something for this here election...

     Today we here in Ohio vote in our minor, inconsequential primary. This really is shaking out as the most important Presidential election since, o, 1980. So, it seems meet and right to keep these words from our first President in mind as I head to the polls. 

'In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated,' George Washington's Farewell Address.

electionisticalnexcitementnpunditry

Five more days and we here in Ohio will once again put the *swing* in swing-state. I am as yet undecided, though in good apophatic form I know those whom I shall not vote for. 

Sanders certainly is out - he's better as a gadfly in the Senate - and Kasich, should he remain on the ballot, shall be as a vessel of dishonor. As for the various strageric schemes to throw a spanner into Trump's hair, they're all too complicated and have only a faint chance, if any, of success. Besides, I can think of fates worse than Trump. 

If Romney screws this up I'm setting everyone's shoes on fire.

Incidentally, early this morning in New Albany I saw a fellow putting out signs for the Kasich campaign. Lea Ann and I speculated that perhaps he was an in-law who felt obligated to at least do something. I admired his quixotic dilligence in the face of certain, humiliating defeat. 

Anyway, the Ohio Primary is almost upon us. Be afraid, be very afraid.

a translation...

Antonio Machado, ‘Sobre la tierra amarga...’

   Upon the bitter land,

the dream holds labyrinthine

roads, tortured paths,

parks in flower and shade and silence;

   deep crypts, climbing above stars;

icons of hopes and memories.

Tiny figures that pass and smile 

- an old man’s melancholy toys - ;

  friendly images,

at the path’s flowered turn,

and roseate chimeras

that make a way . . . far away