Read Drink & Be Merry

Amazingly in less than an hour.

M left the house around 6:30 and I stayed home to sleep in… I mean watch Finn. She called to wake me up a little after 7 to let me know how long the lines were so I dragged myself into action. Oatmeal for Finn while I showered and then we were off. Dropped Finn off at school and then the long haul to our voting precinct.

We live in an oddly gerrymandered district. One would think that we would vote at Norrell, it being only a couple of blocks from our house. Nope. Perhaps we should vote at the library on North Avenue. Nope – although we do drive by it on the way to our precinct. No, we drive up North, down Brookland Parkway and down 1st, passing a number of other precincts to get to our rather remote spot – a firehouse that doesn’t even serve our neighbourhood. Normally this difficult set-up accomplishes it’s nefarious task of voter suppresion by increasing the difficulty of voting, but not today.

I arrived in the light rain and took my place in line. The atmosphere was upbeat but there were a lot of questions being asked. It was surprising how many people, some older than I, who had never voted before and were unsure what to do. The newbies were helped by various poll workers while others walked around extolling the virtues of their respective candidate. The most interesting person I met there was Art Burton’s daughter – seems we have a common friend – RVA Foodie. She reffered to him as her ‘home boy’.

The level of confusion was evident as I entered the firehouse. Just because the letters A-K and L-Z may give you the impression that you have split voting population in two it doesn’t really work that way. One line was much longer than the other. Not to mention the fact that splitting the voters in two may have been a good idea in the past it may have been prudent to form three or even four line to help move things along.

A poll worker at the door was directing people to their assigned lines but for some odd reason kept pulling all the J’s out to the side. So, there we sat. Feeling a little singled out and unsure what to do. She returned and moved us to one of the many, overlapping, confused lines in the firehouse. Watching the whole scene I started mapping out how, if I was a bad person, I could jump lines and possibly even vote more than once. Hopefully they were paying closer attention then it seemed and even if I were so inclined to beat the system the odds of failure were pretty high as the few of us with white skin stood out just a tad.

It was about this time that I passed M as she was waiting for a voting machine. She had been there for nearly two hours at this point. She informed me that it had taken her an hour to get where I had gotten to in a little under a half hour. Guess it paid to sleep in a bit…

The first signs of real trouble appeared as I approached the registrars desk. A young Arab gentleman, who barely spoke English, didn’t seem to be on the voter rolls. He had looked nervous the entire time in line and I would be lying if I said people weren’t giving him unpleasant looks. The problem was pretty evident to me – the id he kept waving about listed him as a resident alien. My guess is that he wasn’t on the voter rolls as he wasn’t a citizen.

As he was pulled to the side I stepped up and was told I was in the wrong line…. Yep, we were in the line for L-Z. I informed the poll officer that this is where I had been told to go and that the five or six people behind me were also J’s and had been told to stand in this line. No problem, she said, just step to the front of the other line. My turn to get dirty looks from others….

So, I was off for yet another line – this time for the voting machines. In the past we have had three machines in our precinct, although usually only two are functional. Today we have a whopping four. Sad. We really needed at least five to keep things moving although maybe more people working the voter roll books might have made it work even better.

A couple of minutes later and I was at the electronic machine. Obama, yes. Warner, yes. Jones, yes. Burton, yes. Two additional votes were cast but there were no opponents. Both of these people should have been challenged. Ellen Robertson, I voted for her but feel she has ingnored the district for a while now. Perhaps someone will step up and challenge her next time. Same for Bobby Scott, I voted for him but would have voted against him had there been a challenger. He has been an empty suit for quite some time now.

So, my duty done, I headed off to open the store. Now the real waiting begins.

Living in Battery Park the last few years has been a bit of a challenge.

While all the attention has been paid to The Bottom our storm drains crumbled and finally collapsed under the weight of Isabelle and Gaston.

As the mayor partied it up in Japan I was told by Richmond’s finest that if I didn’t leave my house (the water was within a block of my house but we sit up so high enough that we were never in danger) they would arrest me and turn Finn over to Family and Children Services.

As we debated whether we could drink the tap water and others were forced repeatedly from their homes after the lightest rains we saw a parade of politicians from Senators to the ever-elusive, and very absent, Rep. Bobby Scott make their obligatory stop for a photo op in our damp ‘hood. Ellen Robertson, our council person, hasn’t been very present either – except for her weekly spam phone messages. We soldiered on, dealing with detours for our new, above ground, drainage pipes and pumps the size of elephants that blocked our streets.

Rather than admit the boondoggle that is the city owned golf course changed the topography thus turning Battery Park and the surrounding environs into a lake, the city seized homes, rendered apartment renters homeless, and put the problem to the bulldozers. Oddly, some seized homes have been deemed ’safe’ and are currently being rehabbed and de-molded. It will be curious to see who gets to buy these homes and at what price….

Then, on what must have been a slow news day for out mayor, the Battery Park project was declared complete last December. Really? The pumps were still there. Sink holes in the tennis courts. Bulldozers and cranes were everywhere. Fences and no trespassing signs would lead one to believe the park not open. The floods, the clean-up crews in haz-mat suits… it all continued. Methink the mayor a bit hasty.

Spring arrived and the gashes in the ground were covered and they seemed to be moving on to cosmetics. The ground leveled, new playground equipment installed. Would we be able to use the park this summer? No. As far as I can tell we only get city work crews 2-4 days a month, and rarely two days in a row. At the rate they’re going I would expect the park to re-open about the time Finn finishes college.

So, that brings us to today. As Fay dumps much needed water onto our very brown lawns and for what may be the real first test of the city having spent millions to move water around the very critical 3-hole golf course. The shiny new grates near my house are working well and there is no standing water. Glad to know that bulldozing an apartment complex and displacing all those families had allowed the city to protect the sandtraps for the golf course. OK, I’ll admit, I don’t miss the apartments. They were a source of trouble but wouldn’t it have been easier to dig up a sand trap to rebuild the drains rather than raze a bunch of buildings with people living in them?

Moving over to the park proper, doesn’t look too bad. Six months ago the south side of the park would have been under anywhere from 6 to 30+ feet of water after more than 24 hours of rain. Today it looks a little soggy but not too bad. The brand new playground, however, looks like it is sitting in the middle of a lake. Hard to tell from a distance but at least 6 inches of standing water. The question is where did that water drain from? Is it just a puddle? Would you let your child play there? Will the men in the haz-mat suits return?

How did the city and our rock-star mayor do? I guess I would give them a ‘D+’.

Had they listened to the residents earlier about water back-ups they could have averted the whole problem by inspecting the storm drains around the park.

The houses were all built nearly 100 years ago and didn’t have problems until the city changed the topography of the area for the golf course. Yet, somehow, the city made it sound like we had all built in a flood zone and that we should feel grateful for the buy-outs.

Oddly, while Bush declined to name our area a federal disaster he named an area up in New York one. Same storm. Same number of people effected in roughly an area of equal size. Could it have happened to have been due to us having a Democrat as a Rep and them having a Republican in a tough re-election bid weeks before the 2006 election? Hmm….

Communication during the flooding basically sucked and the police were way too authoritative.

Months of detours really sucked and the city has yet to do anything about adding or upgrading access to the neighbourhood.

We got a really cool red back-pack from the Red Cross with emergency supplies if we are ever stranded in our home.

The plans for the park look to be very family friendly and are designed to reduce the drug activity.

The pace of the work make me fear it may not be done in my lifetime.

The new drainage looks to be working under it’s first heavy test.

The all-important golf course is open – without which the water would have just naturally drained into Shockoe Valley….