Election night, Dennis and I sat on the front porch waiting for east coast returns to come in. Dennis had voted absentee; panicked by forecasts of long lines, I had gone down to the City Clerk’s office and voted at 8 am Wednesday, October 29th. Here is the moon over Flint, Michigan, just before 8 pm November 4, 2008.
It’s November 6 now and still warm. Unseasonably balmy weather in the 70s began just before Halloween and continued through Election Day until now. The weather pundits have forecast a return to normal by tomorrow, Friday, and certainly by the weekend. It will drop twenty degrees and we'll return to rain and the general ramp up to winter. For friends in the Flint community the warmth seems to be an additional sign of grace at the close of this election season. My neighborhood election efforts began in August when my neighbors James and Sharon hosted an Obama open house. A slender field worker named Erin, no more than 20 years old, energetically hit her talking points; she had taken a semester off from college in New Hampshire to work for the campaign. We signed in and provided our phone numbers and emails on a list that evening of not more than 10 names. Later, in October, I found my way to the downtown headquarters. A vacant building in defunct Windmill Place, a 1980s center of shops and eateries that had failed by 1990, provided space for “Campaign for Change.” Beneath homemade signs “We are the Change” and oblivious to the dusty cement floor and dirty windows, they worked at laptops and phones, doing data entry late at night. Fed and housed by local Democrats from August to November, they worked in one of the ruins of the local Flint economy. They had answered a call like the one I remember with first with John Kennedy and then with the anti-war movement. Erin must have returned east now; her cell phone number here no longer works. I'll call Sharon to see if there's an address for Erin, some destination for my thanks to her and everyone who gave part of their lives to this campaign.
It’s November 6 now and still warm. Unseasonably balmy weather in the 70s began just before Halloween and continued through Election Day until now. The weather pundits have forecast a return to normal by tomorrow, Friday, and certainly by the weekend. It will drop twenty degrees and we'll return to rain and the general ramp up to winter. For friends in the Flint community the warmth seems to be an additional sign of grace at the close of this election season. My neighborhood election efforts began in August when my neighbors James and Sharon hosted an Obama open house. A slender field worker named Erin, no more than 20 years old, energetically hit her talking points; she had taken a semester off from college in New Hampshire to work for the campaign. We signed in and provided our phone numbers and emails on a list that evening of not more than 10 names. Later, in October, I found my way to the downtown headquarters. A vacant building in defunct Windmill Place, a 1980s center of shops and eateries that had failed by 1990, provided space for “Campaign for Change.” Beneath homemade signs “We are the Change” and oblivious to the dusty cement floor and dirty windows, they worked at laptops and phones, doing data entry late at night. Fed and housed by local Democrats from August to November, they worked in one of the ruins of the local Flint economy. They had answered a call like the one I remember with first with John Kennedy and then with the anti-war movement. Erin must have returned east now; her cell phone number here no longer works. I'll call Sharon to see if there's an address for Erin, some destination for my thanks to her and everyone who gave part of their lives to this campaign.
Beautiful shot of the moon, Teddy -- and a nice reflection on the election.
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