My Day at the Poll

In an pre-emptive attempt to keep myself busy on Election Day, I volunteered as a poll worker.  10/10 would totally do again. It was not only a way to keep myself from doom scrolling all day yesterday, but I met some good neighbors, and spent the day supporting, in a tiny small way, Democracy. As I write this (on Tuesday night before falling into bed–I reported to the Poll for setup at 6am, and got home at about 9:30) I know nothing much about how the election went.

What I do know is that–at least in California, although I have no reason to believe it’s vastly different anywhere else–election fraud would be very hard to pull off. The number of cross-checks at every step, from who is voting to what happens to the ballots (in California they are paper ballots that are tallied by electronic scanners–but the ballots themselves are preserved under lock and key) to the number crunching–is considerable. The people I worked with were diligent–both about doing the work and about not talking about the election. We had a lot of fun (there is a lot of downtime) but we all took the work seriously. I come to the conclusion that some of the people who froth at the mouth about election security have no real idea of how modern elections work. If I ran the Zoo, I might consider a policy where everyone has to work at a poll once in their lives–just to inject a little reality into their worldview.

At my polling place the number of people who voted with ballots on site was fairly small; most of the people who came by were dropping off their vote-by-mail ballots the day of. This makes sense in San Francisco, where the ballots were four pages long (including two double-sided pages of propositions on the state and city level) and required a cheat sheet or an extraordinary memory.There were the ballots that had been sent well in advance (VBMR, in poll roster speak, for “Voted By Mail-Received”). So our relatively small precinct overwhelmingly seemed to prefer filling out their ballot before the Day itself. I was one of them (since I didn’t know where I would be working, I opted to vote several weeks ago).

There were a lot of children–my neighborhood has a lot of kids in it, and it seemed like every parent wanted to bring their kids to expose them to the Civic Virtue that is voting. Since I did the same thing with my kids, I totally endorse this. We gave out I Voted stickers to a lot of children (but I note that almost all the adults who voted or dropped off ballots asked for their stickers too, with an almost childlike glee).

There were some… odd moments. Like the very nice older guy who announced to us that he was voting for “Trump of course”–we can’t and won’t ask, but he seemed to think it was a given. Because his eyesight was poor, he asked for assistance in completing his ballot, which he was given. Then his foreign-born wife came in; he reminded her that she was voting for Trump too, and while he didn’t exactly hang over her he made it pretty clear what the expectation was. She too asked for assistance in filling out the ballot, which she received. Both my co-worker and I were a little uncomfortable, but the husband’s behavior didn’t rise to the level of interference, and we’re bound by all sorts of rules about what we can do.

There was a guy down the street from the building (we were in the library–very plush surroundings when many San Francisco polling places are in neighborhood garages) for about an hour wearing a HARRIS WALZ t-shirt–but not accosting anyone. There are strict rules about how near to a polling place campaign materials of any sort can be.

At eight o’clock when the polls closed, we swung into action. Each of us had tasks: two people to count the vote-by-mail and provisional ballots, two people to print out the tally from the electronic scanner (a copy of the tally is posted outside the polling place ASAP) and get the cast ballots ready. All the materials are handed over to the Sheriff (including the SD card from the scanner) in sealed containers, and the numbers on the seals are recorded. All of the materials that had been put to use during the day were folded up and put into order so that the Department of Elections minions can pick them up.

A note about those Minions: when we got to the poll this morning there were boxes and bags of materials–ballots, provisional ballot envelopes, privacy folders, EDU ballots (for non-citizens with children under the age of 18 who are–in California–permitted to vote in school board elections only), and so much other stuff. Including those seals (yellow for beginning of the day, blue for the end of the day) which must be accounted for–every time we broke a seal it went into the Inspector’s folder–the inspector is like the team lead. There are signs of various sorts, and voting desks, and the accessible ballot machine (which can be used by anyone, but allows you to vote with a touch screen and various assistive devices) as well as the electronic scanner. And pens and hand sanitizer and masks and posters and … so much stuff. All meticulously organized and stored until the poll workers deploy them at the start of the day. At one point, as I do, I got lost in the image of all of the DoE Minions (as I thought of them). They do this for every precinct in the city, county, and very likely the state. There was nothing missing that we needed. It was thoughtfully and thoroughly done.

And now I am home, and very ready for my bed. And there are people for whom the job is only beginning, as they take in the tallies and the used ballots (and the unused ballots, which must be as carefully accounted for as those that are used, and those that are “spoiled” and voided).

