Took The Day Off

     The paint has come off the window frames around the living room windows, especially the sills.  Those windows are original to the house, so the wood's over a century old, and it holds paint...badly.  There's time enough this Fall to slap some modern white primer on them and I was planning to do so this weekend, until the weather service predicted rain.  So here goes, and while it won't be pretty, the bare wood is even less so.

     I'll also be trying to vote.  The line at the early voting site was at least a half hour long Tuesday, and I couldn't spare the time.  Today, I can.  If it doesn't work out, I'll go to the regular polling place with Tam on  Tuesday.  I can show exactly why I have become enthusiastic about voting, too -- these guys, who are delighted by Donald Trump's Republican party and see our present moment as their chance to press even more in that direction.  I'd like to tell you they're a joke, cartoonish figures from a Margaret Atwood novel, but it has never been safe to ignore their kind: at one time Afghanistan was one of the more forward-looking and egalitarian of Muslim nations; at one time, Germany, humbled and staggering, was nevertheless a leader in freedom of thought and intellectual pursuits at all levels.  It didn't last.  Decency and fairness are fragile states which require looking after.  If people don't maintain them, authoritarianism and hierarchy is ever ready to fill any gap, ooze through any crack, stamp on the weak and woo the powerful.  If civilization is only a coat of paint, it's the paint that preserves the essential structure underneath; lose it, and the whole thing is threatened.

     So I'm voting.  It's just one vote, but I've got it and I'm gonna use it.