* * Fixing our elections

By the time you read this, hopefully Election Day will soon be upon us and blissfully this worst-election-in-our-lifetimes will be over. The refrain I hear most often is that, “With 320,000,000 people in this country, how could we have ever ended up with two worse candidates?” Esteemed television newsman Bob Schieffer said following the October 9 debate, “I just hope to God I don’t see another campaign like this one. America can do better than what we have seen here tonight. This was just disgraceful.”

Hopefully we’ve reached the nadir, but I have my doubts. The system under which we nominate and elect people at both statewide and national levels is deeply flawed. We need a systematic way to fix it.

The first problem we have is that our districts are gerrymandered to such a degree that representatives are picking their voters and not the other way around. For those representatives picked by districts here in Virginia, the U.S. Congress and our state House of Delegates, there is almost never any competition. When I ran unsuccessfully for the House of Delegates three years ago, out of 100 seats, there were 88 incumbents running. 86 were re-elected. A year ago, not a single incumbent was defeated. The problem with this, for example in congressional races, is that an incumbent’s greatest challenge is typically not from the opposition party but from his own. Consider the case of Eric Cantor, a strong conservative who was ousted in the primary by an even more conservative challenger. This forces representatives to cater to the most extreme wings of their parties. We need non-partisan districting.

Adding to the advantage of incumbency is the extreme disparity in fund-raising opportunities. To illustrate this, as I write, 9^th District Congressman Morgan Griffith is being challenged by Army veteran Derek Kitts. To date, Griffith has amassed $636,507 to Kitts’ $23,154. This is not a typo. Griffith’s endless pit of money is put there largely by corporations, political action groups, and lobbyists. There is no doubting whom he truly represents. We must overturn Citizens United and impose strict campaign finance laws that return our representatives to servants of real, breathing human people.

Our elections are relics of an earlier era, making voting far more difficult than it needs to be. Today we have a single day to vote (other than absentee voting, which requires an excuse), and it’s on a working day. This puts undue stress on working people. All voting is vulnerable to fraud, but with the great minds our country possesses, I’m certain we could devise a safe, trustworthy Internet based system where people could vote anywhere they have computer access. Why not an Election Month instead of an Election Day? We need to make voting as easy as possible rather than as difficult.

Speaking of relics, our system of “winner-take-all” elections is producing results that our Founding Fathers would have never intended. Today, to win an election, a candidate merely needs one more vote than his or her opponent. While this is simple and makes logical sense, it produces legislatures that are not representative of the people. John Adams once said our country’s legislatures “should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large.” Right now, ours are emphatically not. Consider our state’s 10 westernmost districts. Overall, we may find a Republican majority of voters at around 60%. Even with non-partisan redistricting, each could easily select a Republican winner. Ideally, 60% of the delegates would be Republican and 40% Democrat. The situation exists in the reverse in Democratic-rich areas. Modern scientific voting techniques such as proportional representation voting yield results that are more representative of the people.

Finally, our Electoral College system, another relic of an earlier age, makes no sense in the modern world. How could we ever justify a Presidential candidate winning more votes and then losing the election?

One of the most disheartening comments I got while running was from a Christiansburg woman who said, “I never vote; my vote doesn’t matter.” Sad to say, she’s right; in most contests her vote doesn’t matter. Today’s systems drive away potential voters in the millions nationally.

The rise in this Presidential cycle of “protests candidates” is indicative of the dissatisfaction and anger of voters who know they are not being represented. A happy, potentially positive outcome of this most disgraceful and agonizing cycle is that our attention might be directed to fixing the process. Otherwise, we’re doomed to face even more rancorous and unbecoming elections in the future. 

* * Loving the place you live

Melody Warnick is where she belongs. And she wrote a new book about living in and loving Blacksburg. I met her recently and was enthralled by her story. In fact, the title of the book is This is Where You Belong: The art and science of loving the place you live.*

She said, “I wrote the book because I’d been moving around a lot for jobs and graduate school. My husband and I had lived in Iowa, Maryland, and Utah. We were living in Austin, Texas. We weren’t too satisfied with it. It was hot and there was too much traffic. We had heard about Blacksburg from a friend in Iowa, and he raved about it. So when an opportunity came up for my husband at Virginia Tech, he applied, got the job, and we moved here.  

“We told the friend that we liked Iowa. He said, ‘This town is nice, but it’s no Blacksburg, Virginia!’ He was born and raised here and was a huge fan. He talked it up in such a way that it lodged in our brains that Blacksburg was Mecca. He was so loyal to Blacksburg and loved it so much that no other place could compare.