There are a lot of moving parts to Democracy. It’s kind of awesome. As awful and contentious as this election season has been, seeing these parts up close gave me hope. Now, I’m going to bed.

ETA: The next morning. The national results are emphatically not what I wanted. But I stand by my day at the Poll and what I took from it. And I’m going to hang on as hard as hell to that.

When Events Collide

This is the year of many confluences. I want to note just three, because those earlier in the year were more confluences of grief and do not need revisiting.

The first one is tomorrow, that is to say, November 5.

First, there is the US election. I am hoping that the US turns out and votes in massive numbers and that the outcome is one of the better ones. This is not an easy election and I’m very glad I don’t have to deal with some of the issues everyone’s handling right now. I hope things improve and that clever voting opens the door to US lives being significantly better. I also hope that the idiots learn to listen and understand what rampant fools they can be, but this is probably a pipe dream.

The election is, obviously, the biggest thing tomorrow. The second biggest is a rather fraught historical memory. Australia mostly doesn’t celebrate Guy Fawkes Night any more, but I found out yesterday that New Zealand does. We never burned figures, even when we had bonfires and fireworks and for this I am so very grateful. I have to admit that it’s kinda appropriate that there is a history memory on the same day that the US is busy creating its own history memory.

The third thing tomorrow is a race. Not the same type of race as the US one, but a horse race. Victoria (the Australian state, not the city a long way from me) gets a public holiday and most of Australia stops to watch. Tomorrow I won’t, because the friends I usually drink with (because it’s a drinking festival, really) are busy and I have a lot to do and…

I feel as if I’m betraying my childhood with no race and no fireworks, but at least I don’t have to worry about supporting something that really is not kind to horses or an historical event that, in the way it’s celebrated, isn’t that kind to Catholics.

That’s tomorrow’s confluence: the election, Bonfire Night, and the Melbourne Cup.

The next one is on November 11. I might leave it until next week and tell you about it then. Let me just say that only one of the events that collide is celebrated in the US and the UK. Watch this space…

The other collision is a bit longer. December 25 is Christmas this year (as it always is) and, for a wonder, it’s also the start of Chanukah, thanks to a handy leap month last Jewish year. New Year is also Chanukah. So are all the days between the two. I feel it’s a bit of a cheat to call this a confluence, but it’s a fun one because it’s going to tangle all the folks who were finally accepting that Chanukah and Christmas are not on the same dates. The Christian calendar is solar and fixed to the sun. The Jewish calendar is lunar/solar, that is fixed to the moon with solar adjustments. This explains the leap month – the adjustments are a bit bigger because, really, the Moon and the Sun don’t talk to each other and make everything work in harmony.

The shape of the year gives you something to think about if you really, really don’t want to spend more thoughts on the election. The fact that I’m supposed to be frying food in midsummer (for Chanukah) is another useful distraction.

Good luck with your Tuesday confluence!

Embracing the Contradictions

In November of 2020, right around the US election, Master Li Junfeng, with whom I studied Sheng Zhen (a practice related to Qigong) while in Austin, offered an online meditation workshop for – if I remember right – 17 days in a row.

I signed up, even though it was at 6 am Pacific Time, since Master Li was in China and they were trying to set it for as reasonable as possible a time for people all over the world. And I made every class.

It was a very good decision, despite the fact that getting up to do something at 6 am is not one of my favorite activities. I sailed through all the election nail-biting and even lessened my pandemic anxiety.

I did keep it up for awhile, but since then I haven’t been all that regular with meditation. I’m trying to get back in the habit now. What with the election, the multiple climate-change-caused disasters, and the fact that even with sane people in our government we haven’t even come close to dealing with public health crises – not to mention what all this stress does to my blood pressure – I need to take time to breathe deeply and find my center every day.

I do Tai Chi daily, but I need the meditation as well.

I’m a bit eclectic at the kind of meditation I practice. I’ve picked up some Zen Buddhist techniques over the years. Master Li’s approach comes out of Taoism, I think. Some days I just focus on my breath. Other days I watch the Qi or Ki (depending on whether I’m channeling Chinese or Japanese practices) flowing through my body.

Sometimes I recite this verse that I believe I learned from a book by the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn:

Breathing in, I feel my body.
Breathing out, I smile.
Living in the present moment.
This is such a beautiful moment.

And sometimes I try to imagine all the elements of our planet – from the tectonic plates to the oceans to the forests to all the creatures and people – and then go on through the Solar System to the Milky Way to the Universe.

