What are you voting for?

(& an update)

Dear Frog Troublers, I’m sorry for the silence—the longest no-post stretch since we started this newsletter on Earth Day, 2021. Shortly after our post two Sundays ago, we got some great news: my dad, who has been on dialysis for almost three years, was getting a kidney transplant. He’d only been what’s called “status one” on the transplant list for a short time, but because of his blood type and length of treatment, he was matched with a cadaver kidney pretty quickly.

We were, of course, thrilled and full of hope and excitement. We started driving to Virginia before turning around again (the girls would not be allowed in the transplant wing, we learned). So we waited at home, exchanging texts with Mamie and my brother Sky, with plans to drive up the next day. But something happened after they began surgery at six in the evening—the transplant was more complicated than the surgeon on call expected (because in fact he had not seen my father’s CT scans, he told me the next day). They closed the incision and gave my dad the bad news after he woke up from surgery: not only could they not transplant the kidney, but it was their opinion that my dad will need to remain on dialysis for the rest of his life.

This swing from good news to terrible has been devastating for my family. None of us (aside from my dad) can know exactly how hard dialysis is, but we’ve watched a person we love (and the toughest person we know) endure its exhaustion and time theft for going on three years now. We were so so hopeful that this period of time would be over—and maybe there’s a chance it will be, once we get a second opinion and explore the possibility of at-home dialysis treatment.

The experience also reminded me a lot of the 2016 election, when we all expected to celebrate an important win. I remember watching the news with two friends at a Raleigh LGBTQ center that November evening, when the states we expected to go blue started getting called for DT (he goes by the moniker “Dog Turd” with Bea). I walked home, stunned and afraid and confused, at about eight-thirty (around the same time I heard about my dad’s surgery from Sky). I went to bed crying.

Of course the next morning, like the morning after the no-transplant surgery, was awful—and it grew exponentially worse for four years. In many ways it remains bad now because of the violent, racist, sexist, pro-pollution, antidemocratic culture that the 2016 election let loose, and because of the installation of a majority-extremist Supreme Court.

I am thinking of that 2016 morning now, still with hope that this Tuesday, we’ll go to bed happy. Or at the very least on Wednesday we’ll wake up relieved. A Democratic Senate, and positive local elections in your town and ours would mean a lot to my dad, a lifelong Democrat who helps Mamie put signs up all over Walkerton, who records the news so he can watch it later, and who taught us, along with Mamie, that it is a duty to read the paper every day and to vote in every election.

Yesterday morning the girls went with me and Richard to vote early and to participate in a pro-teacher, pro-public schools march in support of Del Turner, our longtime school board member (and the only Black member of our board). Richard and I have known and admired Del, a stalwart believer in public schools, equity, and democracy, for ten years. She is being challenged by a right-wing “Moms for Liberty” candidate (and newcomer to Chatham), Jessica Winger, who’s spent a lot of the pandemic yelling at her at school board meetings but appears sweet-as-pie at campaign events. Cheri Beasley, who would be North Carolina’s first Black woman senator, is being challenged by a gun-nut election denier whose shady family stole money from farmers. And there are, of course, situations like this one all over the country—Dog Turd’s election showed everyone that a portion of this country is eager to elect unqualified extremists.

But not a majority of the country. And of course not us. I know most of you have probably already voted early or by mail, or have definite plans to vote on Tuesday. But can you do us a favor today, and text five or ten of your friends, neighbors, and relatives to check in with them and make sure they’re all set to vote? Yesterday after voting we did that, and then I canvassed for Democrats in Alamance County. If nothing else it helped me make connections with good people, gave me a nice walk on a beautiful day, and quelled my anxiety a little. Later today we’ll be at the Sing Out concert for Reproductive Rights in Carrboro, signing people up for last-minute County to County volunteer shifts on Monday and Tuesday.

But Frog Troublers, we’re curious—in this crucial election, what are you voting for? And how are you feeling about your candidates? Big thanks to all of our friends who are volunteering on election day!

Also, here’s a joke that Harriet made up last night:

Q: How does a dog mark its place in a book?

A: With a barkmark!

And a few Halloween snapshots… Protect your little free libraries!

Don’t make La Llorona weep!

You know what to do…