God Bless Us, Every One

Well, damn ...

Was afraid I would oversleep so went to bed just after eight on Monday night. Woke up fine at four, dressed in my star-spangled blue polo shirt and comfortable sneakers and had time to stop at 7-11 for a 20 ounce coffee before arriving at the local high school promptly at five o'clock. AM.

Didn't have much for introductions all around but there were six women and one other man besides myself. Setting out of tables and taping up of posters and sticking signs in the lawn outside was most of the first 45 minutes. Set up three privacy tables which were kind of Samsonite suitcase things providing a flat smooth surface atop collapsable legs with screens on either side and a light above. Set the horrid Windoze laptop electronic voting machine on a low table for any potentially differently-abled voters who might need a magnified touch screen to vote (thank goodness no one asked for it.) We were having a bit of trouble getting the ballot box unlocked to verify there were no leftovers inside and mount the electronic visual scanner on it securely. With the clock ticking away seconds until the Polls official opening time of 0600 we finally had everything in place.

I had the pleasure of welcoming the very first voter in York County Precinct 102 right after opening, a young woman who expressed sincere satisfaction at finally being first in place after years of voting. I gave her the red-white-and-blue "I Voted" sticker and got a big smile in return.

It was steady all day with only about three occasions when there were no voters in the poll for a few minutes, and maybe as many as three times when voters were waiting for one of the three booths to open so they could mark their ballots. Every vote was taken on a paper ballot with the various candidates listed by office and a bubble by their name to fill in with a black marker, which was then fed into the scanner which tabulated the vote and dropped it into the lockbox. Pretty smart machine really in that if you blacked out too many candidates in one race it would refuse to accept and eject the paper back out the front with an error message in a little LED window. You then tell the voter their mistake, to black in all the candidate circles in order to "spoil" the ballot and give them another blank. I think we had maybe three "overvotes." We only had one voter whose credentials were questionable since she had recently moved, and had to wait on calls to the Registrar before allowing her to proceed. And there were two voters physically unable to enter the polls so in each instance two Election Officers walked outside with a special folder to bring back those ballots in secret and enter them into the box. Other than that, just ordinary citizens voting in an ordinary way.

This was my home district so I did not have to vote via absentee ballot ... when there was a lull in the action I cast my own vote. It was dismaying to see a handful of candidates out of a dozen or so local offices were running unopposed. State Senator. State Delegate. Sheriff. County Supervisor. Clerk of Court. School Board. Soil and Conservation Board.

What the hell kind of election is it when there is no choice?

Worse than that I suppose is the fact that we had a grand total of 452 votes out of 1485 registered voters. What, about thirty percent turnout. I have made public appearances a number of times where I spoke before crowds bigger than 500. If I could not make a lasting impression on more than 227 people then I got up late and left my notes at home. And had my fly open. And a buger snot hanging out my nose. I must check and see what some of these elected gigs pay. Oh, and probably have to decide where I stand on issues or some such rot.

Seriously, can it be this accessible to step up and push aside people who no longer serve the public interest? There must be something I am missing. All the bitching and snarling and gnashing of teeth and there are only 452 neighbors motivated to get up and out and do something to change things? It's FREE! What a waste of karma and psychic effort when a solution appears ready at hand.

Polls closed at seven o'clock sharp and there was no long line of people outside. We mash some buttons on the two machines which print out tape totals - nothing on the WinVote - breaking down the count and candidates by races. Two teams working independently fill out paper spreadsheets detailing the number of ballots issued, candidate totals, and write-in votes while the Captain of Election Officials calls in preliminary totals to the Board of Elections. I kept waiting for the balloons and confetti to fall from the ceiling but I think they must have overlooked it somehow. All there was was a bunch of volunteers getting $90 apiece for a sixteen hour day trying to get the tallies to add up and pack up the ballots and clear the poll.

It was my sincere pleasure to meet: Joan, Jack, Louise, Linda, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Majorie, who have been a team at the 102nd Precinct for many, many elections. Their dedication was impressively apparent and they didn't have to have the delightful humor which they did. I could easily understand if this felt too much like work to be happy, but you all were.

