Blog

I met two interesting people this weekend while planting bulbs in my front yard. One of the is our neighbor, Craig, who owns the house to the north of us, and is moving back in. He’s not new to our neighborhood — his family has owned the house for decades — but he’s just now returning because he’s been in Afghanistan and Iraq for the past four years in the military. I didn’t ask him what branch or anything about what it was like, (I figured that was way too much to get into) but of course a million questions raced through my brain. He did mention, while talking about is plans for working on the house, about possibly being called back to service, but he seemed pretty pragmatic about it. I hope that doesn’t happen; I’d prefer having someone live there. The house has seemed pretty lonely all this time.

The other guy I met was John Elrod, the Republican candidate for State Representative for District 97 running against Ed Mahern. He was walking around knocking on doors and leaving flyers. I talked with him for a bit, and was somewhat surprised that he said he went against his fellow Republicans on the marriage issue. He said that he felt the “government should get out of the marriage business altogether and marriages should be considered as ‘civil unions.'” I was tired and dropped the ball on that question — I should have followed up specifically on the marriage amendment and how he would vote on it, because his other statement was way too broad.
One thing that really bugged me — when I later opened his flyer, the interior contained photos of the logos and signs of all the downtown neighborhoods, making it seem like they were endorsing his campaign. I certainly know that’s not true, but anyone else reading it would get that impression. Not cool.