Distaff productivitytangential
November 8, 2006
Yesterday, Court served as a judge. Specifically, a check-in judge in precinct 0705 of Montgomery County. Not a lick of work done, of course. For my pains, $145 to be paid on December 15, a bonus point with a client, and a clear conscience.
The alarm went off at 4:15. I left the house at 5:50. The drive down Grubb and up Beach took, of course, barely 5 minutes. I got home about 10 o'clock that night. A long day? Perhaps. An engaging one.
Very nearly a 65 percent turnout. One face to face with Paul Wolfowitz and another with Charles Krauthammer. In the line of duty, I asked and confirmed their street addresses and birthdays, but mercifully —in the name of efficient use of valuable cranial real estate— remember neither for neither.
Krauthammer cannot sign his name. He could sort of hold his voter card and voter action slip on his leg with his forearm, but it was tricky. He's a pleasant looking man, with a kind way about him. Also gracious. As he began to spell his name aloud, I cut in saying simply, "ah yes. I read." He smiled faintly for a millisecond. "Thank you."
The sole technical snafu of the day was the voting machine that broke down early. A card got stuck and could not be extricated. The voter got a new card, and all the gruesome details to record the troublesome one and the second issue to the same voter was recorded on paper in several places.
The memorable troubles came from several individuals in different circumstances. One insisted on a paper ballot because he didn't trust the machines. Apparently he's done this for the last three or four elections. Each time, he finally goes to the voting machine and votes electronically rather than not voting.
An obnoxious fellow in all senses of the word. Another —a medical doctor, I recall his tie was sage green and his manner affable— insisted that his cell phone was off as he voted, saying only his pager was ringing, and was exquisitely rude and loud and belligerent to the chief judge who came over and addressed him on the issue, though he finally turned it off.
One brought his son and his son a camcorder (a white finish, to recall an irrelevant detail), insisting that the polls were a public place and that one could film anything one liked. A vehement series of exchanges, lasting quite a while but seeming to end --it was a mob scene and I had to focus on what I was there to do-- with amazing friendliness and laughs and handshaking and references to the next election.
Most rewarding ... the sense of vitality and the decidedly high number of very young and very old voters.
One couple —I can see them now— were so like the essence of my parents I was almost dumbfounded. He was the same year as Captain, she two years after Mimi. 1915 and 1918. They tottered off, white-haired and smiling, ready to wait as long as necessary, leaning on something, to vote. I got a glimpse of them later, he standing off to one side of a voting booth as she cast her ballot. I was poised to defy anyone to ask him to move. No one did ask.
All that came close to that was the number of 18-year-olds.
It was a good day.