Here’s an essay by another writer in one of my memoir classes. After 80-year-old Bruce read this letter out loud about how he’s feeling now, a few days before the 2016 presidential election, I asked, “You miss your dad, don’t you?” Bruce answered, “I sure do.”

by Bruce Hunt

Nov. 3, 2016

Dear Dad:

It’s probably a good thing you did not live long enough to endure this presidential election. At the time of your death in 1979, you seemed to believe that civilization was in decline. I never quite knew whether your golden age was Greece or the Enlightenment, however. Maybe it was the Age of the Explorers? I do know this, though: you certainly would not be persuaded by Donald Trump’s declared intention to “Make America Great again.

Frederick Atherton Hunt is pictured at about age 45. At that time, he was a
partner in his family’s law firm in Boston.

Were you still alive, you and I might engage in a lively discussion about whether there are any historical analogues to our present circumstance. Did the “Know-Nothings” of the late 19th century serve as precursor to the anti-intellectual tenor of the 2016 election? Was the language Taft and Teddy Roosevelt used to pillory each other comparable to the vile accusations that float around on social media?

The lack of civility would surely be disturbing to you. You belong to a long line of respectful citizens. Your devotion to the Republican Party stemmed in large measure from your appreciation for the decent men who held office in Massachusetts. Leveret Saltonstall was a distinguished senator, reelected a number of times. You were proud that Massachusetts voters elected Edward Brooke, the first African American senator in US history. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. had a notable pedigree, although he was not a personal favorite of yours.

Democracy has always been messy. And you harbored secret (and sometimes not so secret) concerns about mob rule. I still recall your wondering whether perhaps a benevolent oligarchy might be the most effective government. Some say we are building a corporate oligarchy even now, with so much wealth in the hands of a very few families. I doubt that you would see this as progress or as benevolent.

I recall how torn you were in 1960 when you had to choose between a Harvard man who happened to be a Democrat, and A California Republican whose character you mistrusted. You voted for Nixon anyway.

You would be appalled by the character of the present Republican candidate. How he became the nominee is still a mystery to me. At first I thought it was a marketing effort to build the Trump brand. I still wonder if he cares a whit about governance.

Wait. I forget. You missed a major turning point in Republican political affairs.

Since Ronald Reagan (you likely will remember him as a spokesman for GE) became president, he made a casual comment: ”Government is not the solution, Government is the problem.” That quote has provoked a rash of cheap jokes, and it has made the phrase “civil service” the object of cynical scorn.

Elsewhere (see The First Time I Voted for President, Nov 8, 2012) I have acknowledged and apologized for my cavalier dismissal of Dwight Eisenhower as an inarticulate midwestern rube. That crass judgment stemmed from my intellectual arrogance and you called me on it more than once. In hindsight Ike got many of the big things right and certainly his temperament was more presidential than Candidate Trump, whose reputation is built on the 282 people, places, and things he has insulted on Twitter. (A communications vehicle too complicated to explain here.)

I hope you will not view this letter as an elitist appeal for more politically correct discourse while ignoring the real pain of people whose dreams have been dashed.
“Festina lente” make haste slowly you often cautioned me. I am hopeful about our messy democracy and I am looking forward to electing the first woman president. Now that is a topic I would be eager to discuss with you.

This week I asked the writers in my memoir classes to write a letter to past or future generations about how they’re feeling now, a week before the 2016 presidential election. Sharon Kramer lives near Wrigleyville, and I thought this piece she wrote about voting early last Sunday while Cub fans were gathering for the fifth game of the World Series really knocked it out of the park. Enjoy!

I Saw America Sunday

by Sharon Kramer

That’s Sharon Kramer to my left and three other writers from our downtown class: Audrey Mitchell, Wanda Bridgeforth, and Darlene Schweitzer.

I saw America Sunday. Oh, I’ve seen America before. Videos of policemen shooting young black men. A candidate for President of the United States degrading women, the disabled and Muslims. Anger from citizens not able to replace a lost job. Hatred of our first African American president. Yes, I’ve seen too much of that America. But Sunday in Chicago, for one brief moment, America was working the way my imaginings told me it should.

