Attention class! It’s time to vote. I know you’d rather do other things, like watch TV or surf the Internet, but this is important. So let’s take a quick trip back in time to the 1950′s, with an excerpt from Irene McDermott’s Living for Young Moderns. Though the exact numbers are a bit different than they are today, I think we can all agree that times haven’t changed a whole lot when it comes to voter turnout. Gosh bless America, everyone!
1956: Your Vote is Important ~ to You
There are approximately 98,377,000 people in the United States who are eligible to vote. This includes all those who are twenty-one years or more of age, plus the eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds in Georgia and Kentucky where young people are allowed to vote at the age of eighteen. In the 1952 Presidential election only 61,680,000 went to the polls and cast their ballots. This is only about sixty-three per cent of all the people who could have voted if they had wished to do so.
These figures may seem dull to you until you realize that there are some thirty-six and one-half million citizens in the United States who apparently do not take very seriously their responsibilities of citizenship. More than one-third of the eligible voters did not vote in the 1952 election. Of course illness and absence from home would account for some voters not getting to the polls, but not for such a huge number.
A cynical comment on this situation was made in a feature column of the Pittsburgh Post-Gaxette, where democracy was defined as ‘a system under which a man who doesn’t vote spends his time criticizing the candidates other men have elected.’ This so-called definition states an unpleasant truth about ‘We, the people’ who have inherited the right to govern our own country.
It is not amazing that so many people care so little about the American way of life that they will not take the trouble to vote? What do you think would happen to our country if no one at all went to the polls? Do you know that in our past elections, especially in the elections for state and local offices, less than one-third of the people have case their ballots?
Why is it important to you as an individual to vote? Because it is one of the best ways in which you can do your share in taking care of your country.
Source: McDermott, Irene E. and Florence Nicholas. Living For Young Moderns. Chicago: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1956.
~ p. 321 ~
Ever the procrastinator, I’ve just now finished my taxes ~ April 14th at 10:00pm. During this traditionally painful event, I pondered why parents don’t just take care of their kids and do things like taxes and pay the bills throughout their lives. Wouldn’t it be great? Sigh.
I can’t get skating out of my mind, thanks to recent news of drama and corruption on the ice. Here’s a little reminder to those who don’t have the comfort of a Zamboni-treated ice rink. It’s from an important text titled Everyday Safety, which was written by William A. Evans. Watch yourselves while skating on the pond out back!
This selection was found while looking for some tips on blisters and burns. Earlier today, after hiking along a river, my friends and I were peering over the edge of a dam when my nutty dog decided she’d like to see what was on the other side of the ledge. She went flying over the wall, and before I knew it she was dangling from her leash above the murky waters by the bank, about ten feet down. She dropped into the water seconds later, but luckily my friend was able to climb down to retrieve her as I held on. She was wet and uninjured. My fingers suffered a bit of leash burn, however. Ow ow ow.
Q Dear Miss Abigail:
Q Dear Miss Abigail:
That Estelle Hunter. She sure is a crack-up in her Personality Development, Unit Three: Voice and Expression. I mean, that salesman joke ~ hilarious!
I admit it. I’m a camping snob. Thanks to trips as a youngster to a favorite spot by a pond near the Finger Lakes in New York State, I prefer real camping: the Grotke family tent, the roaring fire, wading in the creek, peeing against the trees. Alas, many urbanites are a bit fearful of the idea of so much closeness with nature. So while those friends who stay home contemplate what restaurant to visit this weekend, the brave ones among us will forage for wood in order to cook a feast over the campfire. Here are some tips I picked up from Beatrice Pierce’s book The Young Hostess for just such an activity. Pass the s’mores! I’m hungry!
Pink geraniums, orange marigolds, sonata mix cosmos, sunscape daisy nasinga white, snow crystals alyssium, brachycomb, a tomato plant, and some herbs. They should be outside enjoying the spring, but tonight they sit in my living room waiting for the season’s last frost to pass us by. I’m certainly an amateur gardener, only filling a few boxes and pots on my brick patio out front, but still, it makes me happy, and that’s what it’s all about, right? I think that Adelaide Laura Van Duzer, one of the authors of home economics textbookEveryday Living for Girls would agree.
A little worry is not harmful, as author David Seabury reminds us in the preface to How to Worry Successfully: “It is only when apprehension is ruled by nervous anxiety, and imagination distorted by fear, that worry injures us.” And that’s why I’m worried ~ it sure seems like people are just freaking out these days. Here’s a little reminder to help identify the unhealthy worriers out there.