As if things weren't scary enough in Washington right now, many believe that President Lincoln has never left the White House -- that his spirit remains waiting to complete his second term. For years presidents, first ladies, guests, and members of the White House staff claim to have either seen Lincoln or felt his presence. So when is he going to get to it and resume office?
The Rose Room is believed to be one of the most haunted spots in the White House. In it is Andrew Jackson's bed. People have felt his presence and say that "Old Hickory" still lives in his former bedroom.
When Mrs. Woodrow Wilson lived in the White House, she ordered gardeners to dig up the Rose Garden. Dolly Madison had planned and built the garden. As the workmen started to comply with the request of Mrs. Wilson, they saw Dolly Madison standing in front of them and ran away. The Rose Garden has bloomed for nearly two hundred years.
When Abagail Adams moved into the White House, she couldn't decide where to hang the family wash. She finally selected the warmest and driest place in that cold and damp mansion. A clothes line was strung between the walls of the East Room. It is said that to this day the ghost of Abigail Adams is seen hurrying toward the East Room -- with arms out stretched as if carrying a load of laundry.
Of course not one of those alleged White House ghosts is as terrifying as its present, living occupant. And the deeds of that current resident will haunt us for decades.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
The Bet
My parents have a bet with their live-in home health aide. My parents are betting that Barack Obama will win the election for president. Their aide is betting that John McCain will win. It is a two-dollar bet - my father is very careful with money. It's not that Mary--their aide--doesn't want to see Obama as president. She does. It's just that she is from Lithuania and she is accustomed to seeing elections get stolen. "I hope it is not true", she says, in an accent to which I could not possibly do justice, "But I think they will not let him be president". Yesterday, the New York Times had a front page feature about African-American voters in the south strategizing how to cast their votes. Some think that if they vote early, by absentee ballot, that they will have time to fix it if their vote is discounted. Others are counting on going to the polls on Election Day because an early ballot can be lost. Like Mary, they don't believe that this election is going to be fair.
How is it that we can use computers to do banking, buy airline tickets, donate to charity and trace the shpping on our merchandise orders, but we can't use them as a secure voting system? Why can authorities find out who is qualified to serve jury duty or whose driver's license is up for renewal with remarkable accuracy, but a person's right to vote can always be questioned? How is it, that after two presidential elections in which gross electoral fraud was discovered, the system has not been overhauled?
Mary said she hopes she's wrong and I hope she is, too. We need to watch the voting in this election very closely.
How is it that we can use computers to do banking, buy airline tickets, donate to charity and trace the shpping on our merchandise orders, but we can't use them as a secure voting system? Why can authorities find out who is qualified to serve jury duty or whose driver's license is up for renewal with remarkable accuracy, but a person's right to vote can always be questioned? How is it, that after two presidential elections in which gross electoral fraud was discovered, the system has not been overhauled?
Mary said she hopes she's wrong and I hope she is, too. We need to watch the voting in this election very closely.
Election Day Memories
The cattle ranch of my childhood was the polling place for our corner of Yavapai County. Perhaps thirty people came to our house in the Arizona desert each election day. A few days before the election my parents received their polling place supplies -- tiny American flags, sample ballots, actual ballots, sealing wax, the official ballot envelope which would be sealed with the wax when all of the registered voters had come to the ranch and left again to go to their ranches, quill type pens and bottles of ink -- all sorts of magical stuff. In preparation for election day, my mother baked cookies and my father raked the yard.
The election days of my childhood were magnificent. People who never came to our house came on those days for no reason other than the privilege of voting.
John and Frank Goodwin and Florence who was married to one of the two brothers crowded into the front of their pickup. One Armed Joe sometimes spent the entire day visiting with my father. Once he started to leave and my father reminded him that he'd come to vote. Old Mrs. Pickett came with her middle aged son who Mama said had tuberculosis. Oscar and Lillian were all business and never stayed to visit. Lillian always had something or other on the stove at home. Daddy sometimes said that it was probably one of our chickens. Mr. Kenny, who left his home in Kansas at age nineteen years because his doctor had told him he had one year left to live, arrived in his 1921 Dodge truck. I tried to always watch him crank the engine to start it after he had voted. Mr. Kenny lived to be 103 and voted in many elections before his year to live ended.
It wasn't easy for those people to come out of the desert mountains and vote and every election they showed up proud to be a part of the process.
My parents were serious, attentive business during the election days. There was no ballot tampering. Each one of those couple dozen votes was important. Polling place rules and procedures were strictly enforced by my parents.
After the elections, my brother and I got to keep some of the unused supplies -- the flags and the pens and the ink and the unused sealing wax and the sample ballots. For weeks after each election we practiced voting. We knew the sample ballots by heart. We sealed self made election envelopes with the heated wax.
For us on that isolated desert ranch, an election day was an event not to be missed. Those desert dwellers believed with all their hearts that their votes mattered. And they were never undecided.
The election days of my childhood were magnificent. People who never came to our house came on those days for no reason other than the privilege of voting.
John and Frank Goodwin and Florence who was married to one of the two brothers crowded into the front of their pickup. One Armed Joe sometimes spent the entire day visiting with my father. Once he started to leave and my father reminded him that he'd come to vote. Old Mrs. Pickett came with her middle aged son who Mama said had tuberculosis. Oscar and Lillian were all business and never stayed to visit. Lillian always had something or other on the stove at home. Daddy sometimes said that it was probably one of our chickens. Mr. Kenny, who left his home in Kansas at age nineteen years because his doctor had told him he had one year left to live, arrived in his 1921 Dodge truck. I tried to always watch him crank the engine to start it after he had voted. Mr. Kenny lived to be 103 and voted in many elections before his year to live ended.
It wasn't easy for those people to come out of the desert mountains and vote and every election they showed up proud to be a part of the process.
My parents were serious, attentive business during the election days. There was no ballot tampering. Each one of those couple dozen votes was important. Polling place rules and procedures were strictly enforced by my parents.
After the elections, my brother and I got to keep some of the unused supplies -- the flags and the pens and the ink and the unused sealing wax and the sample ballots. For weeks after each election we practiced voting. We knew the sample ballots by heart. We sealed self made election envelopes with the heated wax.
For us on that isolated desert ranch, an election day was an event not to be missed. Those desert dwellers believed with all their hearts that their votes mattered. And they were never undecided.
Don't Blame Me
I had one of those dreams the other night that woke me up. My middle son, age 20, was a middle-aged man.
If that wasn't scary enough, he was blaming ME for not encouraging him enough to register and vote in what would have been his first presidential election. He was scolding me that he didn't vote in the most important election of the century!
It took me a few minutes to find reality.
It wasn't the easiest feat to get him to register. He knew that California was solid blue so he thought he could sit this one out. He also believed not registering would keep him out of the thing he dreaded most which was he confessed, the jury pool.
After a gentle yet unrelenting family discussion, which included his older brother who voted early, my apolitical son acquiesced and registered as an independent. With his commitment to being a participant in the political process so new, I think we'll make a date to go on Tuesday together.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Then And Now
Between my two older sisters my mother had a boy. He weighed two pounds, a few ounces and lived for two days. That was over 50 years ago. "They just didn't save babies that small back then,"my parents would often say. They were told to go home and try again. No discussion, no good-by. Unfinished business.
As I listened to a young man talk about his preemie daughter last night I thought about the baby my mother named so long ago and the grief she periodically expressed throughout her life.
The tired young parent drew me back in with his pride. "She weighed just two pounds." He spoke like it was years ago and then with tears in his eyes added, "She's almost ten months and ten pounds. It's like a miracle."
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