* * * * * * *

Well it appears that we did not do a perfect job this go 'round ... I got a call from the Poll Captain and our report-out of the write-in totals don't match the tapes. We all have to go down to the Registrar's tomorrow, pull the ballots out of the Courthouse, and do a manual recount of all the write-in votes. Thank God there are only 452 of them.

Oh ... and this ...

Always a big night for me

Thursday I get to take the garbage and recyclables out to the street for pickup. I had to leave my dear old house in the hands of strangers in 2000 for career advancement, driving patrol boats out of the ports of Tampa and Savannah, and eventually a Headquarters assignment. The house was unoccupied for the past year and a half while I drove back and forth 300 miles every week from Washington, always seeming to miss Trash Day. So, for more than seven years I lived with the feeling I could kill just to experience the serene, dull, blessed, repetitive routine of putting the cans out on the street. Simple things for simple folks.

-Phillip

Huh

I have never had a beard. Actually, I am not a real heavy-bearded kind of guy by nature nor do I have much chest hair or elsewhere ... I always wonder if there was a Native American (Cleveland Indian?) in my woodpile somewhere in the past ... and the military's rules about grooming are restrictive enough it was easiest to be completely clean-shaven. With retirement I decided just to put down the razor and walk away. All the advice I could Google said not to touch anything for at least a month to see where your natural look ends up; well, it has been six weeks. I am thinking now about the end of the year.

There have been times when the itch or tickle gets annoying but it's not too hard to find a distraction until that goes away. I have been making pitiful excuses out of habit for my ratty look, but a friend took a picture of me last week and I was startled when I saw it. Hey, that looks like a real moustache! And this is beginning to look like a real beard! I don't know why this came as a surprise. I turned 51 this month so why is this unexpected? Every day now I find when I don't say anything first nobody else says anything, either. I feel damn self-conscious like the beard is the first thing that walks into a room before I do, but people give really no reaction at all, and I stopped apologizing.
When growing your own you notice just how many other beards there are walking around, with an odd satisfaction when you find yourself thinking "that one looks like crap."

Ever since I first arrived in Yorktown for training in 1987 I pictured Patrick Henry's stand in the House of Burgesses: "Give me Liberty, or Give me Death!" which I learned as a grade-school kid. I recall General George Washington kicked British butt on the fields behind my house - literally - with the help of the young and gallant Lafayette and the wily Count de Grasse during the American Revolution. When Cuyahoga County Ohio lost or did not count hundreds of votes in a past election I told my cousin she ought to sign up to be a poll worker. Last month she reminded me this is the time of year to apply if I wanted to do so myself. I dropped off some forms at the county offices and tonight we had training on how the poll workers function as a team to conduct and verify voting. There is more to it than you might think. Democracy is hard work.

I've been sworn in as an Officer of Election. About half the poll workers I have met are fairly elderly, and on top of that Virginia is experiencing an unusually compressed election schedule. There are a lot of state and local offices on the normal ballot for November, our Congressional Representative just died so there is a Special Election in December, and Virginia has moved their 2008 Presidential Primary up to February. During my conversations with the Registrar and Chairman of the York County Board of Elections a number of my patriotic impulses and urges burst out of me, weaving in and around stories about my career in the service. I guess something hit home ... tonight I was told I have been nominated to the Board of Elections.

Huh.

I am about sick

Sitting here alone after the first full month of retirement, I find myself surrounded everywhere I look with "shit I ought to do" and get terrible down on myself for doing so little. Just how long does the retirement excuse work anyway. For about a week I have had in the nagging back of my mind that I should load the truck with some brush and scrub for a trip to the recycling center run by York County. I have a deal with myself: I take one load to be shredded and I get to buy a pickup load of hardwood mulch for $10 to bring home and cut down on the amount of mowing I need to do. This is one hell of an operation, they can deliver your topsoil or mulch with a bulldozer if you happen to need that much, it's extremely beneficial to the community with the great amount of downed trees, et cetera that this part of Virginia generates, I get an unlimited amount of dump weight allowed as a resident, the cost is a real bargain, and it's only three miles from my house (all on back roads for which my aging F-150 is grateful.)

