Voting in 2021

When I volunteered to work at the polls on Election Day in 2019, I was a first-timer, a rookie. Everything felt new to me—from arriving at the municipal building bleary-eyed to begin work at 5:15 for the start of a 15-hour day, to constructing and deconstructing the voting booths following the lead of more veteran poll workers, to assuming my specific role, accepting voting authority slips and pushing the buttons to activate the machines that enabled voters to record their choices.

Lured by the high pay and long hours,
I signed up again in 2021.

Like any rookie, I was both nervous and excited. I made a few rookie mistakes, such as inadvertently allowing a voter from District 8, across the room, to vote in my District 3 machine. (That required adding a note to the front of the poll book to explain why District 3 had one too many votes in its machines, and District 8 had one too few. Every number counts, after all!)

I took a year off in 2020, feeling reluctant to chance the Pandemic. But I was back for Primary Day last week, a slightly seasoned veteran. And the year off had made a difference, not so much in me as in the voters themselves. Primary Day is necessarily partisan. In New Jersey, voters have to declare their party identity and vote only for candidates of that party in the Primary. My job this time even included pushing a button to switch the machine between party ballots before the voter entered it.

This year's primaries seemed more than partisan.

Somehow, partisan politics seemed more upfront this time around. And distrust was in the air.  At least four different voters, all declared Republicans, asked if we were using Dominion voting machines. They seemed only partly mollified when we told them no. Had they ever questioned the machine manufacturer in previous years? I doubt it.

Then there was the couple who, after signing their names in the poll book next to their previous year’s signature, and clearly matching those signatures, turned to me and said, “Who is verifying our signatures?” I assumed they were joking and replied with a wink, “She’s checking yours, and you’re checking hers.” “That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in,” the man said with a tone. Unable to just smile or nod, I said, “Not much of a mess.”  That set the man off, and his voice went up in volume, “Just look at our border. More than 40,000 illegals coming in each month. That’s what we get for electing Biden, and anybody who voted for him deserves the blame.”  I wisely decided not to point out that this was a primary to decide only local and state candidates.  

There were other new wrinkles this year. Several dozen voters needed assistance in typing in the names of write-in candidates who had not used the petition process to get on the ballot formally. For some older voters that was not such an easy task. But we were there to help, and, following rules outlined in our poll workers’ manual, made sure that there was one poll worker from each party in the booth to assist the voter. We tried hard to do it right.

I have been voting for many years and working the polls for only two. But this time seemed a little testier to me. I plan to be back “behind the lines” in November to help things run as smoothly and as accurately as possible. Trust me.

And I helped!

An Untold (or Seldom Told) Story

Every family has its history and its stories. The stories are often shared on special occasions—at birthday parties, holiday gatherings, weddings, major anniversary celebrations, even funerals. The stories are passed to the next generations, who become responsible for keeping these parts of the family history alive.

Many families also have stories that are never or seldom shared. Perhaps, there is something painful about them or embarrassing or just forgettable for some reason. But I think they deserve to be told also.

In my family, a story that was went unshared for many years involved my grandmother Sarah Heyman when she was still Sarah Scheinerman and not yet my Nana. She was a tiny, courageous teenage immigrant trying to build her life in a new country with very little English and very little money but a strong sense of self preservation. Nana never shared the story with me or any of her other grandchildren during her lifetime. And it might be still hidden, if her daughter (my mother Bea) hadn’t shared it with me almost inadvertently one day long after Nana had died. And I have a big mouth and a certain reverence for history. So I am retelling the story now, with some new insights because it involves a major event that occurred 110 years ago this week.

There are lots of holes in the story, but the basics are that my 18-year-old Nana came to the United States from Brest Litovsk (now in Belarus) by herself in 1908. She was supposed to live with relatives in Brooklyn, but she was fiercely independent and refused to put up with their strict rules. So she found an apartment with some roommates in lower Manhattan and a job at a notorious sweatshop in Greenwich Village, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The factory became even more notorious on March 25, 1911, when a fire broke out in the ninth floor of the building, causing the horrific deaths of 146 people, most of them young women like my Nana. Luckily, six weeks before the fire, Sarah Scheinerman had left New York, going with her soon-to-be-husband Morris Heyman to Savannah, Georgia, where she would live for the rest of her life and begin a new family that would eventually include me.

