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CobwebbingJuly 18, 2006 As summer swelters go, Martha's Vineyard is not Washington, D.C.; still, it's been hot. Today I didn't ride till 6:30, and then I didn't ride for long. Before that I did chores. The hayloft was a sweatbox. Anything to do with running cold water was good. I decided to vacuum some cobwebs. Cobwebbing is a twice-yearly task. The cobwebs alone aren't all that obvious, but the winds blow this way and the winds blow that way and pretty soon the cobwebs are laced with shavings, hay, dead insects, and other small particles; they dip and droop and generally threaten to turn into Spanish moss. We didn't get the spring war on cobwebs going till this past weekend, because the heavy-duty indoor/outdoor vac was in the boat barn and the extension cord was acting up. Once Uhura Mazda transported the vac (guarded by Rhodry) and Ginny figured out that the extension cord worked if you only plugged the vac halfway in, I 'webbed the main aisle in an hour or so. It looked pretty good. Four stalls plus the tackroom and the grainroom to go. I decided to start with Dolci's stall because Ginny trailered her up to Tufts today for a follow-up check on her ulcer, and didn't she deserve a spiffed-up stall after a several-hour trek to and from and much poking, prodding, and blood-testing in between? On a hot day like this? Well, Dolci, like her stablemates, likes her stall best when there's food in it. The rest of the time she'd rather be outside. Nevertheless, I started with Dolci's stall. Cobwebbing is good work to be doing on a hot summer afternoon because once you've marshalled your equipment, you mostly stand in one place and wave your arms around. It's a good job for when you've got something to think about. I should have been thinking about the review I started writing this morning, but that's going well, it's not due until Monday, and I'd already pondered it considerably while driving to the post office, the bank, Reliable Market, and the beer store. What I pondered instead was a quirky story I printed off the New York Times website yesterday: "Arizona Ballot Could Become Lottery Ticket." The gist is that one Mark Osterloh, identified in the story as "a political gadfly," has managed to get an initiative on Arizona's November ballot that, if passed, would turn each ballot cast in a general election into a lottery ticket. The big prize: one million bucks. Well, plenty of people hate the idea. They call it bribery; they think it represents the erosion of democracy. Some, like the editorial writer for the Yuma Sun, note that "higher numbers do not necessarily mean a better outcome." Hear hear. Eliminating legal, social, and physical barriers to voting is one thing: no one should have to risk his or her life in order to cast a vote, and no one in a wheelchair (for example) should be denied the franchise because the polling place is inaccessible. It's quite another thing to offer incentives to people who voluntarily don't vote. What no one quoted in the article noted was that elections as currently practiced in the U.S. of A. already have plenty in common with gambling. I call them crap shoots, but really they're more like horse racing. It takes serious bucks to get a horse into even a modest stakes race at a midlevel track. It takes mega-serious bucks to get a horse into the Kentucky Derby. Prepping a candidate can easily cost as much as prepping a horse. Voters get no more say over the selection of candidates than horse-race bettors get over what horses will run. Bettors can celebrate unequivocally when their horse wins. The voter who backs a winner may come to wish that her candidate had lost, because then his incompetence or venality would not have become so manifest. Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate in Washington, does not like the idea. (If I set myself up as the Center for the Study of something, would the New York Times call me up to comment on stuff?) "People should not go vote because they might win a lottery," said Mr. Gans. "We need to rekindle the religion of civic duty, and that is a hard job, but we should not make voting crassly commercial." What caught my eye was his reference to the religion of civic duty. I think of voting as a sacrament -- what the Episcopal church of my youth defined as "the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." Without the spiritual grace -- the belief -- taking communion or being baptized or getting married (etc.) is just go much going-through-the-motions. This is why I'm not currently registered to vote. I have no problem with the act itself -- I actually like kibitzing with the candidates and placard-holders outside the polling place, not to mention greeting the nice ladies who check off my name and hand me my ballot -- it's just that at present I don't have enough faith to make it meaningful. Despite its bad rep among secular types, there's a lot to be said for faith. It's probably what holds democracy together, and the fact that so many of us lack faith in it and are devoting our best energies to other things is good reason for concern about the future of the republic. The trouble with the proposed Arizona lottery, and all other schemes to address "voter apathy," is that they focus on the outward and visible signs instead of the inward spiritual and political malaise -- much like the more malevolent manifestations of religion. Manipulating behavior is relatively easy. Touching the spirit is hard. Dolci's stall is for the moment free of cobwebs and all their catchings. It looks good. Only three stalls, the grain room, and the tackroom to go.
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