Two stories today
Tuesday, 9 June 2020
I headed out on my walk thinking my body was adjusting to early-mid Deep South summer after being in mid-spring northern Midwest, and I was darned lucky that it was overcast. Humid, but no bright sun.
A man’s voice penetrated my distraction. He told me about a lost dog, a small golden retriever. Phone number on collar. I said I’d call if I saw her. I rounded the next corner and saw a woman carrying a…yup, small golden. Which was not tiny; I’d say smallish medium-sized. I said, “you found her!” “Yes,” she said, “she was sitting at the end of a driveway.” All’s well.
Not so happy second story. Voting is a real mess in this state, or at least in this city.
We were lucky that we received our absentee ballots. They were long. About half judges, at all governmental levels. Took us both quite a bit of study to work through all the options.
Then we set off with our properly (I sure hope) packaged ballots to drop them in a ballot box toward downtown. While we were there long enough for me to drop ours off, we saw six other parties dropping off ballots. That’s a steady flow, considering it took me less than a minute to walk across three lanes, a wide sidewalk, and up a gentle half-flight of steps, push them through the door, then return. That’s a big pile of absentee ballots, and there were at least a half-dozen other absentee drop-off stations in this county.
For grins (as the saying goes), we returned home by two polls…. Both had long snaking lines, at least a half-mile, I estimated. Social distancing had collapsed somewhat…huge numbers of people. Lots of reasons for the problems, beginning with long ballots, brand new machines, and inexperienced poll workers. Afternoon showers I’m sure did not help things. I will not speculate on the role of incompetence, or the potential for malevolence masquerading as incompetence in the poll problems.
Photo themes: color graduation (small changes…you get it); parting of the plant (separations in wholes); and the sign for an Atlanta institution, the Sweet Auburn Curb Market (local name for the market; WikiPee details that the Municipal Market sign is a replica.