DeMarco: To All the Baptist Ladies

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The Op-Ed Page

President Jimmy Carter addressing the SBC in Atlanta in 1978. In 2000, Carter would break with the SBC over its position on the status of women.

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

Although I am a United Methodist, I have known many, many sweet and skillful Baptist women in my time. My children went to Marion Baptist Kindergarten prior to entering 5K in the public schools and were taught by two of the sweetest, a pair of beloved elderly sisters. Baptist women can organize church events, cook the best caramel layer cakes you have ever tasted, and I’m going to wager that most are smarter than their husbands (that’s no crack on Baptist husbands; it’s true in all denominations and certainly in my household).

I expect that most Baptist ladies of a certain age will stay put and keep doing important work for their congregations and communities. But after the Southern Baptist Convention’s recent annual meeting, I’m not sure how the SBC thinks it’s going to hold onto young women.

Since 2000, the SBC has had a nonbinding statement of faith banning women from the pulpit. At the annual meeting this past June in Indianapolis, the SBC came close to formalizing that ban into the denomination’s constitution.  The ban received support from 61% of the delegates, but it failed to achieve the required two-thirds supermajority. Still, the vote demonstrated that more than half of the delegates hold this outmoded view.

I remember watching my mother struggle with the restrictions placed on women by the Catholic church in which she was raised and educated.  I think she might have been the first doctor in our family if Fordham, the Jesuit university she attended, had allowed her to major in chemistry. However, in the early 1960s, Fordham’s chemistry degree was offered only to men.  As opportunities expanded for women in the secular world, the idea that women could not be priests or use birth control became insupportable to her. Eventually, she and my father found a happy home in the Episcopal church, where men and women are treated equally.

I remember as a teenager meeting a brilliant Mormon high school senior. She had been selected as a Presidential scholar, one of only 100 young people in the country to receive that annual award. To my surprise she was already engaged to be married. She had been admitted to college and had a bright future ahead. But when I asked how she would respond if her husband wanted her to stay home with the children they were sure to bring into the world, she said without hesitation that she would drop out.

My point is not that staying home with children is a bad choice. It’s a wonderful choice. I am grateful to my wife for choosing to stay home with our two when they were young. As a brilliant master’s prepared nurse, she could have decided she wanted to pursue a high-profile academic or administrative position.  How could I have denied her that?  Using a few verses from the Bible, a book written two millennia ago exclusively by men at a time when women were considered property?

The Bible contains great truths, but it must be interpreted (and whether we want to admit it or not, every reader of the Bible interprets Scripture. There is no objective reading of a text so voluminous, complex, or contradictory). As a physician, one of my favorite examples of bringing a modern interpretation to the Bible concerns the Gospel writers’ descriptions of Jesus casting out demons. Today we would diagnose the afflicted as having epilepsy or perhaps psychosis. Building a church infrastructure around exorcism of demons would be foolish based on today’s understanding of the brain.  Likewise, building a church infrastructure to uphold another antiquated idea, that woman are not men’s equals in the work of the church — including, teaching, preaching, and leading — is similarly foolish.

The SBC was founded in 1845 by men who wanted a denomination that would allow its members to own slaves, twisting the message of the Bible to accommodate that view.  It took 150 years for the SBC to formally apologize for that. Ladies, I am confident that at some point in the future, the SBC will recognize that it has made a similar mistake with its treatment of women. But why wait a century and a half for the apology?

If you’re a young or young at heart Baptist woman, consider moving to a denomination that fully recognizes your God-given worth. There are many, but I am partial to my own, the United Methodist Church, where women are viewed as equals in every way and hold every leadership position, including pastor and bishop.

Women lead men successfully in every secular aspect of life-in our homes, in the workplace, and in government.  Does God really want them to remain subservient in the church? Mike Law, pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Virginia and author of the constitutional amendment banning women pastors argues, “Our culture may see this prohibition as harsh, but our God is all wise, and wrote this word for the flourishing of both men and women.” Reverend Law, let me respond for all the women rolling their eyes right now, “Well, pastor, bless your heart.”

A version of this column appeared in the October 16th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

Throwing away all (well, MOST) of those old notes

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Some of the notes I’ve kept — there are very, very few.

When I was subpoenaed to testify in Jim Harrison’s trial in 2018, I was first asked to meet with the prosecutor, David Pascoe. He wanted me to testify about a long-ago (2006) blog post regarding an interview with Rep. Harrison.

Also, he wanted my notes from that interview. I told him that really wasn’t practical, and wouldn’t be helpful even if I produced them. First, there was thge problem of my handwriting. Second, I seldom wrote down full direct quotes (unless something the speaker said was so obviously a quote I would use that I thought it worth the time), because I was a slow note-taker for a journalist. My notes were so sketchy that I always had to write within a day or two of taking them to remember what they referred to. They would mean very little to me now, and nothing to anyone else.

Finally, I seriously doubted that I could produce them before the trial, even if I quit James Smith’s campaign and did nothing but search through the pile of boxes in my garage until I found what he thought he wanted.

So he dropped that idea, to my great relief.

Soon, I won’t have to worry about such subpeonas, because I’m getting rid of most of the notes.

The end of last week, we bought a car. A new car. Believe it or not, it’s the first new car we’ve bought since 1986. Yep, at least 38 years. We’ve gone with “previously owned” on every subsequent purchase. We were sick of the stress of constantly having to come up with money for repairs, and we wanted something with a warranty.

It’s a middle-of-the-road — in terms of cost — Toyota, but in unadjusted dollars, it cost more than the first house we bought, back in 1980.

So we want to take good care of this vehicle — which means parking it in the garage. Which we use for other purposes now, mostly (measured by cubic feet) storage.

Those couple of dozen boxes have got to go. They’ve been piled up in a sort of uneven ziggurat right next to the steps leading into the house. They’ve been covered with a big sheet of heavy plastic, which (I’m now finding) didn’t protect them as well as I’d hoped.

The going is slow, because I’m going through every sheet of paper in each box. (I’ve never been a person for blithely throwing things away.) I’m doing it fairly quickly, but it still takes maybe an hour per box. I was discouraged by the result on the first box, because I eliminated less than half the contents. But that was stuff from college days, and my decade at The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun, right after school. Which means I had winnowed through that several times before.

One thing that amazes me is the time I spent on administrative matters while putting out a newspaper — especially the correspondence from the days before we had printers that produced something of letter quality. Letters to readers, letters to prospective reporters (I was over all the news reporters at the Sun), letters to people running some conference I was about to go to. All produced on a typewriter. All that time spent on things that I really don’t care about now (which make up most of the stuff I did toss out). Wow, the energy I had in my late 20s.

Since that box, things have gone much better. I’ve thrown away something like 90-95 percent of each box. And a LOT of that is notes from the ’90s and double-aughts. Still haven’t run across those Harrison notes, though.

But I have run across a few notes here and there that I’ve pulled out to keep. Sometimes because of the interesting topic, but mostly because of the people being interviewed — people I like or enjoyed talking with (Joe Riley, Fritz Hollings, John McCain, Joe Biden), people I found completely appalling (Grover Norquist, for instance) or people who have subsequently become more widely interesting (like Nikki Haley).

