Voting is your SUPERPOWER: Exercise it!! Please.

HALLIE EPHRON: Please, everyone, get out and vote! In my town it's easy peasy. Takes 5 minutes. I hope your experience is the same.

I remember my first time in a voting booth. I went with my mother to the polling place which was the Kindergarten of our local school. I went in with her as she pulled the booth's curtain behind her. I must have been about 5 because all I could see were her legs.

An aside, my mother was a pacifist and a socialist who voted for Norman Thomas (he ran six times as the Socialist Party's candidate for president)... except when she voted for Stevenson. Of course. And way back when for FDR.

What's your experience voting been like?

INGRID THOFT: The single most critical thing I gleaned from my political science major in college was the importance of voting.  We studied political systems around the world, many of which don’t guarantee a vote for each citizen, and it’s been said before, but people in other countries really do die fighting for the right to vote.  I always remember Winston Churchill’s quote:  “Democracy is the worst system, except for all the rest.”

In Washington State, we vote by mail so I haven’t been to a polling station for over ten years.  I get to fill out my ballot in the privacy of my own home after consulting the various endorsements and researching the ballot initiatives.  I pop it in the mail, and it’s done.  It doesn’t get easier than that, Hallie!

JENN McKINLAY: Voting is your SUPERPOWER!!! I believe this all the way down to my squishy middle. When I was nine, I read a biography and did a report about Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I have never forgotten it or the lessons it taught me about equal rights for women. Consequently, I have never missed an election, big or small, in my voting lifetime.

In AZ, we can vote by mail and then we can track our mail-in vote on the state recorder's website to be sure it was counted, which I do - of course I do - because I'm anal like that. LOL!

RHYS BOWEN: I don't remember much about voting in England as I left in my early twenties, but John and I met in Australia where voting was compulsory. If you didn't vote you were fined.  (Maybe that would be a good way for the government to raise money here!) Where we live now we have voted by mail for years. John and I sit with our voting papers and all the additional information and go through, line by line, discussing the ramifications of each ballot measure. Some of them are so convoluted that it's hard to see what they really mean and we usually look at who is backing them.  I am so grateful we can do this in a slow and meaningful way. I don't know how people can not make mistakes in the stress of the voting booth.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I love to go to the polls and vote! We go to our local community center, where we know we are Ward 3 Precinct 3, and the nice poll workers are the same every year, and there's a bake sale in the hall. How cute is that? And we get "I voted" stickers, which I put on my phone. We have some very complicated ballot questions, and we're so determined to figure them out!   And some difficult person or party decisions, too. 

When was my first vote? Rats. I can't remember. But I remember going to the polls with my mom--my parents were the only ones in the neighborhood wearing Adlai Stevenson buttons.

LUCY BURDETTE: As for those proposition questions, who in the world writes them? John and I tried for an hour to puzzle out what one in Florida was really about--and we're pretty smart people. They need writers on board!

As for first time voting, I blush to admit I voted for Richard Nixon. Sigh. Anyway, I've done better than that over the years and honestly, it always feels good and right to have my say. So don't stay home!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: You know, Lucy, you voted. As a young woman, when young people have ALWAYS been underrepresented. So I say, wear your Nixon button proudly!

The Smithie wrote a column about voting where she pointed out one of the things that made her a voter was tagging along with her dad and me when we went to vote. We took our kids along every time we voted, and talked a lot about what it meant to us. Did you know the most sure-fire way to turn your kids into readers is to let them see you read for pleasure? It's the same way with voting. So literally, parents, do it for your kids.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I went with my mother, too, I remember her pulling the curtain and showing me how the voting machine worked. I've always voted in national elections, but I have to admit there were some years when I was too busy or distracted and I didn't bother to vote in midterms or local races. No more!! I vote in every election for everything including run-offs. I study the candidates and the propositions. I voted absentee from London in 2016, which was the first time I'd ever filled in a mail-in ballot. And I mailed my ballot the week before I left for this trip to the UK. Even though I'm across the Pond I will be checking election results like mad. I, too, believe that voting is our superpower.

The last couple of years my daughter and I have voted together, so I am missing that. She researches all the candidates, too, and never misses an election, so, yes, if you take voting seriously, chances are your kids will, too.

