Southern Kind of Life

I started writing up my day as an election judge and then life intervened and I didn’t get it done. But, I had set myself up that I wanted to get it done before doing anything else, so the longer it went, the worse it got. I felt I couldn’t write anything new without finishing my election recap. So, I’m now backing off on that and presenting here an abbreviated version of my election recap so I can get on with life and actually post again.

Election day for me started early. Very early! I woke up at 4:15am and left my house in south Durham before 5:30am so I could be at the NC School of Science & Math by 6am. I’m an “emergency [election] judge” in Durham county, meaning I fill in where other judges cannot during an election, and as an unaffiliated voter, I can serve as a replacement judge for either party. For this election I was filling in for the Republican party judge in precinct 4 who was unable to be here for the election. We had set everything up the night before, so we were pretty good to go and opened the doors right at 6:30am.

We had a line waiting for us as we opened the door and for the next two hours turnout was fairly heavy. We got about 200 votes over those 2 hours.  After that it slowed down quite a bit.  I talked for a while with our other judges and election officials and because I was the judge with the least to do (because my main function was watching over the ballot machine), I ended up processing curbside voters.

The big news of the morning was that our chief judge had talked to someone the night before that had said the Bill Clinton was planning to come by, probably sometime between 5-7pm.  We weren’t really sure if it was the real thing, though. 

We had brought quite a bit of food to snack on and had planned to call up and order lunch from Elmo’s and have my wife bring the order by, since we couldn’t, by law, leave the polling place.  When we went to order lunch, though, neither of the other judges were hungry and the other officials were only working a half day, so I ended up being the only that that ordered lunch.

About 2-ish, we had someone come by and say that the democratic party office had told him Bill Clinton would be arriving at 3:30.  Sure enough, we started seeing Secret Service and State Police outside.  We didn’t want anyone voting to miss the opportunity to see the former president, so we made periodic announcements about his imminent arrival and worked out a schedule so that officials could go outside to see him and we’d still have everything covered.  I managed some provisional ballots while our Chief Judge was out trying to see Clinton and then I went out to try to see him myself.  I managed to get lucky and both shake his hand and get this picture of him.  He looked very tired, not surprisingly.

The main problem, however, with Clinton’s visit was that the police ended up blocking off our handicap parking and curbside voter location.  In fact, I ended up walking down the street to process two curbside voters while Clinton was visiting.  I understand the need for security, but the primary reason we were there that day was to vote, not to see Clinton and I fault his group a bit for that.

Other things that happened that day include running out of under 18 ballots and getting more delivered.  We also processed over 20 provisional ballots! (By contrast, the last election they said they only processed a very few provisional ballots, under 5.)

By the time 7:30 came around, we had started taking things down and closed down the polls right on time since there was no one waiting to vote.  We hooked up the ballot machine to the phone line to transmit the results and may have actually transmitted them twice since it wasn’t clear if it went through the first time. (Note that they aren’t actually counted twice since it is the same data.)  We broke everything down, loaded up and the chief judge and other judge headed off to the BOE for the audit. (Normally only the chief judge goes, but our chief judge has an eye disability where she can’t drive at night so the other judge drove her.) The chief judge was concerned about making it to the BOE in time, but I heard later that she ended up being the first precinct to make it to the BOE for the audit!

So, all in all, it was a very long, but good day.  We had over 60% of the registered voters in the precinct vote, and this is just a primary!  It will be interesting to see what the general election brings.

Also, it looks like there will be a runoff for 2 primaries.  This will entail a runoff primary on June 24.  I will again be working as an election official that day and have been assigned to work precinct 4 again.  However, this time, instead of expecting 800 voters, we’ll basically be expecting 8. So, not only will that be a very long day, but probably a very boring day.  If only the General Assembly had actually taken up the “Instant-Runoff Voting” bill a few years ago.

Anyway, now that the recap is out of the way, I can finally start posting again.  I want to post about the Trips for Kids Triangle group I went biking with this weekend that takes inner city youth out for mountain biking rides and there’s the Ride of Silence I went to tonight.  Also, I’ve been getting ready to head down to Orangeburg, SC this weekend for the National Sport (High Power Rocketry) Launch with the National Association of Rocketry and I’m busy building a couple of high power rockets.  But more on all that later!

I’m still writing up my experience as an election judge on Tuesday. I hope to have that done and up by later today. In the meantime, however, I just got an e-mail today from the National Weather Service about the fact that our current weather patterns are looking suspiciously like the weather patterns 2 years ago before Mother’s day. If you recall, the NWS issued 65 warnings that one day, had nearly 100 reports of severe weather including hail up to 2 inches in diameter, 1 F1 tornado, 3 F0 tornados and straight line wind damage. It wasn’t a really good day weather-wise. So, it seems that our local NWS is trying to learn from the past and is concerned that things are heading that way again. With Mother’s day celebrations and graduation at local universities, this could be problematic. So, they’re trying to get the word out for people to be on the lookout. The presentation they’re sending out is here.

If you’re interested in severe weather, you might want to look into joining Skywarn. Our local skywarn program trains people to recognize severe weather and report it. Why do we need this when we have radar, you might ask? Well, radar signals are well and good, but they travel in straight lines and the earth is curved. So, radar can’t tell you what is actually happening on the ground and that is where skywarn comes in. Skywarn is very valuable to the NWS and can use all the trained spotters it can get.

After working 14 hours as an election judge today I’m now home and utterly exhausted.  I’ll write up my thoughts on the process tomorrow, but until then, here’s a photo of someone who stopped by my precinct (well, outside it) and who’s hand I got to shake.

Full set of pictures here.