I put a few of those together on my scanner so you could see the kind I’m talking about. I have a long way to go — including the dreaded box of an odd shape (like a cubic yard) that I know is nothing but notes. Who knows what I’ll find next?

In any case, I’m making gradual progress. But I thought I’d tell you because while there are always a lot of things preventing me from having time to blog these days, this is one of the bigger ones right now…

As of right now, I’ve eliminated 11 boxes. This is what’s left of the pile…

Hey, y’all, help me check something out

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See if you can tune in the signal…

Lately, I’ve heard it said a couple of times on NYT Audio that their content — or some of their content — is free to nonsubscribers.

It might just be the blogs, like “Matter of Opinion,” and “The Ezra Klein Show.” I’m wondering whether it might also apply to the newspaper’s other content (like The Daily and Headlines), and to some of the stuff they carry from other publications, such as The New Yorker.

This matters to me because so much of what I read and hear — and would like to share with you, so we can have a fully informed conversation about the things I’m thinking about. Which is, you know, what a blog is about — unless I just cut off comments and write a “personal journal” that I simply allow others to read. Or not. Which I’ve thought about.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I include quotes to an extent that some might say goes beyond Fair Use (I would not say that, but we all have our own views, don’t we?), too often the conversations don’t go any deeper than the headlines, which means they don’t go beyond the usual conversations people have about politics or culture or anything in this social media age. And every statement is drawn directly from the current talking points from the two sides — the only two sides too many people perceive.

And if we don’t get beyond that, there’s little point to blogging.

So… let’s see if this works. Here are links to some recent items from NYT Audio. I initially tried to give you something from each category — blogs, opinion and news content from the paper (some read by the writers, some by ersatz voices), and some from other sources.

I’ve also tried to share a variety of topics. But after the first two or three, I ran into a bit of a challenge. Read on:

OK, that was more complicated than I thought. I couldn’t even find links to most of the dozen or so items I wanted you to listen to. And I’m pretty sure that the last of those three goes to the text content, not the audio. NYT Audio doesn’t give, on the app, direct URLs to specific content. So I was trying to grab those from the browser on my Mac. And even then, I couldn’t find links to outside content that appears on the app, such as The New Yorker and Foreign Policy.

Bottom line: You may have to download the app onto your phone or other device. It’s obvious they want everyone to do that. It’s worth the effort if they give you free access, because there’s good stuff there on a wide ranged of topics and interests. Here’s where you download it.

You would be rewarded by being able to listen to some of these other pieces I was originally going to link to here:

  • Carlos Lozada: Stop Pretending Trump is not Who We Are
  • The New Yorker: The Improbably Rise of JD Vance
  • The Culture Desk: Why Was 1999 the Best Movie Year (No, that’s not a typo; the second 9 wasn’t supposed to be a 3. But as silly as the proposition sounds, it’s an interesting listen while walking.)
  • NYT Interview: Al Pacino is Still Going Big
  • Foreign Policy: What a U.K. Labour Win Means for the Global Left
  • Hard Fork: Apple Joins the A.I. Party, Elon’s Wild Week and HatGPT
  • The Daily: A Conversation with President Zelensky

Or maybe you’d be thus rewarded. I can’t tell from my end, since they recognized me as a subscriber. But still, if you have any success with anything I’ve offered above, please let me know. I’d really like this blog to feature deeper and more intelligent discussions about … whatever the subject at hand might be… than are likely to be fueled by free media…

Nice playlist, YouTube!

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When I first listened to this, I was initially going to try to say something about how impressed I was that artificial intelligence had gotten so much better.

Screenshot

But then, I realized that such a preference-driven thing as this wasn’t really artificial (or any other kind of) “thinking” at all. It’s more of a case of you press button A multiple times, and the machine keeps showing you A — not even something as smart as “thinks like A,” but A itself. In some way or other, you could probably have built a machine that could do that a hundred years ago. Press these 12 buttons; get these 12 results. Duh…

It wasn’t even as “smart” as the thing I admired Pandora doing several years back — long before, say, ChatGPT and such. That’s when I noticed that, based on the tunes I had elected to hear, the algorithm was intuiting that I would also like this other tune, of which I had never heard. And it was right. I made some really happy discoveries through that process. I was impressed because Netflix had been presented at the time as being able to do that with movies and TV shows, and it failed miserably. I wasn’t sure whether that was because there are fewer variables with music, or because Pandora was just that much smarter than Netflix.

Anyway, this is nothing like that. I’ve chosen at some time or other to call up every clip on this list (except perhaps one), and YouTube just put them together and played them back for me.

But as dumb and obvious as that may be, I really enjoyed it. So I thought I’d share. Maybe you’ll dig it, or some of it, too. Here’s what it presented to me under the “My Mix” heading:

  1. “New Lace Sleeves,” Elvis Costello and the Attractions — What kind of music would you call this? I would have called it “jazz,” based on what that rhythm section is doing. But Wikipedia doesn’t say “jazz” once, which I guess shows yet again that I am a musical ignoramus. It puts both Elvis and the song under “New Wave,” which is hard to argue with. I says Elvis himself said it was inspired by Devo‘s cover of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and Stevie Wonder‘s “Superstition“. I can see the Devo, but not the Stevie. At least Wikipedia admits that Elvis’ wife plays jazz.
  2. “Tired of Being Alone,” Al Green — No mystery here. I listen to the Rev. Al quite a bit. As should everyone. And this one may be the best, although, to quote Ed Grimley, it’s difficult to say…
  3. “Elenore,” the Turtles — I love the story people tell about this one. The Turtles wanted to get all creative and produce a Sgt. Pepper or a Pet Sounds, but their label just wanted another “Happy Together.” So they decided to write the worst piece of crap they could think up, and that was “Elenore,” and the studio recorded it, and it was fantastic. Another big hit, because it’s simply an awesome pop song. Even the Turtles had to admit it. It’s even creative — I like the rhyming with the first syllable: “ELenore, gee I think you’re/SWELL and you really do me/WELL..” and so forth. Yes, the lyrics are moronic, but in a clever way, I always thought. I thought the dumb words were a way of saying that Elenore blows the guy’s mind to such an extent that he is rendered incoherent….
  4. “Use Ta Be My Girl,” the O’Jays — Not sure why this is on here. Not that I hate it, but I don’t remember having deliberately played it.
  5. “I’m an Old Cowhand,” Gene Autrey — I know why this one’s here. My mother was talking about enjoying the singing cowboy when she was a child, so I was showing her how to find some of his stuff on YouTube…
  6. “New Amsterdam,” Elvis Costello and the Attractions — Played this a lot before we went to Europe, especially since we’d be spending close to half the time in Amsterdam. Talk about fun, goofy lyrics… “New Amsterdam it’s become much too much/Till I have the possession of everything she touches/Till I step on the brakes to get out of her clutches/Till I speak double dutch to a real double duchess.” Maybe ol’ Declan is saying something super-deep about New York. I dunno. I just dig the wordplay. I listen to it the way I do “I Am the Walrus” — although this is better.
  7. “King Harvest,” The Band — I’ve mentioned my appreciation of this many times before, and this is a great time to listen to it — the most autumnal song by the most autumnal band ever. I first found this video of the guys playing it live in the studio years ago, and consider it a bit of a treasure.
  8. “Happy Together,” the Turtles — Hey, you can’t put “Elenore” near the beginning of a playlist and leave this one out altogether. As Nick Hornby said about making a mix tape, there are a lot of rules. And apparently YouTube’s algorithm follows them.
  9. “Sulky Girl,” Elvis Costello — I’ve mentioned how impressive I found this one before, so of course YouTube puts it in.
  10. “Delta Lady,” Leon Russell — This clip is another classic in the “live in the studio” genre. And of course, this was a time when musicians were fond of putting glitches and restarts on vinyl, to give listeners an illusion of being there. But this is special. When Leon starts, and stops everyone and starts again — twice — you are hearing the Master of Space and Time himself, an actual leading member of the Wrecking Crew, at work…
  11. “A Day in the Life,” The Beatles — No need for explanation here, is there?
  12. “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding,” Elvis and the Attractions — One of the great things about this is that it comes across as the quintessential Elvis Costello song, suiting his persona perfectly. And yet it’s not. Nick Lowe wrote it… but he could never bring it to life as well as Elvis. Nick sings it too gently. When Elvis does it, he says the title in a way that sounds like he’s ready to fight, and daring you to tell him what’s so funny about it…

