Done for now

We had our last League event on Friday, with a voter information table in the lobby of the hospital.  Our final tally for the season is contact with 2,300 potential voters.  We reported one case of voter intimidation, and one case of a problem with access to the early voting site, but otherwise, things are going smoothly.  

The voter intimidation issue was really disturbing.  A member of the Town Council in Hartwick (where we used to live) posted on his personal FaceBook page that people should take pictures of any lawns with Harris Walz signs and post the addresses so that “we’ll know who to thank if Trump loses.”  This guy, LoRusso, is a scary study in the worst of MAGA.  He’s wealthy, for this area.  He restored a beautiful old stone building right in the center of Hartwick – so thanks for that.  He also restored a church at that central intersection and turned it over to a group of home schoolers who don’t want their kids to have to learn about evolution.  He bought the old bank, also on Main Street, and turned it into a gun store – clearly what the town, which doesn’t have a grocery store, needed.  He’s made the Town Council meetings so toxic that the lawyer, whose family has represented the town for fifty years, resigned in disgust.  The Town supervisor is moving away, also in frustration and disgust.  

I’ve just started serving as the League Observer for the Hartwick Town Council meetings. At the first meeting I attended earlier this month, a half a dozen residents used the public comment period to call for LoRusso’s resignation over the voter intimidation issue.  Their speeches were powerful – talking about how people with different opinions had always lived together peacefully in Hartwick, about respect for differences, about the core value of neighborliness, about how much they loved the town and wanted it to be a safe and peaceful place.  LoRusso was interviewed later and dismissed their concerns.  He said the Town had more important issues to deal with.  But I disagree.  I think few things are more important right now than this social cancer.  In our peaceful little world it’s still the exception.  But I think about how emboldened this destructive creep will be if Trump wins, LoRusso and all his hateful kinsmen.  It’s a challenge to figure out how to deal with this, and how to not let it hijack my brain.

But a glance out the window restores me.  It has been a stunningly beautiful autumn, with brilliant colors and lots of clear warm days.  The leaves scuttle quietly across Averill Road, and for some mysterious reason they have decided to pile up right on our doormat.  The walk to Moe Pond is spectacular.  The leaves drift down silently through the sunlight as they have ever since there were trees here.  The bumper crop of acorns are hidden by the fallen leaves, but they crunch underfoot with every step.  With most of the leaves down now, I have a view of the horizon to the south that has been hidden all summer.  I can see the sun and moon set on the western horizon, and rise between the trees to the east. The dropping of leaves makes a much bigger difference in our views up here on the main level of the house than it did last fall when we were still living in the lower level.

Every season has its joys.  I can still feel my feet scuffing through leaves on Palmer Avenue on my way to high school in Mamaroneck.  There is the joy of the sound they make, the joy of kicking them up, the joy of jumping in a big pile of them and scattering them.  I don’t do that anymore.  But fall still brings that feeling of joy, that cool air, the smell of apples, the sweetness of pears.  There was so much I loved about living in California, but I missed these seasons.  I missed seeing the last traces of summer disappear, and the feeling of anticipation, of waiting for the first magical snow.

I’d rather keep my focus on anticipating snow, but anticipation of the election keeps creeping in.  I think about decent Germans when Hitler came to power.  I think about the dreadful choices we may have to make.  I think about LoRusso and the corruption of a little town.  

I started this blog when we moved to Hartwick in 2018.  I thought that someday our grandchildren might want to understand why we moved so far away from them, and what our lives were like in this distant place. And now I think that someday our grandchildren might want to know what we did as we saw the rise of MAGA, how we thought about our lives as the ground shifted under us.  Our friend Richard Sternberg has urged me to ditch the League and put all my energy into getting democrats to vote.  I’ve insisted that the non-partisan role of the League is essential to democracy, that we have to stand up for voting, not just for winning. I hope it turns out to have been a good choice.  I hope that when the leaves fall next autumn they will still fall in a free country.