HALLIE:  Please, tell us you've voted or are going to vote (and get a flu shot, please, too.) Anyone else remember when booths had curtains? Made it feel so mysterious.

Rhys Might Ramble...

RHYS BOWEN: Dear friends I'm writing this post with one eye on the TV set on election day. Frankly it's hard to concentrate, so if I am writing nonsense please forgive me. I don't know about you but I haven't managed to breathe properly for ages.I can't wait for it to be over (with the right outcome. I'd better not say which that is or I'll get hate mail).

As for what I'm writing, I have just finished the first draft of next year's Molly book. It's a Christmas book that will come out next November. The title is THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST. It's one of the few books I've written that I have pitched on a premise. The problem with that is that you have to deliver. I had this intriguing idea: what if a small child walked out of a house into the snow years ago and simply disappears. No other footprints but hers. Never seen again. Her body never found.

It was intriguing all right and I looked forward to writing it. However, when I started to write it I realized what a challenge I had given myself. What did happen to the child that was plausible? So my story brings Molly and Daniel to a mansion on the Hudson for Christmas. There is a definite atmosphere of tension in that house. Somebody there knows what happened to that child--or thinks that they know, and for good reason cannot tell.

Molly has her own agenda. She's battling her own demons (and I can't tell you about that part) so it becomes doubly important to her to find out what happened to that child. Well, I've finished it and I'm really pleased with the way the story turned out. But I was holding my breath about that as well... not sure I could bring off the story until I finally did.

Here's a small snippet when Molly learns a hint of the family's story at a party (which, incidentally is given by Carrie Chapman Catt, leader of the suffrage movement!!!).

“So are you staying near here?” I was asked.

            “She’s staying at Greenbriars,” Sid said. “You know, that estate we can see from our windows?”

            Two of the women had moved over to make room for me on the sofa. I sat and was handed a cup of hot wine punch. The warmth of the punch, the warmth of the fire, and the warmth of the reception sent a glow through me. I felt the tensions in my body ease away.

            “Greenbriars?”  The tall, rather severe-looking one called Josephine said, frowning as she stared out past us across the room as if she was thinking. “Isn’t that the Van Aiken place?”

            “That’s right,” I said.

            “And she’s finding it rather gloomy and tense from what one gathers,” Sid said.

            “Just today because the hostess has not been too well,” I said hastily. I glanced around uneasily to see if Miss Lind was within hearing distance. I didn’t want her to think that I had been running down her family’s hospitality.

            “Well, no wonder it’s gloomy and tense,” Josephine went on.

            “Why do you say that?” Gus asked.

            “Well, that was where it happened, wasn’t it?” Josephine said. “Greenbriars. Don’t you remember? Everyone was talking about it. And it was at Christmas too.”

            “Oh yes,” the chubby one—Annie, I believe—agreed. “Of course. The Van Aiken child. I’d forgotten all about it.”

            “A child?” I asked. “The Van Aikens had a child?”

            Josephine nodded and I noticed that the group of women had drawn closer together, as one does when sharing a secret. “A little girl.” Josephine had lowered her voice. “She wandered out into the snow right before Christmas and was never seen again.”

Now I'm getting back to the TV set and may do some pacing and nail biting in the next few hours. 

"Oh, Kaye!" Chats About Balance

Most of the time my world is one of casual content.

Not a lot of radical ups or downs. Just the usual things life tosses at all of us. 

That is not to say that many of those things can't be damn tough, or that some are not cause for great joy. 

But, in my case, most of them are part of a normal, fairly constant and consistent life of sameness.  And I'm good with that.  There are people who live daily life dramas of extremes that exhaust and bore me and are, I think, unnecessary except for the ego of the dramatist.  'Course, that's just my opinion.

Recently, however, I've had some delightful ups.  

And some devastating downs.

And I find myself thinking more of balance.

Balance.

A word I'm using more and thinking of more than I once did.

And I think it comes with age.

As we age we gain wisdom. If we don't, we're to be pitied.  (Again - just my opinion).


We learn a bit about acceptance as we get older.  We don't really have a choice.


