Voting sticker and weather

I early voted, and got a little sticker to put on my shirt. I like getting anything free, but this was like patting myself on the back and saying, “what a good boy am I.” It was like getting a gold star in first grade, something I didn’t do terribly often.

Trouble is, this sticker stated, “I voted today.” Note the “today” part. That seemed sort of limiting, don’t you think?

It meant that if I was honest, I couldn’t wear my sticker the next day. I could wear it the rest of the day I voted, and everyone I met would know I had performed my patriotic duty. But I was only allowed to brag on myself for one day. If I was honest.

Unfortunately, I’m honest, at least about things like that. So I didn’t wear my sticker the day after or any other days thereafter. Seems a shame.

Maybe I could have gotten away with wearing it, but I could just see someone who had seen me on the day I voted, spotting me and my “I voted today” sticker in Walmart a couple of days afterwards. There is a gasp, followed by a shocked hush all over the store. The cry of “vote fibber!” rings through the aisles, and I am in disgrace.

Okay, maybe it wouldn’t be quite that bad, but almost. However, I do have a simple solution to this little problem.

I think it would be a good idea for the little stickers to say simply, “I voted” and leave it at that. Then folks like me could show off more. And that would mean more of us would be walking around with stickers, causing folks to feel left out because they didn’t have stickers. And, therefore they would flock to the polls to get their stickers, and voting numbers would increase exponentially. Well, increase, anyway.

Maybe somewhere there are already stickers proclaiming “I voted” without specifying a day. Maybe. Trouble is – and I think this is where the problem may lie – there may have already been a few bazillian of those “I voted today” stickers printed up, and the giver-outers of stickers want to save money by going ahead and using them.

Shucks, if I had me a non-specific sticker like that, I’d wear it every day, until the sticky wore off, and then I’d pin it – on second thought, I’m not good with pins. But I’d wear off the stickum anyway.

••••

Saw a show on PBS recently, which told about all the things scientists are trying to come up with to counter global warming. There were some heavy doses of “it’s really our fault so we need to fix it,” if not in so many words, in implication. And for all I know, those accusations could be right.

Some projects involve huge machines that will take carbon out of the air. (Of course, I thought there already huge machines that do that. They’re called trees. And they give back oxygen. But too many folks are intent on cutting them all down to plant crops).

And some proposed projects really sound like the stuff of science fiction, literally out of this world. They want to put stuff in space to reflect some of the sun’s rays away from earth. The folks laying the plans for these projects believe their reflectors could cool the planet.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong? I acknowledge the possibility that humans have inadvertently caused a lot of the climate problems we’re having today. I can even imagine Las Vegas as a ghost town someday, if things keep getting dryer. And sure enough, some folks are saying droughts will get worse. Okay, maybe they will.

So, after possibly creating accidental problems that could be traced back to us, we are now going to try and deliberately affect the climate? That makes me wonder a bit. There’s this condition I heard of once, called “unintended consequences.” Unintended or not, these consequences could be on us. I mean, if we are advertising that we’re trying to change the climate, and something goes terribly wrong, there won’t be anyone or anything else at which to point.

••••

There is a passage in the Bible which sounds a bit spring-like, when it says “and the voice of the turtle (or turtle dove) is heard in our land.”

Well, I haven’t heard any turtles, or even a dove, lately. What I have heard are lawn mowers. I think we’ve skipped spring. I joked about it some time ago on social media, and it looks like it’s happening.

There have been worse things. I can remember, after a couple of horrendous storms, when the voice of the turtle was replaced by the voice of the chain saw. Seems like that’s all we heard, day and evening.

But now is now. Guess we better get all the rain we can now, because it may get scarce before long.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: David Nichol is a freelance writer who retired from the Times-Herald. He can be contacted at nicholdb@cablelynx.com.)