“We’d never been here. We had high hopes. When you move, you have a fresh start. You anticipate being a different person and your life will be amazing! We got here in 2012 and it was a rough start. It was rainy. People said ‘We call it “Bleaksburg.”’ We were used to living in places with amazing restaurants and there weren’t as many here. The library wasn’t as big. We were thinking we’d made a huge mistake. I was thinking we’d move again in a couple of years. But I realized I didn’t want to keep doing that. It wasn’t fair to keep uprooting our kids. We needed to settle someplace and be happy there. I decided to try to fall in love with my town. And that led to the book.”

I asked if there was a day when that became easy.

“There was not a single day, but there were epiphany moments. I spent a year writing. I did ‘Love where you live experiments.’ I made actions to feel more connected to the community. Eating at local restaurants. Shopping at local businesses. Going to the farmer’s market. Hiking. I remember a day when I rode bicycles with my daughter down the Huckleberry Trail to the Farmer’s Market and thinking how awesome it was. I found I’d started to love it!

“We did a hike to a local falls. It was a beautiful day. Driving home I was struck by how beautiful it is here. I started having moments of looking around and feeling lucky to be here.

“People are mobile, and they have a hard time settling. Twelve percent of the population, around 38 million people, move every year. But there are few books about it. Moving is overwhelming. Once you arrive, you can feel lost. I quoted a woman in the book who said about her new community, ‘If I was to die, nobody within 50 miles would care.’ I realized lots of people were having this experience. What was the process of feeling at home? How could someone accelerate that process?

“One of the things that helps you love the place you live is an appreciation for what it offers. There’s really lots to do (here). There are amazing people. Research has shown that small towns are easier to love and people are more attached. But there are challenges. Sometimes people feel isolated. Where are the art museums, and amusement parks? You have to rethink your idea of what to do on weekends and what entertainment is. If you consider yourself more urban, it can be hard.

“People here are incredibly friendly. People say hello to strangers. Shopkeepers are friendly and try to remember who you are. Nobody should take that for granted.”

I asked what surprised her as she worked on the book.

She said, “I was surprised at how malleable it is to change your feelings about a place. The landscape here was initially confining and claustrophobia-inducing. That was internal to me. Some people love mountains. Some love the beach. It’s who you are. But I wanted to resolve my issue with that claustrophobia. So I went hiking, canoeing, and bicycling. That experience of being in nature totally changed my feeling. By getting out in it and having fun altered my perception. You can work at changing your perceptions.

“The ideas of place attachment work everywhere. Being an active participant in your community will help you appreciate what your community is good at.”

* * Life has no dress rehearsal

Everybody loves a good romance story. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. They live happily ever after. While the basics have been the same since Adam fell for Eve, the way eligible people make connections has changed with the times. Love Story in 1970. You’ve Got Mail in 1998. And now it’s Kiley Facetimes Mark in 2016.

“I turned 40 and got my divorce papers the same week,” Kiley Thompson told me as we chatted in a Blacksburg bagel shop. “My papers were finalized on October 30, 2011, and I turned 40 on November 3. People talk about chapters closing in life; that was a slamming chapter closing.”

Kiley and I have known each other for over half her life. She was a customer of mine, managing her Virginia Tech student literary magazine that my company printed. We’ve somehow managed to stay connected. She keeps up with modern trends as well as anybody I know.

“There are all kinds of apps these days for people looking to find each other on-line. Tinder. Match.com. E-Harmony.com. I live in a small town where the main demographic is between 18 and 24. I’m 44. I was a single mom.

“I was never of the opinion that I’d get married again. I tried leaving Blacksburg twice, but it didn’t work. If Blacksburg wants you, it keeps you. Dating options were few and far between. Dating a student or graduate student seemed a little creepy.

“Then this whole thing happened.”

Kiley met a guy. Mark. He lives in Scotland.

“In April, 2015, a friend named Susan who works for the Nautilus project was on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico. They lowered a camera into the water and a whale buzzed it repeatedly. It was amazingly cool. A bunch of friends loved it. The video got on Facebook and went viral through Buzzfeed.”

Long story short, a friend of Susan’s saw the video and “friended” Kiley. People get friended by strangers all the time. “If he was a friend of hers, he couldn’t be too bad.

“I learned from his settings that he worked for the University of Glasgow and for CERN (the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, in Switzerland). Being a bit of a geek, I found that sexy. He was a single guy with a couple of kids. He was cute.

“We started talking on Facebook and did that for six months. Then we decided to Facetime. That’s video calling. I was in L.A. for work and he was in Minneapolis for a conference. Our first call lasted three hours. ‘Well, this is interesting!’ I thought to myself.

“We Facetimed more. We were flying back to our respective homes, me from L.A. to Blacksburg and he from Minneapolis to Glasgow. I sat next to a woman and told her about Mark. She said, ‘This isn’t a coincidence. This is the universe talking to you. You need to listen.’ She was an older woman flying from Phoenix to Philadelphia to Manchester. Her sister had died and she was leaving her sister’s funeral. She said, ‘I just buried my sister. Life has no dress rehearsals. You’d be a fool not to see what can happen with this. You don’t get a second chance.’ This really resonated with me.”

Simultaneously, on his flight, he sat next to two women, recent widows, going to Scotland as a memorial trip. One had met her husband 20 years earlier in an Internet chat room. “She told Mark it was the happiest 20 years of her life. She told him, ‘You have to meet her.’ We got home, immediately Facetimed each other, and told each other about what had happened, our stories. It was a vacuum kind of moment. He bought a ticket for three months later to come over and meet me.

“We wrote letters, actual snail-mail. We read to each other. We talked about our children. A month and a half into that, I couldn’t wait. I bought the most expensive airline ticket I’ve ever bought and I flew to Glasgow. It was old-school courting. But I needed to see this man in person. It was movie-like. (From the airplane,) I saw myself descending into Scotland. We landed and I stopped at the bathroom to put myself together, knowing he was in the building. What was this going to be like? He’d made a sign saying, ‘Improbably Wonderful Person Kiley Thompson.’ He ran to me and kissed me. Luggage dropped. This type of stuff doesn’t happen in real life. I’m an optimist but a realist. The only way I can explain it is that it was like falling into a space that had been created for me.”

Sadly, my word count has elapsed and there’s much more of the story to tell. Kiley and Mark are engaged to be married next springtime. Stay tuned.

* * Closing in on the end of a life well lived

A timeless river. A john-boat. Camera. Canteen. Binoculars. Father and son. Elemental stuff.

Dad and I took the morning on the New River on a hot summer day. We parked and unloaded at the landing near I-81 and dropped the propeller of his electric motor into the green water. Traffic thundered overhead on the massive parallel bridges, yet it was calm and serenely peaceful on the water. As it should be.

Dad has had a terrible year, in and out of seemingly all the area’s hospitals. I joke that he should apply for the bed equivalent of frequent flier miles. He had prostate cancer twenty years ago and it was treated successfully with radiation. But at this stage, his bladder has failed, likely because of it. I’m guessing his doctors at the time never thought he’d live this long. He’s been wracked with infections since then, necessitating the hospital stays.

I mean no disrespect to the wonderful health care people of our community, as most are caring, thoughtful, and well-trained. But hospitals are awful places. Dad’s bad days have been at the hospitals. The good days have been on the river.

Bob has made a reputation for himself as an extraordinary wildlife photographer, with his specialty being birds, especially water birds. When you go on a wildlife trip, you never know what you’ll see. Sometimes you don’t see much of anything. But if you don’t go, you guarantee that you’ll never see anything.

I was hopeful of seeing an osprey or two. Ospreys, or “fish eagles,” are the avian world’s most adroit fishermen. They soar overhead on broad, massive wings and plummet feet-first into rivers and lakes, emerging with fish in their razor-sharp talons. They are dark on the back and wings and bright white underneath. They have curved beaks and piercing yellow eyes.

We went downstream first, under the bridges. Dad had me scouring the shoreline for sights of an otter or perhaps a mink. I saw an occasional great blue heron in the distance and a kingfisher, but the only good sighting was of a kingbird, a robin-sized flycatcher.

We turned upstream and the tiny motor propelled us slowly and silently through the current. Dad knew there were osprey nests on the dam’s upper structure and thought we might see a bird or two.

Dad’s resume might read something like this: Born in 1928 in Nassau County, Long Island, New York. Married Doris Sara Tatarsky of Richmond in 1950. Graduated from VPI in Forestry. Worked briefly for the Forest Service, but then made his home in the New River Valley and worked most of his career in his own company, Christiansburg Printing, which he founded in 1957. Four children: David, Michael, Richard, and Karen. Traveled to two-dozen countries. Loved scuba diving, wildlife viewing, and photography. Lived the American Dream.

Then we saw an osprey! He was a bold specimen, circling around in the area just below the dam. He flew overhead and then perched on the branch of a dead tree on the south side, near the road below an abandoned quarry. We circled towards him and he flew again to the other side, the north forested side, where the lighting was better for photos. He was a stunning, large bird, regal, as if cloaked in a tuxedo.

Dad stopped the motor and grabbed the camera from its carrying case. Attached was a lens maybe 18 inches long, dwarfing the camera. He started shooting. Click. Click. Click click click click… the bird turned towards us and stretched its wings. Click. Click click click. Dad took dozens of shots, perhaps hundreds. “Back in the film days, I’d take two rolls of 36 each and hope for a few good ones when they came back from the developer. Now with digital, I take hundreds every time I go out,” he said.

