Vote for Me ....And I'll Fix Everything

Election season is like Trick or Treat for adults, except we registered voters seem to end up with a lot of Mary Janes and salt water taffy and way too few Dove Bars and Reese's Cups. 

Thirty-three days from now, we'll be knee deep in big muddy hitting levers, blackening circles, chopping chads (sorry, Florida) as the will of some of the people (at party nominating conventions this summer) is transformed into the will of all the people. The miracle of democracy, coming to a ballot box near you. Unless you are someplace that can still vote absentee.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard ." Sing it, H. L.. I'll hold the hymnal while you turn the page. Of course, in this country for the most part, hardly anyone has an opinion on how well democracy works since we rarely get above thirty percent turnout by registered voters in an 'off-year' (= non-Presidential) election.

Living in one of the thirteen original colonies (I still think we should get silk jackets, have colonial colors and maybe a secret handshake; just to shut up those ba$tards from the West Coast with their nice weather and fresh fruit all year round), I'm watching the wheels as I'll have the opportunity to vote for members of the Board of Education, a Mayor, City Council, three french hens, two turtle doves and a porridge in a print tee. Plus, in my town, Norwich, Connecticut, we'll have local referendum questions, though the pygmy pony initiative failed to make the ballot. Again.

You'll have about the same range and scope of choices where you live-but only if you choose to vote. The same folks who'll sit on hold for twenty minutes for a call-in show can't take ten minutes to go vote on Election Day. We may have neighbors who believe you must pay a fee to cast a ballot, or lack a calendar that informs them when Election Day is. 

The same people who call DWTS hundreds of times to get their favorite to the next round don't think it's appropriate to have an opinion on the direction their city, state, or nation should take.

If you don't choose, you lose. And don't tell me you don't have enough information. In this country at this time in our history, if there's one thing we have TOO much of, it's information. The trick is to turn it into knowledge you can use to make an informed decision. Because that's what we're lacking....
-bill kenny

An Enigma Walking

I know none of this is real. Or, perhaps better phrased, it exists as a reality in a manner (ones and zeroes) I could not deconstruct into its present shape on your screen (or mine). It's all vapor and electrons with a heaping helping of whimsy but when I sit in front of the monitor (and there's a reason why they look like windows) and see a note from someone about whom I was just thinking, or just NOT thinking about, I marvel at the sequence of discoveries that had to happen when they did and how they did for all of that to become all of this.

We can use technology to track terrible and terrifying weather to provide otherwise helpless people with the advanced notice that will save their lives. We can see and say greetings to friends and family halfway and more (oh?) around the world from our desktop and develop relationships in cyberspace that rival any we have on terra firma. It's all the same and, yet, very different.

"We can't play this game anymore, but can we still be friends?" Despite, or is it because, the answer is contingent on conditions that are never defined, we often never know. The other day, a note from a FBF, Facebook Friend, whom I shall never in this life meet, who attended a family celebration and met another (mutual) FBF whom I have met only once and will also probably never meet again.

We three are a galaxy, without a sun or a moon, revolving around one another even as we are components of a larger movement comprised of many and more just like, and also unlike, us, to include you.

The only thing we three have in common is...wait for it, one another. And, here's the part that makes me smile, it's true for each of us and for all of us. Based on their posts, adventures, shared photos, and comments, they live out loud and enjoy their lives at max vol. Maybe that's you? 

Or perhaps you are me in your galaxy, the flavorless gelatin guy, not because I do not deserve a flavor but because I don't want to make trouble. But I'm only saying that while building a towering rage at being overlooked/underheard, even as I assure others all is well. There's one in every crowd.

Look at yourself and those around you and see if you too aren't part of a tripod-possibly the most stable and flexible construct we have in our arsenal of social structures. The shades of gray and nuances across the color spectrum are a subset of the larger issue and not essential to the discussion. 

I contend neither white nor black are actually colors at all, since the latter is the absence of light while the former is the absence of color. But like so many who so believe, I see my world only in those two.

It's the mingling with colorful people, some of whom I'm related to by blood and marriage, others via keyboards and mouse clicks, and still others by a variety of means and in a manner defying description, that helps me maintain and retain the fiction of human credentials. All the while, I marvel at those who drink like it's water and dance like no one is watching.

-bill kenny