There is a very unsightly tangle of overgrowth at the corner of my lot where in years past I had cut scrub trees down to open the depths of woods in the view from the street. There is a kind of maniacal growing tree taken residence there - cut a good size tree down and ten suckers shoot out from the stump. I have in mind not only neighborly neatness but also to extend the cedar rail fence across the entire front of my lot and to plant a dwarf orchard behind it. Yesterday FedEx delivered a pawpaw from Stark Brothers, so today finally I back the truck up and grab my sharp implements of vegan destruction intent to wreak havoc on the "back nine."

It is ugly in a hacking through the Amazon kind of way. I take a compound lopper to work on all the waist high tree suckers fair enough, they cut easily and fall where they lay, but when I grab and pull there is some type of snarley creeping vine that has its' claws wrapped around everything. Nothing is immune: lop, lop, lop, lop, grab, pull, -snarltangle- go back, slice the parasitic vines all to hell, break it free and stack the whole pile up. This vine is extremely pervasive. It has climbed on anything upright in sight and makes the leap from brush to shrub to tree wherever they meet. This thing has at times four, five, six creepers wrapped around what I have brushed down, when I yank the snakes move around under the leaf litter and never originate where I suspect they are. I don't know what this is and every once in a while I remember Virginia has some very nasty things growing here which WILL break you out in bleeding sores. But it doesn't have leaves of three, in fact, it seems to have a sort of pleasant fragrance to it freshly cut, but man is it tenacious. I am in shorts of course, wearing white socks and my work boots, and these ... these ... "things" are brushing around my ankles and it is more than a bit creepy. Plus, here's a bonus: Everything takes twice as long.

But I persevere! I am Henry Morton Stanley in Zanzabar! I hack slash and am merciless - a real weed killer. I back up the truck and admire my work for a smokewhile then proceed to load up. Even then I have another fight on my hands because nothing on the ground moves without dragging along everything on the ground, and nothing fits into the truck neatly - I have to wrap and tangle things together to get them to fit. Finally it gets done.

And then ... oh, then ...

See what I did there?

... one little branch brushes my arm like one of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree pinecones. I look closer. A dim light of recognition comes to me. And I am almost physically sick.

How many years did that grape vine struggle against the forest goliaths to fight it's way up to the sunshine, asking only for a chance to turn the light into sugar? Was it ever a cultivar, or is it somehow wild and indigenous? It certainly was low lying with no care to stake it upright or craft an arbor from which to hang. It was definitely losing the battle, having to lie low and creep around and through and up its' stronger neighbors in order to survive at all. The thickest part of what I cut was no bigger than one of my fingers. What a gallant creeper, fighting against all hope for who knows how many years - and I come out and cut it to shit.

While lopping I eventually recognized the root stock point whence all the rest of the climber came with the thought of returning later to dig it out or poison it. For now I can take some small comfort from knowing grape stock really doesn't perish from a hack job, in fact it can be healthy. And maybe over the coming years Gilbert may come back and forgive me if I work at it.

There was only the one small berry. I would have eaten it to be sure. But this one had a worm.

-Phillip

If this doesn't work, it's a lawsuit

Old York Hampton Hwy

Yorktown, Virginia 23692
757-123-4567

14 September 2007

The Honorable James Webb, Senator of Virginia
The Honorable Dennis Kucinich, Representative of Ohio
Attorney General of the State of Ohio
Clerk of Court, Franklin County Ohio
Equifax
Experian
TransUnion
Navy Federal Credit Union Mortgage Loan Office

To Whom it May Concern:

I request the State of Ohio issue letters of retraction to major credit agencies on my account.

In 1992 I was ordered to duty in the Great Lakes Rescue Coordination Center at Cleveland, Ohio with the U. S. Coast Guard. Upon arrival I got married and bought a house in Bay Village. I filed a joint federal income tax return with my wife in order to itemize the mortgage benefits, while she had a part-time job and so filed Ohio resident income taxes, necessarily identifying me on her state return. In 1994 I divorced and quit-claim my real estate to her, and was transferred to new duties in Wilmington, North Carolina that August.

In 1997 the Ohio Attorney General filed an illegal judgement and lien against me in absentia for non-payment of Ohio income taxes. I have no other particulars about the judgement since the State of Ohio did not see fit to contact me regarding the matter; not then, not to this day. I discovered it only when I filed for a mortgage on my current Yorktown residence in 1997.

