Brightspots#16

At my school reunion I was looking at a lone woman sitting at a nearby table. My wife asks, "Do you know her?" "Yes," I sighed, "She's my old girlfriend. I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn't been sober since." "My God!" says my wife, "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?" So you see, there really are 2 ways to look at everything.....

The inside of a 6 volt battery

 

Uplifting Wed. #150

A sweet story to share

 The hubby and I walk the mall before it opens for a little exercise and we have done it for about a year now. There is a old woman who has had a stroke who walks with her son and we have noticed that as they walk they stop at the vending machines and she checks to see if there is any change left. A friend who also walks and has for years and years told us that the son sneaks ahead and puts a quarter in the slot for her to find every so often :)

Election Day

 

U.S. elections used to be held over a 34-day window.

As implied by its name, Election Day is, well, a single day. That wasn't always the case, however: States used to hold elections whenever they wanted within a 34-day period leading up to the first Wednesday in December. This ultimately created some issues, as you might imagine — early voting results ended up holding too much sway over late-deciding voters, for one thing. The current date was implemented by the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845, and federal elections now occur every two years on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. That may sound arbitrary at first, but the date was chosen quite deliberately. American society was much more agrarian in the mid-19th century than it is today, and it took a full day of traveling for many to reach their polling place. Church made weekends impractical, and Wednesday was market day for farmers, so Tuesday proved ideal. November, meanwhile, worked because weather was still fairly mild, and the harvest was complete by then. The current process isn’t perfect, of course. U.S. elections tend to have lower turnout than those of most other developed nations, and there have been calls for decades to make Election Day a national holiday. A 2018 poll found that 65% of Americans favored the idea, though there’s been little legislative movement on the proposal. Should it ever be put to a vote, you know when it will be held.