30/30: Golden Shovel poem #27

source: Voting Overhaul Poses Quandary for Democrats

 

The room is long and chilly when the voting

Begins. No one remembers who did the overhaul

Of procedure. They think it poses

No constraints. They are put off by the quandary

Of too many voters, not enough ballots for

The folks who show up to be Democrats.

 

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Here is how I am using Terrance Hayes’s Golden Shovel poem format, as proposed by the Sunday New York Times "At Home" section, for 30 Poems in 30 Days during National Poetry Month.

 

Take a newspaper headline that attracts you.

Use each word in the line as the end word for each line in your poem.

Keep the end words in order.

Describe the story that the headline is for.

The poem does not have to be about the same subject as the headline that creates the end words.

#AtoZChallenge: I Is for Ignorant

The dictionary defines ignorant as “destitute of knowledge or education,” “lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified,” or “unaware, uninformed.”

            I like to think of myself as being aware, informed, knowledgeable, educated. Of course, there are aspects I am ignorant of, as is everyone else: I’m ignorant of when I will die, what I will die from. I am ignorant of what will happen in the future, though I can make educated guesses based on the past — with the caveat that comes with financial advice: “past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

            Being aware, informed, knowledgeable, educated: this is important to me. But why? Didn’t an 18th century English poet write “ignorance is bliss”? He was thinking of the perils of life, which only ends with death, and if we knew when that would occur, wouldn’t that overshadow any present happiness?

            One night when I was 15, I lay in bed yearning to know everything there is to know in the universe. I no longer remember what prompted that desire, but it remains embedded deep in me.

            For many years, I thought the way to learn about any subject was to start at the beginning, like a novel, and read through until I got to “the end,” which would be “the present.” The Hungarian Uprising in 1956 sent me to the World Book encyclopedia; I had to find out why Hungarians were rising up against communism, which my parents thought was quite a good system. Outlining the history of Hungary would answer my questions, except that it didn’t. The Six-Day War, in 1967 sent me to books about the Israeli-Arab conflict, except that some assumed Israel was right, and others assumed the Arab view was right, and I didn’t yet know how to dance through the evidence from both these viewpoints to determine my own opinion. I still thought it was like math, there was a right answer and a wrong answer.

            As I moved through adulthood, I realized that I was never going to know everything there is to know in the universe. I decided there were some things I could remain ignorant of. India was one: until I read the Jewel in the Crown series, and decades later visited the country. I don’t know Spanish, so I decided to remain ignorant of Latin America: news stories occasionally pierce the darkness, but without much context. Even some parts of American history are shadowy: the Civil War, the antebellum period, the early Republic.

            I started thinking about ignorance after reading a review article in the New Yorker about books on democracy. Universal suffrage allows many people to vote who are ignorant of policy, how the government works, who the candidates are and what they stand for, and even how to think rationally instead of emotionally. So should these ignorant voters have the same rights as more knowledgeable voters? Saying no leads to very undemocratic results. Saying yes can lead to our current president. Per Churchill in 1947, “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time....”

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I'm using this for one of my essays a week, which I have fallen seriously behind on. #52essays2017

SOL Tuesday: Primary Day

Today is Primary Day in New York State, the first time in 40 years that the primary has been meaningful for both parties.

            My voting place is in a public school a few blocks away from where I live. I went to my election district table, got the ballot on paper inside a manila folder, and sat down to fill in the “bubbles.” On the left were the names of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton (I got the Democratic ballot), and on the right were a list of six delegates pledged to Sanders and six delegates pledged to Clinton. I filled in my bubbles, went to the scanner, fed in the ballot, and started to leave.

            On my way out, I noticed a poll worker trying to answer a ballot question for a young woman who wondered why, or even whether, she had to vote both for the candidate and delegates, or if it was okay to vote for just candidate or delegates. He didn’t seem to have a clear-cut answer, repeatedly saying, “That’s your choice.” I thought I knew the answer, but wasn’t sure.

            Outside, beyond the polling boundary, there was a table of Clinton people, so I stopped to ask if they knew how to fill in the ballot properly. I was told that delegates were assigned based on the percentage of votes for each candidates, so if one voted for delegates but not candidate, your vote wouldn’t count, but if you voted for candidate and not delegates, your vote would count. Got that? Best, of course, if you voted for both candidate and delegates – though probably you shouldn’t vote for Hillary as candidate and then for Sanders delegates, or would your vote for Hillary add to her percentage, thus to her delegate count? Very confusing.

            I decided to be helpful, went back to school, and the young woman was still talking to the poll worker. I explained what I’d learned to both of them. But I did think the poll worker should have been better trained – he wasn’t a regular employee of the Board of Elections, just hired for primary and election day. And I do hope the campaign worker I talked to was right.