When I lived in New York, I was a registered independent. I was willing to forgo participation in the presidential primaries because I didn't want to be on the rolls as supporting any party; who I vote for is my business. Also, as a working journalist whose coverage verges into politics, it is important that I appear to be neutral, whatever I might do in the voting booth.
When I moved to Virginia 11 years ago, I assumed the same rules applied. And I wasn't alone--over the years I have spoken to dozens of similarly transplanted voters and we all voiced our certainty that primary participation required party registration.
Which of course I now know was dead wrong.
Who is supposed to inform the electorate of something as basic as the right to vote? That would be the State Board of Elections, and they do an awful job of it.
Last week, after I followed the breadcrumbs of tiny "Vote" signs that lead to Loudoun's inconveniently located Voter Registration Center [TLR SOUL RATING®:0] out on Sycolin road, I put it to the folks behind the desk:
How will the tens of thousands of voter-age residents here, who came from the many other states that do not allow independents to vote in primaries, learn of their right to do so here?
The two ladies behind the desk hemmed and hawed, then politely noted that while information on the commonwealth's open primaries was not in any of the literature they distribute, it can be found on the State Board of election's website. So if you have internet access, and know to look for the SBE, and already have a glimmer that registration is unnecessary, you may just be in luck. Talk about loco!
I suggested that publishing the rule in the local papers might be a really good idea, at which point a third voter-center fellow frostily informed me that it HAD been published, on page 2 of the Loudoun Times Mirror just the day before. Touché!
"Well, good!" I stammered, my quest for truth and justice riven by these few words from the sharp-tongued Voter Go-to Guy. Even if the larger question remained, by failing to strive to be part of an informed electorate and reading the local paper, I had just made a monkey out of myself.
Or had I? When I opened the paper later that day, there was indeed a squib on voting on page 2. But it made no mention at all of who could vote in the primary. Score one for the monkey!
Then this morning that information appeared on LTM's website. A little late in the game, but half a point to the Go-to Guy!
The point of all this, though, is not to kvetch but to simply encourage you to GO VOTE on Tuesday, BECAUSE WE CAN.
Feb 12, 2006
Postscript: Outing Your Party
At the polls this morning, yet another annoying, un-American thing about these Virginia elections came to light. As voters arrived at the table to show their IDs, the folks there loudly asked "Which party?" Now I know that manning the polls is an honorable pastime, and I thank these people for donating their time to the democratic process. But by asking that question in a room full of friends, neighbors, journalists and others, Virginia and the poll workers are essentially forcing me--and you--to announce to all of them which party we prefer.
As I mentioned, for personal and professional reasons, I do not make my political choices public. I don't register in a party and I don't festoon my car with political bumper stickers or fill my yard with candidate signs. I repeat: who I vote for is my business. By shouting out the party for which I want a ballot, Virginia is outing our political preferences and choices, and in essence breaching our right to vote by secret ballot, a right Virginians have enjoyed for some 128 years.
When I protested the process to a woman working the polls--and not surprisingly found several people in the line ahead of and behind me nodding their heads in agreement-- she agreed but had no solution. The Republicans and Democrats have separate ballots and the workers need to know which to give you, she explained.
Obviously voting day is not the time to address the problem. But there is surely a simple solution. Like putting all 12 candidates on one ballot? Or having voters POINT to the ballot they want? It isn't rocket science, and Virginia's failure to protect our privacy impinges on one of the cornerstones of democracy. (Curmudgeonly and pompous but true. And that's all I have to say about this primary, I swear.)
LETTER FROM THE PROVINCES Feb. 5, 2008 Livin' la Vida LoCo? Speak for Yourself, WashPo. By Bill Horne
The Washington Post has for the last year covered life in Loudoun with a blog/print column called “Living in LoCo,” which appears in the printed pullout “Loudoun Extra”, with a corresponding blog online.
