Autumn is here:
You can’t put that in a picture: the smells, the smiling sun, the sometimes crisp air, the crunch of leaves, the smell of that first wood fire in someone’s yard competing with the smell of a fresh lawn. You can’t capture that in a photograph and you can’t share it in a video. But we surely do try.
It was also election day today. I visited my polling place after breakfast. We vote in a hotel. The parking lot was full and so was the overflow lot next to them.
They have the sign-in stations organized by the alphabet, of course. I visit the Q-S line, which had three people in it. I was through the line quickly. Here’s my ID, there I am in your roster. Sign here and take your ballot.
She said they’d been busy since they opened at 7 a.m.
I sat down at a folding table. I was soon joined by a young lady who was making her first vote. She was pretty excited by this prospect, and busy asking her mother what all the amendments on the ballot meant. Her mother didn’t much know either. We had quite a few, and they aren’t written for a low reading level.
I ran my ballot through the machine, watched with pleasure as the tally ticked up one line. I politely turned down the “I voted” sticker, which seemed to throw the nice lady for a loop.
Someone lost their Voter ID registration card. I returned it to the help desk — there was a help desk — feeling it was part of my civic duty. Hopefully they can mail it to the lady.
I received emails from some of my students who were telling me they may be late to class. They were going to vote. One of those extra perks about teaching college students: they’re all getting their first vote this year.
They all made it to class on time, too.
We had a guest speaker in class today. At the end of his presentation there were still two more hours before the polls closed. I encouraged all of the local students, if they had not voted yet, to consider going to do so. “It will mean more to you as you get older.”
Our guest speaker agreed.
Went upstairs to the Crimson office. The news editor was designing a front page for a Romney win and another for an Obama win. I convinced her of the wisdom of designing a third one, a question mark. She started working on that.
Of course the race was all but over by the time I returned from dinner. They’re working long into the night on the paper.
I remember my first election coverage in 1996. I was writing for my college paper. I attended a county watch party. It was held in the same hotel where I voted today. A very inebriated lady of considerable local influence spent most of the party hitting on me. I left there to go to the other party’s headquarters and spoke with a newly elected congressman on the phone. From my place I called a new senator. His staff told me I would be a terrible reporter. I asked too many questions. It was a badge of honor.
I worked on that story late into the night, typing until morning time. I think I had two front page stories that issue.
Elections are like Christmas. And that’s one of the nights the recovering journalist misses being in a working newsroom.
I remember sleeping in my car for two hours on the night of the 2000 election. That was after watching the deadest watch party ever. The candidate hadn’t talked to the media or much of anyone, felt the whole ordeal was basically hers because she deigned run and was stunned when she lost badly. I feel asleep in my car that night, though, after working probably 20 hours, listening to the radio in the early morning. When I nodded off we didn’t know anything about what was really going on in Florida. I woke up before the sunrise to find we still didn’t know anything about what was happening in Florida. I worked all that Wednesday, but don’t remember much about it on zero sleep.
Like Christmas.
Maybe I’ll get a little more rest tonight.