When I do that last version, I remember that I am a part of the universe, and so are all the microbes living inside me as well as everything around me.

I am a tiny speck of the universe and whatever happens or doesn’t happen to me is part of that whole. Continue reading “Embracing the Contradictions”

Monsters and Books

Today I’m dreaming of Jewish monsters. This is the reason: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ranthalix/jewish-monsters-and-magic-trading-cards

I heard about the project because the publisher of The Green Children Help Out is involved in it. There is an increasing number of people who, despite everything that’s going on in the world and all the antisemitism, are enjoying the wild and amazing stories that are part of all the Jewish cultures.

I saw that this weekend at the Virtual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. R Andrea Lobel  was a guest of honour (who has published a story of mine in Other Covenants – sometimes I think the world is a tiny place) and delivered her plenary on Jewish fantasy.

First, she explained something that had me nodding in sad recognition: right now, a lot of Jewish writers are being avoided by publishers, by booksellers, by many people. Jewish writers from all over the world, and Israeli writers regardless of religion or political views. My own income from writing has suffered from this. I’m visible in some places, and in others, it’s as if I never existed… and I’m one of those who have experienced less hate. No book sales, but also no death threats.

Seeing the Jewish monster cards made me smile. Something cool and fun is entering this world despite all the hate. Of course I’ve backed them. I told my friends that they are a combined Chanukah and New Year present for me, myself and I, but the reality is that they are a tool with which I can combat ignorance and hate. I can learn more about Jewish monsters… and also use them to teach writing. I miss teaching, and cards like this would make it enormously fun.

Rabbi Lobel talked about the history of Jewish fantasy (English-language history, for she did not have two hours! The Jewish Fantastic goes back a long, long way.) then she gave examples of some modern writers of Jewish fantasy for the attendees. I think you might be interested in her list. I’ll give it to you as a screenshot.

R A Lobel's list of recent Jewish fantasy writing
Jewish fantastic fiction

The thing is – and this is not a small thing – there are hundreds of works. Not so many in Australia, which is another story, and I am still a bit overwhelmed that I’m on the list along with Jack Dann. This means that 50% of the current Jewish Australian fantasy writers who have published novels and short stories containing Jewish stuff is on this list. I doubt anyone in Australia will even notice. Jewish fantasy writers are not included in Jewish Writers’ festivals in Australia and Jewish writers are currently not very welcome in the literary scene. I notice, however, and it means a great deal. Mostly, it means that I shall not give up on my fiction despite the current problems.

This week’s post is not deep. It’s a small moment of joy in a difficult time.

A Matter of Feet

I recently bought new shoes.

Now this in and of itself isn’t monumental news. I don’t buy shoes all the time, but I do get new ones as needed.

What makes this time different is the kind of shoe, though you might not be able to tell the difference just by looking at them.

Black leather Birkenstocks oxfords with white soles

These are lace-up leather shoes, not precisely sneakers but not precisely oxfords either. They’re made by Birkenstock, a well-known brand, though not one I’ve favored over the years.

Here’s the thing: they have a very firm sole – they are not in any way flexible.

It turns out that I need shoes like this, because I not only have bunions, I have very rigid big toes, which is to say arthritis in the toe. There’s even a medical name for that: hallux rigidus.

And according to my physical therapist, shoes with very flexible soles aggravate that big toe, leading to various kinds of problems. Continue reading “A Matter of Feet”

Mondayitis

Do you ever have a week when you’ve got more to do than you’ll ever fit in and there’s not a lot of time and it’s all the best work, then fun stuff but you don’t feel well and the world world becomes too much so you sit down with a big cup of tea and watch Captain Scarlet? That’s me. Today. I’m not well and I’m busy and it’s all stuff I want to do…

I have until Thursday afternoon to finish the conference presentation. It’s about how I used my ethnohistorical self to devise a perfectly formed lost culture of magic for one of my characters. I get to talk about magic! And history! And my own writing! I’m talking about the cultural contexts of the magic in The Wizardry of Jewish Women. Demons in lemon trees. Home made amulets. That sort of thing. Except that it’s not ‘that sort of thing’ – I created a complex magic system based on the history of magic, specifically, Jewish magic that my character would have inherited. You can trace where her family lived for about 3000 years if you look at the crumbs of magic I left along the path of the novel. I’ve learned a lot more about the history of Jewish magic since then, and could now create more characters with quite different family heritage and give them all equally Jewish magic.

