Early Voting

I've voted.
Early voting is great. Go when it's convenient. Get it
over with. The local Democratic Party still hasn't
made much effort on behalf of their national
candidate. Still no yard signs, no buttons available.
The lone staff person told me that Georgia isn't a
battleground state. The attitude is that it's solid
red and pretty apt to stay that way. Yet there are
indications that the red color is bleeding. I think
the red will be on their faces if Obama takes the
state, or even if there's a tie, and it is possible.

Yet another reason why I am not a member of
the Democratic Party. If I were, I would feel
obligated to help elect everyone who ran on
their ticket. But I vote for candidates, not
parties. This time I voted for two Republicans
for local offices.

A relative who voted for Bush in the last two
national elections says he's voting for the
Libertarian candidate. He's thoroughly disgusted
with Bush., but says "I can't see that Obama
would do anything for me."

I don't think he'll do much for me, either. I don't
own stock, and have no children or grandchildren
of military age. I voted to end the war in Iraq and
with the hope of medical care for all those who have
been suffering and dying early without it.

One woman I talked to said she's voting for McCain
because Obama will raise taxes. She lost her job and
has only two more weeks of unemployment insurance
to collect, says she's going to file for an extension of
benefits. The factory where she worked has laid off
more workers recently, and another local factory is
going to close entirely, throwing 400 more workers
onto a shrinking job market. But when I said Obama
would not raise taxes, but would lower them for the
factory workers like her, she brought up the Muslim
angle.

Suddenly I understood McCain's steady barrage of
lies about Obama's person and character. No one
is expected to believe them, but they provide excuses
for what some people plan to do anyway. They are
especially useful for those who cannot bring them-
selves to vote for a Black man.

More Peeping

I thought the spring peepers had done their thing and gone
back to wherever it is they stay the rest of the year.

After a balmy Super Tuesday, it rained and turned cold again.
For a few days it was very cold for these parts, snow on the
mountain top, up to 4 inches in places. Only light flurries here
in the valley, but there was a lacy edging to my book building
when I went there to pick up books ordered.

Then the weekend before the big March 4th primaries, they
were at it again, both in the spring water deep in the woods
across the road and at the pond in my neighbor's pasture,
Their voices too loud and shrill to call the sound peeping.
It was 70 degrees and sunny as I worked in the yard that
Sunday, listening to the frog choruses to the north and to
the south of me. I won't indulge in anthropomorphism and
say they're timing their concerts as a prelude to the
primaries, but the jubilant abandon with which they sing
out makes an appropriate background to the voting
excitement.

Now I know why I had been under the impression that they
are calling for rain: it is simply because of our normal
weather cycle at this time of year. It will be cold, sometimes
with frozen ground, then gradually warm up and then there
will be one or two shirtsleeve days, and the frogs will come
out and sing. It always rains and turns cold again, and
always then the frogs are silent.

This time their appearance is a prelude to spring, just as the
writers say about the peepers in the northern states. There
are jonquils, and there are a few white blossoms on my
pearl bush, scotch broom has been blooming for about a
month now, And there are both upright and umbrella-type
flowering quince near the library, the branches covered
with red flowers, so bright and pretty I wish I had planted
some here last fall.

But my priority is to get one of my small garden beds sowed
with greens. I've hauled in buckets and cans of cow manure
and got the soil loose and mixed, but it isn't raked and ready
yet. Too wet now from Tuesday's downpour.

Freezing rain washed down on the intrepid Ohio voters.
That would be a state where it would be another week
or so before the peepers appear, according to those
northern writers who state they appear in mid-march.
That is, if Ohio has spring peepers.

Spring Preview

On the evening of Super Tuesday the spring peepers burst
into sound. Accounts I've read elsewhere state that the
peepers can be heard as early as mid-March, and are a
sign that spring is on the way.

Mid-March indeed. Those were northern writers
accustomed to colder climes. The peeping has
always started here in Northwest Georgia in
February, but even so, the 8th, the Big Tuesday,
was a little early for them.

