Left to my own devices

W e moved from the house -- mom, dad and I -- in Spring of 1986, so this would have been around Christmas of 1983, 1984, or 1985, no later than that. I was standing on the front porch of our home on Draper St., the first home I'd ever known, with a couple of friends. I think one of them was Lyle? Maybe? I don't know. There were a couple of friends present. They'd come over earlier, and we'd just finished playing for the day. We were on the porch, doing that midwestern small talk before saying goodbye, and somehow, perhaps because it was in the offing, the subject of Christmas came up.

"Hello, how are you? Have you been alright Through all those lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely nights?" - Telephone Line ,  ELO T here was a time when I used to love talking on the phone. This was before the ubiquity of the Internet, before cell phones, texting, video calls, etc. It was also before I had a job, and much of the work I've ended up doing over the years has fallen under the designation of customer service, where I would interact with folks either in-person or over the phone. That can wear down one's capacity for certain types of contact methods during off-hours. This was before all of that. This was when I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young person.

      O ne of the topics at Thanksgiving was the lost art of letter writing. Once a commonplace necessity of communication, it is now wistfully recalled by those old enough to remember when it was abundant. It can certainly be argued that it had its time, and technology has usurped it, opening avenues of imparting dialogue and information to those we care about in ways that surpass the quaint, clunky method of writing something in our own hand on pieces of paper, folding them up, putting them in an envelope, paying for postage and mailing them off, only to take perhaps several days to reach their destination. And yet...

It's Election Day in these great United States of ours. I have today off from work. Our governor declared it a state holiday (though it only seems to apply to certain employers), the idea being that it will be easier for folks to go vote if they don't have to wrangle time-off from work in order to do so. Schools have the day off, as well, so I've heard that's caused issues for some parents. It's never going to be perfect. I applaud the intent.

Election Day here in the U.S. is just two days away, so why not have a little fun (your definition of 'fun' may vary), and try to predict the outcome? We'll also touch, tangentially, on the House and Senate outlook, because I believe the Senate and presidential races to be at least somewhat tied together. There's going to be some (minor) bits of history thrown-in, as well, for better or worse. Are you ready? Let's go.

As we hurtle toward the November 3rd election here in the U.S., where presidential, federal, state and local races will be decided, I find myself longing for the past. And, it isn't some distant, long ago past that never really existed. Just the other day I was watching a five-hour-long recording, on YouTube, of the NBC News coverage of Election Night1992. There was Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel, and the late John Chancellor and Tim Russert, all sitting around the newsroom, waiting on results to come in, calling states for either Bush or Clinton, and it was all so quaint and, oddly, a little charming.

I heard the Spice Girls song Move Over on the radio t'other day. Though the lyrics are fairly inane, I believe the gist of it is about how Generation X is gonna take over (unclear as to what -- society? the world? a toy shop?). At any rate , the song was from 1997 and, as I was listening to it (a fellow GenXer myself), I thought, "Have we really taken over, though?"