Shooting in The Covid Part IV: Here and There

Hard Road Park is a stone’s throw from my home. Our metro park system is widely used and our parks are beautiful. We built our home in the early 1980s. For decades, I traveled down Hard Road on my commute to and from work downtown. The land off Hard Road was woodland and grazing land. I would pass by herds of cattle as I approached my home. And then I would sit at railroad tracks for a half hour while trains loaded with coal passed by on the way to power plants along the lake in northern Ohio. The city has since built an underpass at the tracks. Progress.

When the matriarch of the family who owned this land died, her children sold the land to developers. Homes are now built on this land. The city purchased a chunk of the woodlands to build a park. I was hoping the city would leave the land wooded, which also includes a creek. I was not thrilled with how the city developed the parkland. A significant piece of the land was used to construct a maintenance building, and they created soccer fields on another large chunk. My immediate reaction was, why can’t the kids play on the street like we did growing up? Do I sound like an old person? The woodlands they did leave intact does not have a trail. Thus, there’s no getting down to the creek or into the woods without risking a personal tick infestation.

There is a trail around some grasslands, a small wetlands area and some wildflowers. Those are the areas I focus on for my short hikes with my camera.

I wouldn’t have ever found Schnormeier Garden if it hadn’t been for Bruce. These are private gardens created by a family on an 80-acre piece of land about an hour from Columbus. These gardens are so spectacular that the family graciously opens them to the public during the summer for about a month. Considering that we went during The Covid, it was crowded. Like me, Bruce is an amateur photographer. We’ve developed a wonderful friendship and schedule time together to get out to shoot at least once a month. Bruce is a retired clinical psychologist. At this stage of my life, I try to surround myself with as many clinical psychologists as possible. Two old guys with bad knees thoroughly enjoyed traipsing all over the property with our cameras. Bruce is a master with photoshop. He removed the crowds from his images. I, of far less skill and patience, spent most of my time with my camera pointed toward the ground, or water.

Antrim Lake is about ten minutes from my home. The lake runs adjacent to the Olentangy River. There is a trail that goes around the lake and is also a piece of a long bike trail that runs between Worthington and south of downtown, along the river. There is a lot of traffic and people ride their bikes really fast on the trail. It is a bad idea to become engrossed in nature while standing in the middle of the bike path.

Alum Creek is a sprawling state park that runs through Delaware county. It is an interesting place with a dam, lots of lakes, a beach, and many trails through woodland.

Michelle Obama has remarked on several occasions that when they go low, we go high. During her convention speech, she said something about when they go low … and then I became confused about what we were supposed to do. I could have been projecting but I think I heard, when they go low, break their nose. Whatever she meant, I concluded that when they go low, I shouldn’t be writing an angry rant in my photography blog. I inherited my father’s injustice gene. We have a horrible time accepting injustice and staying silent about it. As I have so much respect and admiration for Michelle Obama, I’m going to work at moderating my rant.

Thus, rather than thrust myself into a downward spiral about our country’s history on voting, I’m going to suggest a few homework assignments.

Obviously, the right to vote is fundamental to our democracy in the United States of America. Please do some reading about the following. The history of voting rights for Blacks, women, and Asian-Americans. The torturous record of voting rights for our indigenous peoples. The thousands of people who risk their lives to protect our country by serving in our military who do not have the right to vote. If all people do not have equal access to the vote, what kind of democracy are we really? Please do your assignments. If we can’t be honest about who we are, we can’t make ourselves better.

A democracy requires an informed electorate. We can come up with a lot of complicated explanations for the electoral college. I’m going to offer a rather simple notion. I believe that our founding fathers weren’t entirely confident in the ability of all of the white guys (who owned land) to pick the right candidate, i.e., it was possible that in their irrational exuberance, the flotsam and jetsam would select some immoral, incompetent, moronic, self-absorbed, orange huckster. The electoral college would be the escape hatch allowing the intelligencia to cut some deals in a backroom. After the popular voting had been completed, they could select the right white guy while no one was looking.

Our history with voting hasn’t been and remains far less than stellar or acceptable.

While we’ve had this history of denying or suppressing the vote to ensure that the white guys remain in power, the times, they are a changing. I see it in my children and I’ve seen it in the protests from the Black Lives Matter movement. I see it in our changing demographics and the inevitable expansion of our diversity. I was a child of the 60s and I am a cultural anthropologist with a specialization in culture change. I know it when I see it.

There is a good chance that the democrats are going to win the presidency, the house and the senate. They are going to have ten minutes to undo an immoral history in our democracy with the right to vote. They’re going to have a ton of other things to fix, in this country and around the world. I sure hope Biden and Harris are staying up nights making lists.

They’re going to need to get rid of the filibuster on January 20th and face the reality that President Obama struggled with … you aren’t going to have any partners on the other side of the isle. Figure out what is right, and then do the right thing. If any of the cowardly sell-outs want to join your cause, then you have an obligation to listen. But before you get your head stuck in some lofty ideal about any kind of deliberative body, keep repeating the name Merrick Garland in your head over and over as you go to sleep at night. The deliberative body was sent to the trash heap by Mitch, the Orange Emperor’s bitch. Please just do what needs to be done.

I’m 69 years old. I’ve never witnessed anyone so blatantly work to overthrow an election. His intelligence agencies have already reported that Russia is involved in election interference as we speak. The Orange Emperor talks to Putin more than many adult children talk to their parents. And we have no idea what is being said in these conversations. How creative do we really need to be when we have substantial evidence about what he already did during the 2016 election. And he’s using his power of the office to rig the election. Most of what he says about everything is a lie, but his projections so often reveal his own unethical, immoral, and likely illegal behavior. To reiterate, the man is just not right in the head. It is remarkable.