So there you go. It’s been a rough week, folks. Enjoy…

You know who inspired “Delta Lady,” right? Rita Coolidge.

 

 

The day after…

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The view out my home office window at 7:28 a.m. What a bright, sunshiny day, huh?

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

— W.B. Yeats

Well, we know what rough beast. He’s been rending and tearing at the very meaning of our country for eight years now. We know him. And yet all those millions of people, who were right here through it all, actually went out and voted for him. To me, it remains unimaginable that even one person did. (I mean, have you ever seen this guy? Have you ever heard him speak?) But you see what happened.

As for Kamala Harris — well, it would be dishonest to pretend I was her biggest fan, but I was very impressed at the race she ran under such difficult circumstances. And in the end, I was happy and proud to vote for her and Walz and put a sign for them in my yard.

It’s a great tragedy for our country that she didn’t win. The contours of the tragedy are yet to be fully defined, but here’s a starting point: We were the great hope of the world, the greatest force for liberal democracy in human history (and if you’re one of those people who don’t understand the meaning of the word “liberal” in that phrase, please go do some serious reading). Now what will we be?

Whatever it is, there is no reason to think it will be in any way good.

But you know, as much as I mourn for the country I love, I’m even more immediately worried about people in other parts of the world — you know, those people Trump and his most fervent followers really don’t give a damn about. I could write about that from now to the day I die, and only partially describe the horrific likely effects. Just to mention one: I can’t tell you what will happen next in Ukraine, but it’s logical to expect that thousands more innocents will die, and the survivors will spend the rest of their lives being oppressed by Trump’s friend in Russia.

America can (I still hope and pray) bounce back, eventually. I’m not able to be as hopeful for Ukrainians.

Of course, other than that, some things went well, although that sound like I’m saying, “But aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, didn’t the play have some fine scenes?”

But, no longer being the public man I was, here’s my personal view. I had five signs in my yard. Here’s how things went with the folks other than Harris/Walz:

  • Mary Burkett — This is very pleasing, as she seems to be the biggest vote-getter in the Lexington 2 school board race. There are four winners total, and I also voted for two of the other three — Liz Chitty Castles and Craig Aull. My fourth choice was Brian Habing, and he didn’t make it. I have little or no objection to Tre Bray, who did. Three out of four is hard to complain about.
  • Micah Caskey — No surprise there, of course. But there’s a slightly interesting thing about the result. As I said in a previous post, his opponent was a very pleasant young man, and I enjoyed talking with him. But it would be hard to find anyone who seriously thought he had a chance in this Republican district. And yet — according to SCVotes, he got 39.63 percent of the vote. Let’s just round that up and say 40 percent. Of course, that could be because this is a fairly moderate Republican district, but still pretty good. Here’s why that matters: Fatalists are constantly saying there’s no point in voting in SC if you’re a Democrat, but take a look at the numbers. No doubt some people wanted Kamala Harris to win, but stayed home because soneone told them to be “realists.” (Alas, far, far too many Americans turn out only for the presidential contest.) And yet she got 40.42 percent of the vote statewide. Just because a state, or a district, is considered “safe” for the other party does not mean anyone has an excuse to stay home. Every vote counts. Every vote. Always.
  • Russell Ott (for whom I had two signs). This is the one candidate I tried most to help elect, as ridiculously minor as the help may have been — introducing him to friends, knocking on doors to talk a very few neighbors into putting up a sign for him. Make no mistake — the guy who made this happen was Russell himself. He worked as hard as I’ve seen anybody work for a state Senate seat. He made his case, and it was clear that he was the better candidate to any objective observer. But there was reason to worry. His district went for Biden in 2020, but Biden wasn’t running, and I never saw much similar enthusiasm for Kamala Harris in these parts. Congratulations, Russell. I’m glad to see you will be my senator.

That’s about it, from where I sit.

Election of the Body Snatchers II (with a possible answer)

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At first, I thought it was maybe a sign of lack of specifically Republican interest that so few voters were at the polling places I mentioned previously in Lexington County.

For a comparison, since I had to go into town anyway, I ran by several over in heavily Democratic Richland. Most were places I used to drop by each Election Day when I was at the paper:

  • A.C. Moore Elementary
  • Rosewood Elementary
  • Sims Park
  • Dreher High School

The first two I just drove by, and confirmed that there no visible lines stretching out the doors. At Sims, I went in, and found one or two people waiting to vote — just like at my own precinct back near Lexington Medical Center.

Finally, at Dreher, I went in and engaged the workers — who weren’t what you’d call busy — in conversation. And maybe I got my answer, although it’s an answer I brought up and immediately dismissed in my last post.

One of those signing people in (occasionally) told me not to be “fooled” by the light trickle of voters. He said 600 people from Ward 16 had voted early. That didn’t impress me until he explained that was half the registered voters (as least I assumed he was talking registered and not voting age population, because he would have had those data at hand — but I neglected to ask) in that ward. And, he said, while it might not look like much at any given moment, 300 had already voted there today. He said that at about 1:15. Conceivably, that left open the possibility that the remaining 300 could vote by the end of the day.

I don’t know, but the same could be true at the other places thus far mentioned, and at the Saluda River precinct I drove back by on my way home.

Huh. Those lines for early voting hadn’t looked very long, particularly when you consider these were people from precincts all over that part of the county. But when you stretch that out over a couple of weeks…

So, maybe folks are voting after all. I may not like the way they vote on this or that race, but I suppose I can’t accuse them of slacking off. Or maybe I can. We’ll see. Dreher was the only place where I went in and got some numbers, and maybe it was different at the other places…

Uh — where are the crowds?

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Normally, there are loads of campaign signs in this spot. This time, they had all been stripped away. Voters were almost as scarce in this location…

I get up, and I read how painfully excited everyone is supposed to be across the country, which was to be expected — right?

But then I go check out the action at my own polling place, and — there’s nobody standing outside. And I drive by my Mom’s a couple of miles away, and — it’s the same.

Which is a shock. I mean, here’s what it looked like at my polling place in 2008, which is the year I think of when I think “big turnout.”