Living in LoCo -- get it? It’s an alliterative double entendre, that is, it has two meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary defines double entendres as: 'A double meaning; a word or phrase having a double sense, especially as used to convey an indelicate meaning' [emphasis added]. So yep, we understand the first meaning; LoCo is short for Loudoun County. Clever. But what of the second, presumably “indelicate” meaning — which is basically that we live in an asylum out here? That we are mentally ill, ie, CRAZY? DEMENTED? INSANE? Since last February I have opened the Extra from time to time thinking this could be the day Living in LoCo actually lives up to its name and throws into relief some of the truly loco stuff that may be going on around here. Like, I don’t know . . . election hijinks or gang warfare at Simpson MS or the politically correct purge of a ladies’ bookclub . . . Uh, uh.And it isn’t that LIL’s new blogger, Erica Garman, or her predecessor, Tammi Marcoullier, have not diligently reported on a range of issues, from new stop signs and summer hairstyles to a smoking ban and divorce support groups. They have, and some of it is pretty smart. But loco? Nada. Which has me pondering anew the genesis of “Living in LoCo.” Just how did it come about, and should we inmates of said crazy county take umbrage? Erica tells me that the title may have been Tammi’s idea. But Erica also suggests it’s just as likely that the editors back at washingtonpost.com coined it. Ah, of course, the editors. Some overly-clever Washington wordsmith probably took great pleasure in fobbing that phrase off on its safely-at-a-distance exurban readership. Can you imagine living in or near D.C., of all places — with its taxation without representation, mayflower madams,and Marion Barry! — and having the temerity to call Loudoun “loco”? This from editors who are supposedly among the best educated and thoughtful in the business?
Why not something clever and neutral like, say, “LoudounClear”? Because in the end "Living in LoCo" doesn’t appear to be irreverent or clever so much as simple name-calling. Urban sophisticates putting us nutso hucksters in our place. Loudoun, all the proof to the contrary notwithstanding, is apparently a place of lunacy, home to lunatics. And most of those wackjobs read the Post – holy cow, maybe we ARE crazy! Upon reflection then, yes, we do take the insult in the manner in which it was intended and wish to respond in kind-- I am thumbing my nose in your easterly direction. But no, that would be wrong — let us use our words, as I once so often counseled my children, the little fruitcakes. Thus Loudoun hereby demands in the way of reparations for these many months of madness only that you ape your actions regarding our fair county and apply them to the many new local and regional blogs suggested below: Berserk in Bethesda Foggy Bottom Breakdowns Wackos in West End Demented in Dupont Madness in Maryland Bonkers in Baltimore Cuckoo in Kalorama . . . Shoot, gotta go — some guys in white jackets are at the door —but you get the idea. See you back at the bin.
OBSERVED Juno, the Ho and me Jan. 25, 11:55 PM by Bill Horne
The Tally Ho, Jan. 23, 3:10 p.m
When the death of the Tally Ho Theatre [TLR SOUL RATING®: 4]was announced in Leesburg Today in December, I was ticked off. Was this to be the nail in the coffin of the years-long efforts by townsfolk and business owners to inject life --more and better restaurants, a higher quality and variety of retail stores -- into our Main Street? More to the point, how could I live an idyllic small-town existence if the very heart of that town, a creaky, two-plex movie house built in 1931, closed its doors?
In short, this wasn’t just about the sad demise of a struggling local institution. It was about me. And what I really wanted to say was “Waaaa!”
After a decade of mulling it over, my family and I had finally moved just a year earlier from a house in the boonies—some five miles outside of Leesburg--right into the heart of downtown. With McMansions and developments increasingly cluttering a once-pristine view, with light pollution opening a new front on the far hillside and my morning commute 10 minutes longer thanks to the new stoplights on route 15, it was time to pack it in. Besides, we were eager to return to the urban experience of walking out for food and drink and entertainment, even on so small a scale as Leesburg now offers.
The burg’s still-quaint downtown offered succor and a sinecure: Developers could not clearcut a swath next door and throw up plastic-sided boxes, could they? And there would always be food, drink and films, right?
The Tally Ho, if we are to be honest, has not provided cinephiles with a superb movie-viewing experience in years. The seats literally creak when you lean back, there are no cup holders, and the sound is not always hi-fidelity. More importantly, the selection of movies playing in recent years—particularly for sentient adult moviegoers--has often been bland at best, and occasionally verged on atrocious.
Still, the popcorn was and is fresh and buttery, the audience is generally attentive, and it is a quintessential small-town experience to stroll down the street, grab a cup of coffee at the excellent Market Street Coffee,[TLR SOUL RATING®:4] and get lost in a movie, day or night, seven days a week. Yes, I too now have a biggish screen at home, but there is absolutely no substitute for the fellowship of an audience in a darkened theater or for the seductive thrill of watching a fresh new film. And theaters, whatever the quality of the featured film, have a way of working stealthily but unrelentingly on our memories and emotions, evoking precious times and places from our pasts, or transporting us however fleetingly to other places, other lives.
So it was selfishly, and with a sense of being somehow duped (after all, I had moved for this--how could they??) that I raised the alarm in December. Before the marquee lights flickered out, before our beloved Ho, warts and all, was to close and perhaps reopen as yet another downtown bank or law office or some other blank, soul-deadening reminder of Leesburg’s past (consider “The Offices at Laurel Brigade” now occupying that quaint inn), I, we, would make a last stand!