Let’s start with this. Universal mail voting, absentee voting, mail in voting all mean the same thing. How states manage the process may be different, but they all ensure the same thing. The only ballots that count come from registered voters who are legally permitted to vote. Whether the check for legal registration occurs before the ballot is mailed or after the ballot is received, no states allow people to vote who are not legally permitted to do so.

Mr. and Mrs. Orange Emperor both applied for absentee ballots from Florida. The world of entitlement knows no bounds. He can vote by mail but for everyone else it stinks like fraud and abuse? Chain immigration is horrible, except as it applies to the parents of Mrs. Orange Emperor? He does hypocrisy with such panache, because he believes that he is entitled to live in this make-believe kingdom of privilege. It is indeed time for the revolution. There’s a whole bunch of old white republican senators who also reside in this kingdom, and they are way overdue to leave the stage.

The postmaster general is his stooge. He is one of his large donors. He also has a financial interest in the post office failing and being privatized. I’ll save the horrors of privatizing the post office for another time. (If you live in rural Kentucky, how do you feel about getting mail delivery twice a week?) And then late on a Friday night, the stooge decapitated the senior management that could get in the way of his diabolical scheme to force Bubby and Zadie to go to the polls to get sick.

I am really concerned what might happen once the voting starts. The Orange Emperor has announced that the only way he can lose is if the democrats rig the election. The man’s powers of projection are amazing. Russia. Screwing with mail delivery. Sending out jackboot thugs to monitor elections. What could possibly go wrong?

If he goes down in flames, I have grave concerns about whether he will accept the results. I have no faith in the republican senate to do the right thing. What are we going to do if this horrible thing happens? Driving to Washington DC to camp out on the mall during The Covid feels like a bad idea, but there might not be a choice. We might just have to emulate Belarus and go to the streets. When did you ever think that we need to be like Belarus? About anything. I sure hope all those food trucks are still there and that we’re able to use the bathrooms in the capital building.

When this election has concluded, and hopefully, with the democrats taking the executive and legislative branches, they must pass legislation immediately to repair and protect our democracy. The Orange Emperor has offered up some frightening evidence about what is possible. Beyond putting some very sharp teeth behind taking election help from a foreign government, there are measures that must be adopted to ensure free and fair elections across the country. Many of these measures were passed in this session of the house of representatives and are being ignored by Mitch and his old white brethren.

There are other issues that must be addressed to heal the nation and to restore trust in our government.

Money must be removed from our elections. If money is speech, as was determined by the less than Supreme Court, someone needs to deal with the issue of volume. Lobbyists, the wealthy, and corporations can always speak so much more loudly than the average person. We are too easily ignored. Politicians will never ignore a large donor. If you want one person, one vote to mean just that, money must be removed from politics.

Elections should be entirely publicly funded with each candidate receiving the same amount to spend. We should also limit the amount of time an election can go on. Running a presidential election for four years is insane. PACs need to be abolished. Donations to political candidates and politicians should be made illegal. Elected officials should be banned from holding a job as a lobbyist. Ever. Period. They should be banned from taking a job in a company that they ever passed legislation to regulate or in which they had a legislative interest. Elected officials should be on either the same pension as all federal employees or social security. Elected officials should be required to be on affordable health care act insurance with no supplemental plan unless they qualify for Medicare.

The electoral college is a farce. It needs to be scratched. One person, one vote. Period. Why would a single vote in South Dakota have more weight than a single vote from California?

There should be a uniform set of national rules for elections. Election day should be a national holiday. Mail in balloting should be made available on a national level for every registered voter.

Gerrymandering needs to be eliminated. If we’re going to pretend to be a democracy, then stacking the deck to create safe districts is about as undemocratic as it gets. These districts create the most marginal candidates and discourages any kind of negotiation and compromise. If you are a politician in a gerrymandered district, you are going to be primaried if you try to exist in the center. Gerrymandering creates extremes.

I vote in the 12th congressional district in Ohio. This is it:

Districts should be required to look like a geometric shape that can be identified by a 2nd grader.

When redistricting occurs every ten years following the census, the process must be done by people who have absolutely no stake in the result. If you ever held an elected office, you should not be involved. If you serve on a redistricting committee, you should never be permitted to run for an elected office. Politicians cannot be trusted to do the right thing. For decades, they’ve demonstrated that they will do the most self-serving thing. The people charged with drawing districts should be political scientists, demographers, statisticians, priests, ministers, rabbis, monks, and mullahs.

We desperately need to repair our country and our democracy. Even though the Orange Emperor has illegally asked you to vote twice, please vote only once. It is a felony to vote twice. It was a felony for him to ask you to vote twice. Lock him up! Please do vote. Please learn the rules for voting in your state. Please do this today. And if you are not registered to vote or you are not sure if you are, please contact your board of elections today!

https://www.vote.org/

Our country, our lives and our planet really do depend on it.

If I can save the world from satanic cannibals and pedophiles, is that supposed to be a bad thing?

If Biden wins, your American dream will be dead.

If you want your 401k’s and Stocks, which are getting close to an all time high (NASDAQ is already there), to disintegrate and disappear, vote for the Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats and Corrupt Joe Biden. Massive Tax Hikes - They will make you very poor, FAST!

If I lose, body parts are going to start falling off.

The Orange Emperor is the bodyguard of western civilization.

Yo Semites! Could you please find Zadie’s nuclear codes and then hide them with your books? He’ll never find them. There’s not a chance that Zadie is going to pick up a book.

It is what it is.