You may say, “Yeah, but it’s raining right now.” Yes, very lightly. And an almost identical rain was falling when I took those pics in 2008, too.

But thinking of that, I went back to my own precinct to see if the crowd was all jammed up inside the building.

No. Nothing. No lines at all. I talked briefly with a school board candidate who was standing out greeting people at the door, and he said the workers told him it had been like this all morning — one or two voters at a time.

I stood there and talked to him for several minutes, and during that period that description of the trickle was borne out — one voter went by us and entered.

It wasn’t like this at early voting, as you can see from my previous posts. But at the same time, while the early crowds were good-sized, they weren’t big enough to tell us there would be virtually no turnout on the Day.

What are y’all seeing?

 

This was pretty good, but the Mick Jagger one was funnier

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Several news sources mentioned last night’s SNL skit with Kamala Harris and Maya Rudolph, so I checked it out. (You say I should have watched it live? What do you think this is, 1975?).

It was pretty good. It was a fine execution of an established skit, both carried it off well, and they didn’t try to do too much with it — they stuck to the simple gag.

Possibly the most practical thing they accomplished was helping me remember how the veep pronounces her own first name. They played around with it a bit, as The Washington Post described:

Rudolph and Harris then exchanged a set of jokes riffing on Harris’s first name.

“Now Kamala, take my palm-ala,” Rudolph said to Harris. “The American people want to stop the chaos.” “And end the drama-la,” Harris said. They concluded: “Keep calm-ala and carry on-ala.”…

Beyond that, though, I have to say I still prefer the original — when Mick Jagger did the same mirror shtick with Jimmy Fallon. Of course, part of what made that funny was the way Jagger himself kept cracking up at Fallon’s mockery of him. Remember?

Of course, when I first thought of it, I was thinking “that skit that Mick Jagger did with Mike Myers.” But my memory slipped on that one. Myers did the one in which he played Jagger, and Jagger lampooned Keith Richard. That was fun, too, even though Jagger managed to stay in character…

Anyway, while last night’s skit was enjoyable, the other thing keeping it out of the winner’s circle was that I see nothing funny at all about this election. I think SNL has figured this out, which is why their mockery seems to have less fire than in the past, and is less funny. The Post has noticed this as well…

Mick cracking up over Jimmy’s impression…

Nee, ik ben geen Duitser

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We enjoyed the Museum of the Canals, just before my big screwup.

While I’m on the Dutch kick…

You may wonder why I’m still doing the lessons daily, since our trip to Amsterdam and other places where the language is spoken was over months ago.

Well, I enjoy studying it, in spite of the compound nouns and sometimes weird sentence structures. And I don’t want to break my streak, which now stands at 231 days.

Also… back when I was doing 10 and more lessons a day, before the Europe trip, an interesting thing happened. I suddenly was really, really good at the NYT word games I play — Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections. I mean crazy good. There was one week when I got Wordle in two tries three days in a row, and also hit the “genius” level — which means I “won” — three days in a row.

I could really feel the difference during those months. Obviously, exercising the part of the brain that learns new languages helps with intuiting words in my own language as well. And that’s a good thing to be doing at my age. That’s the good news. The bad news is that since I got back and have only been doing a lesson or two a day, I’ve been doing much worse at the word games. So I’ve started the last couple of days stepping it back up a bit.

Anyway, I’ve several good reasons for continuing my studies.

Which is good, because my studies were almost no help at all to me in Belgium and Amsterdam.

Which I suppose shows that the wisdom that comes with age is of limited value. We were in Amsterdam because one of my granddaughters was doing a summer intensive with the Dutch National Ballet Academy. Once we decided to follow her there, I started studying — and urged her to do the same. She said no way. She had heard that everyone there spoke English, especially at the ballet school.

Well, sure, I said, but don’t you want to be prepared for the unexpected? Admittedly, my frame of reference was perhaps outdated. I kept thinking about that time in “Band of Brothers” when Bull caught some shrapnel in his shoulder, and was separated from Easy Company when it was forced to retreat by an unexpectedly strong German counterattack. This was way out in the country near Eindhoven, and he had to spend the night alone in a barn. Eventually, after killing one of the enemy in a hand-to-hand fight, he managed to survive, barely, and even got some first aid from the farmer. But wouldn’t the situation have been a little easier if he had spoken Dutch?

I thought so. And we were planning some forays away from urban centers, where — in my imagination — people might not be so thoroughly educated in the current international lingua franca.

But here’s the sad truth: There was not a single instance, that I could tell, in which I used my new skill and it helped in any practical way. Oh, I would try. I’d walk up to people and greet them in Dutch, either to say good morning or something more urgent like waar is de wc?

I thought I was doing it pretty well, but they responded with neither appreciation nor scorn. They didn’t react in any way, except to answer me — in English.

I had tried this multiple times as we made stops on the way to Amsterdam in Ghent and Antwerp. No success. Probably my greatest triumph was a humble one. Speaking of the wc, when I got off the train in Antwerp, I went looking for one urgently. Finding it, I was happy the pay the standard euro to get in, but then found myself standing staring at the closed doors of the full stalls.

Next to me stood an even older man, a little guy who looked nothing like a tourist, who seemed more displeased than I was. He muttered something I didn’t quite make out (more because of my hearing problem than lack of understanding the language). I just shrugged and said, sort of the way a Russian might say nichevo (or so I imagined):

“We wachten…”

I think he nodded or something. Anyway, I took his response as agreement. At least he didn’t answer me in English. He probably thought I was a complete idiot and didn’t want to talk to this guy, but I congratulated myself for saying something way existential under less than noble circumstances. I was so pleased that when a stall opened, I let him go before me, even though I had been there first.

But then we got to Amsterdam, and on our first full day, I screwed up royally, and after that largely gave up on trying to engage the locals in their own language.

We had spent much of the morning visiting the Museum of the Canals, which was pretty cool. It explained how the canals and much of the city was laid out in the 17th century, with some pretty impressive 3D, multimedia displays.

We had gone there by tram, but were in a hurry to get back to the hostel, and called an Uber. Being the careful kind of guy who learns a language before visiting a new country, I checked to make sure this was our driver as we got in: “Pat?” I asked. He responded in the affirmative and asked, “Brad?”

Filled with confidence from the previous day in Antwerp, I answered:

Ja, ik ben Brad.

Except I didn’t. What I said was,

Ja, ich bin Brad.

I heard it as I said it, and thought, Oh, no! I actually did it. Having had that tiny bit of German at an impressionable age — in high school — during my months of study, I had repeated pronounced similar Dutch words as their German counterparts. I blamed my teacher, Helga. (I never liked her much.) But that just made me practice harder as I prepared for the trip, determined it would never happen in real life.

The Uber driver could have let it go. But he didn’t. In a deadpan tone, he asked, “Are you German?” In English, of course, because he knew the answer to that was nein.

But I forgave him, because he was actually a nice guy, and we had a nice conversation on the way back to the Oost area where we were staying. In English, of course, because he spoke that very well. He wasn’t Dutch, but African. It was the same with all those Middle Eastern people who lived and worked in the area we were staying. You’d think they’d speak accented Dutch to European-looking strangers. But no, they went with English, mostly.