The truth is that I’m not well. I used to simply take time off to get over the illness-hump, because I get them all the time. Right now, though, I’m busy. I’ll be busy until next June. I love being busy, but I’ve not had to handle so much work alongside the illness since pre-COVID. That’s why I’ve been watching Captain Scarlet. I used to learn new ways of dealing with things by taking long walks or by dancing for two hours. I’ve learned that watching certain types of TV gets me that same thinking, the sort that will change my world because it must. What has Captain Scarlet done for me today? I know I shall include a reading in my presentation and that I shall record the reading for Patreon. I shall also give my patrons some of my coolest research photographs this month, which means I don’t have to write the new fiction I have no time for. And I shall write 700 more words tonight and my new book will reach 50,000 words. I have to finish with all the books on my table (about 40) and have them away before I need to use the table for anything but cups of tea, and those 700 words are the first step in this process. They will also free my brain, because I have 3 essays and that paper t write tomorrow.

Another way I deal with illness is by rewards. The days shopping is delivered, I have potential treats, which I cannot open until I have done the essential work. Tomorrow is such a day, and so IO shall write 6,000 words. Captain Scarlet taught me all this, so it must happen… after a cup of tea. One of the difficulties with my illnesses is staying hydrated, so tea comes first, and stretches and the gentle exercise that will get me back the mobility I had until I tried dancing last week.

It will all work, one gentle step at a time. Until I took that time and admitted just how unwell I am this week, I felt as if the world hated me and as if nothing would ever be finished. This is the single biggest reason for admitting things are impossible and for sitting down in front of the television with a big cup of tea. Light watching and big cups of tea help me find the distance I need to handle the otherwise impossible. Wishing life were kinder is not nearly as effective.

The Best Job for the Future

In the modern world there’s an obsession with figuring out what field of study or job path is the “safest” or “best” from the perspective of guaranteeing a young person a good livelihood for life.

I am old enough to still be amused by the way the 1967 movie The Graduate addressed that question: “Plastics.”

Given that we now live in a world overrun with plastic, perhaps it wasn’t far wrong.

For the past couple of decades or so the answer has been something related to digital tech. That one is so strong that about the only argument against it comes from the tech bros themselves –  they claim their so-called AI will make all jobs obsolete. (It won’t.)

But the next big thing isn’t going to be in tech (though some people working in it will use some high end computing). And it’s not going back to plastics and other byproducts of the fossil fuel years.

And I doubt it’s even going back to earlier times when what most people did was grow the food so all could eat, though there are some apocalyptic stories these days that set that up.

No, the next big thing – the one that will give people guaranteed work for their lifetime – is obvious from watching the weather news.

Disasters. Continue reading “The Best Job for the Future”

Meditating on the Writing of Postcards

Like many other people in the United States, I’ve been writing postcards to voters in other states as a way of doing something about the election. I’ll vote, of course, and I’m sending a little money here and there as well.

Given the number of postcards I can reasonably write and the amount of money I can afford to send, not to mention the value of my single vote, all those things only matter if a lot of other people do them as well.

But the stress of “the most important election of our lives” is weighing on me. I don’t call people, because I despise getting such calls and cannot bear to do that to others. Postcards I can do without having to talk to a stranger who doesn’t really want to talk with me.

In general, while I worry a lot and always vote – the last time I skipped an election was a runoff between a dishonest Democrat who was going to win anyway and a well-intentioned good-government Republican whose ideas on how to run a city were disastrous – I am not excited about electoral politics. I prefer to put my energy for change into building something that might grow into better systems. Co-ops, for example.

I came to that after being active in the antiwar movement back in the day when I realized that I preferred making things to protesting them. Not that I haven’t done a lot of protesting as well – it’s kind of like voting: you gotta do it from time to time.

Anyway, I’m trying to do my small part to fend off fascism – and yes, there is a right and wrong side in this election and not just in the presidential race. I don’t think the United States survives as a nation if we don’t stop this latest effort to create an authoritarian state.

And though I can think of reasonable arguments for the dismantling of the United States, it would be hell to live through that period and while I’m old, I’m not so old that I won’t have to.

Also, I’m pretty much in favor of getting a sane base in place and trying to fix the country’s problems from there. See above, where I mentioned I preferred building things to protests.