Soldiers & Sailors Civil Relief Act of 1940 (SSCRA) states:

“In any action or proceeding commenced in any court, if there shall be a default of any appearance by the defendant, the plaintiff, before judgment shall file in the court an affidavit setting forth facts showing that the defendant is not in military service.”

I wrongly assumed that in order to be Attorney General of the State of Ohio one had to be a lawyer, or at the very least, familiar with the law. Even a cursory inquiry by that office would have disclosed the fact I was an Active Duty member of the military and not liable for state taxes. It was negligent not to do so, and I have been injured as a result of that negligence.

When I originally found out about this judgement in 1997, I wrote to every Congressman and Senator from my home state of Nevada, the state of Ohio, and the state of North Carolina where I was serving at the time. The only one to bother responding was the Office of Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. It was one of his staff who contacted the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio about the matter and is responsible for cancellation of the judgement.

Of course I thought this would correct the record. In fact it has not. A mortgage application I filed one month ago in August 2007 disclosed this judgement is still on the books of all three credit bureaus. I have been materially and substantially harmed by the State of Ohio's illegal judgement against me. THIS HAS GONE ON FOR TEN YEARS. Interest rates on my credit cards, mortgages, auto and motorcycle loans have all been higher than my rightful credit record would merit. For example, my credit union, Navy Federal, offers Visa cards at 7.9% to members with clean credit; my current Visa account with them is charged at 11.9% interest. Likewise their Home Equity Line best rate is 5.75% while mine is at 8%. At just 1% penalty, my $250,000.00 average debt over the past ten years means your negligence has cost me, very conservatively, a minimum of of $25,000.00.

THE STIGMA OF HAVING A TAX LIEN FILED AGAINST ME IS TERRIBLY DAMAGING!

It is clear to me that rather than being expunged after the kind assistance of Rep. Kucinich and his staff in 1999, the State of Ohio merely registered a “Release and Satisfaction of Judgement” my copy of which is dated September 9^th 2007 Serial Number 00219942243576 Account Number 123-45-6789, Case 97JG-XXXX. “The above tax judgement having been settled, cancelled, and/or satisfied, the same is hereby discharged upon payment of the court costs by the defendant to the Clerk of Courts.“ This libels me by making it appear I somehow 'settled' or 'satisfied' or in some other manner paid what was an unlawful judgement for which I bear no blame and had no voice in.

I have paid every legitimate debt incurred since I was sixteen years old - today I am 50 and retired from the Coast Guard with an Honorable Discharge and a letter of appreciation for my military service from the President of the United States of America. It is outrageous that the State of Ohio accuse me of being a tax cheat and file a lien against me in absentia while I was in uniform serving honorably in the Armed Forces of the United States. And it is my definition of high cowardness for the State Attorney General to attack me without calling me to defend myself before the Court.

I await your corrections to clear my credit and my good name. I am not stupid enough to expect an apology. And, I will write off my ten years of stolen and lost income as tuition paid for trusting the government of the State of Ohio to behave in a responsible and legal manner towards citizens.

Very Sincerely,

Phillip C. Wolf
Master Chief Boatswain's Mate (Ret)
United States Coast Guard
Yorktown, Virginia
Birthplace of America and Freedom

This.

Olbermann to Bush: "Your hypocracy is so vast."
By Keith Olbermann

Because it's not right to reprint I replace the actual rant with a link.

What is most upsetting to me is that the smallness, pettiness, and Oedipal troubles this President suffers deeply were clearly visible and on display on the march to launch this lunatic war. Remember the thirty day Crawford, Texas August vacations with the puppet riding Reagan-like on the wild range, hacking brush? The State of the Union lie about Iraq buying yellowcake uranium from Africa even after the CIA agent's husband told them it was a lie? Sending the henchmen forth in a body to parrot-squawk that "hope the smoking gun doesn't turn into a mushroom cloud" party line on the Sunday News Shows? Cruising low on Air Force One to gawk like a monkey out the window at the sweltering humanity soaking in what used to be New Orleans?

The most Colin Powell, the only man with any integrity in the originial Administration, could muster was to quit four years before the rest of the rats decided to flee the Presidential shipwreck after throwing his lifelong reputation on the lying altar at the U.N.

None of the suddenly wise commentators gave peep one.

The Press is late to the party. They have some payback to make up. This is just the start.

-Phillip