So I kind of gave up on the trying-to-pass-as-a-local thing. Obviously, it was completely futile, and unnecessary, even outside the international ballet crowd. I later learned why. We had an Uber driver who was actually Dutch — a lady named Saskia who had kids past high school age. She explained that so many of their school courses are in English that just before graduation, they have to deliberately take some classes to bone up on Dutch so they can pass their finals.

So that explains the natives, if not the immigrants from elsewhere.

But I was still discouraged, after all that work. Even now. Whenever the “Are you German?” incident comes up, my wife tries to cheer me up by noting that at least I could read all those signs. And yes, I could. I had enjoyed that from the moment we boarded our first train into Belgium from Northern France.

But still…

Antwerp had a nice station, but it could have used more wc stalls.

We zijn de morgenmensen

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Finding myself at the beach this Saturday morning, I woke up a bit before 7. My cramped shoulder, from the drive the day before, was still bothering me after a restless night. But it took me about 15 minutes to decide not to take a muscle relaxer and go back to sleep for hours, and to go see the beach sunrise instead.

That made me a bit late for the actual sunrise itself, at 7:38. My first pictures, one of which you see above, were taken about nine minutes after the definitive moment. But as you can see, a bank of clouds blocks the horizon, so the sun was just beginning to come into sight.

As you can also see, the beach is not what you would call overpopulated, even if you are a devoted disciple of Paul Ehrlich. This trend continued, as I went down the beach and visited the new pier. I encountered few fishermen, one of them who hadn’t unpacked his gear and was leaning on the rail, taking his time finishing his Red Bull. A guy sweeping the pier at the shore end of the pier. A couple of people near him setting up a booth — for what, I couldn’t tell. An occasional walker like myself.

Almost everyone was quite cordial in offering a friendly “good morning,” although no one was seeking further conversational engagement. No one wished to break the spell of a beautiful new morning.

Since I would normally be sitting at the breakfast table at about this time doing a Dutch lesson on Duolingo, I thought, “We zijn de morgen mensen.”

We are the morning people.

Later, I would question myself on that. Dutch has the same problem as Spanish. The Dutch use “morgen” for both “morning” and “tomorrow.” As Spanish speakers do with “mañana.” When they wish to be precise, the Dutch have an alternative word for morning: ochtend. (I’m sure there’s some rule for when to say “morgen” and when “ochtend,” but Duolingo doesn’t teach rules.)

I later checked Google Translate. Sure enough, my we zijn de morgen mensen translates as “We are the morning people.” (Although maybe I should have formed a compound noun, morgenmensen.) So I felt good there. But if I do it the other way around, asking for the Dutch translation of that English statement, I get Wij zijn de ochtendmensen.

Oh, well. “We are the tomorrow people” sounds pretty cool, too. And I wanted to express my momentary sense of kinship with these few mensen who were up with me.

It was a nice walk, and as I write, this is still a beautiful morning…

Thanks, but I don’t care ‘Where they Stand’ on these issues

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One reason I don’t blog more often these days is that I find myself torn between writing fun little things about trivia, and addressing the serious matters of the day. I enjoy doing the former, but a lifelong sense of duty instructs me to do the latter.

The trouble is, so many serious things are so fouled up these days, on so many levels, that explaining what’s wrong with even the smallest thing seems to call for writing a book. Or perhaps several volumes. But I’ll try to be brief.

See this cover of the most recent edition of AARP Bulletin.

On its face, it’s a simple enough matter, and 20 years ago, there would have been nothing objectionable about it, whether we’re talking about a special-interest publication such as this, or a general-interest newspaper. This is their crack at a timeworn institutional convention — the “voters’ guide” edition.”

In a newspaper, the edition would summarize all offices facing readers, giving you brief bios of the candidates and neutral descriptions of their positions, plus how-to info about where to find your polling place, the hours it will be open, etc. With a special-interest pub such as this, you’d particularly provide info on candidates’ positions on issues of intense interest to your target audience. Which in this case would be senior citizens. Hypothetically, that is a category that includes me.

And in the minds of the AARP editors, these special-interest issues include Social Security, Medicare, inflation, caregiving and jobs.

But even in the best of times, this information would have been of little interest to me. These things are far from what I look for in a president. The president is the person who represents our nation, and makes the critical decisions at critical times, in the area of global affairs. These considerations would matter most to me even if I were a voter choosing a chief executive in Britain, or Germany, or Ecuador. But it is of supreme importance in the richest and most powerful nation in the world, which has so clearly been the linchpin of peace and prosperity in the world since 1945.

If I need to read about those things to make up my mind as a voter, I’ll look to such sources as… to pick something quick and easy for you to glance over, here’s a recent column by Max Boot addressing that sphere of concerns. That should give you the general idea.

But the thing is, I don’t really need to read anything at this point regarding those subjects. Since he first blundered into politics to our nation’s great sorrow, Donald Trump has made it clear — and he continues to do so daily, even if you do your best to ignore him — that he will proudly dismantle all international arrangements that have prevented a World War III, blithely destroy the fortunes of our allies and joyfully promote the interests of the very worst people in the world.

I’m no expert on what Kamala Harris would do on this front — no one is, because she has practically zero record — but everything she has said, and what little she has done, indicates she has no intention of being a reckless, destructive force in the world.

But that’s not my major beef with that list of topics. I have a broader objection. I may be the only person you will hear say this — God knows everyone else seems OK with it — but I have always been appalled at the idea of basing my vote on how it is likely to benefit me, or that offensive phrase, “people like me.”

I really, truly believe with every fiber that it is our sacred duty to vote according to what our careful judgment tells us is in the collective interest of the country — or the city, or state, or school district, or whatever political division or subdivision under consideration — as a whole. (And as indicated above, in the case of the U.S. presidency, the world as a whole.)

If we can’t master our selfishness enough to do that to the best of our ability, we shouldn’t be voting — and our community would be far better off if we didn’t.

Many of you will think this view of mine beyond absurd — laughable, contemptibly out of touch. Don’t I know how the world works?

Yes, I do, and I’ve had about enough of this garbage. I am sickened by calculations of will my taxes go up or down, or am I better off than I was four years ago, or will this candidate improve the lot of left-handed Lithunian CIS men like me? I’ve had enough of it, and so has the country.

(Oh, and before you say, “But there are instances in which considering the situation of this or that group is the only right thing to do!” let me say that you are absolutely right. An American voter in, say, the early 1960s had a profound moral obligation to vote in support of the Civil Rights Movement. Not because of the way it affected that voter, or “people like” that voter, but because it was the right and fair thing to do, for the sake of the whole country.)

But enough preaching, right?

Finally, there’s possibly my greatest objection to this feature on the front of the AARP mag:

It pretends that this election for this office is all about cold, hard positions on this, that and the other issue. It isn’t. If you think it is, you really haven’t been paying attention, have you?

A lot of folks on the left like to complain about media engaging in what they are pleased to call “false equivalency.” You know, pretending that these are equally worthy candidates who must be covered and dealt with with a balance that is entirely and equally respectful of both. Lots of times, my readers fling that charge at me, and I do my best to explain why that’s not what I’m doing or saying in that instance.

But folks, this magazine cover is definitely a case of doing that very thing.

