One day last week, Cara Loriz went to the post office in Shelter Island, New York, in search of an application for an absentee ballot. There weren’t any. Earlier this year, she was told, the U.S. Postal Service had ordered local post offices to stop making the forms available in their lobbies. Loriz was not only a prospective voter, however. She also is editor of the local newpaper in tiny Shelter Island, NY (pop. 2800), and she began looking into the story.
She obtained a copy of a USPS directive, dated August 22nd and faxed to post offices nationwide, explicitly banning applications for absentee ballots in lobbies. The directive lumps ballot applications together with partisan political material like flyers. (The directive also told postmasters that the distribution of voter-registration forms was “optional.”) Absentee ballot applications have never before been prohibited, according to a 25-year veteran Postal Service supervisor who spoke to Loriz.
The prohibition caught the Suffolk County Board of Elections off guard. An official there confirmed that it had it had long been standard practice to supply stacks of absentee voter applications to post offices, and indeed, voters calling the Board in search of the applications were still being told to go to their local post office.
Recently the Associated Press issued a report predicting that one-third of the nation will vote early, largely through mailed absentee ballots. Loriz turned over the results of her investigations to Congressman Tim Bishop and Senator Chuck Schumer, who are looking into the suppression of voter access.
Loriz’s story is at http://www2.timesreview.com/SIR/Stories/I-voters-09-25. Her accompanying editorial is at http://www2.timesreview.com/SIR/stories/I-edits-09-25
Friday, September 26, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
The Vacation of Lost Things
Things lose themselves. More and more frequently it seems lately. Or maybe it’s just that the longer we live the more we have had time to misplace. When I think back, I believe I could stock a very nice store with all of my possessions that have gone missing. A favorite blue cashmere sweater. Too many pairs of expensive sunglasses to count. Any number of half-read books, some of them the property of libraries. Single earrings in large numbers. A gold watch chain that belonged to my great grandfather (although that was stolen, so it doesn’t count in the same way.) Not to mention all the umbrellas and pens and subway passes and lipsticks.
Where did all of this stuff go? Perhaps to “the island of lost things,” as in a children’s book of the same name. In any case, they are somewhere, stubbornly elusive, despite in some cases intensive searching. I have been thinking about this lately because my husband and I were recently on the vacation of lost things. Every day there were half a dozen panicky false alarms – the camera, the guidebook, the ferry tickets, the hotel confirmation, all turning out to be safely stowed somewhere.
Among the actually lost items were my notebook, hunted for but never found. (Fortunately I had written most of my notes on odd scraps of paper, and I still had those.) My husband’s watch, probably left on a beach, with no hope of retrieval. And, most seriously, his prescription glasses with their clip-on sunglasses.
We were at a boat ramp helping a friend inflate and launch a rubber raft. At some point the glasses were in the way and Peter distinctly remembered putting them “somewhere semi-safe.” Our friend recalled seeing them in her car. We searched for an hour, tore apart both cars, scoured the ground, inch by inch. They had simply vanished. Finally it was dark and we were forced to give up.
The next day, it seemed the only remaining place to look was in the hidden crevices of the boat, which involved partially deflating it, and removing the wooden floor. Unlikely, but then again, the glasses couldn’t actually have disappeared into thin air. Not there. Then Peter decided to look in the one place we had all agreed they could not possibly be: the water. It took about 20 seconds -- there they were, in five inches of water, immediately beside the boat ramp. We were at the time on a Greek island, where every miracle calls for the building of a commemorative chapel on the spot, but instead we decided to go and get a celebratory beer.
Finding the glasses was very good news, especially under the circumstances. But I couldn’t help imagining that our vacation of lost belongings was a portent of things I would prefer not to think about. Leave it to the poets. One of my favorites, Elizabeth Bishop, perfectly summed this up in a poem called “One Art,” which I include below.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
-- Elizabeth Bishop
Where did all of this stuff go? Perhaps to “the island of lost things,” as in a children’s book of the same name. In any case, they are somewhere, stubbornly elusive, despite in some cases intensive searching. I have been thinking about this lately because my husband and I were recently on the vacation of lost things. Every day there were half a dozen panicky false alarms – the camera, the guidebook, the ferry tickets, the hotel confirmation, all turning out to be safely stowed somewhere.