Sarah and Morris in New York
in 1910 or 1911

When did Sarah learn about the fire, and what did she feel about the horror that she had narrowly escaped? Those are just a few of the holes in the story. As far as I know, she never talked about the event, though she must have told my mother about it at some time. But it was not a story that was ever shared at any family gathering that I or any of my cousins attended. Not by Nana, nor her husband, nor any of her children. Perhaps if Nana and Granddaddy had remained in New York, they might have been caught up in the labor union struggles that were part of the aftermath of the fire. But I never heard them say anything political while I was growing up. Instead, they labored in their own small food store that was famous in my mind for the assorted penny candies that were available there.

Why the secrecy about the fire? I can only speculate. Perhaps my grandmother felt some “survivor’s guilt.” Why was she spared when many of her former workmates were not? Or maybe her whole attention was focused on starting her new life in a location that was even farther from Belarus and even less culturally Jewish than New York. And she did have a new husband and would soon have her first baby. Or maybe the story was too overwhelming for her to dwell on or to want to pass on to the next generations.

Remembering the fire at 23 Washington Place 

I can see definite similarities between my grandparents’ decision to keep the horrors of the March 25^th fire inside themselves with the decision of Audrey’s relatives and her parents’ German immigrant friends to never discuss the condition of their lives in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. “I wouldn’t want to worry you,” my mother-in-law might say. Or “It’s not something I ever want to think about again.” Or “What would be the good of talking about it now?”

And those may all be good reasons, but they are not reason enough to keep these stories hidden because the stories are part of our history too. My grandmother’s courage in coming to New York on her own, nearly coming face-to-face with death, and building a new life through all of that is not just inspiring, it is an essential part of my life too.

So I am retelling this somewhat secret family story. Again!—my friend Harvey might comment with just a touch of sarcasm because I am known for occasional repetition. It is what we who have big mouths and a reverence for family history do.

The fire occurred behind locked doors on the
ninth floor; 146 died, many from jumping
to escape the flames. 

 Changing Doctors

When you reach your seventies, doctors begin to take on increasing importance in your life. You find yourself making more doctors' appointments than ever before and being poked and prodded or at least inspected by a wider range of medical specialists for a wider range of reasons.

In my case, I learned a few years ago that I have an unusual aorta (of all things) that leaves me vulnerable to a possible (but not probable) internal explosion. Luckily, the problem seems well under control, thanks to my adding two different cardiologists to my poking, probing, and inspecting team. I am advised by one of the cardiologists not to lift anything weighing more than 60 pounds, if I can avoid it. Luckily, I was already avoiding lifting such weights, other than my own bulky body, for most of my life.

Then there is the oncologist I visited regularly for 10 years but have now thankfully left in my wake. And the dental specialist who has filled my mouth in recent years with a number of costly implanted platinum teeth. And the endocrinologist who is monitoring the third of my thyroid still inside my body. And the eye surgeon who removed a cataract. And the orthopedist who discovered that several of my vertebrae are closer to each other than is optimal. And the chiropractor and physical therapist who are helping to deal with that problem. And the podiatrist who determined that I have something called a Morton’s neuroma on my right arch that has led to my wearing wider shoes and sometimes inserting special pads into them for soft support.

You get the point. It seems that it takes a medical village to keep me going as well as I am from day to day and year to year. The problem is that my medical village is going to be inhabited by a lot of new citizens this year and going forward, which is a little disconcerting. It takes time and effort to pick doctors you trust and feel comfortable with. I think I have made good choices for the most part, and I was feeling pretty satisfied with my choices. Then the village came under attack in the past year. Both of my cardiologists left for good reasons that had nothing to do with me, I am assured, but both had to be replaced. My dentist is in the process of retiring, but fortunately I like his current partner.

