Subject: Re: Dull, duller, dullest
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 08 2000 - 21:19:18 EST
On Wed, Mar 08, 2000 at 03:59:45PM -0800, citycabn wrote:
> Just this sentence alone, early on (before the segue to The New Yorker)
> should have pricked up attention. I quote: " (There was once a party list
> of registered voters posted on the front door of the Cornish town hall, and
> there was one high-profile Republican on the list.)"
>
> Obviously, one only could have written this sentence if one were actually
> standing before the front door of the Cornish town hall and this alone is
> worth a post of: Ah, wait a minute, Tim, what's that you say?
Ah, Bruce, it's a delight to drop breadcrumbs of hints and have SOMEONE
pick them up.
Indeed, I confess: I stood before the door of the Cornish town hall and
read the list. Like the town hall of my own hamlet it New Hampshire, it
was an empty box, open only for elections and town meetings and other
official business. (NH is a perfect state for someone who wants to
minimize his interaction with politics and the political apparatus --
the quadrennial presidential election circus notwithstanding.) When I
went to vote, I was always handed a pencil and a sheet of paper with
the candidates listed. I went into one of the stalls that were like
plywood stalls in a restroom, pencilled in my choices, and dropped the
sheet, folded, into a ballot box watched over by one Republican and one
Democrat. It was charming.
Seriously -- it seemed so PRIMAL compared to going to a voting booth; in
New York we have these mechanical contraptions that are nearly 40 years
old, and, according to the New York Times a day or two ago, have only
one electrical component: the lightbulbs that indicate which party you
belong to.
I miss the NH method....
--tim
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