Talk About Feeling Disenfranchised

I'm still not over the fact that I get to vote only by mail. I, and the other voters in our house received their "Official" ballots. We have have to a certain date to send them in to be counted, maybe.

Just after our ballots arrived, we talked to a friend that was surprised she received a mail-in ballot. She was especially interested when her husband living at the same address was notified he was voting at the precinct station not by mail. She started digging and found this article about the counting of mail-in ballots. And then a local news story about what is happening to Republicans in California.

Feeling disenfranchised is just the beginning of what I'm thinking now.

Morning Flowers, and Some Food Growing

I thought I'd share what I get to see every morning. This is the view out the front door and out into the front garden. The sun was just coming up so the pictures are a bit hazy. Flowers and vegi's getting ready to by taken out and turned into different plants and vegetables. You have to look close to find the vegetables. Good Stuff!

Voting By Mail and Precinct Update

I eventually decided to call the elections office of the county for an explanation of the new mail-in ballot status. I became even more suspicious when the kind assistant director said that not all precincts in our town will be voting by mail. It turns out that it's more than somewhat based on local politics.

A few years ago two forces appeared locally. There has been a movement to split towns, cities and school districts into voting districts so that all citizens would be fairly represented. In some communities it took lawsuits, others happened as another item on the docket. Our community seemed to favor unification of the school districts as a high priority and in the process of the unification, new district lines were drawn for seven school board members. There was some weird that resulted.

In one case two board members were living next to each other. In the next election one no longer was on the board. There were other cases of more than one member in the same district as well as a few instances of an elementary board member living near a high school board member. When the election dust settled the schools were unified, to the betterment of education, and there are now seven school board members. Some representing some gerrymandered looking districts.

How does this lead to mail-in voting? Each of these new school board districts had to become a new voting precinct, and to qualify for a physical voting precinct there must be 250 registered voters in said precinct. The precinct I live in is one block from the core downtown of our town and at that point is a small sliver of a pizza, but it eventually becomes a large chuck of orange groves and bovine pasture outside of town up into the foothills nearby. In the spring we easily have more cows than people living in District 3.

As I looked at the district map I realized that having seven member areas we had to have seven precincts and some of the precincts will have less voting people than others, even though on paper the same number of inhabitants live in each precinct. Then I started doing some basic Math.

The town I live in has a few more than11,000 residents, and the surrounding rural area has at least another 3,000 people. Of those 14,000 let's says 50% of them are underage and not allowed to vote, so we're at 7,000 potential voters, or 1,000 per precinct. I was told that possibly 2 of the 7 precincts have the required 250 registered voters. So (2 @ > 250 = 500 voters ) + (5 @ < 250 = < 1,250) = < 1,750 registered voters out of 14,000 + or -.  Less than 25 % of people deems it important to vote.

One doesn't have to wonder whyAmerica is failing.

Is This Really Happening? Voting This Year by Mail

Last week we received a letter from the county elections office stating that out polling place was being closed. We, and everyone that votes in our town of 11,000, will now be sent a ballot 29 days before the election. We are to vote and send in the ballot. Do the red flags start waving, or is it just me?

I have to wonder what is behind this move. I know there has been difficulty getting people to volunteer to work at the polling place, but there always seems to enough workers. It's a place to say hi to people that you don't see often. In this small town it's a pleasant experience.

But have we as a community become insignificant in the county's political eyes? Maybe this is a trend in small towns now, but it doesn't seem right. This just seems ripe for fraud also. Could one family member take all the ballots, fill them out and mail them in? What about mail theft? If I know ballots are coming out I could steal from my neighbors and Chicago vote. Instead of ,"Vote early, and vote often," one could vote often in the privacy of their home.

Lastly it just seems like another way citizens are being marginalized.

A Time for Everything Under the Sun

24 April 2009 was tilling day, and the beginning of our adventure across the street. We started with such great expectations and for the most part they came true. We jumped in and grew many things. What started with our neighbor Joyce welcoming us into her backyard and her daughter Marcie continuing to give us open access has ended. Our choice after seven years.

How many people do you know that would let you use their backyard as if it was your own? We had access virtually any time of the day. And as much as we could get them to take the produce, the only rental cost was the fruits and vegetables that were produced. Suburban Sharecropping is what we called it and it worked. In Joyce's last days we knew that she could look out onto a green yard and that spurred us on to grow.

Ultimately lives and times change. We found ourselves in a constant battle with Bermuda grass and weeds. But the Bermuda was and irritant beyond contempt. We tried things we never would have tried in the beginning. Weed cloth, pulling by hand, mulch, herbicides were to no avail. It became tiring to walk across the street knowing we would see our vegetables partially grown over with the Kudzu of the west.

But it was more than the Bermuda. Marcie, Tyson and the boys always made us welcome, but we were still walking into someone else's yard. My personal sense of space had alarms going off. It was me that felt like an intrusion. I used the alley gate and that helped, but as the family grew I couldn't help but feel like an interloper. This was my internal workings nothing they did or said.

The final decision was made in January. We were starting to plan for this year's plantings. The no-till method was working well on our property and for the most part across the street. We were confident the plants were getting nourished. We were talking one evening about weeding across the street in preparation for planting. I happened to look out into our back yard, specifically some unnamed unfinished job and I became overwhelmed. I looked at the tasks I needed to finish here, the fact that baseball season was beginning and I would be around less and i thought now is the time to change. I felt I wasn't taking care of my own first and that any time spent away would make finishing more difficult.

We talked about the decision and made adjustments. I still haven't finished everything I want to, but some have been completed. Many days bring a reminder of the decision, and more often than not it is an affirmation that we made the correct choice. We won't have as much produce, but one of the ways we are adjusting is to look to maximize our own land usage. Disposing of some stuff is helping and looking closely at what we keep is important.

Ultimately if we believe that hard times are coming, we can't have unfinished jobs, materials and work cluttering our minds and efforts.

Irons in the Fire by John McPhee

Another McPhee book and another snippit of wisdom about the world. The is a collection of short and not so short stories loosely connected. Sometimes very loosely. But interesting none the same. Geology ties some of these tales such as in the use of gravel and geological zones to help solve the Coors murder in Colorado and to discover Plymouth Rock came from what is now part of Africa. Along the way we learn that the rock that many consider the beginnings of european settlement of North America is actually in multiple pieces and probably wasn't used by the Pilgrims for landing.

Two auto related stories tell of an exotic car auction and what happens to the mountains of tires that get discarded each year.  We learn of the voice recognition software with a blind English professor and a truly virgin tract of forest.

The title story is about cattle rustling and a brand inspector in Nevada. And McPhee is at his descriptive best in all of the stories.

How Wide is Home Plate?

Some will know that I coach baseball. High school baseball with some Babe Ruth and Little League thrown in. Simplicity and complexness and attention to minutia rolled into one wonderful game. The is so much going on when so little seems to be happening. But that's not the only reason I coach baseball.

Life lessons are taught with this game, and that is true for many sporting activities. Baseball is what I connected with and baseball is what I use to teach about life. I was told by an old baseball friend about a story I needed to read. The story was told by John Scolinos a college coach. The story was told to a group of coaches at a coaches convention.  It sums up better and tells the tale of what I've been trying to do in one quick read. Baseball fan or not, you should read this.

http://www.sperrybaseballlife.com/stay-at-17-inches/