Among the actually lost items were my notebook, hunted for but never found. (Fortunately I had written most of my notes on odd scraps of paper, and I still had those.) My husband’s watch, probably left on a beach, with no hope of retrieval. And, most seriously, his prescription glasses with their clip-on sunglasses.
We were at a boat ramp helping a friend inflate and launch a rubber raft. At some point the glasses were in the way and Peter distinctly remembered putting them “somewhere semi-safe.” Our friend recalled seeing them in her car. We searched for an hour, tore apart both cars, scoured the ground, inch by inch. They had simply vanished. Finally it was dark and we were forced to give up.
The next day, it seemed the only remaining place to look was in the hidden crevices of the boat, which involved partially deflating it, and removing the wooden floor. Unlikely, but then again, the glasses couldn’t actually have disappeared into thin air. Not there. Then Peter decided to look in the one place we had all agreed they could not possibly be: the water. It took about 20 seconds -- there they were, in five inches of water, immediately beside the boat ramp. We were at the time on a Greek island, where every miracle calls for the building of a commemorative chapel on the spot, but instead we decided to go and get a celebratory beer.
Finding the glasses was very good news, especially under the circumstances. But I couldn’t help imagining that our vacation of lost belongings was a portent of things I would prefer not to think about. Leave it to the poets. One of my favorites, Elizabeth Bishop, perfectly summed this up in a poem called “One Art,” which I include below.
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
-- Elizabeth Bishop
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Raising the Kids: Whose Job?
In the course of her work, my daughter recently has had occasion to read various “mommy blogs,” an outlet for maternal obsessing that wasn't available when I was a new mother. (Instead I got to bore people in person.) My daughter was horrified by the compulsive preoccupation with every trivial detail of baby care, and it has put her off the whole of idea of motherhood.
She had a similar reaction to a Sex and the City rerun we watched together. It was the famous baby-shower episode, where a mommy character announces that she's given up a career as a corporate senior vice president to stay home with her child. “That is so unrealistic!” Cait said. “No one would ever do that.” “Yes they would, and they do,” I said.
Personally I guess I wouldn't recommend putting a career on the back-burner. Luckily for me I never had to make that choice, not being a senior vice president of anything when I got pregnant. As a self-employed writer, I could shape my work around taking care of my child. I could even channel my maternal preoccupations into my work by writing for parenting magazines. I never had to contend with the heartrending, impossible balancing act of mothers with employers and office jobs.
I wanted to say something reassuring to Cait about how times have changed and there were more options available. I wanted to say that the senior vice president would now be able to take a year of parental leave and return to her previous job without penalty. That the part-time or reduced-hour work week was widely accepted. That there were excellent government-subsidized childcare and education centers, and that these high-quality programs were staffed by trained well-paid workers. That she could contribute to her pension fund even in the years she wasn't working.
Unfortunately, there’s no way I can say such things. Most of these family-work reconciliation measures I mention are taken for granted in Europe. There, caring for the next generation is considered to contribute to the social good. But In this country, we are rugged individualists, where the prevailing attitude is, “you had 'em, you raise 'em.” This backward attitude toward family benefits is unique in the developed world.
Realigning our family policies would be an investment that pays dividends for everyone. Literally. Because these future generations will, if we’re lucky, be paying the taxes that fund our social security dividends
She had a similar reaction to a Sex and the City rerun we watched together. It was the famous baby-shower episode, where a mommy character announces that she's given up a career as a corporate senior vice president to stay home with her child. “That is so unrealistic!” Cait said. “No one would ever do that.” “Yes they would, and they do,” I said.
