Voting Matters

I first voted in 1972 and it was the presidential contest – Richard Nixon v. George McGovern – that sparked my interest. My vote for Sen. McGovern did not help put the South Dakota senator in the White House, much less put Maryland in the Democratic column.

The senator only won in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. (Some may recall the Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts bumper stickers that showed up after the Watergate scandal.)

My vote for McGovern wasn’t the beginning of my political awareness. I went to college in California in the 1960s; that says a lot. I also come from parents who were aware, informed, and concerned about the issues of the day, especially about fairness and equality – what I now know as “social justice.”

I vote because my parents modeled the behavior, which is how so much is learned. I also had great high school civics teachers who drilled into us that voting is a vital act of civic participation so important to our nation’s representational form of government.

Yes, showing up is crucial for a democracy.

This campaign season I’ve been canvassing door-to-door, usually with another volunteer, to get out the vote – and, yes, persuade voters to vote for Democrats. As a professional communicator, I know face-to-face is the most effective way to communicate.

So, we canvass. My compatriots also canvass, call, write letters, and help in other ways.

It’s vital that voters know about this election and know that they need to show up. Yet, after opening his door one man told us, “I don’t vote in midterm elections.”  He thinks the only important elections are the ones with candidates for president at the top of the ticket.

Sadly, that voter is not alone. He is in large Tar Heel company. In 2010, with no presidential election, only 39.8 percent, or 2.7 million people, voted in North Carolina.

That number was down dramatically from the 4.3 million North Carolinians who voted in 2008 (66 percent turnout), to help put Barack Obama in the White House.    

Do the math. In 2010, the last midterm election, 1.6 million fewer people voted in North Carolina than in 2008. Those non-voters are as many people who live in our state’s four largest cities – Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, and Durham, combined.

One-point-six million people stayed home on Election Day. Why? Did they have something more important to do?

More likely, just like the man on our canvass route, they thought their vote doesn’t really matter and matters even less in non-presidential elections.    

What do you say to people like that?

One response is to look at history. There are quite a few extremely close elections, such as in Alaska in 2008 when a state representative won by one vote.

Mass. Governor Marcus Morton

Close elections in U.S. history date back to a two-vote margin in the 1839 Massachusetts gubernatorial election and continue to today.

There are even more close calls in primaries and caucuses, including Mitt Romney’s eight-vote win over Rick Santorum in the 2012 Iowa Caucuses, corrected days later with Santorum’s 34-vote win.

Another response to these voting naysayers is to look at what happens after elections. As NC State Rep. Tricia Cotham (D – Mecklenburg) says, “Elections have consequences.”

In the 2010 North Carolina midterm election, Republicans took control of the General Assembly. Two years later, Republican James McCrory became governor.

Here are just a few consequences of those two elections, notably the midterm election in 2010 that gave Republicans control of the statehouse.

• Republicans dramatically reduced funding for public education. In a state that used to be known for its commitment to public education, in less than six years state funding per student dropped $653.
• Republicans eliminated critical safety net programs. North Carolina is one of 15 states that refused Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). According to a study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, rejecting Medicaid will cost North Carolina $51 billion in lost federal funds as well as thousands of jobs over the next ten years. 
• Republicans abolished the Earned Income Tax Credit, which provides crucial support to working mothers and families, and they ended long-term unemployment benefits. That’s called kicking them when they’re down. 
• And, Republicans made radical changes to voting rights to make it even more challenging to vote (and targeting the poor and disadvantaged, those more likely to vote for Democratic candidates).

Would the story be different if those 1.6 million people had gone to the polls in 2010?

I think so. Voting matters.

Elections have consequences. Especially now in North Carolina with so many changes that negatively affect women, children, the unemployed and under-employed, minorities, the disabled, and more.

Our citizens are not getting a fair shake, while corporations are getting a big break. It’s not right. We North Carolina voters must create better consequences this first Tuesday in November.

What do you think?

Note:  For voting information, check out the 2014 North Carolina Voter Guide…and for more on the 2010 election, here’s some real interesting reading.

Reunions Old and New

Last week, I had the pleasure of joining long-time family friends in Seattle for the first wedding of our children's generation. Our daughter, Jocelyn, had come home for a break from graduate school and was here to greet my red-eyed return.
     This morning she helped me (and other volunteers) set up the Catawba County Democratic Party booth at the 125th Soldiers Reunion in Newton, NC. My brain is too fried by travel and heat to write a coherent blog entry; here's a photo instead of our young Democrat and her mother. Thanks for all the memories, Jocelyn, past and future.

It Takes a Year

It’s been a little more than a year since I retired and just shy of a year since my husband, our dog, and I pulled into our new driveway and new life in North Carolina.

I still feel like a newcomer in this town, a near-northerner in the south. I know Washington, DC, is not the north, except to real southerners, and western North Carolina is not the south. Our house is just minutes from Appalachia.

But, there do seem to be more syllables in spoken words and more air time is required to say hello. And, everybody waves.

Commercial transactions are more than mere exchanges of cash or credit card information. There’s humanity at the checkout. “How are you? Do you need help with your bags?” You don’t hear this at many grocery stores in the Washington metropolitan area. At other stores, and with the tradespeople who come to our house, everyone is consistently friendly.

Amy at Talbots is a gem.

There are so many positives to life in a smaller town, but here’s a downside after decades in DC:  you have a bigger choice of grocery stores in a large metropolitan area. After a few months, I developed a Lowes Food phobia. I will go great lengths to avoid their stores, even shopping at the Ingles on the way home from the airport. One Lowes remains a conundrum with all those islands and peninsulas and other odd shapes, no direct routes, and no logical product placement.

Could the bread be any less convenient? Maybe that’s why I’m going gluten free.

