Electionn Day

Where can I hide from the onslaught of television, talk, newspaper reading.?  I voted weeks ago; there's nothing I can do, I don't want to know.  Now I am simply waiting for the fat lady to sing.  Timidly I glance at the Times, and leaf through the first section.  The editors have done a kindness by putting other news to the front.  A pleasing article about Obama on the election campaign circuit, more human interest than anything else.  The obituary of Janet Reno, the recounting of her quiet fight with Parkinson''s Disease, a little bit about dissidence in Hong Kong, and a murder here in America that the article claims shows the chinks in the welfare system. But inside we get soda tax in California--a damn good thing, the problems of doctors care across this broad land, no villain, really, but rather a problem that calls for fixing, a wonderful look back at the Arno flood fifty years ago and all the  wonderful people who rushed to Florence to help out immediately, the story of a man who donated a yacht which another fellow has outfitted to rescue migrants from the Mediterranean Sea.  Then a down about India's smog to keep the tone level, as a prelude to the International Pages and Australia backing down on gay marriage, a Palestinian getting 12 years for stabbing Israelis, corruption in the Ukrained, and the National section with  a lady thrown under the subway, news of a new kind of sandwich sold from a van by its creator rising to restaurant fame in Harlem, and the Pope--God Bless Him!--choosing a moderate for Archbishop of Newark, and the really good news is that the editors relegated all the nail biting election news to its special section, there to be set aside and maybe glanced at much much later after getting through Tuesday's special Science section.  I'm done reading about the election and await either business as usual or the Storm Troopers patrolling the streets.  Last night we went to a superb performance of Donizetti's "Don Pasquale" a comic work thus exhausting its humor early on, but which nineteenth century audiences, chatted and drank champagne as they listened to--odd but I believe grammatically correct--and I fell into a deep sleep.  So well rested I came hom, and now it's today.  I feel oddly sanguine this morning.