Democracy in....Action?

Last Tuesday I dropped by my local middle school to cats my ballot. The school is right around the corner, so i figured the process wouldn't take long. Wrong! I opened the door - CHAOS. Lines of voters snake around the tables in crazy zigzag patterns, intersecting and looping around like a knot that can't be untied.

So I wait, and wait, and wait some more...2 1/2 hours in total. The bottleneck is right in front of the voting booths, where the three election volunteers have to manually look up every person's name before they can vote.

The voting itself is pretty low-tech - just a little cubicle to shield your ballot from prying eyes. The form itself is very SATs; fill in the bubble. No stray marks! I vote for who you expect me to vote for and submit it, the end.

Now the election is over,  a few observations:

- it seems pretty obvious that the old GOP coalition can't carry an election anymore. Not because they've moderated; it's just that their constituencies are aging and therefor dying off.

- On the GOP truly becoming the party of 'Greedy Old People', I do find it funny that the group which was strongest for Romney (the elderly) is also by far the biggest recipient of government aid.

- In the near future (unless we enter a second Era of Good Feeling) we're going to see a rift in one of the major parties. I couldn't say what the exact cause will be, but my bet it will be immigration.

Sandy Days, Wintry Nights

Just as the power went off in Manhattan, my blog decided to come back to life. Sure, we're a few days out, but I've been busy getting back to normalcy.

Sunday: The subway shuts down at 7pm. People scramble to make last minute arrangements. The supermarket is packed; they've sold out of bread and the lines stretch deep into the aisles. The supermarket intercom is playing 'It's Rainin' Men', which I find funny, if not in the best of taste. 

Monday: Storm day. Kind of a disappointment for me; in my neighborhood there's not much wind and rain. We never lose power or even the internet.  I end up spending most of the time watching movies with friends (The 39 Steps followed by Brazil).

Tuesday: Time to survey the devastation. Downed tree branches, general debris everywhere. We head to Red Hook but find it curiously normal-looking; the flooding has receded. We head up to Lower Manhattan and find it a ghost town; no power, not even traffic lights. We're supposed to be checking up on elderly residents but find ourselves caught in a catch-22: none of them can let us into their buildings because the buzzers don't work!

Wednesday: Still no subway form Brooklyn to Manhattan. I work from home for a few hours. I make a call out to Westchester and discover that they've lost power almost completely.

Thursday: They've established two bus lines from Brooklyn into the city; one from Atlantic Station and the other from Jay Street. Jay Street is closer so I go there to find a half-mile line waiting for me. The shuttle only goes up Lexington Avenue, so I take it to Grand Central and walk across the island to get to work.  Our office is just over the line, and we still have power. Four blocks south, and nothing is open.

Coming back home I take the bus from Grand Central. The line there is tremendous; I wait about an hour and a half before finally getting on. Driving through a totally dark Manhattan is a strange experience.

Friday:  Same story. It's eerie waiting in a cold, dark, windy corridor, then looking up and seeing a brightly lit Chrysler Building shining back, reminding you that you're in New York and not Soviet Russia.

Saturday: Time to give back. I join a group of volunteers in Canarsie as we hand out information packets to residents of southeastern Brooklyn who suffered most heavily from the storm. Many of them still don't have power, which drives them out into the streets and makes them easier to find. Some of them don't speak English, but my Chinese is good enough to direct them to the number they should call if FEMA is dragging their feet.

Sunday: This time I'm up in Harlem working with kids, doing the arts-and-crafts stuff I was never particularly good at. Some of the kids want to play Connect Four, which I'm much better at (though I try to give them a fighting chance).

Monday: Things more or less back to normal, at least where I am.  Still, there's a lot of work that needs to be done - more volunteering scheduled for Wednesday.

Snow in New York?

Nope, just confetti after the Giants won the Super Bowl.

The Post-College Hunger

Well, this isn't very good:

Hungry Grads are Hit by Recession

When Christy de la Cruz was an undergraduate student at Fordham University, she never thought she would have to worry about paying for food.

"You expect that when you get out of college, you'll get a job that [will] make more than enough to survive," de la Cruz said. "But the real wake-up call comes when you find out that it's not enough."

De la Cruz is not alone. Almost 3 million New Yorkers — 35 percent of New York City residents — had difficulty affording food at some point in 2011, according to the Food Bank For New York City.

I knew the economy was bad, but it's a shock to me that people with college degrees would actually be starving.

Pura Vida

When I lived in Buenos Aires 'Pura Vida' was a juice bar across the street from my apartment - my near-daily relief from the endless supply of meat and starch that constitute so much of the Argentine diet.

Here in Costa Rica, 'pura vida' is the national saying. While its literal meaning is 'pure life' it's generally used to mean something like 'cool' or 'great':

Como estas?

Pura vida, por dicha.

But Pura Vida is much more than just a phrase...it's a way of life. To live la pura vida is to really and truly live, to be healthy and happy.

Well, I'm leaving Costa Rica in a few hours. Pura vida!