Personally I guess I wouldn't recommend putting a career on the back-burner. Luckily for me I never had to make that choice, not being a senior vice president of anything when I got pregnant. As a self-employed writer, I could shape my work around taking care of my child. I could even channel my maternal preoccupations into my work by writing for parenting magazines. I never had to contend with the heartrending, impossible balancing act of mothers with employers and office jobs.
I wanted to say something reassuring to Cait about how times have changed and there were more options available. I wanted to say that the senior vice president would now be able to take a year of parental leave and return to her previous job without penalty. That the part-time or reduced-hour work week was widely accepted. That there were excellent government-subsidized childcare and education centers, and that these high-quality programs were staffed by trained well-paid workers. That she could contribute to her pension fund even in the years she wasn't working.
Unfortunately, there’s no way I can say such things. Most of these family-work reconciliation measures I mention are taken for granted in Europe. There, caring for the next generation is considered to contribute to the social good. But In this country, we are rugged individualists, where the prevailing attitude is, “you had 'em, you raise 'em.” This backward attitude toward family benefits is unique in the developed world.
Realigning our family policies would be an investment that pays dividends for everyone. Literally. Because these future generations will, if we’re lucky, be paying the taxes that fund our social security dividends
Garry Trudeau and John McCain
Remember Mark Slackmeyer, aka “Megaphone Mark”? He was part of the original Doonesbury gang, the 60s slacker/activist who has ended up working for NPR, where he and his politically conservative life partner debate each other on the air. Around where I lived, Slackmeyer was a familiar type. (In fact, it was rumored that a local alternative newspaper journalist, a classmate of Garry Trudeau’s at Yale, was the original model for Megaphone Mark.)
We recognized many of the Doonesbury gang in our own circle. It was fascinating watching them grow up, because, unlike other comic strip characters, they did grow up. Like us, only somewhat more slowly. They left their communes behind, got married, had kids, got divorced, went to law school, got jobs on Capitol Hill, got fired, went into rehab. Ups and downs. Like the rest of us.
But in the last several years, Garry Trudeau has thrown something much tougher at one of the old gang. B.D., Michael Doonsbury’s college roommate, has lost a leg in a grenade attack in Iraq. Since his injury, the football coach and former college jock has turned into a moody alcoholic, now undergoing therapy for post-traumatic stress at Walter Reed Hospital.
This new storyline has won Trudeau admiration and awards in some surprising quarters, including the Pentagon and the Disabled Americans Veterans. Even John McCain has done an about face. In 1995, he went on record as saying he held the liberal cartoonist in “utter contempt.” This past year McCain wrote an introduction to Trudeau's The Long Road Home , a collection of his strips about B.D.'s injury and recovery. (The proceeds will go to a veterans’ charity.)
Doonesbury has always been topical, and often controversial. During the Vietnam War Trudeau’s anti-war cartoons were part of a larger protest movement. Because of the draft, that war was central to our generation’s experience. After it was over, many of those who opposed the war came to regard the veterans as victims, not perpetrators.
In the war in Iraq, decades later, Trudeau’s has directed his focus and sympathy to the soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to writing about their issues, he’s a frequent visitor to the injury ward at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and at gatherings of wounded troops.
On his website, Trudeau has also created a virtual community for soldiers – a sort of "Global War On Terror literary magazine,” as he has written. "The Sandbox," is a digest of military blogs, open to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Posts on The Sandbox include a list of 63 items every Iraq-bound soldier should pack (baby wipes, webcam) and attempts to compare real combat with the way it’s portrayed in the movies. (Movies are more interesting,” wrote one soldier. “It’s sort of the banality of being shot at.”)