It pretends, outrageously, that these candidates are equally decent and qualified people, and that the only way you can choose between them is by carefully examining their stated positions on these specific, cut-and-dried issues.

What utter insanity.

And I’m not just dismissing political promises the way I usually do. As I’ve said many times before, policy statements and other promises are of limited value in determining how well someone will do in office. The future is too unpredictable. No one has the slightest idea what a president, for instance, will face in office, or what will be the best thing to do under those unforeseen circumstances.

This is why I value previous experience as much as I do. If someone has performed in the public sphere before, and we have had ample opportunity to see what that person has done in real life, then we have a basis for a decision. And it’s not about some certain knowledge of what that person will do in the future, based on specific promises and proposals. What we have gained from observing is a sense of whether we trust this person to be the one deciding what to do under unknown circumstances.

A simpler way to say it is, it’s about character, not policy proposals.

And there has never, in the history of our country, been a clearer case of that being true with regard to an election.

I don’t know Kamala Harris’ character as well as I’d like. But I’ve had some opportunity to observe her over the last several years, and I have seen nothing that gives me serious concern. Yep, I’d rather see Joe Biden on the ballot, because I know Joe, but I don’t have that option.

But I have seen far, far, far (I could keep going with the “fars” to Election Day and beyond) too much that shouts of the abominable character of Donald John Trump. So have you. So have we all. I had seen enough back in the 1980s. Maybe you hadn’t yet. (I’m surprised when I hear about people who didn’t know who he was before that “reality TV” show. But I suppose a lot of folks just don’t pay attention.)

I didn’t need to see him being impeached twice, although that definitely needed to happen. I didn’t need the 34 felony convictions, or any of the other legal findings against him. I didn’t need to see him instigate insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

And I certainly don’t need a recitation of what he says he would do about, say, Social Security to make a decision. (And I just have to ask: Is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t know that this is a guy who can’t be trusted to stick to the same position from the beginning to the end of a single sentence — if “sentence” is even the correct term for those aimless word salads that come pouring constantly out of him?)

So anyway… thanks for your efforts, AARP, but you can take your handy-dandy voters’ guide and drop it into the oubliette…

Well, I got that done. Did you yet?

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At 11:37 a.m. Friday at the West Columbia Community Center. About 50 people behind us, too.

Finally.

I have voted. After what seems like 100 years of people yammering about nothing but this election, to a point way beyond weary disgust. (People talk about Kamala Harris having only 100 days to campaign. That’s more than enough, people.)

Anyway, it’s over. And as I’ve said before during these last four years since I voted early for the first time, can we just go ahead and count the votes and move on? Not one of us needs 11 more days of this hysteria.

Anyway, the line was fairly long outside the West Columbia Community Center. You can see above what it was like at at 11:37 a.m. At that point there were also 50 people behind my daughter and me in line (this wasn’t the first picture I took). But it moved pretty well. Going by my texts and other evidence, we were at the door of the building at 11:54. And we were completely done by a couple of minutes after noon, in spite of my usual obsessive slowness, checking and double-checking each step as I’m voting.

As we were leaving, and the lady was about to hand me an “I voted” sticker, I pulled out my phone. She reflexively started to tell me not to take pictures, but I explained, that no, I wanted to show her something. That was the photo below, of a friend’s 3-month-old after her parents voted at this same location yesterday.

I told the lady I wanted a sticker that would make me look THIS cute. She admired the picture, and gave me a sticker, but It didn’t work….

So… does he practice this at home?

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That is the richest man in the world. Which I think maybe tells you something about the state of the world in 2024. Or at least, I suppose, the state of Twitter.

The richest man in the world didn’t used to look like this. For instance, here’s J.P. Morgan, at right. He was Mr. Moneybags in his day, and he wielded political power of the sort that I suppose Elon Musk is hoping to obtain by this ridiculous display of his joy at the possibility of electing the most dangerous man in the world. Even Teddy Roosevelt had to consider Morgan in making major policy considerations. He was a force, rather than a mere goofy distraction.

You’ll see that there’s a different quality on display. Some of you younger folks may not recognize it. It was called “dignity.” (OK, so there’s also a kind of grumpy “I am the Walrus” vibe there, too, but I’m calling it “dignity” because that speaks better to my point.)

Let’s not mock uninhibited joy, though. People should be allowed to let the world know when they’re happy. I suppose it should make us all smile.

And maybe it would, if he weren’t leaping for joy at the prospect of doing to America and the whole world what he did to Twitter, only way worse.

And also… maybe if it didn’t smack of artifice.

Jump up like that once with a blissed-out look on your face, and maybe it’s believable. Weird, but believable.

But twice, on different occasions? Seeing the second one, below, made me think, Does Musk practice this “jump up and show my belly” maneuver in his spare time? How else could more than one such photo exist? (The one above is from The New York Times, and I found the one below in The Washington Post, and I hope they don’t mind my showing them to you, because that’s kind of necessary to making my point.)

In fact, having all that money to throw away, has he hired a professional “jumping with joyful abandon coach” to supervise his practice sessions? Does he do this, over and over, in front of a mirror? Have they practiced with tee shirts made from different fabrics, to ensure exactly the right amount of exposure of his belly?

Seeing the second image kind of makes me think so. And it makes me think something else: If this is the richest man in the world today, maybe our economic system is rewarding the wrong characteristics. Maybe something is a bit off at the moment…

A moment with the old guys on the park bench

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Russell Ott — who, as I’ve pretty clearly indicated, is the candidate I’m trying hardest to promote in this cycle — is in those last pressing days of a long, hard campaign, so I really appreciated that he stopped by to say hi this morning to some friends I wanted to meet him.

This is an updated — but I guess not all that updated — version of a familiar campaign trope: Shaking hands with the old guys sitting around on the benches around the courthouse.

When I said so this morning, Clark Surratt — that’s him at the right in the picture — nodded. As an old political reporter, he’d been there, too.

(I just paused for a moment to dig up some old images of what I was thinking of, from my first time on the road covering a statewide campaign, back in the summer of 1978. I couldn’t find a full print, or the negatives, but below you’ll see some blowups from a contact print sheet. I used to always make one of those when I developed a roll of Tri-X in those days…)

Anyway, I was glad to get Russell together with Clark, and with John Culp. That’s him in the middle. John is a retired Methodist minister, perhaps best known as the guy who started the Salkehatchie Summer Service program. He’s also my neighbor. Clark was my predecessor as governmental affairs editor of The State, back in the ’80s. Clark occasionally comments here. He and John are friends from back in their school days. They gather for these breakfasts frequently, and sometimes let me join them.

I had wanted them to meet Russell, and as it happened he had to be in this part of the district this morning for a Greater Cayce/West Columbia Chamber of Commerce meeting. So he joined us a bit before 7:30 at the Just Us Cafe in Cayce, then on to the Chamber before 8. I’m probably going to see him again this evening because he’s visiting my mother’s HOA meeting, and she wants to meet him. But he’ll only be there a few minutes before he has to charge off to a Lexington County Democratic Party meeting.

I know what that kind of schedule is like, and I don’t envy him. I don’t know if I could do today what I did out on the road with James and Mandy in 2018. In fact, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t. But Russell seems to be holding up pretty well. I’d say that shows it’s a young man’s game, but I watched Joe Biden moving like mad when he campaigned with us that same year, and he was amazing. Some people are just made for that. But eventually, of course, we all wind down…

As I said, Russell couldn’t stay long, but we had a good chat. Some of the news we shared (almost entirely political) was encouraging, some not so much, as we fly headlong through this home stretch.

