And now?

Here we are.

With any kind of luck at all, we have a clear winner in the U.S. Presidential election. I’m writing this as the returns are coming in (what? you think I get up at the crack of dawn to do this?)

At just about midnight, all the major networks have called the race for President Obama. However, the Romney campaign is not conceding, at the moment.

It doesn’t look like they have a path to victory where the math is possible, but they’re holding out. This seems to be part of a trend. Facts don’t count. We don’t believe data. We don’t believe science.

I wonder today, on this Wondering Wednesday, why anybody wonders why we have a problem with education.

However, it is fair to make sure that the votes have been counted. I’m okay with that, although I’d like to be able to go to bed knowing it’s settled.

And I wonder if this—once it is settled—means that we might get an actual working government where people realize not everybody can have exactly what they want and compromise is not always a bad thing.

Because there’s one thing I don’t wonder—and that is that we cannot go forward if people don’t get out of the way.

I’m going to bed thinking and hoping that this is a good day for the United States of America.

(UPDATE: It’s 1 am and Mr. Romney has conceded. It is over, and it is a good day for the United States of America. I still wonder if we can move forward, but I have higher hopes than I did yesterday.)

Do you know what time it is?

I’m not sure you do.

Too many clocks. Too many different settings.

In case you forgot, last night—Saturday—or, really, some time this morning—here in the U.S., we were supposed to set our clocks back to accommodate the switch from Daylight Savings Time back to Standard Time.

I went around and did it yesterday afternoon since I had nowhere I had to be later Saturday in a timely manner. In other words, other than any possible TV shows I might want to watch, it didn’t matter to me what time it was.

There are people who don’t bother. They use their computers and their cell phones—devices that are supposed to change automatically. My problem with that is that I have noticed that the phone companies don’t always change the time until Monday. The subways never did. And the computer. . .well, let’s just say my trust level is low. I was unduly influenced, perhaps, by HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or by the Blue Screen of Death. It doesn’t bode well for any chance of me turning the driving over to a computerized car, does it? My PC may change back to Standard Time on time, but, you know, my Palm Pilot changed about two weeks ago. I guess it never got the message about the new, extended Daylight Savings Time.

Anyway, there are the clocks that changed automatically and the clocks that are going to change automatically but haven’t yet and the clocks you changed manually and the clocks way up high on a shelf that you forgot to change and the clocks you changed manually but accidentally mixed up the AM and PM and the clocks that are off anyway because the power went out for twenty minutes last Tuesday and the wristwatch in the back of the drawer and so on.

To say nothing of your body clock which is going to have you waking up at 4 or 5 am for the next few days no matter what the other clocks say.

Good luck with all that.

I love New York

Long may it live.

Today, I’m thankful that I have heard from most of my NY/NJ friends.

Hurricane Sandy—as far as I can judge from a distance—was about the worst thing that’s happened there in a long, long time. It’s true that it lacked the shock value, the loss-of-invulnerability fear factor of 9/11, but the damage was more widespread.

However, people have been speaking up here and there, and they all seem to be all right. Most of the New Yorkers even have power. Some of the Long Islanders and all of the Jersey folks are in the dark, but they have roofs over their head and working cell phones.

I suppose the biggest problem is water—inside and out. Flood waters are health hazards on many levels—and high rises depend on pumps so even if the water mains are intact, there’s no running water in the building. So, that’s a concern.

There are millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of damage. And a fair number of homeless people just now.

But most of the people are okay.

And that is certainly something for which to be thankful while we sympathize with those who have lost their lives, their living spaces, and, temporarily we hope, their livelihoods.

As always, the Red Cross is on the scene.

If anybody wants to help out, you can donate $10 by texting REDCROSS to 90999 on your cell phone. Quick and easy. The $10 just gets added to your cell phone bill for you to pay next time around. As in most disasters, they really need money more than canned goods or blankets or whatever.

I’m sure that New York and New Jersey will survive this, as they survive most things—with panache. But, golly! What a mess!

I’m also sure large thanks are due to New York’s finest and to their Jersey equivalents and to FEMA and the National Guard and to all the federal, state and local officials who worked so hard to coordinate with each other.