I mean, we already had a civil war over how the country should be governed. As someone who has read a bit of history, I contend that we wouldn’t be in this mess if we hadn’t abandoned Reconstruction after that nasty war. The Civil War Amendments to the Constitution gave us a way to build the country we ought to be, but we haven’t used them as well as we should. Continue reading “Meditating on the Writing of Postcards”

Do Not Murder In My Name: The Rush to Execution

Today it feels appropriate to repost my essay on my opposition to the death penalty as a family member of a murder victim. This is from 2020.

 

Now, in the waning days of 2020, the criminal in the White House has pushed through a string of murders. I realize I have used inflammatory language, but nothing less conveys the intensity of my outrage and revulsion. Simply put, someone who initiates and demands the ending of a human life is a criminal. The deliberate, calculated, cold-blooded taking of a human life is murder.

 

From the BBC: 

As President Donald Trump’s days in the White House wane, his administration is racing through a string of federal executions.

Five executions are scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden’s 20 January inauguration – breaking with an 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition.

And if all five take place, Mr Trump will be the country’s most prolific execution president in more than a century, overseeing the executions of 13 death row inmates since July of this year.

The five executions began this week, starting with convicted killer 40-year-old Brandon Bernard who was put to death at a penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. The execution of 56-year-old Alfred Bourgeois will take place on the evening of 11 December.

I am the family member of a murder victim, and I speak from personal experience of the impulse to revenge the taking of my mother’s life. I also know that this is a natural expression of grief, and that with healing, it passes. To me it is essential that those left behind be given the support and time to process that loss and to re-engage with their lives. To focus on killing someone else freezes us in retaliation mode.

Over the years, I have spoken out against the death penalty, telling my story to groups as diverse as city councils, law students, death penalty abolition activists, and state legislators. In 2012, I was invited to participate in an international conference put on by Murder Victim Families For Human Rights. Then I met others like me, who had lost a single family member to violence, those whose loved ones had been executed or were on death row, and those who experienced both. Every single person who had experienced both was Black. There is no escaping the racial injustice in the way the death penalty is applied (or the way crimes are investigated and prosecuted). Yet the most moving part of that weekend was listening with an open heart to mothers weeping for their executed sons — and realizing their grief and loss was no less than mine. 

If you, who are reading this, take away nothing else, remember this: every person who is put to death is or has been loved by someone, and is grieved by someone, and missed like an aching hole in the heart by someone.

In 2019, I penned a blog for Death Penalty Focus, called “When we focus on revenge instead of healing, we never heal.” You can read it below.

Continue reading “Do Not Murder In My Name: The Rush to Execution”

More on returning home

Do not return from abroad. Not returning to a messy everyday is now a fixed star in the constellation of my life journeys. Of all my returns, the recent one is physically the most arduous, and also the most difficult to juggle. Yes, my everyday involves the equivalent of juggling while on a high wire with no shoes and no net.

I’ve been home over a week and I’m still juggling. What am I juggling? The theft of my purse (and its ongoing ramifications), the impossible flight home (things went wrong – not too seriously, but I left my flat in Dusseldorf at 10.30 am on Thursday and arrived at my flat in Canberra at 10.30 am on Saturday) and lots of little things that have gone not-quite-right or completely wrong since then. My favourite today was when I needed to speak to my doctor over the phone because they closed down my bus stop while I was away. It’s temporary, but I couldn’t walk to the next stop and still have the capacity to walk at the far end, see the doctor, run messages, and then everything in reverse. If I’d known the bus stop was closed, I would have left much earlier had a halfway chai at my favourite cafe.

Lots of small things add up. The last two weeks were more exhausting than the previous six weeks, which says a lot, given what I spent the previous six weeks doing.

Also, I was not wrong when I posted last week. Western Germany was easier to be openly Jewish than Australia is currently. A major political party supported a pro-Hezbollah rally in Sydney, for example, where Jewish deaths were threatened, but the party claims to not be antisemitic. I already miss talking about politics openly and easily.

My trip to Germany brought together so many things I’ve been thinking about for years. The book is writing itself at the moment. I will reach a stage soon where I will hit the research brick wall, but I have the first set of research materials all ready for when I reach that stage.

This book is on contemporary German views of their own Jewish history prior to 1700 and has become a place where a lot of things I’ve learned over my life come together. When the current Australian Greens metamorphosed into a small case study in the book, I found myself able to handle things a bit less fretfully. I need to understand and I need to help others understand… and I’m very lucky to have the luxury of a few weeks recovery time (because of my health, this time has been budgeted for) where the main thing I do is sort out the messes life produces, rest enough so that my body recovers from it all… and write.