I've been grappling a little with accepting some things I don't have the power to change.

But I'm also accepting the challenge of standing up for things I just might be able to help change.

Challenge is good, I think

Change is often necessary.

And, when it is necessary, I am always up for it.


I do not ever want to be one of those people who thinks everything in life is written is stone just because that's the way it's always been and can't be changed.


Bunk.


So.  

I'm just going to take a deep breath and say this.


If you're one of those people saying you're NOT going to vote this November because you're unhappy with your choices?


Then you're part of the problem.


"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new."

The above quote has been attributed to Socrates, to world-class gymnast Dan Millman, and to an attendant at an all-night gas station. 

Take your pick. 

But heed the message.


It's time to start building the new. 

We're not just voting for a new president in November.

There are choices on your local ballot that are extremely important.

I hope you'll remember that.


'Cause if you're one of those people who say your vote doesn't mean anything, or that you're disgusted with politics in general, or disgusted by both the presidential candidates or any of those tired old excuses, then I would suggest you sit back and maybe re-read some history. 

And think about "balance."


As a noun -

"an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady."

"a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions."


Or as a verb -

"keep or put (something) in a steady position so that it does not fall."

"offset or compare the value of (one thing) with another."


Balance in our lives is important.

There needs to be, in my opinion, some balance brought back into our government.

Being an active grassroots volunteer for the past year has given me a great deal of personal satisfaction and gratification.  

My local party, The Watauga County Democrats, has accomplished great things.  Has gained attention at the state level, and has been featured, more than once, on the Rachel Maddow Show.  

I'm proud to be a small part. 

I'll be working in the county headquarters office in downtown Boone from now until election day.

If you're in the neighborhood, drop by and say "Hey!" 


P. S. - The above statement is one issued by "Oh, Kaye!" and does not necessarily reflect the views of Jungle Red or any of its seven smart and sassy crime fiction writers.

Politics Past

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: My mother taught me there are three things polite people don't discuss in public: politics, money and sex. While the internet at large has made this standard hopelessly obsolete, we at JRW still hew to the older, more genteel ways (with the exception of white after Labor Day, which seems to be falling fast.) So fear not, dear readers, we're not going to delve into proselytizing or predictions for the most interesting primary season we've seen in years.


We are, however, going to reminisce. The votes of young people - those 18 to 24 - are going to be critical again this year, and that makes me think of my own first forays into democracy. Right after my eighteenth birthday, I registered in the state of New York. This is how I decided my political affiliation: I asked my mother what she was registered as, and then ticked the opposite box. (We had had quite a few clashes during my college search and I was still feeling rebellious. Sorry, Mom!) But my first political crush wasn't a Democrat or Republican, it was independent John Anderson. I'm embarrassed to say I can't recall a single thing about his campaign or positions except that he was a good-looking silver-haired guy and almost everyone on my campus, except the Young Republicans, who were swooning over Ronald Reagan, supported him. I was not what you would call a high-information voter.

Ah, youth. I emerged from college a full-fledged Bolshevik who honestly believed we would  be better off  handing over all means of production and letting a benevolent government take care of us. Then I moved to DC, saw the benevolent government up close and personal, and started paying taxes. The next election I  voted for George HW Bush. My shifts weren't as seismic as Ross's, though. He went from being a Political Science major at Georgetown who interned with National Conservative Political Action Committee to a Jerry Brown delegate in 1992!


In '92 (gosh, that makes me sound like a middle aged Victorian reminiscing during the Jazz Age) we went to hear as many candidates as we could. Maine, being a caucus state with a small population, rarely gets the big hitters to show up and speechify - we usually see the outsiders and the underdogs. The only one I remember - and vividly! - was Bill Clinton, who, regardless of what you think of his policies, has got to be the most charismatic speaker I have ever heard. I was mesmerized. I literally whipped out my checkbook and dropped a donation into a collection box in the lobby. And Ross, "Mr. Jerry Brown," agreed to it!

