Distracted Mind

Hey kids, want to read something scary? Just head on over to the New York Times for some good old fashioned scary news, coming at you straight from the Lake: Can the Mortgage Crisis Swallow a Town?. Why is this so terrifying? Because it’s true, it’s real, and it’s happening right here.

Honestly, it’s a little disappointing to hear that you really can’t afford as much house as you thought you could. It’s tempting to take the offer that will get you more, even if it may come back to bite you in the ass. I’ll be honest–I thought we’d be able to afford a lot more than we were able to when we looked four years ago, but once we realized what our monthly payments would be, we started aiming a little lower. Of course, not everyone had people looking out for them like our realtor–she was the first one who suggested that we were far out of our price range.

Four years later, we’re ready to get the hell out, as are at least four other households on our block. It could be that we’ve outgrown our house, that it’s on an extremely busy street, that my daughter can’t play outside, or that one of the neighboring houses has a residential count that defies noise ordinances, basic manners, and all laws of physics (oh… did I mention the neglected pit bull pup in their back yard?). Honestly, I don’t know how many people stay next door (I don’t say live, because being crammed into a three-bedroom bungalow like that ain’t living), but it’s a hell of a lot more people than that house was built to shelter. Our house has gone from being a little slice of our own heaven to hell in four years, and only part of it has to do with the scary article in the Times. A lot of it has to do with the state of our city as well.

The crime rate is going up. People are trying to move out and getting trapped by the fear of paying two mortgages at once (and that’s a very real possibility that could really crush a person’s/family’s financial well being), and Cleveland is looking less and less desirable. Just ask my other neighbor, who has had his house burglarized over five times (realistically I’d say around eight, but I’m not sure) by the same people, who have never even been brought in for questioning. The last time he was burglarized, the cops wouldn’t come out–serial burglary doesn’t rate as high when you’ve got drug dealing, gang shootings, domestic abuse cases, and everything else to deal with and not nearly enough officers to handle it all.

It’s more than I can cope with–and judging from the realty signs, more than a few of my neighbors agree. Cleveland was a wonderful place to live, but it’s going downhill and fixing it isn’t glamorous enough to get Frank Jackson or any of our city council members airtime. Taking on the banks, fixing the schools and public services is a hell of a lot harder than offering up a few soundbites, so I doubt most of our officials would be interested in the first place.

Quite honestly, after living here, all I want is a farm out in the boonies with a half mile between me and the closest neighbor. Cleveland, I’ll remember to visit you. Right now it’s time to pack.

[Tim Russo](http://democracyguy.typepad.com) has been chronicling the election snafu as it unfolds, but I’d like to voice a few concerns of my own.

First off, my voting experience was uncomplicated. Other than not getting the card to read the first time, the voting went off without a hitch. That said, I’m still concerned.

First off, what about a paper receipt? It seems to me that the paper trail was a selling point. Having to read everything on screen and verify that way was a pain in the ass, and the receipt that printed out and scrolled off never to be seen again didn’t help me either. The receipt issue was, and is, extremely annoying.

Second, [what about people with disabilities?](http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=5693) Sure, there’s supposed to be an audio booth at every polling place, optical scanning devices were supposedly available, but none of that was widely (if at all) publicized. How are people with vision impairments supposed to vote? Well, if all the other options fail, they can vote by dictating their votes to someone who _may_ cast them accurately.

Someone with limited motor skills may find the touch screens to be unwieldy–they require a degree of accuracy that many individuals with motor-impairments can’t muster. If you have severe palsy, how can you ensure that you’re going to touch the right candidate’s space? It could be a fairly long and frustrating process for people with motor-impairments. I’m thinking that there will be some lawsuits regarding electronic voting and accessibility.

The whole electronic voting thing is playing out like a bad farce. I’d like to think that the machines had been tested before today, that kinks had been worked out, but it doesn’t seem to be playing out like that. Polling places are closing down due to mechanical errors, people are angry and frustrated with the new technology. While both Daman and I had no problems, we’re also used to working with technology (being the computer geeks that we both are) and aren’t exactly citizens average.

I’ve read (and heard) some comments about the NEO “blogosphere”, specifically about the behavior of some of our bloggers. Some say that a few of our bloggers are a little hard to handle. I say, suck it up and read. It’ll be good for you, and you may miss something important if you don’t.

Any community of bloggers is a little like a family. We’ve all got our drunk uncles, our snobby older sisters, moonbat hippy cousins and crazy aunts. I’m not going to start classifying anyone in the Cleveland blogosphere as “Creepy Uncle Harry” (but we all know who you are…), but we all have our little quirks and some of them just aren’t cute like showing the kids what a colostomy bag looks like or giving little Jimmy his first sip of homemade moonshine/engine degreaser (after all, he _did_ just get into that fancy preschool!). My point is that we need all sort of people around to balance out the decks, even the brother-in-law that voted for Bush twice, and then two more times this decade.

We may all be a little strange, smelly and more than a little offensive to each other, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. The sometimes tiresome navel-gazing is nothing but a kitchen table conversation — it twists and turns, sometimes it gets a little heated, but there’s usually no hard feelings by the time the coffee’s poured. After all, if I couldn’t disagree with Hitch’s and Jonathan’s conservative ramblings over at [Brewed Fresh Daily](http://wwwbrewedfreshdaily.com), read about the magical [coffee castle](http://writeslikeshetalks.blogspot.com/2006/01/coffee-castle.html) Jill’s daughter built (I swear I’m going to have one of those someday), and read Tim’s rants against Brown, I would feel like something is missing.

So here’s my little paper heart to Cleveland, with its pasted-on candy hearts and a doily background. Even with the shitstorms that occasionally swirl up around NEO, the blogosphere strides on. The bloggers in NEO are crazy, creative stars who want to make the world a better place and dream of ways to do it. The best part is, these dreamers aren’t asleep. Happy Valentine’s day NEO, you all deserve a big ol’ kiss.

The salon got off to a rocky start, being that Pearl of the Orient was closed, but we ended up at Beachciff Tavern. Once we got all sorted out, we ordered drinks and got started–here’s a bit of the discussion that ensued.

Present: John Ettorre, Tim Ferris, Gloria Ferris, George Nemeth, Daniella Lindquist, McKala Everett and Tina Vance Read the rest of this entry »