All Quiet on the Eastern Front
We haven’t written a blog in a while, so I thought I’d check in. There’s not much new going on with us in the DC area. The weather is strange. It can be very cold and rainy, and then warm and humid the next day. The autumn leaves are quite nice. Our new roommate has moved in to occupy our second bedroom. We have probably this year’s closest US congressional election race here in Virginia between Webb and Allen and this will probably decide who will control the Senate. I voted of course, despite my distrust of easily hackable electronic voting and our our whole electoral system as a whole. However we can’t complain about the system or about not actually having a choice when voting until a larger majority of voters actually vote, since voting turnout rates can hover around 40%. France for example has a bad year for voter turnouts when it’s around the 60 percent range. There’s enough non-voters out there in the US to vote in a third choice if you feel all Democrat and Republican candidates are practically the same. Anyway most Americans just seem happy to not have those annoying campaign ads bother our TV watching enjoyment. How can we spread democracy to others, when we don’t practice it ourselves?
I’ve begun some part-time ESL teaching in DC and Arlington. It’s fun to have students from so many different places, and here they can’t all speak Arabic to each other to cheat like in Yemen. Anne-Sophie will be in France from December 13-January 7th. I don’t know where I will be. It will depend on work and ticket prices. If I do go somewhere, it will most likely be California. So I hope to see some of you over the holidays.