The VOTESTALKERS!

The "Official" Election Day is Tuesday, June 2nd, but there's "Early Voting" at the North Miami Public Library this week. Things were getting serious. A couple of days ago somebody stole the Frank Wolland for Mayor yard sign from my lawn. Frank replaced it. Tonight the thief stole ALL the signs from my yard. I drove around the neighborhood and sure enough, the thief must have found a market for used campaign signs. Everybody's yard was devoid of campaign signs, regardless of candidate.

The rain poured down all day, really POURED, but Michelle Garcia, Frank Wolland, and Bonnie Schwartzbaum, and their supporters (as well as their opponents) were out there in front of the polls holding campaign signs, waving at the people driving by, and speaking with everybody they could, while trying to maintain a remnant of dryness beneath their umbrellas. Mostly they just got soaked. I wasn't there more than about fifteen minutes, used my umbrella, took some photos, and I got soaked. Monkette refused to even get out of the truck!

They were STALKING VOTERS! That reminded me of the motion picture my friend Bob Morgan had made a few years back. The cover is perhaps a bit too graphic for an election, but it is an eye grabber!

Nobody is going to get their heart cut out of their still living body for voting for the wrong candidate. Honest! Regardless of any rumors you might have heard to the contrary. Save that kind of thing for the movies.

Recently my old friend Robert Morgan has gotten back in touch with me after a too many years hiatus. He told me that he has the script written for BLOODSTALKERS II and like the first film it will be filmed in the Everglades. Most likely it will be headquartered here in North Miami. He wants me to do the stills and I'll probably have a small part in the film. Look at the hair style on the guy in the picture! A younger face with less grey hair, but pretty much the same shaggy mop that I'm sporting these days. Without a doubt a movie star hair style.

Monkette is all excited. She told me that being a movie star should make me very popular with the ladies. Last week she told me that I should be very popular with the ladies already, based on some demographic research that she was doing in preperation for the election. She told me that according to the latest government statistics I'm one of the three North Miami residents who are unmarried straight male registered Democrats not living in nursing homes.

Early Voting, The Interminable Wait

I haven't missed an election since I was old enough to vote. Even before that, as a toddler, I remember walking with my grandmother to vote at the Betsy B. Wislow grammar school four or five blocks away from the house. After she voted we stopped at Browne's Pharmacy and she bought us ice cream cones, chocolate for me and coffee for her. Was it the ice cream that kept the event ingrained in my memory? No, it was probably the continuous lecture that I was receiving on the importance of voting, how lucky we were in this country for having the right to vote, how our family had come from a country where people didn't get to vote for their leaders, and how my daddy was overseas fighting a war to preserve our right to vote....and on and on and on. It really meant something to her.

In the past few years "early voting" has been introduced. Around here most of the usual polling places are closed for early voting, but for two weeks before the election you can go to the open ones and vote. This week it's mornings, next week afternoons. Then on Election Day all the neighborhood polls will be open all day long. I vote at the Congregational Church two blocks away.

I'd heard that the line at the North Miami Public Library was around-the-block long, that the wait would be at least two hours in line. Yesterday at times it was four hours, and we've been having scattered light showers to boot. Some people brought lawn chairs, some brought umbrellas, and there were a lot of thermos bottles and bags of snacks in sight also.

The city has several charter amendments on the ballot in addition to the usual stuff. It's a l-o-n-g ballot so voting goes slow. Under normal conditions that would have dissuaded many voters from coming. North Miami's population is about 60% black, mostly Haitian, plus a fair amount of Hispanics, mostly from Central America. Most of the were grateful to be here but still thought of themselves as Haitians or whatever. There was no big rush to become U.S. citizens. Mostly they didn't vote.

When it became pretty obvious that Obama was going to be on the ballot that changed things. That around-the-block line had three or four white faces at most and everyone was talking Haitian Kreyole to one another. Block after block of houses have Obama signs in their yards. That includes the more upscale neighborhoods by the bay which are mostly all white. I wandered around in the drizzle for awhile getting some black and white photos of the crowd, library in the backround, flags fluttering from the flag poles in front. At this rate everybody who wanted to vote will have voted by election day, but I'll come back next week, vote if it looks reasonably possible, and run some color film through my Leica M2. It's set up with a 21mm lens.

I shot this photo a few years ago, but it's a good depiction of the way I felt wnen I saw those long lines. Most likely I'll soon be replacing it with a photograph from this election cycle.

...AND A BIG THANKS TO JON SINISH

Yup! This blog account was so screwed up I couldn't figure out which side was up. Fortunately I've got some great friends, some new and some going back many years. Jon and I were trying to figure out just how many years, it's been when he was in Miami a few months ago. We think that it was 1967 or 1968. What I need to do is get those boxes of negatives and contact sheets down off the shelves and spend a few hours squinting at the contacts through a magnifying glass, looking through my pix at the annual Wilson Hicks Photojournalism Conferences at the University of Miami, or from my summertime trips to visit my dad in Massachusettes and I'd stop off to visit Jon in Connecticut for a few days on the way.

Anyway, he's the computer/internet genius these days, and we spent a few hours the other night and again this evening, and now I'm back! I don't have a clue as to what or why we did what we did, but he stayed on the phone with me and walked me through it step by step.

For all of you who thought this might be health related it's not. Only the blog was sick. I'm in great shape. Monkey is sitting in his little chair in the bedroom gazing out the window while Monkette is in the truck, and I have no idea what she's doing out there. Watching the rain perhaps? They also are in great health.

Other news: I have about a dozen prints in a group show at the North Miami Public Library on N.E. 8th Ave. between 132nd and 133rd Streets. They have a dedicated room for art exhibits. The opening party was last night and the show runs through the end of October. I got an email a couple of days ago from a woman in Tampa who's putting together an audio visual presentation on Indians for a Boston based company. She'd googled Seminole Indian and came up with my name and several pictures from 1974 on the web. I have to get in the darkroom and make up some prints for her. I located the negatives this morning. It pays to have a good filing system and never ever throw anything out.

Again, thanks for hangin' in there for the last few weeks. I'm back! It might be slow going at first and I've got to get better at scanning if photos will be a regular feature again, and they will be! Congratulatory emails are flooding my mail box:

The oddest thig was that for the past year or two Yahoo! rated this blog about number 72 for traffic out of all the blogs on the internet, and suddenly it's moved up to number 65. I don't expect to get to number one. This isn't an all consuming passion. I want to have a life! But I take pride in turning out a good product.