The one thing that has remained constant through my left-right-left-right swings has been showing up to vote. My grandmother was eleven when women achieved suffrage through the 19th amendment. She remembered how her mother, a woman in her late thirties, was incredibly excited to go to the polls for the first time in her life. She impressed on me what a privilege and honor it was for women to vote, and my feminist mother encouraged me to never miss the opportunity to let my voice be heard. I'm happy to say my daughters are carrying on the tradition: The Smithie hasn't missed an election - national or local - since she turned eighteen, and Youngest ran for student office as a freshman in high school!

How about you, Reds? What were your first forays into politics?

RHYS BOWEN: I've shied away from politics all my life, mainly because I seem to fall right in the middle between extreme left and extreme right. I've always voted based on personality rather than party, much to John's horror. Voted for both Diane Feinstein and Jerry Brown!  If I had more time on my hands I'd found the Sensible People's Party , one where the aim was to make good decisions that benefit all people and not be behooven to special interests (is there such a word as behooven?) .

My closest brush with democracy at work was when I was part of a committee to stop the local education board from closing our high school. The rest of the board put tremendous pressure on me to run for city council. Luckily they found another sucker, uh worthy candidate.

HALLIE EPHRON: I hate getting into political discussions because these days people just talk past each other. Then they yell. And any time people are yelling at each other I'm out of there.

When I was in high school, I used to tell my parents that I was going to a Young Democrats meeting when I was really going down the block to meet my boyfriend whose motorcycle I was not allowed to ride on. My parents were old lefties. Loved FDR and Stevenson. My mother voted over and over for Norman Thomas, Socialist party candidate for president. So it won't surprise you that the first political campaign in which I was actively involved was Eugene McCarthy's failed bid. I was in college in NYC and election eve I helped get out the vote - it was a very sad night. It's no fun losing.

LUCY BURDETTE: I'm embarrassed to say that my first vote was for Richard Nixon. Honestly, I was Daddy's girl at that point and since he voted for Nixon, I did too. Four years earlier in high school, I temporarily got absorbed into the Young Republicans. I wasn't informed on any of the issues, but I wanted to go on their bus to Washington for the inaugural parade. Which I did! I was interviewed on the street by a famous TV journalist whose name I might remember eventually, and I'm sure he found me a poor subject.

"Tell the TV viewers across America why you're here to support President Nixon?"

What was I going to say, it looked like a fun trip? Utterly mortifying...

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, my  parents were the only ones in the neighborhood who backed  Adlai Stevenson. So I proudly wore my Adlai button while everyone else Liked Ike.  In college, my roommate Ann and I hitch-hiked from Oxford Ohio to Cincinnati to go door to door handing out campaign flyers for Gene McCarthy. We got in a lot of trouble for it. The hitch-hiking part, I mean.  After college, I  was filled with the desire to change the world, and went to work for several political campaigns, as a staffer to the state committee (my desk-mate was Jane Pauley)  and then for several candidates.

Sadly, every candidate I worked for lost, so I figured it was time to start a new career. So I applied for a job as a reporter, and the rest is... . 

And I still have my McGovern/Eagleton button! How about that for a forgotten story...





DEBORAH CROMBIE: I want to join Rhys's Sensible People's Party!  Can we get buttons made, please? I've actually been contemplating an I LIKE IKE button. Eisenhower, the Republican who nowadays would be considered a rabid liberal...

My parents were committed Republicans. And disagreeing with my father on politics was considered tantamount to treason in my family. So I didn't. But I didn't have to tell them how I voted!!

Julia, I wish I'd heard Clinton speak! I did hear both George H and George W. George H was a surprisingly charismatic  speaker considering that he didn't come across well on television.

The first campaign I actively supported was Obama in 2008, but even then we didn't put up signs. Where we live, that's just asking for trouble.

JULIA: How about you, dear readers?What are the buttons and bumper stickers in your past?

ON WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

"The book sweeps from the steamy bazaars of Egypt to proper English drawing rooms as Ursula battles international intrigue and her own sensuous nature. Dorothy Sayers would be proud of her Oxford sister."

**Rhys Bowen, Award winning author or the Molly Murphy and Royal Spyness mysteries

HANK: I met Clare Langley-Hawthorne in the one of the world's most high-tension white-knuckled situations--Malice Go Round. That's the feared and beloved event where new authors get like 10 seconds to convince a group of experienced, savvy and educated mystery readers that their new novel is the greatest thing since..well, the last greatest thing they've ever read.