I just hope he wins. He is just the right candidate to replace Nikki Setzler in this Senate district, and he will represent it effectively and with great dedication. Most of all, he’ll work hard to represent every single constituent, regardless of race, color, attitude or (gasp!) political party. And senators like that are too rare these days…

 

 

Early voting begins here in SC

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I shot this at 12:21 p.m.

I drove by the West Columbia site for early voting, which started today.

I spoke to some folks coming out. I got comments such as big turnout… but it’s moving… not bad… maybe 25 minutes. I overheard one man exiting and speaking to someone on the phone and saying it took “forever”.. but he was using a walker, so I suppose it was especially tedious for him. I wonder that they didn’t just let him vote from his car. Maybe he didn’t want to.

Anyway, it’s started, and the line you see coming out of the West Columbia Community Center tells us it’s a respectable turnout, but not overwhelming — yet.

My wife and I plan to go tomorrow. If you plan to do the same and don’t know where to go, check out this page…

My ethnicity is apparently linked to my current location

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The current version.

OK, let’s put away the tam and kilts, I’m apparently back to being a sassenach.

I just happened to look the other day, and Ancestry has again “updated” my personal ethnicity — which is something they think they can do. Of course, they cover themselves by calling it an “ethnicity estimate.” And their estimates keep swinging wildly this way and that. My European ancestors still lie in their graves, unmoving, but, my ancestry keeps skipping around.

Lately, they’ve been sure I’m mostly Scottish. That is to say, a huge plurality of my DNA bits: 47 percent, back in 2023. (The year before that, it was 53 percent!) Now, I’m down to 35 percent, and the largest percentage of me is from “England & Northwestern Europe.” That’s jumped from 27 percent to 43 percent — again, in one year.

How do they define “England & Northwestern Europe?” Well, that’s fuzzy. They created that category several years back, and on their map it looked like England plus the tiniest bit of France. That tiny bit sort of equated to greater Calais. Here’s how they depicted it in 2022:

See how the line loops over from England to take in the Pale of Calais?

You see England, Calais and I suppose the Channel Islands. Which I suppose makes some sense, because Channel Islanders are British subjects, and England ruled the Calais area for a couple of centuries (they called it “the Pale of Calais“), and were bound to have left some of their DNA lying around. You know how men are. But since that’s the case, why not just call people possessing such DNA “English” — or at least X percentage English?

Of course — this being the Ancestry universe — the category doesn’t show up that way now. On the map at the top of this post, only England is green now. But if you click for more details, you get … well, it looks like this:

Wow, that’s a huge proportion of Western Europe, minus the Iberian Peninsula.

See how the larger, lighter green area takes in — well, most of what I think of as western Europe? That’s nice and vague, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, I’m no longer Scandinavian at all, even though last year I was 7 percent from Sweden or from Denmark, and 1 percent Norwegian. And suddenly, I’m practically not Irish at all — which would have been a great shock to my grandmother, being a Bradley and proud of that heritage. Finally, for the first time ever, Ancestry finds that I am 3 percent Dutch. And Belgium shows up, but I don’t see a specific percentage.

How could these things be? Well, here’s a wildly unscientific theory: This new estimate was issued in July of this year, even though I just noticed it a few days back.

Where was in July? Let’s see… For about four days, I was in England — London, Canterbury and Dover. Then, after crossing the Channel, we spent a couple of nights in… Calais. On the way north, we spent two days in Ghent. Eventually, we spent more than a week in… Amsterdam. During that last week, we took a day trip down to Bruges.

So. At the very time they were setting out a new vision of where my ancestors were from, I was physically in the places to which they decided to shift my “estimate.” So they appear to be basing the whole reassessment on where I, personally, was at the time.

Yes, I know that makes no kind of practical, cause-and-effect sense. But my theory has this going for it: It’s more fully understandable than the explanation Ancestry provides:

How do we come up with your estimate?
To figure out your ancestral regions, we compare your DNA to a reference panel made up of DNA from groups of people who have deep roots in one region. We look at 1,001 sections of your DNA and assign each section to the ancestral region it looks most like. Then we turn those results into the percentages you see in your estimate. Your genetic link to these regions can go back hundreds of years or even more.

To me, that seems to raise at least as many questions as it answers. I could enumerate some of them, but this post is already long enough.

Wherever numbers go up, they track our July itinerary.

Signs Redux…

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There aren’t a lot of signs in this image, but this is fairly typical — two for school board, none for anything else.

Couple of things I neglected to say in that last post, and it was way to long to add to it.

So here’s a sequel.

Actually, the first thing wasn’t so much “neglected to say” as I got it wrong. I mentioned that I was supporting Mary Burkett for school board, and needed to identify one more, because we vote for two.

That was wrong. I’ve got to pick three by the time I go vote next week (early voting starts Monday), according to my sample ballot: “You may vote for Four, less than Four, but not more than Four.” (And apparently, when we do so, we must capitalize the number “Four.” For some reason.)

Well, that’s going to be a lot of work. Because if there’s any segment of the electoral universe about which I feel particularly ignorant, it’s school board. As you may recall, I have many times donned sackcloth and ashes over my utter failure to give school boards sufficient attention — or any attention, usually — during my time as editorial page editor. All that work on endorsements at every other level from president to council members in small municipalities. I felt and feel terrible about it, because I think that if there’s any electoral office in the land that needs and deserves a spotlight, it’s school boards.

But I just couldn’t, with the scores of other offices for which we were interviewing, further researching, debating and endorsing in each cycle, we just barely got through election seasons, and I wasn’t ever fully satisfied that we’d had enough time.

And I did the math a number of times: Just doing the seven school boards in Richland and Lexington counties would have doubled our load. And if we did that, we wouldn’t do a good job on any of them. So we didn’t.

And I would go the polling place on the day of an election I’d been slaving over for months if not years, and would end up asking my neighbors in line whom they were backing for the board, if anyone. Of course, I still seldom voted for one, as I have to be convinced I know a candidate — and the candidate’s competition — well enough to pull that lever.

Consequently, to this day, I seldom vote for school board. But I’m going to do my best this time.

And part of the reason I’m determined to do so is… yard signs.

There’s another factor regarding signs in my neighborhood that seems different this year, one that I meant to mention in that other post:

Without doing a census or anything, I’m pretty sure that there are easily more school board signs in my neighborhood than for president, Congress, Legislature, and countywide offices combined.

And that makes me proud of my neighbors, and shamed into trying harder to be as smart and dedicated as they are regarding these important offices. Of course, with some folks it might just be that this position is so hyperlocal that they personally know the candidate whose sign they are displaying, so they’re just doing a favor for a friend. Which is OK, of course, up to a point.

But I prefer thinking they’re just savvier and more diligent than I am. Because I like being proud of my neighbors…

More signs in this one. Four in the near distance, and more you can’t quite see in the far distance. All school board.

Can’t you read the signs?