I fired off an email to friends and neighbors, informing them of the Ho’s fate and calling on them to join the cause. Stop monkeying around and come Save the Ho! The responses were heartening, offers of help interspersed with Huzzahs and fond memories (“So sad--I can remember my first kiss, first date, a lot of firsts in the theater,” wrote one.) Posters and buttons were in the offing (Long Live the Ho!); an investment group began to take shape.
One friend and I even conjured up a way to bring the Tally Ho into the 21st century using his Web 2.0 strategy: we would secure funding from a local tech titan—think Steve Case or Ted Leonsis--then let viewers vote via the Web on what they would be willing to go see, and that’s what the Ho would show. So brilliant! So today! So Google!
But perhaps impractical in the short term. (“Let’s see, that’s four for La Vie en Rose and three for Batman 6 — Rose has it!”)
Others, it seems, were similarly moved, thank goodness. By the end of the year, the theater’s landlord had announced that a new partnership would take the lease and keep the projectors running, and add some live entertainment as well. The Ho was closed only a week, reopening on January 11th.
We waited with bated breath; what movie might signal the rebirth of our town’s only movie house?
That movie, of course, was Juno.
Could the new partners have picked a better debut flick? It is, after all, a hopeful film, one that celebrates the purity and complexity of love while exploring the realities of a very thorny but modern issue, featuring a brilliantly wry script and a voluble, pitch-perfect new actress, Ellen Page, who manages to teach us a little more about love and marriage, while making us laugh, and even cry (well, you know, the women!) all along the way. (To say nothing of the terrific supporting cast--seriously, in this film, Michael Cera puts the dead back in deadpan.)
In my book—and it was unanimous among the four of us who went together last week--Juno was a solid A, with its clutch of Oscar nominations a serendipitous affirmation of the new owners’ choice.
An offbeat PG-13, it is very unlikely Juno would have appeared at the old Tally Ho, which tended to stick with flashy but critically panned big movies like Spiderman, and PG-rated cartoons and soft fare that even my children (tweeners and teens) would not be caught dead at.
David Wright, the public face of Market Street Productions, the new theater operator, told me that Juno -- along with Cloverfield, a well-reviewed monster-attacks-Manhattan flick—were picked to “put our stamp on the Tally Ho”. He hopes to bring in at least three other Oscar Best Picture nominees, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Michael Clayton -- all dark, artful, acclaimed films, even if they break into R territory. To which I again say: Bravo!
then playing
When I asked about foreign-language films, though, Wright demurred, noting it was a niche market that they may dip into “once in a blue moon.” I understand the need to make this a financially feasible venture, and the case I made to Wright is that there is no competition out here for the excellent foreign films that many of us drive into DC or Arlington for at the moment. He could have a lock on that market.
I do hope they will reconsider and at least try out a few “mainstream” foreign-language films, that is, those whose excellence and accessibility has led to their wide release in the states, such as 2006’s Volver and Pan’s Labyrinth, or such recent fare as La Vie en Rose, the Orphanage, and the Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Maybe some overseas-based arts-minded local benefactor, like say Rehau,[TLR SOUL RATING®:2]could be coaxed into underwriting a couple nights of foreign films per month? Regardless, if you show them, Dave, we will come.
And if we do come, it will hopefully be in sufficient numbers to warrant some more serious renovation; for now the new lessees promise some fresh paint and oiled hinges, a modest but worthy start.
Wright, the head of the Last Ham Standing comedy troupe, is also intent on bringing more live shows to the Ho; last week his group and a magic show drew some 140 people over two nights. (The next show will be the First Friday in February.) He plans to try to partner with a local eatery to do dinner/theater combos. While Wright floated a couple of possibilities, the no-brainer to me is some sort of prix-fix dinner movie deal with Lightfoot,[TLR SOUL RATING®:4] the only place big enough and good enough and sufficiently staffed to pull it off. Call the Gustavsons, Dave, and tell them Bill sent you.
As for me, the movies trump everything else — showing good films and getting the word out that they are there are what will ensure the Ho’s viability. Sure the chairs creaked a little when I was last there (for Juno), and the speakers crackled now and again. But the popcorn made a satisfying crunch, the audience clearly appreciated the show, and the film itself was terrific. I can’t wait to see Cloverfield.
Spread the word: The Ho is back, and as Juno would say, it’s like, totally boss.
