As regular readers know, I avoid politics as a subject. This, however, is a case where civics can cross into politics. In all the noise about mail-in ballots, there seems to be confusion about objections. I’ll start by saying “mail-in” has existed for a very long time, but was traditionally called absentee ballots. That’s because in years past, many people made voting day a priority. Employers were (still are) required to give a certain number of hours off to allow time to get to the polls, vote, and return. There was no early voting then. People who would be absent would apply for their ballot, fill it out and yes – mail it in. Generally, that applied to military and other personnel who knew they would be away on election day. Even older people often had someone take them to the polls to be able to vote. That’s what some of the drives during the Civil Rights Era were – filling buses with people to ensure they could make it to the polls. Population growth, longer commutes which might make it difficult to get to the polls in time, and those who didn’t have access to transportation, etc., began to use absentee/mail-in at a greater rate. Early voting came into play to try and accommodate some of these situations.

There have always been issues with ensuring absentee ballots are properly accounted for and counted. Some errors are human carelessness, some will full mistakes, some delivery errors, and fraud. The concerns with increasing mail-in to large scale is proportionately increasing errors and fraud. Example of a will full mistake is throwing away ballots rather than delivering them. Example of fraud is filling out another person’s ballot, influencing them to fill it out in a way they might not otherwise do, or knowingly having an ineligible person fill out a ballot.

Absentee/mail-in is and always will be a legitimate form of voting. Greatly expanding it comes with risk.

As with other things that don’t slow down because of the pandemic, we’re looking at a Hurricane Watch beginning Sunday. There had been expectations Hurricane Isaias would weaken in crossing the mountains of Dominican Republic, but it didn’t go in that far. We’ll keep an eye on things of course with the hope of an eastward track to go out into the Atlantic. As I have said on many occasions, there is plenty of empty space for hurricanes to swirl around all they wish and interfere only with shipping and air traffic. Florida Power and Light (FPL) does year-round trimming and scheduled pole and line replacement to “strengthen” against storms. They have been systematically replacing wooden poles with taller concrete ones which are more resilient and the added height helps raise the lines to prevent falling limbs and trees from tearing them down.

Even though we do have the whole-house generator (despite all the hassle we endured), our development does not normally lose power because the utilities are underground. That of course isn’t a safeguard if there is flooding. At any rate, tomorrow is likely to provide clarity of the situation. Direction and speed can change with little warning which is what makes it difficult to know how much to prepare. Too much and people feel it was a “wasted” effort. Too little and there are obvious problems. We both happened to fill our vehicles this week which takes care of that task. It is the reality of living here, and as one friend said Thursday, at least with hurricanes, you do have some warning. They were previously in tornado-prone country. So, in the literal rather than figurative sense, we really will see what tomorrow brings.

I meant to finish this yesterday and was interrupted. As I’ve mentioned before, my father was a forester for about sixty years although he did finally quit tromping around the woods so much in his early 80s. Anyway, he was once called upon to be an expert witness in a civil suit. The issue was a tree that was cut down, fell the wrong way and damaged the house in question. I don’t recall the particulars because they aren’t important. He recounted there were actually three experts who testified about the situation. What surprised him was each of them provided a different analysis and that left the jury with the task of trying to decide which, if any of them, they believed. This is not uncommon.

There are multiple problems with experts. The first is credentials. As I may also have previously posted, I am by no means a scientist, but my sister and brother-in-law both are. In the years of being around them and listening to different things, I learned how narrow some science focuses can be. When my sister was considering seeking a new position, she was well credentialed in her field, to include having received national and some international recognition. In her particular field though, there were only a few positions open in the entire that were an actual match. All scientists have common understanding of certain things, then branch out to where they have little, if any understanding, in other areas. We’re all more familiar of course with this in medical practice. The GP is only the first stop if something specialized is the problem.

Speaking of problems; human nature, particularly if someone is an “expert”, is to be reluctant to admit one doesn’t have the answer, or worse, if one has made a mistake and must openly acknowledge that. And so, we come back to what to do when two equally credentialed experts provide assessments/recommendations that are the opposite of each other. If no hard data can support one position or the other, we choose whom to believe based on multiple factors; one of which is likely to be one’s personal view, which in turn may be driven by emotion. It does make decisions difficult.

Strong emotional content alert. I’ve written about loss and dealing with grief on other occasions and probably even the intense aspect of loss with no warning. This, then, may be a post to skip. Irony will “out” at times because with so much attention on COVID-19, the fact that “Death waits for no man” in the normal range still applies. One week ago yesterday, I picked up a friend at 5:00 a.m. to take her to one of the strings of “prep” appointments one has prior to a scheduled out-patient surgical procedure. She was in great spirits and her son was to pick her up later. I sent a text the next afternoon to check on her. She was fine; had slept on and off most of the day, but was ready for the CT scan scheduled for Friday. If she was finished in time and not too tired, she would join our small group for Happy Hour. When she didn’t show for that, we assumed she was either running late or tired. I meant to text/email on Saturday, but the day got away from me. Her not reaching out first was a little unusual; not enough to raise concern. At 10:30 Saturday night the call came from the other friend who’d been at Happy Hour. When she received the news and called me, no one knew quite what had happened, but our friend had passed away. The shock set all of us back and it took a while to get the correct version. For reasons as yet unknown, she suffered a seizure followed by a heart attack during some part of what was a routine procedure and they were unable to resuscitate her.

Our friend had been to dinner Thursday evening, her usual smiling, pleasant self. As everyone has attempted to come to grips with this, the comment of, “I didn’t know she was ill,” is understandable except she wasn’t, not precisely. The condition she had (can’t recall the exact term) is one that many deal with; that medical technology is such, you go in, have an out-patient procedure, rest up a bit and make sure you do your follow-up with the doc later. Then there are those tragic turns no one anticipates and no one is prepared for. Her service is today and due to the COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings, what would be a full church will instead be a relatively small group at the funeral home although the service will be “live-streamed”.  Watching a loved one/close friend suffer through a lengthy illness is incredibly difficult. Coming to grips with sudden death, especially when it is, “too soon”, carries with it a different level of loss. (She would have been 73 in September)

We Babyboomers who had grandparents we were close to often did not necessarily pay attention to their stories of coping with the Great Depression. In each case for me, what they dealt with was bad, but paternal grandparents had the farm in rural Arkansas and maternal grandparents were in a very small Louisiana town. They, therefore were somewhat shielded from the worst of what people saw with breadlines and utter devastation in places where the Dustbowl hit. Daddy, born in 1924, was a youngster throughout that time and had nothing to compare deprivations to. Since his parents had some livestock, to include chickens, and grew produce for their own consumption, crops for sale were on a relatively small scale. Mother, the youngest of three, was not born until 1930 and so had little memory of the most difficult years. While they did live in town, one of the claims to fame of the local bank was it stayed open, having somehow convinced people (it was in fact named People’s Bank) to not have the kind of “run” that closed so many down. I now wish I’d listened to the story of how that came about.

My point here is if our economy cannot restart until around May, that will be approximately two months of intense closure. Several state are already declaring June for three months. Logically, there will be a ramp-up rather than a “roar back” for another some months until full recovery. This then is why the “old rule” of having six months (preferably a year) worth of living expenses in savings would seem to have been accurate all along.This mantra from many of our grandparents, passed on to their children (our parents) is rooted in what they experienced.

For those who  live paycheck-to-paycheck because of low-paying jobs/high cost of living areas, that has never been doable. For those who chose spending versus savings, once we get through this, the old adage may be something they re-visit.