I decided to vote early at my public Library on Belmont Ave. Just blocks from Wrigley Field, where the Cubs would later win game 5 in the World Series. At Clark and Diversey, about 100 policemen and women were lining up on bicycles, like a chorus line on stage, guns at their sides (I always check that), on their way to the Cubs game at Clark and Addison to keep the peace. Intermingled in this bike parade were everyday men, and women, and children dressed in blue Cubs shirts and Halloween costumes, going to the same place, inadvertently caught in the police bike procession. Nothing happened. Nobody acted self-important. It was just a long display of people and police on bikes on their way to an event. I felt like I was in the audience of Radio City Music Hall and the program was about to begin.

When I got to the voting location, there was a long line. The library was technically closed on Sunday, so I couldn’t take out a book to read. I’d left my cell at home, too. So, I had nothing to do but look at the waiting people. The shoes were mostly sneakers. All sizes and colors and styles coming together to vote. Maybe what we all have in common is sneakers.

The clothes represented young and old — black elastic-waisted pants (like mine), skirts too short coupled with torn stockings and lots of sweatshirts and baseball caps. The hair was gray, black, purple, blonde, brown and pink. The faces Black, Latino, Asian, White.

Not one word of complaint. The long line, curved and orderly. The only loud voice was from one of the voting officials trying to straighten out a line or push us closer together. No one took offense. It was just someone trying to do his job. Everyone was eager to vote. Graceful and beautifully choreographed in curvy lines, I half expected to hear a rendition of “God Bless America.”

On my way home after voting, the Trick-or-Treaters were mixed up with the Cubs fans and they were all mixed up with the police and early voters. Proud parents moving their young princesses and witches from store to store to add goodies to already bulging bags. Another dance. This time in technicolor, with joy, humor and generosity.

A perfect confluence of goodness was happening right before my eyes — voting, Halloween, innocence, pride, passion, and humor, on a lovely fall day. Everyone respected everyone else’s space. It was the way I want to think of my country. Everyone moving in their own direction, to their own song. Yet somehow, still together, respecting one another.

Will I ever see this perfect storm of civility and graciousness again? I hope so.

Sharon Kramer compiles essays by writers from the “Me, Myself and I” class I lead at the Chicago Cultural Center at a blog called Beth’s Class. This “I Saw America Sunday” essay was first published there, along with pieces written by her fellow Wednesday writers. Check them out!

Hey! An op-ed piece I wrote was published Monday in the New York Daily News, and much to my happy surprise, they didn’t edit out my favorite line of the whole thing: “Most of us aren’t fortunate enough to have a spouse named Mike.” (I can just imagine Cub fans across the country sighing in relief!) In case you missed it, here is Blind, but entitled to cast a ballot” in its entirety:

By Beth Finke

Monday, October 31, 2016

I lost my sight in 1986, to a rare condition called retinopathy. By then I’d already voted twice, in national elections, as a fully-sighted person.

Struggling to adjust to blindness, I was determined not to lose my ability to vote — not just casting a ballot, but the act of voting itself.

Going to the polls is essential. There’s no substitute for the feel of a voting device in your hand or the sound of your vote actually registering, a certainty that voting by absentee ballot can’t provide.

For three decades now I’ve searched for a voting experience equivalent to the one I enjoyed when I could see.

It’s a fair expectation. People who are blind are guaranteed that right by law — many laws, in fact, including at the national level alone: the National Voter Registration Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Federal Rehabilitation Act.

The technology has existed for many years, too. Text-to-speech software translates the candidate selections on the ballot into spoken choices; a special keypad then enables blind voters to choose their candidates by touch, with the selections confirmed by voice again before the ballot is cast.

Some places — like New York City — have more or less that setup, with ballot-marking devices that allow people who can’t see to make their choices in private.
But in many places, blind people can’t choose candidates on their own. The systems may work in theory, but they don’t in practice.

During the last 30 years I’ve made my way to the polls many times, each time hoping to recapture what I felt emotionally, and what I could actually do, before I became blind. What I experienced were more journeys of trepidation than fulfillment, not to mention the convoluted measures needed to approximate an act guaranteed by our Constitution.

