| 07 November 2006
Bamboo
I was the third in line at the polling station in the basement of the assisted-living facility kitty-corner from Big Pink.
The building is for Dr. Charles Culpepper, who made his property available to build Culpepper Gardens in 1975, shortly after Big Pink began to rise adjacent to Route 50.
Dr. Culpepper was a botanist who fancied exotic species of flowers. He is best known for his hybridization of daffodils and daylilies, though many species grow on the grounds of the eight-story building.
On the street side where the day-workers repair their autos at curbside, you can still see little tags on the tree trunks naming their genus and phila. It is overgrown on the south end of the grounds, and the top rail of the chain link fence is bent wildly where trees have fallen down on it.
Entry to the polling place is from the Pershing Drive side of the Building, and that is where the campaign worker for the Republican candidate for Senator accosted me.
She was a resident of the building, and relentlessly cheerful. There were two men waiting before me, and she had already worked them over. I wondered if I should remind her that campaign activities were prohibited within 50 feet of a polling place.
The moon hung full over the patch of bamboo plants that the Doctor had planted long ago.
I thought it would be boorish to make the woman stand off by the curb by herself, and I said nothing, accepting the brochure she handed me. She really wanted to talk about the six years she worked for the Central Bank and Trust in Los Angeles, and her twelve years with the Agriculture Department downtown.
Election Day is the most exciting event at Culpepper Gardens, better even than the Holiday Festival, since it is much more focused.
Only one of us wanted to talk about the Republican candidate, and the other topic that seemed safe was the clump of bamboo. The plant can be a pest, expanding wildly beyond its intended bed, probing roots out to envelope adjoining neighbors, over whelming them in green vertical growth.
The second man in line, who works in Arlington, said the best way to take care of the problem was to drive corrugated steel sheets down into the ground around them, barring expansion.
It struck me that it might be easier to stick with ornament grasses native to the area, but more people appeared out of the darkness to line up behind us, and our Republican worked the line, even as a Democrat worked down the other side.
At the head of the line, we reverted to stoic silence, and I looked at the copse of bamboo and slipped on the headset of my pocket radio. The BBC told me Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was leading in the elections in Nicaragua, which was unsettling.
There had been some unpleasantness over that, with the notion that the Sandinista movement would spread like bamboo across Central America.
There was an effort to drive corrugated steel into the soil around them, and other things. Later, when the scandal broke, there quick re-assignments of some colleagues who had been working the problem. Then our attention wandered, and he is back.
Perhaps time changes attitudes, though I suspect not. I yawned in the chill air.
The Condo elections had been held the night before, and ran late. The issues were mostly pocket-book in nature. The pipes in the grand old building are rotting out, and that is a $230,000 surprise. The windows are thin, and energy is has driven up the cost of heating and cooling.
A South Asian man asked a pointed question about being able to monitor individual energy use, and charge the residents accordingly.
The President of the Association has been in office since the place went Condo in 1980. He said there was a program to place informative notes about conservation in the quarterly newsletters, and post the energy costs over the trash chutes in the hallways.
“Point of order,” Mr. President, I said from my seat in the front row. “I believe the member was asking why there is no individual accountability for wasting energy. I think he means metering the thermostats and charging residents according to use.”
The member from the back row said that is exactly what he meant. Why should we all pay for the profligacy of the few? And wouldn't individual accountability encourage residents to calk and weather-strip their own windows, so that the cost of replacing every window in Big Pink could be deferred?
It appeared that the member had encountered socialism before.
The President cleared his throat, and said that they had looked at that issue 15 years ago, and it was an expensive proposition. His gavel came down. Then on to the next agenda item.
Democracy is a funny thing.
The polls opened on time. I produced a driver's license at the desk for names L-Z. The two poll-workers checked and re-checked the list, and then crossed me off.
They gave me the blue card to take to the volunteers at the machines, and I was the first voter on computer number three. The volunteer booted the machine up, the program loaded, and ballot appeared.
It was as simple as pie. I made my picks, pressing my finger against the screen. I did all the right things, looked at the summary, and then pressed the big red box with the word “VOTE” in the middle.
The screen disappeared and it was back to the main menu. Mission accomplished, I thought. Now on to the next agenda item.
Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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