My medical village team huddles up .

Then, last month, I received the most crushing blow. My general practitioner, whom I really like and who has been cheering me on as I have lost weight in the past year, has received a promotion within his large multi-doctor practice, and is no longer seeing lowly patients such as I. The office “organizer” called me earlier this week to help me choose a replacement. She offered me two likely choices within the same practice, one male and one female. That’s all I knew about them for now to help me make my choice. She did offer one “helpful” suggestion: one of the doctors (the male) is more experienced with geriatric medicine, she noted. “I hope I am not there,” I said with an ironic laugh. She didn’t challenge that contention, as she laughed along with me.

But as I think about it, I am not getting any younger, and I am hopefully going to be in need of geriatric expertise sometime in the future. So that is the doctor I will be seeing for my next physical in May, if my doddering bones can get me to his office.

Many years ago, Audrey’s first boss told her the secret of choosing a new dentist or doctor. “Choose one who is younger than you and will be around for a long time. You don’t want to outlive him or her,” he said. Or outlast them, I might add.

I am not really looking forward
to my geriatric years.

 The Aging Skier

Last week, Audrey and I broke out of our Pandemic exile by going skiing on a small, fairly gentle mountain in the Berkshires called Ski Butternut. It was our first time skiing in almost 11 months. For someone who grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and never saw snow before turning 18, discussing intervals between ski outings seems a little strange.

It was also our first time skiing since we both turned 71. I think that qualifies us for membership in a special club that I call “aging skiers.” Becoming an aging skier doesn’t just involve getting older. And it’s not just a mental thing. If that were true, we probably wouldn’t be skiing at all at our “advanced” age. You have to be a little crazy to risk limb or life schussing down a slick, snow-covered slope in your seventies. It’s really a state of body more than a state of mind. I have come up with a few rules on how to adjust to aging skier status

Accessorize.  As with any sport, skiing calls for lots of equipment—skis, boots, helmets, and poles and maybe a few accessories, such as goggles, mittens, and hand warmers. But for the aging skier, there are a new class of accessories. I have added a knee brace on my left leg to reinforce a balky joint and a back brace that wraps tightly around my middle for lumbar support. 

From l to r, my knee brace, back wrap, helmet, and mittens.
What the well-dressed aging skier is wearing these days.

      Audrey has even added a high-tech medal and elastic brace to support the MCL that she tore a few years ago, while skiing, of course. Can we survive skiing without these additions? Maybe. But we would have to be a little crazy not to add them.

Audrey adds her high-tech knee brace

      Medicate. Audrey has introduced two Advil capsules into our pre-ski regimen. “It’s so our muscles won’t ache,” she explains. I figure she’s right about that. She’s usually right and generally wiser than I.

3       Anticipate. Remember that you are now over 70 and that your bladder is not always your best friend. So make sure to hit the bathroom before hitting the slopes. It is almost impossible to find a safe and semi-private place to pee while on a ski run. Plus, you don’t want to whip out anything that might quickly freeze at low temperature.

4       Discriminate. Every ski trail offers different degrees of difficulty. You can often tell which trails to avoid by noting their names. For example, at Ski Butternut one trail is called Lucifer’s Leap while a nearby trail is called Nuthatch. A nuthatch is a sweet little bird; Lucifer is just another word for the Devil. Do you really think you can leap with the devil? Probably not.

Here are some additional pairs of trail names from which Audrey and I have had to choose. Which is probably best for the aging skier who plans to continue aging safely:

a.  Drop                       b. Deer Run

a.  Challenger             b. Meadow

a.  Whiplash                b. Hopscotch

a.  Downspout             b. Pied Piper

Note: If you chose a for any of these pairs, your membership in the Aging Skier Cub is under review.

But Audrey and I plan to stay in our new club for many years. After all, our friend Til is well into her 80s and is still gliding along successfully. She has slowed down a little bit, but so have we all. Maybe the reason we started skiing in the first place was to add a little bit of speed into our lives. But we are not out to break any records or any bones. 

The final package, as seen from the outside.