On the other hand, there’s heaven on the Square with a glorious farmers market and local produce, meats, cheese, baked goods, and more.

Life is slower here. Except the cars, which drive too fast on streets with no sidewalks. Bikes are not so welcome. I keep riding mine hoping drivers will come to accept non-motorized vehicles. Twelve months in, it seems unlikely.

Speaking of roads, I am still amazed at how quickly I adapted from living in the region with the nation’s worst traffic to being annoyed at turning left without a light onto 127, or Center Street, or 2^nd Street, or whatever its name is.

But, I don't get as lost as I used to. I even know some shortcuts. Well, I think they are shortcuts. I know a lifer would laugh, but I feel pretty smug knowing what to do – sort of – around Highland Avenue. My husband is impressed.

After four decades in the nation's capital, I understand quadrants and street-naming conventions. Washington has numbered and lettered streets as well as avenues, many named after states, but it doesn’t have avenues and avenue drives and streets and street places, circles, and courts and who knows what else. Recently, I was totally flummoxed at the intersections of 24^th Ave. NE and 24^th Street NE. There is one friend’s house that I have only gotten to on the first try once -- and I wasn’t even going there.

I now know people here don’t talk in terms of street names, it’s all landmarks, but how is a newcomer supposed to know which Lowes is the one that used to be Harris Teeter?

Twelve months in, I’m beginning to feel more at home. I now see people I know at the farmers market. The vendors recognize me. The meat lady knows I favor the raw ground-up chicken for our dog; the cheese vendor knows her frozen entrees are my weekly lifesaver (my husband likes her cooking).

Like so many other things, it takes about a year to grow accustomed. I still miss my dear friends and old haunts. Yet, we like it here. Hickory just may be on its way to becoming home.

Reason to Get Up in the Morning

Saturday was gray. Friday was gray, too. Pouring rain with Washington, DC-style heaviness and humidity.

The weather mirrored my mood. Now that I had met the deadline for the July 26 event my adrenalin glands had returned to standby mode. There was no urgency, nothing do and nothing really that I had to do. This gave me time to brood about the upcoming anniversary. It’s been almost a year to the day since I left the office for good, then packed up a DC-area life of 41 years and moved to North Carolina.

Before I retired, I said I couldn’t wait to smash the alarm clock. It went off too early and too often.

Yet, I never smashed it. Maybe because the clock had been my ally and protector. Faithful to the end, the clock helped me show up and earn a living. That daily shock to my auditory senses reminded me that I had good reason to get up in the morning – salary and benefits, notably that health plan for four that saved the day so many times.

No alarm – not even from my clever smartphone – awakened me to Saturday’s gloom. No canine backup either. As our dog gets longer in the tooth (actually, shorter as they wear down) she seems to savor her morning lie in.

So, I awoke on my own with no compelling reason to get up except to continue to brood about the approaching anniversary.

My mother calls this behavior a “pity party.” I was throwing a big one with no expected guests.

Earlier in the week, I posted a “Throwback Thursday” photo on Facebook. It shows my former commute -- the glorious bicycle ride to work that took me alongside the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and across the National Mall.

The photo earned several “Likes.” One friend (full disclosure: she is a behavioral psychologist and is moving to a new home with her newly retired husband) asked two questions:  “Would you go back? What’s your assessment a year later?”

Good questions.

No, I wouldn’t go back. Heck, I live near Thomas Wolfe’s hometown. You can’t go home again. You can’t un-retire. Okay, some people do. I saw many who came back to government reincarnated as contractors. I called them blue badges. Under the color-coded badge system you always knew who they were. They traded green badges and offices for blue badges and cubicles. I never wanted to be one of them. (Thankfully, I don’t need to.)

For me, it was time to leave, for my husband and to make way for ducklings, younger people to have my slot in the full-time workforce. I was also blessed with the ability to get out near the top of my game. What a gift.

So, no, I wouldn’t go back.  But, as I say on my LinkedIn page I am receptive to interesting projects (that do not require sitting in a cubicle).

Even without the morning alarm, I still act like an employed person. I make to-do lists and enjoy crossing off completed tasks. Psychology friends, is that in the DSM?  Listophrenia? Or, perhaps it’s a symptom of retirement affective disorder or dissociative career disorder.

But, the psychologist’s more thoughtful – and serious – question is the second one about the one-year assessment.

That’s harder. It brings me back to those non-alarming mornings, except when my smartphone shrieks a call to action for an early medical appointment.

The biggest difference and the biggest challenge for me, and for, say, a million other boomers, is having a reason to get up in the morning.  

I am not alone in needing a reason to get up. Just do a Google search of “retirement” and “reason to get up in the morning.”

I’d read about this before retirement, notably in Ralph Warner’s great book Get a Life: You Don’t Need a Million to Retire Well (See Oct. 3, 2013, blog post).

Reading ahead is one thing. Experiencing is another. Most of us are wired to be productive and contributing and connected. That’s why Warner wrote about the absolute importance of family, new friends, activities, and curiosity.  The biggest leveler:  good health. You need it.

One year in, I’m working to maintain connections with family – I’ve been to California twice, Texas once, and have and will travel for my mishpochas and friends. Here, I’ve got some budding friendships – it helps to get involved in something where you share an interest, like progressive politics. I love being active and, fortunately, can still bike the hills here.

Even so, Saturday was gray and gloomy. It happens. As I was making my way out of the pity party, I called one dear friend and recalled – again – the advice of another, one who consumes pages in my address book. She had said give it two years to feel at home.

Okay, Facebook questioner, I truly miss my DC connections, but I’m taking a pass on answering just yet. Ask me next year. That’s when I’ll seek your one-year assessment and give you my two-year update.

 

Home sweet home