I love New York. Thanks for hanging on and hanging in.

Now what happens?

I’m seriously wondering.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Welcome to the horror show this Wondering Wednesday has become. Because I am seriously wondering this, and it is a serious thing to be wondering about.

What’s gonna happen to our election in the wake of Hurricane Sandy?

Many, many states have early voting. 32 plus the District of Columbia. Reports, so far, are that 15% of voters have already voted with an additional 18% estimated to vote prior to election day. That’s a lot more than have ever used early voting previously, but it’s not everybody.

A majority of states—all but 2—are supposed to have in-person voting on Nov. 6th. (The 2 are Washington and Oregon. They vote entirely by mail. Who knew? Other than, I guess, people who live in Washington and Oregon.)

And a majority of states should have no problem with their in-person voting on Nov 6th.

But there are a few states that have been hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. Major damage to infrastructure and transportation. As I write this, there are twenty to twenty-five thousand people trapped in Hoboken surrounded by flood waters and downed electrical lines. The mayor has asked for the National Guard to supply some equipment that might make rescues possible in places where the city’s payloaders are too big to fit through narrow streets.

It doesn’t sound like they can find tens of thousands of their citizens let alone provide polling places for them by next Tuesday.

New York City and parts of Long Island are without power with some restorations projected to take 7 to 10 days. The polls had massive voting machines when I lived in NYC—and I seem to remember hefty power cables snaking around the church basements and high school cafeterias. (I also remember a very heavy and loud clunk when you pulled the lever, though, so maybe it was all more mechanical than electrical?)

You used to sign in to vote in massive bound books which had a copy of your signature from your previous occasion of voting. Were all those books on high ground?

So what happens? If the records are soggy? If the subways can’t get voters where they need to be? If there’s no power for the machines? If the voters are missing in Hoboken?

Is there anything in our Constitution that covers this?

We can’t disenfranchise enormous swaths of the electorate. Or can we?

And who gets to answer this question?

I think we should all be wondering.

Silver linings

And very black clouds.

There’s a hurricane out there. It may even have made landfall by the time you read this—although they say it’s moving very slowly—so maybe not.

There are going to be a lot of miracles this week connected to Sandy. There could easily be a lot of not so nice things happening as well. I’ve heard about some of them already. A playwright friend whose reading, long prepared and anticipated, had to be canceled and may have difficulty rescheduling. Another friend who gets a much needed extension on a project because a class can’t meet when subways are shutting down and mandatory evacuations are proceeding.

It’s easy, under circumstances like these, to take it personally. People have a tendency to do what I call omenizing. (Sometimes I make up my own words I’m a writer. I’m allowed.) I’ve even done a bit of omenizing myself.

This really good thing happened! Fate is on my side and everything will be perfect.

This really bad thing happened! The universe is out to get me.

Oddly enough, I thought this was going to be a post about the irony and the luck involved in moving from New York to Florida and finding that the two biggest hurricanes of recent years are hitting the City instead of the oft-troubled and occasionally inaptly named Sunshine State. And I thought I’d be segueing into a hope that there would be even bigger miracles—that the storm would turn out into the ocean, missing my fellow Americans and all the ships at sea.

But, as I write this, a little quote comes to mind that I first read in one of Robert Fulghum’s books, and I think this is the larger idea.

Sometimes it rains on the just. I believe that.
Sometimes it rains on the unjust. I believe that, too.
But I also believe that sometimes it just rains.
Neither God nor Justice or belief has anything to do with it.
—Anonymous

I think the fact that humans have the capacity to evolve to the point where we do not have to attribute these things to superstitious beliefs is, maybe, the biggest miracle.

And we can still hope that no one is hurt in the coming days.

Hope hard.

Hope never hurts.

There is no good reason. . .

. . .to eat funnel cake.

Except, of course, that you think it is going to taste good.

Trust me.

It will not.

This is the result of the law of the universe which states that almost nothing you enjoyed as a child is as good as you remember it.

Now, when I say that funnel cake will not taste good, that is an exaggeration, of course. It’s fried dough and powdered sugar. How bad can it be?