In providing this forum for active duty soldiers, and in writing about disabled soldiers in Doonesbury, the humorist underlines and important truth as effectively in the era of Bush as in the era of Nixon and Johnson.
http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/
We recognized many of the Doonesbury gang in our own circle. It was fascinating watching them grow up, because, unlike other comic strip characters, they did grow up. Like us, only somewhat more slowly. They left their communes behind, got married, had kids, got divorced, went to law school, got jobs on Capitol Hill, got fired, went into rehab. Ups and downs. Like the rest of us.
But in the last several years, Garry Trudeau has thrown something much tougher at one of the old gang. B.D., Michael Doonsbury’s college roommate, has lost a leg in a grenade attack in Iraq. Since his injury, the football coach and former college jock has turned into a moody alcoholic, now undergoing therapy for post-traumatic stress at Walter Reed Hospital.
This new storyline has won Trudeau admiration and awards in some surprising quarters, including the Pentagon and the Disabled Americans Veterans. Even John McCain has done an about face. In 1995, he went on record as saying he held the liberal cartoonist in “utter contempt.” This past year McCain wrote an introduction to Trudeau's The Long Road Home , a collection of his strips about B.D.'s injury and recovery. (The proceeds will go to a veterans’ charity.)
Doonesbury has always been topical, and often controversial. During the Vietnam War Trudeau’s anti-war cartoons were part of a larger protest movement. Because of the draft, that war was central to our generation’s experience. After it was over, many of those who opposed the war came to regard the veterans as victims, not perpetrators.
In the war in Iraq, decades later, Trudeau’s has directed his focus and sympathy to the soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to writing about their issues, he’s a frequent visitor to the injury ward at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and at gatherings of wounded troops.
On his website, Trudeau has also created a virtual community for soldiers – a sort of "Global War On Terror literary magazine,” as he has written. "The Sandbox," is a digest of military blogs, open to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Posts on The Sandbox include a list of 63 items every Iraq-bound soldier should pack (baby wipes, webcam) and attempts to compare real combat with the way it’s portrayed in the movies. (Movies are more interesting,” wrote one soldier. “It’s sort of the banality of being shot at.”)
In providing this forum for active duty soldiers, and in writing about disabled soldiers in Doonesbury, the humorist underlines and important truth as effectively in the era of Bush as in the era of Nixon and Johnson.
http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/
John Adams: The Courage to Sign
It's not only youth that's wasted on the young, as George Bernard Shaw famously remarked. So is education. Other than learning to read and write, and maybe do the odd sum, is there any point in going to school before you're 40-something or even or 50-something?
Certainly teaching me history was a waste. As a schoolgirl, I was too self-absorbed and my imaginative powers were too undeveloped for me to fully appreciate any historical event. If it happened before I was born, my M.O. was “memorize and forget.”
This occurred to me recently because I am in the middle of watching “John Adams,” the seven-part HBO miniseries about the founding of our country. There are aspects I don't much like about the production, mainly Paul Giametti's John Adams -- he seems to have two facial expressions, both of them cribbed from Homer Simpson.
But I have found the history unexpectedly moving, and have for the first time begun to grasp what it really means. Watching scenes from the Continental Congress, where the terms of Independence were hammered out, I understood for the first time how terrifying it was for these men to repudiate their government -- how extreme an act, and how uncertain of success.
They had reason to be scared. Benjamin Franklin (played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson) expressed everyone's mood when he said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” And so they would have. Because we know how the story comes out, it's hard to fully appreciate the courage and audacity of these 56 men. In signing the Declaration of Independence, they might well have been signing their own death warrant.
Strip away the mythologizing and the pieties of history-books, and the fact remains: those Patriots were extraordinary men. Not only courageous, but also smart. Pretty much the same bunch went on to frame the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they created a substantially new form of government that has proved durable and important.
Certainly teaching me history was a waste. As a schoolgirl, I was too self-absorbed and my imaginative powers were too undeveloped for me to fully appreciate any historical event. If it happened before I was born, my M.O. was “memorize and forget.”
This occurred to me recently because I am in the middle of watching “John Adams,” the seven-part HBO miniseries about the founding of our country. There are aspects I don't much like about the production, mainly Paul Giametti's John Adams -- he seems to have two facial expressions, both of them cribbed from Homer Simpson.