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Three of my signs, seen from the east…

That was the only part of the song I could work into what I wanted to say. So here I go working it in…

My answer to the question is both “yes” and “no.” “No” in the sense that I’ve found yard signs a bit puzzling in this election year.

First, in my relatively moderate Republican neighborhood, there were more signs for Biden than Trump in 2020. I wrote some about that at the time, I think. I was under no delusions that Joe would win my precinct, but it seemed obvious that people who wanted him were prouder of it, more willing to share it with the world.

This time, I know of only three Harris/Walz signs (including my own) in the subdivision. Not that I’ve driven every street in search of them, but that’s the total on the streets I frequent. And I had to go looking for the third one, after hearing about it. Meanwhile, although there is no great number of Trump signs, it’s more than three, and more than what I saw in 2020.

And here’s the weirdest bit — they’re not in the same yards. There are no signs at all in two yards I remember as the most enthusiastic for the Donald. (One had signs for several GOP candidates, including the only one in the whole subdivision supporting Nikki Setzler’s Republican opponent, and the other had two Trump signs, and kept them out well after the election was over.)

I don’t know what’s going on on the MAGA side. I understand the lack of Harris signs, because it reflects a lack of enthusiasm that I share, as you know. But hey, my man Joe dropped out and dubbed her as his successor, and that’s good enough for me — and of course, Trump must be stopped, and she’s the only person in the world in a position to stop him now. I hesitated about the sign, though, because there’s a difference between voting for somebody and going that extra step to put out a sign. But in this situation, we have to pull out all the stops.

Anyway, have you noticed these patterns where you live? Maybe so, maybe not. Maybe my neighborhood is more sensible of shifting winds that are not felt in more committed ones-and-zeroes areas. As I said, this is a Republican precinct, but it went for Nikki Haley in the precinct. You don’t see people wearing MAGA hats when you go for a walk here.

Another reason I say “no” is that people don’t always see what you mean when they look at your signs. I told you I’m confused by the yards that had Trump signs four years ago, and have nothing today, as well as the ones that never had signs before, and are now all in on MAGA. Meanwhile, I know my own get misread. Remember I mentioned in my last post the pleasant talks I’ve had recently with a Republican neighbor? In the latest such interaction, I said something like “You’ll notice I’ve started putting signs out,” and he said, “Oh, I know, I can always tell a Democrat.”

I answered politely that no you can’t — not if you think I’m one… and explained further. Of course, part of this confusion is because I only had two of my signs out, and they did not include either the one for Micah Caskey, or for that matter the Harris/Walz sign.

And now, about the “yes” side of my answer to The Five-Man Electrical Band…

I think yard signs are important for a number of reasons, including (but not limited to):

  • Everything I said in 2018 when I said “I refuse to be an ‘idiot.’ I’m joining the ranks of the involved.” I was very serious about that. I had just put out the first two yard signs of my life, and six weeks later, I was communications director for James’ and Mandy’s campaign.
  • In this time in which people have retreated into their own safe spaces, only associating with people who agree with them, I think we have an obligation as citizens to stand up and say what we think, and be willing and even eager to discuss our positions. We desperately need such discussions now. And I’ve been having them — not just with the Republican neighbor across the street, but with a couple of candidates who have come by, with folks I meet out walking, and with the man who mows our yard. Worthwhile discussions that have led to good things thus far.
  • I think signs do communicate worthwhile things to passersby, although of course the ways they do so are complicated — way more complex than most people fully realize. Generally speaking, I know that I get impressions of how things are going from the signs I see, taken in aggregate. And often those impressions affect my own thoughts and decisions about candidates (and no, I’m not speaking of the silly “bandwagon effect” — or at least, not exactly.) It’s more like, well, the reason that Harris/Walz sign is in my yard. Normally, she would fit into the category of people I would vote for and definitely want to win, but I’m not quite enthusiastic enough for a sign. But I put this one out because at that point I had only seen one other sign for Kamala in our neighborhood, and I believe wavering people need to see more support for her around them. Just as one example of what I mean.

Anyway, that’s enough philosophizing. As for my signs this year, I have five:

  • Russell Ott — I’ve got two for him — one at each end of my sign display — and he’s probably the candidate about whom I’m most excited. Nikki Setzler has long been one of my favorite people in the state Senate, and I’ve been proud to have him as my senator. But I’ve told you that before. By the way, the second sign for him is one of five he gave me the other day, and I’ve already got the other four distributed. Maybe I need some more.
  • Mary Burkett — This is my favorite candidate for Lexington Two school board. And not just because we’ve known the Burketts forever, and their elder son took one of my daughters to the prom many years ago, and joined our elder son in forming their first garage band in high school. I have more pertinent reasons to support her for school board. Mary cares as little about left and right and parties as I do. She just wants to get the job done. And the job, to her, is about effectively addressing the problem that 70 percent of kids in our district don’t perform at grade level. I’m certain about her, but still need to pick another board candidate to vote for.
  • Harris/Walz — While I was still making like Hamlet over whether to get a sign in this all-important race, a kind neighbor who knew me dropped off three at the house, and we immediately put one to work, and shared the others. And boyohboyohboy, do I hope they win.
  • Micah Caskey — That makes one Republican, two Democrats (well, three when you consider Walz being on the Harris sign) and an independent (Mary). There’s no point in you folks on the left trying to convince me how terrible it is to have a sign for this Republican, or any Republican in our post-2016 world. You may not understand my reasons, but I do. And I only reached this decision (after things Micah’s done lately to tick me off), after talking with him, with his Democratic opponent, and for that matter, with three other present and former Democratic legislators who know Micah and understand the ins and outs, and all told me I was making the right call. And while I had been torn, I feel good about it.

Well, that’s enough. I’m on to other things…

It’s a bit more tricky to get all five of our signs in one picture, since we live on a corner, and I make use of both streets. Click to blow it up and see them better.

 

 

A bit more ‘access’ than I need…

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Just updating y’all again on the progress of the project to fix Malfunction Junction (yes, Bud, I know DOT calls it the Carolina Crossroads Project, but I’m just trying to describe it in a way most will understand).

This is taken from my old pickup on the access road I take into my mother’s subdivision (McSwain Drive). Every time I take her somewhere by this route, she notes how uncomfortable it makes her now that work on this part of the project is finally taking visible shape. My wife says the same. I  agree with both of them, but what are you gonna do?

For a long time in earlier stages of the project, we couldn’t see exactly how close the widened interstate would be to the access road, and how little barrier there would be between us. At this point that I’m showing, there’s almost NO barrier to prevent a car on the access road running off (easy to do on a dark night) and straight downhill into oncoming 70-mph traffic. Or vice versa. I mean, there’s a very low barrier that promises to damage your car a bit before rolling over it and straight to utter destruction.

It’s disturbing, even in broad daylight — or perhaps especially in broad daylight, when you can see more clearly what is happening — to drive out of a quiet subdivision, and suddenly be confronted with all this freeway traffic coming more or less right at you. (And for an acrophobe like me, it would be uncomfortable even without the traffic. Don’t get me started on how I hate riding through mountains.)

You can see that up ahead, there is a concrete barrier, not that it’s all that soothing to see. And there’s one behind me, as well. But right here… well, I’m waiting to see what they’ll do to make it safer, and also inspire confidence — especially for someone who isn’t expecting to suddenly face this vista…