Practicing What I Preach (This Time Anyway)

“That’s just the trouble with me, I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.”
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Like Portia, Alice, and (I bet) a whole lot of us, I don’t always listen to the advice I give myself or “follow mine own teaching,” BUT BUT BUT — here’s an instance in which I did:

I’m fortunate enough to live in Colorado, where voting is pretty easy. All voters who register on time get a ballot in the mail. We can register on line. We can register by mail. We can register in person — even on Election Day.

We can mail in our ballot. We can put it in a secure drop box. We can vote in person, early or on Election Day. If we make a mistake, we can go get a new ballot. We can even do it more than once if we, say, fill out our ballots when we’re so tired we don’t track the bubbles properly and need to go twice to trade in our ballots and then finally decide to vote in person so that if we make ANOTHER
mistake we can get a new ballot on the spot. Not that I know anybody who’s done that. (We do have to trade in the original ballot to get a new one. No voting twice.)

I wish all eligible voters had the options we have here in the Centennial State. To everyone who has waited or will wait in lines for hours or even for the whole damn day, who has to face down intimidating “watchers,” who has to travel for hours to get to a drop box, who has to contend with any of the myriad obstacles that are placed in your way because of your race, your politics, your address — YOU ARE HEROES. And all I can say is “Thank you.”

“I hate ingratitude more in a man
than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
or any taint of vice whose strong corruption
inhabits our frail blood”.”
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night