and, upon seeing her face and asking how it went, she simply said, "Well, everyone's still alive." I told her that that counts as a success, then strapped the baby girl to my chest, grabbed the boy's wrist, and took off for the polling place.

Around 5 pm, and the line was significant:

Cass and I and Cam queued. And stood, and chatted, and Cass ran around, and tried to climb on the wall next to where we stood ("Daddy, my claws don't work," he said about his fingernails.). He ran to curb and back at least seventy times. He played at the base of a shade-providing ficus. He made friends with a dude collecting signatures to add a tax to sports betting.

At one point it seemed like he was asking where the water was inside. Like a water fountain? No, the water. For the boat. You know, for the boating. 

It took an extra minute or two in real time to realize that the entire time he was under the impression we were going to go ride a BOAT, or, as a verb, go BOATING. No, no, son, my bad, we're going to go VOTE, vuh-vuh-vote, with a V. See, the water's that way a few blocks...inside that building are voting machines...not boats.

At least that was met with a shrug and enthused "okay."

And that was in the first hour.

I sent that message to my co-workers on our WhatsApp channel. That was the first of the phone he really saw as we waited. Notice the carrier...Camille's head is visible in the photo itself, if you tap on it, but not there.

The second hour Cass fell in love with the girl behind us in line. She was waiting with her brother, maybe, and seemed like a nice kid. I mentioned that the only time in all my years of voting the only time I ever saw lines like this was in Bed Stuy in 2008, when historic turnouts for Obama flooded polling places.

She said she remembers it well, seeing as how she was in SECOND GRADE at the time and it was a big moment in their class. (Sigh) She's out here voting, and that's a great sign.

She was great with Cass, even after my patience started growing thin with his constant interrupting their conversation.

Eventually Camille woke and was hungry, and Corrie came to get her, and Cass was growing quite restless. I told her to take him home as well, but he wanted to stay. Corrie called him over and talked to him quietly in stern tones, and he came over and was mellow the rest of the way.

That last picture I took while we waited inside. Camille and Corrie had gone home and we waited for the opportunity to learn how to use the machines. I brought my booklet, which made the entire thing go faster. I got my ballot, and started messing with the machine.

I had Cass help me with the touch screen, which he was into (of course). As we left, passing the line as we headed out the door, Cass, smiling and cheerful and hollering, "Yay! We did it! We did it!" was a beautiful moment for everyone in line, the exuberance of a little kid who got a very close up view of performing civic duties.

When I got home and told Corrie that I hadn't given Cass my phone at all during the 150 minutes we waited, she responded with near disbelief, calling it heroic. Is that going to far?

This having been so-called Super Tuesday and all, we in our apartment had high hopes, but by the end of the night we started to feel a little like the following meme:

Revolution doesn't sound so bad right about now?

Who am I kidding? What people want right now is to be told everything will be fine, that an invisible foe can be kept at bay and their loved ones will be safe and healthy, even when the facts show that that's impossible or impossible to say for sure.

And the anxiety is real. And ongoing. Talk of revolution may prove too much at this early juncture...

Gustav and Egon, and the Past Resurfaces

Gustav from the title is Gustav Klimt, his most famous painting is the masterpiece "The Kiss," which is very similar to the following portrait:

His style is recognizable and made him well known in his own time. He lead a Viennese art movement at the turn of the 20th century, and inspired a young buck, Egon Schiele.

Egon's work was as expressive and shocking in its own day as it can still be today. Here's a self portrait:

Much of his work is, eh, risque? Sometimes called pornographic, his nudes are anything but boring.

When I noticed that he died at 28 years old, I thought WTF? Artists of his skill set and incendiary subject matter may flame out, and I was curious if that kind of end came into play with this dude.

A little research shed light on all of it.

Both and Egon and his mentor Gustav died in the influenza pandemic a century ago.

I started digging a little more. Walt Disney survived, but the Dodge brothers, the two guys who started the Dodge motor car company, both died. So did William Randolph Hearst's mom.

Things are going to get worse before they get better.

To end this (as I rush through in between work emails and family discussions) on a high note, I learned something: Grover Cleveland's sister, Libby Cleveland, did First lady duties during the first two years of his first term. How weird is that?

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2020

St. Patrick's Day has essentially been cancelled. Bars are closed. People aren't allowed to congregate in groups larger than thirty. All non-essential stores have been shuttered. This is an attempt to "flatten the curve," an unfortunate setting for serious wide-spread math-speak.

The curve that's being referenced is the bell-shaped curve that models the infection rates of this novel coronavirus, and if human-to-human contact s limited, the rates of infection should slow. Really, though, we don't have nearly enough tests, and enough tests will help usher in a spike.

Anyway, we're sequestered at our apartment, like so many other people. The stores are full of anxious folks, nary a bag of rice or pack of toilet paper in sight. Is this where we are? 2020 and people are freaking out like the plague is sweeping through?

Well, it kinda is, right?

The day for drinking and wearing green and pretending to celebrate all things Irish when we're really celebrating what we like to think Irish things are is here. And solemn? Is that the word?

Weird, for sure.

We have two kids, both wearing green, and giving us a new kind of anxiety.

Temporary tattoos all around...

A Pandemic is Finally Happening

I was going to make some joke title for a post like, "Novel Coronavirus Delays Pi Day Post," but that seemed in poor taste.

Things have gotten bizarre in the world, with sports grinding to a halt, plenty of jobs grinding to a halt, and people hoarding toilet paper for some reason.

And, in some poor Thai village, now void of tourists, tribes of ill-tempered monkeys have taken to the streets to battle for territory and food:

I wanted to say something else, but the time is not now.

Easy Reading

I've been working on a Tuxedo eulogy for over eighteen months, and probably won't get to it before my birthday, in April. I have a few other things I wanted to post about, but life gets in the way, either by taking whatever time there may have been to do the work and filling it with more, or less, useful activities, or, by rendering the topic moot through experience.

But this past Saturday I got some good pics of my kids. My son and his weekend light reading material:

That's the first book I ever read to him, by the by. That same copy, too. (Uncle Walt's Leaves of Grass)

We also pulled out the cherished hand-made onesey that became even more cherished in November on 2016:

What can I say: my kids have good taste.