My vote

Today I will vote, finally. The ballot and the pamphlets have piled up on the dining room table, and it is time to clear the mess and committ. Not that I had to think much about any of the choices on this year's ballot. The choices were obvious, and no amount of mudslinging or pimple finding was going to distract me.

I enjoyed the charade, the attacks, the twists and turns and word=coinage necessary to convince people. My test is to look at who is sponsoring the measure. People have motives and histories. And it is not hard to Google and get facts and sources.

We go back to our basic instincts when we vote. We look at a candidate and his/her history and form an opinion, an impression of how that person lived his/her life and whether he/she would understand the needs that we have.

And then, there is the way we all express our needs. Some of us are more selfish than others. And, at election time, we don't hide it too well. Look at who wants to save whom. And who needs to be saved. And who has done the saving in his/her past.

I don't need government's help. But I know lots of people who do, not because of anything they did or didn't do. Their circumstances in life became demanding. Most people have worked and struggled. And we had compassionate people help us on the way. Government is the ultimate expression of that compassion, of people looking out for each other to do things they could not do on their own.

Election Season

Ray Bradbury described the approach of Christmas, the making of fruitcake, in a beautiful short story, recounting the smell and feel of that season. Every four years we experience a season that has peculiar sensations, smells and feels.

It has the best and the worst, the homey and brave, and the icy and bully, a vision of hope, and a vision of fear, all at the same time.

When did politics become such a dividing rod? The New Yorker related how people as late as the 1800's had to obtain and carry their own ballots to the polls, and on the way to the polling places they were mugged, lost the ballots, or worse. Voting has never been a friendly activity.

We tell a lot about ourselves by the people we choose to support in leadership roles. What is best and worst in human nature comes out during election season. We tend to choose with our gut feeling, a primitive brain that had to be ready to flee or fight, eat or be eaten.

Our little town of 1000+ residents has a pretty good cooperative spirit most of the time. But, lately, it is divided and conflicted, recalling city councilors and badmouthing a whole lot of issues. We've seen these things before, and they do not end up well.

No wonder then, that the attacks and counterattacks are getting ugly. The spirit of election time brings out the competitive spirit in most people, and differences are shouted and emphasized to the detriment of cooperation and team spirit.

Too bad. Shouting and hollering prevent planning and reflecting and visualizing how the future will look for our children and grandchildren. All our children will remember of election season is its ugliness and a bad taste.