We’ve come a long way of course since 1988, when I first voted as a blind person. The technology back then was punch card, so my husband Mike joined me in the booth, selected the candidates for me and placed my hand on top of the stylus so I could physically punch the ballot on my own.

In a subsequent election, Mike was away on business. I made it to the polls myself, but quickly discovered how much assistance I’d need without him. Two judges — one Democrat, one Republican — crowded with me and my seeing eye dog into the tiny polling booth.

I didn’t bother asking them to put my hand on the stylus so I could punch the card myself, just allowed a third party to vote for me with a second third party to witness.

Yes, I cast a ballot, but the experience was invasive and overheard by many.

Text-to-speech software became available in the mid-2000s, and the news coursed quickly through the blind community that we could now vote independently and privately. I live in Chicago, and the city sponsored free trainings at Chicago public libraries. I spent many hours there, getting a feel for the machines and practicing with the buttons on the handheld device.

When I arrived at the polling station in 2008, the technology was in place but no one could operate it. There’d been no training of staff in the sequences needed — enabling the software, activating the audio, even finding the headphones that ensure privacy of selection.

So backwards in time we went. Once again my husband Mike had to sign an affidavit, accompany me to the booth, read the candidates’ names out loud and hear my choices in response, as did everyone else within earshot. The same scenario repeated in 2012 during the national elections.

Next week we again have a national election of great import, and again, my hopes are raised that I’ll be able to exercise the same basic right that sighted people do — to vote in private without public assistance. Millions of Americans with disabilities share this ambition. . Instead, we need to rely on larger systems and resources. “Save yourself the trouble,” some suggest with a shrug. “Vote absentee.”

On a purely technical level, I won’t vote absentee as it’s historically fraught with challenges, including ballots getting damaged or lost, and in many cases not even counted.

It’s the larger imperative that compels me to the polls, however. People need to see me voting. The astonished comments I hear from people waiting with my seeing eye dog and me in queue tell me they really do want me to vote.

Those of us with disabilities can’t let others forget about us. In the not-too-distant past, people with disabilities did stay home, not just on voting day, but perpetually. We can never go back to those days, and voting publicly is one way to ensure we don’t.

Finke is the interactive community coordinator at Easterseals headquarters in Chicago and the author of two books.

Last week Beth posted about her humanitarian plan to remove me from Chicago while the Cubs played their first home World Series games since forever. Awhile ago, when it looked like the Cubs might just win the pennant, she determined that we’d go to the city of whatever American League team was in the Series.

Well, I’m glad that city ended up being Cleveland, and elated to report that the trip was an absolute success. I escaped Chicago, and Cub fans were spared me.

We saw our longtime friends (dating back to when they were Ph.D. students in the English department at the University of Illinois), Bob and Lauren. They have a great big old house on the west side of Cleveland with lovely views of Lake Erie, which is a short walk away.

I was pretty well-behaved. Most of the time.

We got to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and spent some time in a terrific little a neighborhood called Gordon Square. For Chicagoans, think of Logan Square just before it really got to be Logan Square.

Mostly, though, it was about the baseball. Friday night we ate a scrumptious dinner Lauren and Bob made and watched an absolutely terrific, tense, well-played baseball game that ended with Cleveland winning 1-0. Saturday, Beth and I watched the beginning of the game out at a bar in Gordon Square, and then came back to Bob and Lauren’s to watch the end.

The World Series is a big deal in Cleveland, but it’s different than here in Chicago with the Cubs. There are no W flags, but just a quiet, constant flow of conversational exchanges between friends, clerks and customers, and total strangers wearing Indians garb that invariably ended “Go Tribe!” Cleveland fans don’t care much about Cub fans suffering—they’ve suffered plenty themselves.

They were aware of their status, as our friend Bob termed it, as the Cubs’ generic “opponent.” Or, as this Boston columnist put it, a “prop” in the Cubs drama. Saturday morning, a Cleveland Plain Dealer column in the print edition was headlined, “Just in, Chicago not entitled.”

