The Fredösphere

My, the voting lines were long this morning. Yes, I said lines. Plural. I went to the usual place, misread the map, went to another place and wasted a half-hour there before I found out my first guess was correct. I wished I had thought to bring a book with me, but right now the novel I'm working on is called Dewey Defeats Truman and someone might have construed that title as having a political message, so it is probably just as well. The only time I was called up for jury duty, I took Homage to Catalonia with me, and it earned me a comment. I did happen to have a printout of Aristotle's Physics with me, so I looked at that. I noticed someone else in line reading The Illiad; what kind of coincidence is that? I'm reading Aristotle because I have this not very practical idea for setting some of the words to music. I think it contains a hypnotic combination of rigorous geeky science guy talk, based on some quaint premises and intuition that is tragically flawed, but beautiful. There is lots of spooky metaphysical talk about the prime mover and infinite this and that. I think there really is a fun piece in there somewhere, probably with a post-minimalist machine rhythm, but I have to decide if it is worth the time trying to extract it. Of course, it would have to be really, really good or no one is going to want to listen to it. Finally, I'd like to mention the guide dog I saw at the polling place, which got me all choked up if you want to know the truth. Ours is a very progressive county and we have this wonderful guide dog program paid for by local government funds. if officials determine your political views are just too screwed up for you to vote properly, they assign you a guide dog to lead you into the polling place. Then the dog goes into the booth and makes your voting decisions for you. I really hope this program catches on all over the country; it could save us all a lot of grief in future elections.