It had been an unusually warm day, which probably
helped to bring them out, just as it had helped the voter
turn-out, even in the states further north, according to
news accounts. After dark it was much cooler, but yet
not really cold. Clouds covered the moon and hid the
stars, and I knew that the balmy day, rather than
beginning spring, simply presaged the coming rain,
whose heirs, in turn, would be more freezing nights
and mornings.

I was still wearing my "I'm a Georgia voter" sticker
when I slipped into my old coat, strapped on my
headlight, and headed off to the woods across the
road. Buckie trotted ahead of me, stopping to sniff
here and there, but still managing to navigate the thorny
underbrush and pine thickets better than ever I can.

As it seems that the frogs have always been singing on
a day before it rained, I used to think they were singing
for the rain, sort of a vocal rain-dance ceremony.

Now I know their shrill, ear-splitting chorus is only
the background for their annual orgy. Other creatures
engage in group sex, but no others mate amidst such
loud and jubilant rejoicing.What a great way to celebrate
being alive and aware again after the death-like sleep of
hibernation. One account I read stated that most of the
frog's body can be frozen while hibernating and not prevent
its full recovery.

The peepers do not choose the creek, but favor the spill-
over from a spring in the midst of the woods. There was
once a farmhouse, and perhaps some sort of spring house
where the farmer's wife set butter and milk to cool in warm
weather. Both are long gone, but the barn still stands, lights
from cars along the road glinting on its tin roof.

There are deep ruts from the heavy equipment used by
Georgia Power to clear beneath the power lines, and along
these ruts, eroded into ditches, flow small tributaries toward
the creek.

Following the ruts, one skirts a sort of marsh land, then the
small pools here and there, before reaching the larger body of
water that is the spring. As I draw closer, the sound becomes
deafening. What was a pleasant evening sound as I was
leaving my yard becomes cacophony close at hand.

You would think such noise would mask the sound of my
careful footsteps, already muffled by the thick carpet of
wet leaves. Yet, when I get too close to one of the pools
or ditches the sound stops. Or most of it. There are always
two or three laggards peeping on for a second or two, then
cutting off in mid-note, as if suddenly aware of the
strangeness of solo singing.

The coordination of the frog singers seems remarkable:
together they sing from pools scattered across a large
area, together they stop and sit in dead silence, no sound
but the distant rippling of the creek.

No matter how stealthy my approach, I cannot see any
of the tiny frogs at night. The largest would be only about
one-and-a-half inches long, some are under the debris at
the bottoms of the pools laying eggs, others scattered
about the banks, their color blending with the dead leaves
under which they hide.

Not until Buckie and I are back in our yard are they again
giving full voice to the same urgent jubilation. They will sing
like this for about a week, mostly in the evenings, providing
a pleasant background to our lives beside the creek.

Almost two weeks after our walk in the woods, on the
day after the next round in the primary voting contest
this time, I heard spring peepers at the pond in my
neighbor's pasture. Those at the spring were quiet,
they've gone back into the woods, perhaps becoming
inanimate again during the cold nights.

There were far fewer at the pond, no deafening wave of
sound, it was more as if they were singing rounds than
creating a chorus. That they were there at all intrigues me.

The spring peeper is a tree frog. Although, according
to some naturalists, the tiny frogs spend as much time
on the ground as in the trees, their natural habitat is
the woods. They do not live in pastures. To get to the
pond from the closest woods they would have to cross
the creek and a wide stretch of grass, constantly in
danger of being eaten by crows before dark and by owls
at night, then again when they retrace their steps-
or hops- back to the woods, where they will live in
relative silence and obscurity for the rest of the year.

I suppose that just as the birds return to the area where
they once were nestlings to build their own nests, the
frogs spawned and metmorphosed from tadpoles in the
pond remember to return there, and so they do, every
February.

There are even fewer there this evening, no chorus, no
rounds, just solos and an occasional quartet. In another
month it will be spring by the calendar, but I am weary
of cold weather and bare trees and the peepers have
provided a welcome respite.

Pictures and a sound clip of their cries is available on
the National Geographic website.

And by the way, about that Super Tuesday: Hilary Clinton
won my precinct. But Obama won the state, my vote counted.