The visit was also confirmation of the universal sense among all sports fans that announcers are biased against their teams. Here in Chicago, Cub fans detest Joe Buck, largely because of his ties to St. Louis and the hated Cardinals. In Cleveland, they felt like Buck was partial to the Cubs, and that he couldn’t stop talking about the Cubs players, and in particular, Kyle Schwarber.

They also were irked about how the media narrative has been more about the Cubs losing than Cleveland playing well and winning. This is a Cub thing, as the Clevelanders are learning. For example, the 1969 season is still seen by Cubs faithful as the Cubs collapsing. Except: The Cubs won 90 games that year. They were very good. The Mets won 100 games. They were better. They went on to beat a great Baltimore Orioles team in the World Series 4 games to 1. In other words, the Cubs simply lost to a better team. I realize that’s not as much fun as goats and stuff….

Fans packed Progressive Field to watch the games at Wrigley. (Click image for video.)

Generally, fans just seemed very happy to be watching their team in the World Series. Some watched at Progressive Field, the Indians ballpark. Tens of thousands of loyalists paid $5 each to watch the games on the enormous jumbotron. Part of the proceeds went to local charities. The fans hooted and roared as if they were at the real thing. (We thought about going but it was sold out.)

The best part? Hanging with friends. Bob and Lauren subscribe to the print versions of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the NY Times. We hung out both mornings, sitting at their dining room table, drinking coffee, trading sections, reading passages aloud to one another, kibitzing about the game, about the election, the old days, the current days.—and laughing a LOT.

And so, Bob and Lauren, Beth and I—and the Cub fans of Chicago—thank you for putting up, and putting up with, your crazy friends.

If you follow this blog, you know my husband Mike likes baseball. You also know he doesn’t like the Cubs.

Mike Knezovich is a Chicago White Sox fan. He does not think the ivy is cute — crying is OK in baseball, just not shrubbery. He doesn’t think naming a dog Wrigley is clever. He thinks the Cubs manager likes attention a little too much, and is too fond of gimmickry. And grown men posing for photos in onesie pajamas is a sign of weakness.

Last year Mike went to a Cubs-Sox game with some members of my family, including my nephew Brian. The Sox won, the L flag came out, and Brian couldn’t quite believe it (also Note Mike’s Florida Marlins hat).)

Mike Knezovich owns an “L” flag.

Earlier this month I came up with a plan. For Mike’s sake — and the sake of Chicago citizens — I’d see to it that Mike was away from Cub fans if the Cubs ended up playing at Wrigley in the World Series this year.

Cub fans are everywhere (they’re like cockroaches, Mike says). Where on earth could we go to watch those games where Cub fans would be in a minority? The home of the American League champions!

At the beginning of the playoffs, we knew we’d be traveling to Texas, Toronto, Baltimore, or Cleveland the last weekend of October. At risk of offending any blog followers who live in Texas, I rooted against the Rangers. Mike and I have always been curious about Toronto, and having never been there before, I started out pulling for them. We have good friends in Baltimore, Boston and Cleveland, though, and in the end, I am absolutely delighted to have Mike rent a car and take Whitney and me with him to Cleveland while the Indians play here at Wrigley.

Our friend Brad may drive with us, too — he’s originally from Ohio, loves staying in downtown Cleveland near museums and music halls, and with the
Indians out of town he should have no trouble finding a hotel room.

Mike, Whitney and I will stay with our friends Lauren and Bob there. Bob grew up a Brewers fan, Lauren followed the Mets, and one (of many things) that brought them together was the discovery that both buy scorecards and score every single baseball game they attend in person. Since moving to Cleveland a decade ago they’ve taken on the Indians  as their team. They have tickets to World Series games in Cleveland but will be home to watch it on TV with us during our visit.

We’ve offered our Chicago apartment out to family members (my family is full of Cub fans) to use while we’re away and are very pleased that Floey’s dad and her big brother Justin took us up on the offer. They’ll be staying here and taking public transportation to Wrigleyville, just an earshot away from Wrigley Field
while the games are being played there.

And, because Mike Knezovich will be hundreds of miles away, they should be able to enjoy their time.