Post 237 - November 3, 2020

Day 237…

Election Day.

When I first started writing these posts two hundred and thirty-seven days ago, it was in direct response to the first day of the shut down because of the pandemic. At the time, if you had told me that I would still be writing them all of these months later, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Since the beginning, the virus, its spread and how it has been managed, or mis-managed as the case may be, has been a constant in our lives.

The murder of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis in May brought to the fore the racial tensions in our country that have been there from our inception and that have never been properly addressed.

Friends, family members and complete strangers have died by the hundreds of thousands in the United States.

I’ve written about all of it.

For the last few months, the closer we have come to today’s election, the more that politics started to take up the bulk of our waking lives. I think that I have been mentioning voting for months now. Much of my writing in recent days has been focused around what is going to happen today.

Like the day that we shut down and the day that George Floyd died, today is going to change the narrative. How that happens remains to be seen. The first two events caught us somewhat unaware. This one, the election, we have seen coming for a very long time.

Jimmy Kimmel said that last night felt like “somewhere between Christmas Eve and the night before a liver transplant.”

I always wonder about what I will write about tomorrow. Today, I really have no idea.

Despite my training session, I was never called upon to work the polls today. Instead, I got a good night’s sleep.

More than 100 million people cast their ballots before the polls opened this morning. A federal court overturned a Republican attempt to discard over a hundred thousand drive-by votes in Texas.

There is about five or six more hours of pre-election coverage before the actual election coverage starts on the news. This endless pre-election coverage is basically filmed anxiety. Camera crews are wandering around polling stations in various states, showing people voting without having any more information to offer than that.

“We simply don’t know,” has been the answer to a whole array of questions posed this morning, and I’ve only been up for an hour.

Michael and I are sitting on the couch with the cat. I think that we will be here on and off for the rest of the day.

A couple of months ago, I helped produce a virtual version of Broadway Barks! our annual animal shelter adoption event. In a few days we are going to stream a new British spin-off of that event called West End Woofs! We have been actively working on it for about two months.

Bernadette Peters is going to co-host it with Elaine Paige. Elaine is kind of the English version of Bernadette. A major West End star, she has originated roles in everything from Cats to Evita. Animal shelters from all over the UK will be introduced by theatre stars, writers and producers from the West End as well as by British film and television performers.

I don’t think that any of us truly imagined when we were putting together the first version of Broadway Barks! in 1999 in New York that we would still be doing it twenty-one years later.

Realizing that we could do it virtually, was very exciting. It allowed us to include some shelters far away from New York’s theatre district. A whole array of celebrities that might not have made the trip into the heart of the Broadway were more than happy to film something from their homes. We hoped to bring in the virtual version at about an hour and a half and instead it was well over three hours long.

Someone in London reached out to us about doing a version of Barks! there and, after a lot of discussion, we decided to go for it. West End Woofs! was born. The hope, of course, is that it will become self-sufficiently established there and continue on. Elaine Paige has gotten almost as excited about this project as Bernadette is.

There have been challenges involved in putting Broadway Barks! and West End Woofs! together, but it has honestly never been hard to do. We have never had a shortage of people who’ve wanted to be involved and the longer we’ve done it, the more people who’ve come aboard. Seeing hundreds of dogs and cats find forever homes and leave the shelters behind them over these two decades has been gratifying beyond belief.

We were initially going to stream West End Woofs! this past Sunday but decided to move it until after the election. It will now stream on November 9th at 7pm GMT.  Here in New York that will be at 2pm. It will be available to watch online after that, too.

Shelters across the Atlantic have experienced a similar rise in dog and cat adoptions during the pandemic that we have over here. Like here, many people there have decided to foster an animal in their homes while permanent homes are found. Having a companion in lockdown has proven to be a lifesaver for countless single people wherever they live.

It’s windy outside today. The trees are whipping back and forth. Our apartment is on the corner of our building and one side of it is across from a much taller structure. The wind thunders through that canyon between the two buildings. The sound of it is like a storm out on the moors.

There is almost nothing better than curling up on the couch on a day like this with the cat sleeping in a tight ball next to me. He’s like a furry hot water bottle.

Today is not going to be an easy day for many of us. This election will dictate the direction that this country takes over the next four years. Four more years of this Administration is, frankly, unthinkable.

We need to move forward. One way or another today, we will.

It’s going to be a very long day. Once are ballots have been cast there is nothing that we can do except wait. We may not get the final tally for several days.

For everybody working the polls today, hang in there. For everybody else, well, hang in there. We will know what’s going to happen soon enough and this election, like every other election we have ever had, will slip into history.

Whatever happens, don’t despair. History has a way of balancing itself out. We aren’t going to get a repeat of this last Administration even if they win. The landscape is going to change today. The question is, how?

If you haven’t voted yet, now is the time to do it.

Our active participation in this process is an important part of our civic duty. We have created a society that demands that we contribute to it. Anyone who chooses to be a part of this society is morally obligated to sustain it.

It is also a right that our forebearers fought long and hard to get for us. The right to vote is not a given. It’s a remarkable privilege that we, as Americans, have.

Use it or lose it.

It’s going to be a long night.

Hunker down and stay safe and warm.

See you tomorrow.