Wednesday

22 November 2017

— I made the coffee exactly right today!

Good Morning All,

On this sad day fifty-four years ago, I was in a high school study-hall trying to force my recalcitrant hand to open my Latin book when a student I did not know rushed in and shouted in fear and anger, “The President’s been shot!”

 I happened to be staring at the floor, which was made of alternating brown and cream-colored linoleum squares. There was a steel paperclip half on a brown square, half on a cream one. I reached down and picked it up—possibly in some strange reaction to that dreadful news, as if wanting to save it from being stepped on. I put it in my chino pocket, took it home, kept it on my desk, where it probably remained for years and years, before someone in the family needed a paperclip and it—one might suppose thankfully—went back to being just an ordinary paperclip again.

Esther and I voted today in the city and county elections, including a representative for the Council for the Elderly. I must say they have a very strange process in Denmark. A couple of weeks before the election candidates from the fourteen parties are allowed to put cardboard signs up on lampposts, usually a picture of the person, his or her name, and his or her party.

After that, you can watch on tv various debates and discussions among the candidates. Unfortunately, they stick almost entirely to the issues, to the problems of the day and their ideas for solving them. There is almost never any name calling, chest beating, or flagrant arm waving. These candidates for some reason seem determined to treat each other with respect in their efforts to make it clear where everyone stands.

You might get a flier in your mail box from some candidate, outlining his or her position and asking for your vote. I got one. I’m pretty sure the candidates do not use the phone system to invade your privacy.  I got no calls. It’s possible someone might do a pre-election poll, but I have yet to see one.

Also, as far as Esther can recollect, no single party has in her life-time won a majority of the votes. Denmark always has a coalition government. Parties have no choice but to work together, and the Prime Minister is always a member of one of the coalition parties in power. (Unlike, you may have noticed, often in America.)

Anyway, first we went to Esther’s voting venue in Sorø. Lots of people, many arriving on bicycle, were going in and coming out. It took us a while to get inside the building since Esther knew about 80% of the people. (Or, as she told me later, “Probably more like 95%, but I couldn’t say hi to everyone.) She had a lovely time, anyway, chatting to fellow voters and to the men and women running the voting. 

After that, we drove to my voting venue in Fjenneslev, where Esther may have known only half the people. I certainly enjoyed the whole process. Voting is an uplifting experience, for sure.

For whom did we vote? Both of us voted a strict ticket for the  Socialistik Folkeparty, SF, (Socialist People’s Party), which was founded in 1959, when Aksel Larsen, the leader of Denmark’s Kommunist Party, (DKP) got kicked out for having the audacity to criticize the Soviet Union for intervening in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He and many fellow DKPers formed the SF and in 1960 won the six seats the DKP lost.

In 2011, SF formed a coalition government with the Social Democrats and the Liberal Party. Today, their ideological base remains popular socialism, inspired by green politics and democratic socialism. It favors environmental protection and supports equal rights for women. I gotta think Bernie would be a member of this party.

After our voting, we went for a bit of a drive to absorb the last of the foliage, stopped at a plant nursery for a dozen packets of bulbs for assorted spring blooms, and went back to her apartment for a celebratory gin-and-tonic. While doing so, she opened the local paper and said, “Let’s see who’s given up beer this week.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, “people don’t announce that sort of thing in the paper, do they?”

In response, she read off three names, saying, “All three of these people have given up beer.”

“You gotta be kidding me!”

“Haven’t you ever heard that idiom?” Esther asked, giving me a gleeful glance. “I’m reading the obits, Bheka.”

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron 

P.S. Two Johs snaps from autumn in Washington: