The View from the Hermitage, Day 153

The novel coronavirus is often not front page news these days and when it is, it's in conjunction with the best way to reopen K-12 schools and colleges or universities. I got a letter today from my brother. He lives in Maine, which is one of the states that has really done well handling the pandemic. He learned from a teenager working at Tim Horton's that schools in Bangor would be hybrid--two days each week in classrooms and three days online. Said teenager reported that he did not like online instruction because he could not ask questions when he didn't understand something. I find that comment heartening after everything I've read about kids here blowing off the online learning in the spring. 

In terms of blowing online learning off, though, my brother noted that one of his college roommates teaches at a college in Japan. He went there to teach English for a year or two post-college and fell in love with the country and, at some point, a Japanese woman. He's never left. He told my brother that a lot of his students have blown off online instructions and assignments. I agree with my brother that I would not expect to hear that from a Japanese student. 

It seems that every day's front page has something new about the US Postal Service and its role in the upcoming election. People who wait until the Saturday before election day to get an absentee ballot and then want to return that ballot by mail run the risk that their ballot may not arrive in time to be counted. Here, an absentee ballot must be postmarked on election day or earlier. What I don't know is how long they wait to get those absentee ballots. I know that when someone has to vote a provisional ballot due to not having identification, they have until noon on the Friday after the election to produce an ID and have that provisional ballot counted. That Friday is when the local electoral board issues its official statement of results. 

I have already requested an absentee ballot. I will likely complete it when it arrives in late September and put it in the next day's outgoing mail. The ballots are supposed to have tracking numbers by which a voter can make sure their ballot arrived at the registrar's office. As of this election, voters in Virginia do not have to say why they want or need to vote absentee. Up to now, you had to pick from a list of reasons. I have voted absentee twice, once when we were living in Europe for the husband's sabbatical year and once when I was pregnant. Then, I walked into the registrar's office and, at a counter about the height of my armpits requested an absentee ballot because "I might not be able to get to the polls on election day." The registrar must have been having a bad day. He jumped up from his desk and came out of his office to tell me that they did not give absentee ballots because someone thought they might not be able to get to the polls. I stepped back to reveal how pregnant I was, and he quickly apologized and told the clerk to give me a ballot. 

Dinner tonight is Mongolian beef, a recipe I would not have discovered were it not for the pandemic. At least the locking down has been good for something.