Post 670 - November 2, 2024

There’s a strange quiet and peace this week. I don’t want to jinx anything by saying that, but I’m not feeling the wave of panicked energy coming my way that has been so marked these past few weeks. Kamala and Tim are, of course, texting me hourly for money instead of daily, but aside from that, the vibe from where I am sitting in New York is surprisingly calm.

Halloween came and went. Our neighborhood exploded with decorations. The next street over from us must have had a competition because most of the brownstones were completely covered in skeletons, spiders, and ghosts. I will say, that despite the relative lack of anxiety in the air, I’m not sure I am ever going to look at a pumpkin the same way again.

The weather has been crisp and cool without any rain leading up to the day, so the leaves in the park have stayed dry. We’ve had an array of autumn reds and yellows that we don’t always get. All that made me so nostalgic that I considered going downtown to watch the annual parade in the Village.

Thankfully, my daily walk took me down through part of the route earlier in the day. Sixth Avenue was already lined with row after row of police barricades. The quirky local parade of yore was clearly not what was going to be on offer.  Not unlike most other celebrations in the city, the Village Halloween Parade has become enormous and unmanageable. Like throngs of cruise ship passengers descending on Venice, the sheer number of people who flock to events like the Parade tends to suffocate the joy out of the experience for me. There is fun to be had I am sure, but not the kind of sweet, innocent fun we had as kids.

This election hasn’t been fun either. I’m trying to remember if any of them ever have been enjoyable. Even so, I don’t remember living for weeks on end in a state of existential dread the way I have this time. Even the last two elections, which were certainly fraught, were nothing like this one. I suppose in 2016 we didn’t think the ex-President could ever really win so we weren’t as worried about it as we should have been. It seemed like too much of a joke. We also had no idea what lay ahead of us in the form of a microscopic virus.

In 2020’s election, we were all focused on getting rid of him. Many of us lost sleep over the last weeks of October and the beginning of November that year. The man had done such a terrible job in office, though, it didn’t seem possible that we would ever let him have another go at it. The relief when he lost was palpable.

This year, it feels like having been told our cancer is in remission and having had a few years to celebrate a renewal of our lives, we’re now living with the news that it’s come back worse than before. When we went through everything that we did the first time, we didn’t really know what to expect. This time, however, if we can’t beat the cancer, we know exactly what lies in store. The thought of having to live through it all again is simply numbing.

Is every election going to be like this one from now on? If the Republicans have their way, there won’t be any more elections, so maybe that answers one possible side of the question. Not having any more elections is not an idle fear I’ve made up in my head. It’s not a story I’ve concocted that I’ve allowed to take over my every waking thought. Not needing to ever vote again is something the Republican candidate has said out loud and nobody in his party has ever raised an objection to it.

If the Democrats do win a few days from now, will we then just face the same kind of democracy-threatening armageddon again in two years? I don’t know how many more of these I have in me.

Venice banned cruise ships from docking in the Grand Canal. The daily hordes of people who disembarked from them were adding nothing to the city. They were sinking it. Cruise ship passengers don’t spend money on hotels because they sleep on their ships. They don’t buy food in restaurants because the all-you-can-eat buffets are waiting for them back onboard. They don’t enrich the city, instead, they just clog it up for everyone else.

Now, if you are on a cruise and want to go to Venice, the ship docks well above the city. You need to arrange transportation to enter and pay a visitor charge. If you truly want to see Venice, and everybody should at least once in your life, it’s a minimal inconvenience and sacrifice. If you aren’t that interested, there are plenty of activities on the Lido deck to amuse you and keep you from needlessly adding to the over-touristing of one of the world’s great cities. It has made a positive difference.

Missing the parade was fine. I was happy to walk around the Upper West Side the day before yesterday and see all the families out trick or treating with their kids. I didn’t need to be part of a crowd of thousands pushing my way through to get a view of the big event. I got the Halloween I wanted right here at home.

I saw one little boy who couldn’t have been more than five or six whose parents had made him an Olaf, the Snowman costume. It was beautifully done, but Olaf’s head was almost as big as the kid himself. I walked past them. The kid was lagging about ten feet behind his family, dragging the enormous white head on the ground. His little mop of blond hair was wet and plastered to his head. He was done. He could barely move his feet.

Seeing the poor little guy, sparked a memory. I must have been seven or eight at the time and Mom had gotten me a Casper the Friendly Ghost costume. It was the kind that came in a square box with a cellophane lid. Inside it, there was a kind of plastic cloak and a thin molded plastic mask with a string of elastic stapled on to keep it in place.

I couldn’t wait to go out in it. What I remember vividly is the feeling of my sweat pooling into a little puddle inside the chin of the mask. It was stifling inside it. I ended up poring out the water and perching the mask on top of my head.

That’s what I think of when I think about Halloween. All of us kids would kick through the leaves trying to see the edges of the sidewalk where we were walking. The little eyeholes in our masks were usually either too far apart or too close together which made it impossible to see.  There was a lot of banging into trees and mailboxes. It was exhausting. At some point, not even the promise of more candy was enough to keep us going. If the orange plastic pumpkin had gotten at all heavy, our work was done. It was time to go home and happily sort through it all.

We must find a way to keep electing people to represent our best interests in government without having to wage war on our neighbors every time we do it. There are far better things for us to do with all that energy.

We all, Democrats and Republicans alike find ourselves facing some very real issues that will need us to drop the petty animosity between us and get down to some serious work. The list is long.

I don’t know how many more Republican strongholds need to be battered to dust and rubble by hurricanes and tornadoes before everyone realizes that climate change is a very real problem. We can’t keep kicking that can down the road. The end of the road is now in view just ahead of us and it’s getting closer.

That’s just one thing from a seemingly endless, ever-growing lineup that we, the people, need to address. No solution is going to work unless we all commit to doing it together. Step one is figuring out how to do that.

If you haven’t voted, for heaven’s sake get out there and do it. The advantage of early voting is that it has spread the crowds out over several days. There is minimal waiting time.

Early voter turnout is breaking records across the country. Usually, only about 60% of us bother to get ourselves into a polling station. I’m interested to see what this year will be like. Women are outpacing men.

As awful as most of this election cycle has been, this election truly matters. There is so much at stake. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is. There’s a lot that’s broken.

None of it is simple. None of it is easy.

The unseasonable warm temperature we had on Halloween night seems to have dropped away overnight. Today feels more like it. Winter is coming. Let’s get past these next few days so we can start to prepare for it.

Please vote.