City Views, Country Dreams

Good afternoon from New York.

I would like to share some photographs I took yesterday morning.

My polling place is located in an elementary school that is just a short walk around the corner. 

I waited until about 11 a.m. to vote, in order to avoid the crowds that would have been queueing up before going to work earlier in the day.

Note that another attraction was the bake sale, held to raise funds for the school.

There was still quite a long queue waiting to vote, since this polling place is shared by three Election Districts.  Everything was well organized.

When you reach the front of the queue, you check in with the Poll Worker, and sign the log book that bears an image of your original voter registration at that location.

You are then given a long ballot sheet enclosed in a folder, and make your way to a little desk where with a provided pen, you mark your choices.  Then you join another queue and feed your paper ballot into a voting machine that scans your ballot.  Then you have voted!

As I made my way out of the Polling Place room, I saw that plenty of folks were still in the hallway waiting to vote.

Next on my agenda was the Bake Sale.  There were numerous tables filled with home baked treats.  Little girls "manned" the tables, explaining the pricing, which items contained nuts or gluten and so forth.

I bought pin wheel cookies and chocolate chip filled blondies.

When I left the school and continued on my neighborhood walk, I noticed many other folks wearing stickers like the one I had been given.  We smiled at each other.

Back at home, I made lunch, and painted a few more Christmas tea cup cards and then took a nap.  I woke up in time to fix supper and then began to watch televised election coverage, and also stayed in touch with an election night chat room on The New York Times website.

By 8 p.m., it was clear to me that the polls were very wrong.  Not only with respect to the Presidential race, but also the Senate and House of Representative races.

A NYC friend and I began trading emails just before midnight.  Neither of us were huge fans of Hillary Clinton, but felt that Donald Trump was beyond the pale.

I tried to go to sleep about 12:30, but didn't actually get any sleep until well after 2 a.m.  

Now it is a new day.  In January, our President and the two houses of Congress will be controlled by a single party.  Voters who felt fear and anger have been victorious.  No one can truly guess what will unfold.  Financial markets seem to have recovered their overnight swoon.

I do feel tired, numb and a bit scared, but have also just finished doing my weekly laundry.  It is time to make a tuna sandwich for lunch.

Thank you all for your visits and comments.  It's good to have this place to record these recent memories.