A View from the Country

Al Holman, Publisher
May 18, 2012

I thought I had heard it all, but today I saw on the news that in a town someplace, it is against the law to text and walk in public. I guess that if you are walking and texting and you walk into a fountain, into a black bear or into a wall, it is the responsibility of the government to write a law to protect us from ourselves. I bet that if you got all wet, you had a large bite taken out of you or you broke your nose, you would figure out that that was the wrong thing to do. The goal of the law was to stop people from J walking, which happens to be against the law already. The question now is which law will they enforce the J-walking law or the new no-texting law.

Let's look at another issue today. On Tuesday, May 15th in Mendon there was an election. Now granted there was only one race. But in my mind it was a significant race because it was for the School Committee. In my mind the education of our children is paramount to the future of the country. The election is finished and the count is in and the winner is declared and it is over. I want to thank every person, winner or loser, for standing for an office. This being said, only 398 voters came out to vote in Mendon today. That is not very many, which shows one of two things: either 90 percent of the registered voters did not know where to go to vote, or they did not care. I want to believe that it is because they did not know where to vote, not that they are apathetic. I want to believe that it is because they did not know where to vote, not that they had more important things to do than vote. I want to believe that it is because they did not know where to vote, not that they had no interest in the issues relative to education.

In the history of our country, men and women have sacrificed much to protect the right of the voter here and in other countries, and the concept of one-man one-vote is a founding principal of our country. The issue here is not who won, but that only 398 voters cared. On a National level we seem to have little confidence in what is going on in D.C., but we don't seem to show up to vote.

That's looking out my window - hoping that at the next election 100 percent of the registered voters show up.