Anne is feeling fine, as am I, but it is still too early to call. On Election Day she worked the polls as an election official. She has done this job many times before, but nothing seems the same this year. Unlike in the many past years that she has been a poll worker, she wasn’t scheduled to work the polls. This little blessing alleviated the need for her to get up at oh-dark-thirty. She was eventually called to duty and reported there by ten o’clock in the morning.

Subsequently, the news has reported that a poll worker in a neighboring county, who had tested positive for Covid last Friday, but then hid this fact and worked the polls. This all came to light after he died yesterday. Who he was and what he actually died from has not been made public. The epidemic is raging here and infections have exploded since the election. Yesterday, area hospitals admitted a record number of Covid patients and are postponing elective procedures. 

Area health officials announced that if on Election Day you came in contact with 200 to 300 people, you were exposed to the Coronavirus. The exit polls for Anne’s precinct indicate that there were about a thousand voters there while she was working. She was in proximity with none of the voters for fifteen minutes or more. She eschewed the county offered PPE and relied on the masks that she made. She is the best mask wearer around that I know.

We are separately quarantining. Anne sleeps upstairs, I down. She has the laptop, I have the desktop. We both wear masks. I cook, but we both share the kitchen and our sole bathroom. I made coffee this morning and by ten, Anne had already used up three of her five trips to the loo. Thank you very much, Jay. Anne plans on getting tested this weekend, hopefully negative and life can be less squirrelly.

Poll workers are heroes. Full stop. —Dan Rather (and me)

The graphic with this post is from Washington, DC. Specifically Crystal City, which has a huge underground mall next to the Pentagon. Billboards adorn its halls and this photo is from ads for a firm that specializes in job placement for government contractors who hold security clearances. Instances include squirrels asking, “Who gave their lunch a Top Secret classification level?” or saying “You really can’t overdo good OPSEC.” A niche market, but not so much there.