Day: October 28, 2006

I spent 90 minutes doing my civic duty with the absentee ballot this evening, and I’m not quite done.

While I’m not going to share my votes, I will say that the lingering indecision is on Proposition 87 (the tax on California oil production to spur alternative energy sources) and on the competing (?) flood control bond measures 1E and 84. Also, I still need to make the up/down vote on the various judicial nominees, about whom I know nothing and recognize not a one. At least all the various school board officials, for instance, have a candidate statement in the publicly provided documents. I suppose the judiciary is supposed to avoid campaigning, but leaving the judges a cypher beyond their name and the position itself isn’t contributing to an informed process. (Update: Found bios of the judicial candidates.)

My recurring disappointment, though, stems from the inability of elected officials to actually represent us in this democracy. Making decisions about several billion dollars in bond measures is not my idea of a rocking Saturday night. Nor do I think the state of California or city of San Francisco are being well served. I don’t feel educated or informed or competent to judge the needs, or the match between the problem(s) and the proposed solution(s). Each individual measure would probably reward further study, but…not going to happen. And I would stake money on my decisions being more considered than most. (Not necessarily right, but more considered.)

I want elected officials to be forced to make the tough decisions about where the state or city spends its money, rather than foist the unpopular task of spending money (and having a vote on your record as “for taxes,” for example) back onto the voters. Maybe I’m too optimistic, but they are paid to discuss, debate, and otherwise evaluate these matters.

Oh well. I am grateful for absentee ballot availability, even for those (like me) who will not be absent on voting day. Even if I knew my votes going in, this process would take a minimum of 10 minutes at the polls. If you want into the booth undecided…oh boy. Voting lines must be brutal! I’m glad I haven’t seen them in years.

Remember…you really have no right to complain if you don’t vote. I’m voting, so I can complain about the process and the outcome. Please vote.

On Monday morning, I had finished my previous book and was “stranded” on the plane without anything else to read, I raided the boy’s backpack for one of his new birthday gifts: The Twenty-One Balloons.

What a fun tale. Written in 1947 by William Pène du Bois, Twenty-One Balloons won a Newberry Medal the following year for “Excellence In Children’s Literature.” (The boy is six now, so I wasn’t going to pull Dickens or even Clancy from his backpack.) I never came across this one in any of my other reading: child, youth, or adult.

The matter-of-fact style for a work of fiction, the effort to ground its few “sparkling” (you’re groaning if you know the story or read the links above) central fictions in the real world… all are appreciated. The illustrations, from the author, are not special, but fit the earnest, interested tone throughout. This is only an hour or two of your reading life, and it would be well spent.

Earlier in the weekend, I flew through the other additions to the boy’s library. My excuses were that I wanted to be ready to answer questions about what he was reading, to make sure he wasn’t headed down some inconvenient paths a bit early, and to gauge his reading skills. But those are just excuses!

Both The Fantastic Mr. Fox and James and the Giant Peach are from Roald Dahl, a favorite author for almost his entire range of writings. I don’t know when I read these two as a child, but these are certainly short. In fact, each is much shorter in reality than in memory. I wasn’t as disappointed with a re-read as I was with the first in the Narnia series, but I’ll have to honor my fears about Danny, Champion of the World.

Daniel Silva wrote The Mark of the Assassin in 1998. This book is pretty much your standard terrorist/spy thriller, but not crafted like Robert Ludlum at his best. Reminder: ignore Ludlum’s current re-incarnation (literally, since he’s dead) as a “brand” for new novels. Mark of the Assassin was Silva’s second novel. If you followed that first link, you’ll see that he now has a string of similar novels. Worthy as a paperback airplane read, but not more.