And so it went for the next hour or so. He pulled to shore so I could get out for a moment and swim to cool off. Dad used to be a good swimmer, better than me, but the risk of infection is too high now for him to swim any more.

“I’m near the end of my life,” he said in an emotionless, matter-of-fact way. “I’m not eager to go, but I know I’ll die soon. Everybody dies eventually.” He’d already beaten the odds, besting the actuarial tables.

I asked him whether he’d fulfilled his “bucket list.”

He said, “I have some short-term things I’d like to do. A couple of trips to make with friends and to see family. But I don’t plan too far ahead. If I feel well enough, I’ll go.”

We turned and headed back to the landing. The sun was hot, directly overhead.

“I’ve had a good life. I have a loving wife and four great kids. I’ve had great opportunities and done lots of exciting things. I love where I live.”

We waved at a couple of guys relaxing by their boat on the shoreline.

“And,” he said, “I love this river.”

* * Motorcycle rider knows when to quit

I suppose it was fitting that my friend and fellow motorcyclist Bill Sowers and I had this conversation on my birthday. Bill and I love the feeling of leaning a bike through a fast set of sweeping turns, but now 82 years old, he’s decided it’s time to change directions, so to speak.

“I was born in 1933,” he said, noting that everybody always thinks he’s much younger. He has a perpetual gleam in his eye and a bright, healthy spirit. “I went into the Navy and got married and then went to college (at Concord University in West Virginia), so I only dabbled with bikes when I was younger.

“In 1971, a movie called On Any Sunday was released. I was totally hooked from that moment on.” The movie featured motorcycle legends Mert Lawwill, Malcolm Smith, and movie star Steve McQueen having the times of their lives riding and racing motorcycles. Bill saw the movie with some friends and all of them bought dirt racing bikes.

Bill has a degree in teaching with expertise in sociology, biology, mathematics and general science. He taught school for a few years and coached sports that he’d played in high school: football, basketball, and track. He taught throughout Virginia and West Virginia. He was living in Georgia when he caught the bug. “I rode enduro races, through unimaginable obstacles in the woods. These are timed races so the object is to go at a consistent speed, neither too fast nor too slow.

“Riding fast, jumping things, racing through the woods… it was fun! A friend and I could outrun anybody. It was thrilling. I was not into thrill sports prior to that. I was athletic, but not big enough to be a real football star: 5’9” and 128 pounds in high school! We’d ride every other weekend or so. We’d drive 200-300 miles to ride dirt events.

“I eventually transitioned to riding on the road.” The motorcycle industry and Honda in particular went through a difficult patch from 1982 until around 1986. He was able to find a new 1982 Honda CB750 that by 1985 had never sold and he got a great deal on it.

“I had lots of bikes after that. One of the best I ever had was a Yamaha FJ1300. I had two of them. One I rode to the Arctic Circle in Alaska, past Fairbanks.”

His significant other, Mona, is an enthusiastic passenger with him. “We’ve been all over the United States and Canada,” he said. “We’ve been together 20 years. She’d never ridden before we met. Motorcycling has always been a big part of our relationship. Every Sunday we’d do 200 to 300 miles in loops around the area.”

In recent years, time began catching up to him. “When I turned 80, it was like a switch was turned on. Fortunately I was smart enough to realize that. I’ve never had a serious crash in my life. I started not feeling comfortable handling the bike. I ride with lots of buddies, but I’m the oldest. I dropped the bike a couple of times in parking lots and things. I started thinking about it and I realized that my upper body strength was waning. I had a hip replacement and I never totally recovered as far as strength. Even when I get up from this table, I’ll limp a bit.

“A motorcycle is inherently unstable, always wanting to fall down. You’ll think you’re strong enough to handle it, but you’ll get to a point where you can’t. I chose to look at something different.” He bought a three-wheel trike, a Can-Am Spyder, with two steered automotive-style wheels up front and one powered wheel at the back. “To be truthful, I’d much rather be riding a two-wheeler. I really would! But I know I can’t, at least safely. I’d be concerned and I’d never put Mona on another bike with me.”

I asked what advice he had for others.

“Start to look for those signs and patterns in your riding, your inability to do certain things. Listen to what your body is telling you. If it says, ‘I can’t do this any more,’ then you need to believe it.

“The Can-Am is so stable and fun to ride that I’m not sacrificing much. It’s has unbelievable engineering.

“I hate getting old. I hate it. I once rode a 1605 mile trip in 23 hours and 30 minutes. I can’t do the things I used to do. When I stand, I wobble. I realize it, but I don’t like it. I want to do the things I used to do. I’m still young in spirit. Most folks guess I’m younger than I am. I’ve been fortunate to be able to ride for all these years.”