Racial Hatred or Friends And Neighbors? Have It Your Way!

Racial hatred or friends and neighbors? Have it your way. The supporters of Marcellus were not only going around handing out their campaign literature at the polls but they were grabbing stacks of Michelle Garcia's campaign literature out of her hands and the hands of her supporters.

Michelle might have blonde hair and look a bit like a white girl, true, but she is white! That didn't seem to upset her friends and neighbors, who not only came over to the North Miami Public Library for early voting but dressed up for the occasion as well.

I love to see people taking their children to the polls, teaching them about the way democracy works. You vote for the one who is most qualified and who shares your ideals about how the city should be run. Here in North Miami racial hatred should not be enshrined as an ideal. It shouldn't be enshrined as an ideal anywhere.

Supporters Of Frank Wolland For Mayor Chatting With One Another

Outside the polls you saw a lot of people of diverse religions and ethnic groups, everything from Hassidic Jews to Haitian Americans, having friendly conversations about everything from the candidates they supported to what their kids were up to these days. Everything was peaceful until...

Getting A Ride To The Polls

When Monkette saw Bonnie's dog wearing one of Bonnie's campaign T-shirts she threw a major fit! Jealous rage! She doesn't understand why none of the candidates thought about getting some tiny shirts printed. I pointed out that the shirt was really an ill fit on the dog, but she said that at least the dog HAS one. We managed to placate her somewhat by letting her go dogback riding. Then she got to go to the polls with me while the poor dog had to go back home.

The Times Have Changed !!!!!!!!!!!!!! BIG TIME

It was a bit of a problem buying a Miami Herald this morning, at least the English language version. There were still lots of copies of El Herald for sale at the various 7-11 type stores that I went to. Finally I just went straight to Starbucks in hopes of finding some already read papers in the basket. Instead I just bought a new one, and thought about the fact that they don't even sell El Herald. They also carry the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Different demographics, I guess. VERY different.

As I drank my coffee I started thinking about the very different outlooks of the various ethnic groups around North Miami. Sure, we all live on the same blocks in very similar houses, but the Haitian community got energized by Obama's campaign. The Jamaicans and native born blacks added to the lines of voters. People hurried, as best they could, to get their United States citizenship, then they stood in lines at the polls for hours on end in the hot sun and in the pouring rain for the opportunity to vote. The one thing that I didn't see, at least here in North Miami, was any significant Hispanic presence in those lines, all the more a puzzlement because there were plenty of local races on that ballot with Hispanic names.

Thankfully the ammendments to the North Miami City Charter were defeated. They would have favored the incumbants with no benefits to the citizens.

I'd also like to congratulate a young attorney, Yvonne Colodny, on getting elected judge. Back in the early 1970's her dad, Mike Colodny, a young attorney at the time, was on the city council and later served as mayor, perhaps the best mayor we ever had.

On another note, my new computer is on the way and I won't have to be pecking away at this keyboard here at the North Miami Chamber of Commerce office every day. Hell, that means I can once more forgo shaving every morning, wearing unwrinkled shirts, making sure that I pick out a pair of jeans without holes....I can go back to looking like a bum again. HOORAY!

Monkette Ain't Sayin'

Monkette has been acting so strange the last few days. For awhile she seemed just absolutely thrilled that at long last there was a FEMALE candidate on the ballot, and best of all, acording to Monkette, Sarah Palin had a head stuffed with cotton just like her.

Early on in the campaign Monkette had tried to get involved with the national McCain/Palin organization, citing her experience in running the very succesful re-election campaign that she'd staged for North Miami Mayor Kevin Burns. Monkey kept reminding that we were Democrats while McCain and Palin we Republicans. After consulting with a bunch of our friends locally as well as in New York, Washington, DC, and the Boston/Cambridge area, we all persuaded her that with such a high powered brain trust at her beck and call perhaps it would be wise to just follow our advice and sit this one out. Stick with local politics until the next election cycle. The clincher though? Munchies at a Republican campaign party would mean organic bananas. More money and she and all her friends say that they have no flavor.

Now she's telling me to get off the computer. Time to go shoot some pictures of her visiting the polls! No shots of her voting though. She mailed in her absentee ballot days ago, and didn't give a clue as to who she voted for.

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.

No Photo (yet) No Audio

Janis is extremely shy. She's also about as close to stone deaf as you can get, and has been since early childhood. I first "met" her about 1980. She lives less than a block away. She wears a huge hearing aid but mostly reads lips. Even the hearing aid doesn't help much. For the past few years I'd see her on Wednesday nights at Starbucks where an informal Deaf Club meets. One of the guys, Don Meredith, is my age. He makes little tops and he can do amazing tricks with them, like getting it spinning on the back of his hand and making it run up his arm, or suddenly jerking his hand out from under it, flipping his hand over and catching it, still spinning, in the palm of his hand. For a few bucks he'll sell one to you and try to teach you how to do the tricks. Few succeed. I need to get some photos of him with his tops. With that 15mm lens I could get a big hand close to the camera with the spinning top, Don and some other folks in the background.

A few months ago Janis unexpectedly became a widow at 55. One day she knocked on my door asking if I was going to the market. Since then she calls a few times every afternoon and evening. It's after 11 PM now and I just got off the phone with her. We went shopping at Publix earlier, then stopped at McDonalds because they have fifty-nine cent hamburgers on Wednesdays. She loves them! At Publix all she bought was some peanut butter that was on sale. That's normal with her. She never seems to do much shopping at a time. We took the McDonalds burgers to Starbucks and ate them with our coffee. She seems to use food shopping as an excuse the get out of the house, but Don says that it's really an excuse to spend time with me, that she has a thing for me. As we sat around with Don, Don's wife Mary, and a few other deaf people signing one another, I finally managed to shoot a few photographs with the 21mm lens that included Janis, without her noticing. I should be adding a photo to this blog posting in the near future.

I also found out that a lot of tonight's sign language conversation consisted mostly of Don and Mary trying to convince Janis that I would make a good catch. She didn't tell me that, Don did. Things might be getting interesting around here.

* * * DON'T FORGET TO VOTE! I'M GOING TO THE POLLS TOMORROW MORNING FOR EARLY VOTING.* * *