The Omen

First one, then another, and then in twos and threes they came and landed in the trees. Then dozens more until the trees turned black from their numbers. Then scores came and filled the trees 'til the branches bent low under their weight. Then hundreds more arrived, not with precision like starlings but drifting effortlessly like gulls, until it seemed the heavens could hold no more. A great churning sky of birds, each one circling alone as if afraid to know its brothers. And then ... in a moment ... all were gone.

Trump 1 ... Clinton, Johnson, and Stein nothing.

Every workday morning I get up, get dressed, and walk to the bus stop where one of two things happens: I get on the bus and then the train to reach my job in the city, or someone driving to the city picks me up at the bus stop and we use the HOV lane to go in. In common parlance, I'm a slug. Usually, slugging saves me about twenty minutes; but today there was an accident on the highway and traffic was jammed up for miles. Once you're in someone's car, you can't really say, "Hey, can you drop me at the Metro station? Traffic is so bad you're going to be really late." In for a penny, in for a pound.

Anyway, we had to take an alternate route to work today. Waze wound us through the byways of suburbia, and we reached our destination about 30 minutes later than usual. To occupy my time, I decided to run an unscientific poll about the upcoming election. I counted all of the bumper stickers on the backs of peoples cars as a sort of proxy for the voters. The results: 1 bumper sticker on the back of a tradesman's work truck for Trump, no bumper stickers for Clinton, Johnson, or Stein at all! That's really strange. I live in the most liberal county in Maryland which borders on the Nation's Capital; and I looked at hundreds of vehicles on the drive in. How is it possible that I only saw ONE political bumper sticker during that entire hour and thirty minute commute?

I know my survey is meaningless for predicting the outcome of November 8th; but it does say something. I think it says something we all know, but no one wants to talk about: All of our candidates are so hopelessly flawed that, as a whole, we are embarassed to support them in public. We'll all hold our noses and do what we have to do on election day; but none of us are happy about it, none of us want to talk about it, and none of us want to be asked about it either. We all just want it to be over so we can deal with the aftermath as best we can. In all my years - and I've been around quite a few - I've never seen anything like it.

Irony ...

Finding a copy of "the life-changing magic of tidying up" by Marie Kondo in a pile of stuff on your living room floor.