A window on our politics?

 Several days back, the Better Half [BH] and I filled out our "Vote by Mail" ballots. At about the time we received them there was notable concern about the USPS timeliness of delivery. The ballot envelopes were addressed to the same county offices where I also go to pay our property taxes, the second half of which are due by the 15th of this month. So, instead of mailing our completed ballots, I brought them with me when I went to pay the taxes today. Bear in mind please that if the BH and I had simply dropped our ballots in the mail, that would have been the end of it. But, since I was hand delivering a ballot of someone other than myself, I had to show my driver's license, fill out my name and address and the name and address of the person on whose behalf I was delivering a ballot, and sign my name. I don't think they require mail carriers to go through the same routine. Seems misguided to me.

As regular readers (all six or seven or so of them) know, I'm only too willing to take a swipe at government when I believe it's warranted (e.g., see above). I'm also only too willing to offer praise where it appears to be due, no matter how rare the occasion. Today is one of those times.

The Sierra Club national magazine, SIERRA, has a positive story about the University of Minnesota's Morris campus. I've been to UMN Morris a number of times over the years and never knew, until today, that

Now, UMN Morris is a Native American–serving Nontribal Institution, a designation given to colleges that have more than 10 percent Native students. With the tuition waiver program still in place, nearly one-quarter of Morris students are Native American, far above the national average. 

Since most news seems to be increasingly of the negative variety, reading the story in a national magazine prompted me to wonder how many other good to great things I don't know about my adopted state and its institutions because good news isn't often enough considered to be news. I admit that life seems more pleasant and rewarding when I don't have to pay attention to government because, like Apple computer in the old days "it just works." That no longer seems to be true about much of anything, anyplace. But, after what I read today, I'm more willing to cut the UMN some slack, and maybe even give it the benefit of a doubt, which is more than I can say about the Minnesota legislature and Secretary of State's office and their procedures for managing absentee ballots.

a window on our politics?

Photo by J. Harrington

Wouldn't it be nice to see, every election time, score cards on politicians, political parties, and how well they've done fulfilling the promises they made at the last election. There are these already available:

• League of Conservation Voters
• FreedomWorks (liberals might want to use a reverse scoring system)
• BallotPedia

There are probably others but shouldn't it be easier to find information about what our government officials actually stand for by seeing their records? We were dismayed recently to discover that our local school district has a number of board members up for election and there's no single place where their promises or proposed positions are readily available. If sunshine is the best disinfectant, we desperately need to take down the curtains and increase the transparency of our windows on government and corporate decision making.

On the Fifth Day

Jane Hirshfield - 1953-

On the fifth day
the scientists who studied the rivers
were forbidden to speak
or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air
were told not to speak of the air,
and the ones who worked for the farmers
were silenced,
and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,
began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak
and were taken away.
The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent. 

Now it was only the rivers
that spoke of the rivers,
and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees
continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence,
and the rivers kept speaking 
of rivers, of boulders and air.

Bound to gravity, earless and tongueless,
the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,
code writers, machinists, accountants,
lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day,
of silence.

—2017

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