But I have found the history unexpectedly moving, and have for the first time begun to grasp what it really means. Watching scenes from the Continental Congress, where the terms of Independence were hammered out, I understood for the first time how terrifying it was for these men to repudiate their government -- how extreme an act, and how uncertain of success.
They had reason to be scared. Benjamin Franklin (played brilliantly by Tom Wilkinson) expressed everyone's mood when he said, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” And so they would have. Because we know how the story comes out, it's hard to fully appreciate the courage and audacity of these 56 men. In signing the Declaration of Independence, they might well have been signing their own death warrant.
Strip away the mythologizing and the pieties of history-books, and the fact remains: those Patriots were extraordinary men. Not only courageous, but also smart. Pretty much the same bunch went on to frame the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they created a substantially new form of government that has proved durable and important.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Obama Plays the Age Card
Young people don't vote. That's the conventional wisdom, and this year it's big news that, in the primaries, young voters surged to the polls as they haven't in a long time. In 1970, when the voting age was lowered to 18, 55 percent of the young voters went to the polls, but in recent elections that figure has dropped dramatically.
This year, though, they're coming back--mostly, no surprise, to support Obama. He has delighted them in part by challenging the baby boom generation, whose members, he has said, should "get over themselves."
From an age standpoint, it’s hard to think of another election year that has been as interesting as this one. For the first time ever, three generations are represented in the Presidential horse race. Obama has declared that it's time for a representative of a new generation to enter the White House, namely him.*
Not baby boomer Hillary Clinton, born in 1947, the same year the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. And certainly not John McCain, whose 1938 birth date makes him a son of the Great Depression. The year Obama was born, 1961, was the year John F. Kennedy exhorted Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country." Some seasoned political hands say they see in Obama the youth and hopefulness of JFK.
After 16 years of running the country, maybe it is time for our generation to step aside. But it's annoying to hear Obama sound off on the subject. As even he acknowledges, many of the social reforms we now take for granted were initiated by the 60s politics that he now called "tired." If the Democratic nomination does end up going to him, I imagine he will begin to soft-pedal the anti-boomer rhetoric. We are, after all, still the largest generation in American history and we do vote.
*According to some demographers, Obama, with his 1961 birthdate, qualifies as a late boomer. But he counts himself as part of the baby bust, a.k.a. the boomer backlash. If you doubt there is such a thing, take a look at the blog dieboomerdie.
[http://dieboomerdie.blogspot.com]
This year, though, they're coming back--mostly, no surprise, to support Obama. He has delighted them in part by challenging the baby boom generation, whose members, he has said, should "get over themselves."
From an age standpoint, it’s hard to think of another election year that has been as interesting as this one. For the first time ever, three generations are represented in the Presidential horse race. Obama has declared that it's time for a representative of a new generation to enter the White House, namely him.*
Not baby boomer Hillary Clinton, born in 1947, the same year the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. And certainly not John McCain, whose 1938 birth date makes him a son of the Great Depression. The year Obama was born, 1961, was the year John F. Kennedy exhorted Americans to "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country." Some seasoned political hands say they see in Obama the youth and hopefulness of JFK.
After 16 years of running the country, maybe it is time for our generation to step aside. But it's annoying to hear Obama sound off on the subject. As even he acknowledges, many of the social reforms we now take for granted were initiated by the 60s politics that he now called "tired." If the Democratic nomination does end up going to him, I imagine he will begin to soft-pedal the anti-boomer rhetoric. We are, after all, still the largest generation in American history and we do vote.
*According to some demographers, Obama, with his 1961 birthdate, qualifies as a late boomer. But he counts himself as part of the baby bust, a.k.a. the boomer backlash. If you doubt there is such a thing, take a look at the blog dieboomerdie.
[http://dieboomerdie.blogspot.com]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)