After a small mix-up Thursday night where I was late to the election ballot training, I managed to make it on Friday and am now trained as an election “emergency judge”.  Also, I got my assignment.  The republican judge in precinct 4 cannot work the election so I will be filling in for them working at the School of Science & Math.  Everyone please go vote!  It doesn’t matter who you support, just go vote.

It looks like over 7000 people have voted (early) so far (warning: pdf file).

From Valerie over at We Love Durham, tomorrow there is a Voting Exhibit created by Central Park 5th Grade Students and hosted by Kids Voting Durham.

And, finally, the Bull’s Eye lets us know that 17 year olds are allowed to vote in a primary in NC.  Mike Ashe, Durham BOE director made a point of this in our training.  Since a primary is simply picking who you’ll get to vote for and not an actual election, NC lets them vote if they’ll be 18 when the general election rolls around.  So, get out and vote!

An octopus sired by a dwarf, unless it was a snake!

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Tanner Lovelace

I’m starting to recover from the whirlwind week I had last week where I spent around 25 hours total just playing the double bass at the Savoyards rehearsals, shows and even one Durham Symphony concert. This weekend I also went through election official training with Durham BOE Mike Ashe (who is a trip!) and election equipment training. Tomorrow evening I have ballot training and then a 1-on-1 interview with Mr. Ashe, all in preparation for being an election “Emergency Judge” for the primary on May 6. I’ll have more to post on that soon.

Until then, I’ll just leave this one picture that refers to a previous post. A good friend of ours from DC was down this weekend for a show and since she’s a very accomplished balloon artist, she created for us, on basically the spur of the moment, an octupus, a dwarf and a snake so we could take it to the last performance. The official line spoken by the character Colonel Fairfax, in response to the question “what was that”, in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeomen of the Guard is “an arquebus, fired from the wharf, unless I much mistake.” However, it’s easy to mishear it and so that apparently gave rise to the line, that the singer actually had the guts to use in the first rehearsal with the orchestra, “an octopus, sired by a dwarf, unless it was a snake”. So, here is Steve, who played Colonel Fairfax in Yeomen next to the octopus, dwarf and snake.

Two things start today:

1. Early voting starts
2. The Durham Savoyards production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeoman of the Guard starts tonight.

I encourage everyone to avail themselves of both options.

On Saturday I start training to be an election judge and hope to have some interesting posts from that.  Until then, take a look at some pictures that were taken Tuesday night at the first dress rehearsal for Yeoman of the Guard.

This past weekend on Saturday afternoon we had the first orchestra run through of Yeoman of the Guard.  It went pretty well.  Most of us have had the musical scores for a while now and the main problems were making sure we were together and blending well.  Then on Sunday, we had both the orchestra and the chorus together.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable run-through of all the show’s music and definitely the first and only time I’ve ever heard someone sing this post’s subject. (Extra points to anyone that can a) tell what the original quote was and b) where in the score it can be found!) As a musician, I had not really been clued into what was happening with the chorus except for the few queues in the score and what my wife has told me after her stage chorus rehearsals.  So, it was fun to see that part of the story.  I’m really looking forward to Tuesday night where we’ll be all together in the Carolina Theater and I’ll get to see the full show in the first dress rehearsal.

So, for those of you who haven’t heard, the Durham Savoyards will be performing Gilbert & Sullivan’s Yeoman of the Guard at the Carolina Theater on April 17-19 at 8pm and April 20 at 2pm.  Find out more information at the Savoyards website and please come see our show!

Following up on the previous planning meeting for designing the pedestrian bridge over I-40 for the American Tobacco Trail, it looks like there will be a new meeting on April 29 at 7pm in the 1st floor City Council Chambers at City Hall in Durham.  This is to discuss the concepts for the pedestrian bridge over I-40 for American Tobacco Trail - Phase E that will also include paving the ATT all the way to the Chatham county border.

I rode my bike from south Durham up to the first meeting and depending on my schedule I hope to go to this upcoming meeting.  I really want to see this bridge built as I think it will be very good for promoting bicycle and pedestrian travel between downtown and southern Durham.  There were quite a few people at the last meeting and I hope more people come to this one so that we show city leaders that this is an important project.

So, now that our reservoirs are full, Durham has moved from Stage IV water restrictions to Stage III. (ref)  Stage III restrictions state that no person shall “[i]ntroduce water into any decorative fountain, pool or pond except where the water is recycled.”  I wonder if the little fountain we have in our front flower garden, that has been sitting idle for months would qualify as one “where the water is recycled”.  You put water in it and then the water goes up and then it comes down.  Of course, it does then evaporate fairly quickly so it’s probably not a good idea to run it.  Also, the ordinance adds that no person shall “[u]se water for any unnecessary purpose” and a fountain in the front yard, while nice, really isn’t necessary.  So, we’ll probably leave it as is, but I did wonder.

At the Durham Symphony Orchestra rehearsal tonight we had our first guest conductor: Andrew McAfee.  He’s the former principal horn player for the North Carolina Symphony and is now apparently working on his Master’s degree in conducting.  Tonight was his first rehearsal with the Durham Symphony.  Beforehand he had sent out a schedule of what we were going to work on when and by and large he stuck to it.  Since this was our first rehearsal for our upcoming pops concerts, tonight was mainly about site reading the pieces and making notes on what to work on before the next rehearsal next week.  All in all, I think he did a pretty good job and should do very well conducting our upcoming concerts.

Another interesting bit of information that was announced at the DSO rehearsal tonight was that we had apparently received 96 applications (with accompanying DVDs of their work) for the position of DSO conductor!  The search committee has now winnowed that down to 10 and will be looking to reduce it even further down to 4 and invite those top 4 to guest conduct during the next season.  I have no idea who the candidates are but I’m definitely looking forward to seeing who the search committee picks.