Positive Forces for Change

Working Assets is recruiting nonpartisan pollworkers to observe elections this November in California. It's a great program, given the inconsistencies and unreliability of touchscreen voting. Diebold's top executives were banned in 2004 from making political contributions after a story broke that one of them hosted a fundraiser at his house for the Republican party, and other top executives had contributed loads to the Republicans, too. Touchscreen voting worries me because of the lack of accountability for the votes. Perhaps I'm increasingly paranoid about the lengths to which the government will go to screw with our lives. The New York Times ran an article this Sunday about digital voting machines, and came up with the sanest use for them I've heard yet: use the machines to confirm people's choices, then print out those choices to a sheet that will be fed into an optical scanner for counting. Smart, easy, and effective.

Milestones

I have joined the technical age and started a blog. This project has taken me the better part of the last hour because of the immense pressure of choosing an appropriate name. Peripatetic and all of its mutations were taken, as was itinerant, and really anything else pertaining to a life of wandering and writing. I'm planning to spend the next several years of my life living in places where I may not ever find myself again -- namely, mountains, rural places, big cities, other countries. Perhaps these adventures will lead to some sort of epiphany about life, or perhaps just the true desire to actually settle down somewhere for more than three to six months at a time.

--------------------------------------------------

Here is a list of possible careers, or jobs in the short-term:
-- guidebook writer
-- political consultant
-- magazine journalist/nonfiction writer
-- media consulting for politics
-- historian (this may require a phD someday)
-- university librarian
-- restaurant critic
-- the person who writes and edits the wedding announcements in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times
-- public health something or other
-- teacher
-- education administrator

-----------------------------------------------

I'm currently watching people meet on the sidewalks of Palo Alto. Margaret and Richard. Walked past each other with an intense look, then both stopped two seconds later. Turned around.

"I know you, don't I?"
"You look familiar..."
"I'm Margaret."
"Richard, I work at Spago."
"Oh, I managed at Stars when it was still there. Then Il Fornaio for awhile..."
"Working in restaurants, it must be that."
"I'm still at Spago, in the evening."
"I've done day managing for awhile."
"Did you ever work at the Gatehouse?"
"No, Osteria, and then that Mediterranean place down there."

Wow, the restaurant business is a small world. These people never really worked together at all, but were able to discern that they had crossed paths and perhaps an instant friendship will be made.