It’s just that it will not live up to the anticipation. It’s fried dough. And powdered sugar. Hot, greasy, sticky, too big, too sweet, and most likely, too expensive. If you’re anything like me, you will end up being sorry you bought it.

Not that this will stop you from eating it at the time or buying it in the future. It’s very hard to resist childhood treats when you are on an outing. And you will almost certainly be on an outing when funnel cake crosses your path. It is most commonly found at carnivals and fairs and flea markets and harvest festivals. You can make your own. But will you? I think not.

There are other fried dough foods—zeppolis, beignets, sopapillas—and, I venture to say, the experience is probably pretty similar. You buy them because you remember liking them as a kid. You scarf down this heavy dough, managing to thoroughly dust yourself with powdered sugar in the process, and you finish up with a strange craving for insulin.

It is disappointing.

Odds are. . .I’ll be doing it again the next time I see a funnel cake stand. As Samuel Johnson once said, in regard to something entirely different, it is ‘the triumph of hope over experience.’

300 miles

Out at sea.

Hurricane Sandy is 300 miles off the coast of Florida, and the wind has been blowing hard all day. The sky is gray and gloomy.

300 miles away.

Now, that’s influence.

Some big storm.

I’m hoping it blows itself out and doesn’t hurt anybody.

It caused me to check into something, though, and I’ve discovered that one of the things I remember never happened.

I used to tell people that my fifth birthday party had to be cancelled because of a hurricane. “And I think it was named Elaine,” I tell them.

I thought it was.

However, thanks to Google, I now know that Hurricane Elaine didn’t happen when I was five. There have been quite a few storms named Elaine. It’s just that none of them happened when I was five.

I’m absolutely sure my birthday party was canceled that year because of a hurricane. Research shows which one, too, but I’m not going to tell you. (Cyber-security. I may have lost my punchline, but I don’t need to give up my birthdate to random readers.)

There’s some Sandy somewhere, though, who is going to have a birthday party canceled this week. Let’s hope that’s the worst that happens. She—or he—will have a good story to tell, at some point.

It’s just not my story.

Google should come with spoiler alerts.

I guess I’ve had that writer’s impulse to make a story better for a lot longer than I knew. Can’t use that one anymore, though.

Oh, well.

What we lose in irony, we make up in veracity.

The truth will set you free.

And, sometimes, it will spoil a good story.

A breeze and some sunshine

And humidity under 80%.

I had such a nice day yesterday. Didn’t get much done, but that was part of what made it nice.

First of all, I overslept—which could, of course, be a disaster if there’s somewhere you have to be, but I did not have to be anywhere. For me, it was a surprising blessing.

We moved here because of noise. One of the things I particularly hated about the noise was I never got to wake up on my own time. I had quit my job, and I thought I was entitled to revert to my natural rhythms. Left to myself, I want to stay up until about 1 or 1:30 and get up around 8 or 8:30. I had the staying up part down, but big crashes and stomps above my head were never going to let me sleep in.

So, we moved. At which point, I found myself going to bed at around 9 or 10, exhausted from all the new things required of me by the new house—by owning a house at all. And I was waking up by 6, if not at 3 or 4.

In an odd, inverted way, it reminded me of this little stanza by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Grown-up

Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
I should retire at half-past eight?

All of that is kind of beside the point, however, which is that I overslept today for the first time in years.

That put me a little bit behind, but I got my workout in. I used my new nut catcher to round up some sweet gum balls, and I used some Round-up to—I hope—discourage the sweet gum seedling that is trying to grow up in the middle of my labyrinth.

And then, I did nothing.

I just decided to put aside the multiplicity of imperatives that are usually buzzing around my head and only do things I enjoy and that I wanted to do.

I read a book.

Then, I realized that the weather was gorgeous, and I took my book out on the dock. The sun was shining. The breeze was blowing. The humidity had dropped to around 70%—which is low for here.

I realized that almost all of the days I like to revisit in my memory have been days like this. A Girl Scout camping trip to Cape Henlopen. An afternoon in a hillside cemetery in Nevada. A Connecticut meadow. A cookout in Indian River involving a 50’s style motel, a swimming pool, and The Music Man on TV.

Nothing much happening.

