Sherry Chandler

Brooks Carver, an honored member of our conversational community here, has a lovely essay in the Back Porch section of the current New Southerner. It begins like this:

The fields are quiet after the enduring business of harvest. It’s November. As we plod along, my golden retriever breathes in the likely pheasant scents, those faint, elusive clues hidden in the pasture. The horizon is blurred with light rain at the tree line where Little Indian Creek plunges into my stretch of woods. We walk the timber’s edge, and I check the old growth for deer. A small herd lives there. I can spare what little grain they need as they frequently feed in my cornfields. Occasionally they peer out at me from the deep woods, and I gaze back at them. They are safe, safer than they could possibly know. My dog spooks one from time to time. Away they both go, across the fields and over the hills. My hunter returns to me after a few minutes. She was fast in her younger days, but not that fast. The deer always come back later, when we leave.

Give yourself a treat and read the rest.

Three postcards arrived in our mailbox yesterday, reminding residents of this house that we’re registered to vote in Millersburg #1 at Millersburg Community Park. Millersburg Community Park used to be the Millersburg Military Institute, long famed in this state as Mother’s Milkfed Idiots. MMI closed this year after more than 100 years of operation and so did the Millersburg Elementary School where we have voted for a decade or so, reading announcements on the school bulletin board while waiting for one another to vote. It’s a small precinct. I can’t really say I’ve ever waited in line.

So we will have to get used to a new place to vote, across the road from our old place to vote and a reminder that small towns continue to fade away. But at least we still go to the polls, still have that sense of community, still know that the poll workers will recognize us and we will not have to show i.d.

Out in Spokane, Terry of I See Invisible People has already cast her vote and she’s not completely happy with the experience:

I voted this morning.

Six months ago Spokane County adopted a vote by mail initiative. Now, rather than go to the polls, all registered voters receive an absentee ballot in the mail. I can see where it would save money, and would provide a paper trail missing from voting machines, but I just don’t like it. I miss all the little rituals that go with voting.

It’s a nice meditation on the significance of voting that I urge you to read. It has made me grateful for my early morning drive down to Millersburg.

Be sure to vote on November 7 and remember to appreciate your polling place and your poll workers.