Clare hit Malice Go Round out of the ballpark. Talking about her debut Consequences of Sin, she was calm and direct, articulate, passionate and intelligent. And funny. (And of course, 'historicals' are hot in the publishing world these days.) I told her afterward--I was running right out to buy her book. She absolutely won me over.

Now she's on book two--more about that in a minute. But while millions of voters in the US woke up this week to find they had participated in an historic election, Clare didn't get to vote. Why? And how does she feel? She tell us in one word:

Disenfranchised

by Clare Langley-Hawthorne

After the election this week I confess to feeling particularly disenfranchised. As I am not a US citizen I was not able to vote (and neither was my husband which actually may be a good thing as we traditionally cancel out each other’s vote as we hold opposing political views!) nor am I able to vote in Australian elections as we have been abroad so long.

In Australia voting is compulsory – a fact that many American’s find incredible – and we are fined if we fail to vote in an election. For the last couple of elections my husband and I missed getting postal votes and had to send in a letter ‘excusing us’ from voting to avoid a fine – we were then unceremoniously dropped from the Australian electoral roll. So now we are truly disenfranchised!

This gives me particular empathy for my character, Ursula Marlow, who is a suffragette in Edwardian England desperately trying to secure votes for women at a time when voting in England was restricted to men who owned or rented property. My first book, Consequences of Sin, is set in 1910 and includes the infamous ‘Black Friday’ protest which occurred after the failure of the Conciliation Bill which would have extended voting to some women.

On that day women faced unwarranted police brutality and realized just how entrenched the ‘establishment’ that opposed female suffrage was in Britain. Many of these women had already spent time in Holloway Prison and had endured forcible feeding (they went on hunger strike to protest the government’s refusal to treat them as political prisoners).

By 1912, the year in which my second Ursula Marlow book, The Serpent and The Scorpion is set, members of the militant suffragette movement (the Women’s Social and Political Union) had become thoroughly disenchanted (as well as disenfranchised!) and had begun to mount a window smashing and arson campaign. The fight for votes was reaching a level of desperate militancy that would only cease with the outbreak of the First World War when the WSPU agreed to suspend their fight for votes for women to focus on their patriotic war duty.

By the time the war was over a whole generation of men would be wiped out, women over 30 would finally be granted the vote and the nearly 2 million so called ‘surplus’ women became a political force to be reckoned with. Just imagine what could have happened if women had received the vote before the war?!

It’s hard for me to believe that Australia –a land settled by convicts and squatters - granted votes to women nearly twenty years before Britain (although Aboriginal women were still excluded).

I have to confess, as an unabashed feminist, I fully support my character’s political quest (and hey, my husband is convinced Ursula is actually me anyway!) though I have to admit to a sneaking jealousy (maybe even covetousness) for Ursula’s upper class Edwardian lifestyle. She gets to have a maid, a chauffeur, a butler, a housekeeper and a cook. At my house I have to play all those roles!

She also has the luxury of time and wealth. The kind of wealth that allows you to have custom designed French clothing (where’s my dress by Poiret?!), travel by elegant ocean liner (rather than being a sardine in coach class) and flout conventions (though I live just near Berkeley where there are no conventions to flout anyway!). But was all of this lifestyle worth having no say in the way your country was governed? When I try to absorb the sensibilities of the Edwardian period, to think and feel as Ursula would have, the answer is clearly no.

So my character and I have something in common – neither of us have the vote but we both recognize just how powerful and important that right can be.

HANK: Thanks, Clare! And there's more--

A contest! Clare has generously offered to give away a signed edition of her first book--and that's something we can all vote for. So just leave her a comment...and she'll pick a winner at random!

Clare Langley-Hawthorne was raised in England and Australia. She was an attorney in Melbourne before moving to the United States, where she began her career as a writer. Her first novel, Consequences of Sin, was nominated for the 2008 Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery Macavity award. The second in the Ursula Marlow series, The Serpent and The Scorpion, was published in October 2008. Clare lives in Oakland, California with her family.
http://www.clarelangleyhawthorne.com/