Just sunshine and a balmy breeze.

The days when you have all the time in the world, and you hope time never comes to an end.

Upside down

dn ǝpıs ʇɥbıɹ*

So, I’ve been wondering about this for a few years. My family is sick of hearing about it. At the risk of looking crazier than I already do, I’m going to go ahead and see if any of you have become aware of this phenomenon.

Have you noticed that people—restaurants, that is—are making sandwiches upside down now?

Not every place, I’m sure, but enough so that I can call it a phenomenon. I’m talking mainly about fast food franchises, but I’ve noticed it in some more upscale places.

Once upon a time, in my giddy youth, if you ordered a burger it came in the following order:

Bottom half of the bun
Burger
Lettuce
Tomato
Pickle
Other garnishes
Top half of the bun with whatever condiment was requested or usual (Special Sauce, anyone?)

And when I first started buying roast beef subs at Subway, it was kind of the same thing. The roll was split down the middle. The roast beef went on the side closest to the bottom of the roll, and all the extras went on the side closest to the top of the roll.

When you ate your sandwich, the taste buds at the top of your mouth dealt with all the flavors of all the extras, while the bottom of your mouth savored the meat of the matter.

But now, it’s all backwards. And it happened quite suddenly. One day, all my sandwiches were right side up, and the next they were being assembled upside down.

I don’t understand it.

What could possibly be the reason for this?

Is there something intrinsically less expensive in building a burger backwards? Surely a lettuce leaf costs the same whether it is on the top or the bottom of the sandwich? Is it more efficient to layer in this—let’s be honest—wrong order? But, really, how much faster can it be to slap a tomato on one side than the other?

I think it’s the thin edge of the wedge. A slippery slope. Standards are slipping. People aren’t doing things right anymore.

Or maybe, it’s a symbol of a new freedom. We are no longer to be bounded by outmoded conventions. Put that pickle anywhere you want! (Somehow, that didn’t really come out the way I meant it.)

I don’t know whether to be happy or disturbed by this turn of events. I do know that my mouth is confused. I’ve tried to go with the flow, and eat my burgers however they are handed to me, but it just doesn’t work.

Old dog. New tricks. You see the problem.

I’ve taken to rebuilding my sandwiches on the spot. Sometimes, I even just turn them over, and eat them upside down.

But I sure do wonder.

* upside down text courtesy of fliptext.com

What I learned about pumpkin carving

at the pumpkin carving party.

Yesterday, we carved pumpkins. Here’s what I learned.

It’s good to get the little kids to scoop out the innards. Their hands fit, and they don’t mind the essential ookiness of pumpkin guts. (Well, 50% of them don’t mind. 1 out of 2. The pumpkins got emptied.)

The pumpkin carving tools sold at the Halloween store are useless. The plastic awl breaks. The plastic lever breaks. The scoops are too small. The saw must be handled very, very carefully, or it will break. (You’re not going to hand a tiny saw to a four-year-old anyway. Go get some real tools!)

You don’t actually need any creative ability anymore. There are templates. Any reasonably persistent and averagely coordinated adult can turn out a jack-o-lantern of amazing artistry.

You can have daytime pumpkins and nighttime pumpkins. The daytime pumpkins are like Mr. Potato Heads with foam felt features, all pre-cut with stick-on adhesive. All you need to do is poke strategic holes in your pumpkin for the insertion of pipe cleaners (now known, for some unfathomable reason, as “chenille”).

Little kids do better with the daytime pumpkins. Like I said, you’re not going to hand a tiny saw to a four-year-old. So, guess who’s really doing the carving? (Not me. I put the ears on the pirate and the bubble-gum balloon in the princess’s mouth. FYI, the self-stick stuff doesn’t stick well to pumpkins. I suggest Elmer’s Glue as a fall-back position.)

We ended up with a pirate, a princess and a cat in the daytime pumpkin category. The nighttime baton will be carried by a Frankenstein, a carved cat, and an old-fashioned freestyle jack-o-lantern.

A final word of advice. If you have free-roaming bunnies, you might want to put the pumpkins on the porch closer to Halloween.

I’m just sayin’.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Category Archives: Life in General