A look at Ohio

With 1 day and 23 hours left to Election Day, I am not only fascinated but enthralled by the tides that move in and out of polls, observations by the press and the bloggers but most of all the state of my stomach juices.

I am running on scared coffee beans, late nights and Internet madness.

Not since John V. Lindsay have I been so hyped up. But this time I am also in a panic that the polls are off, the election booths rigged and my own State split between the two candidates.

I realized some time yesterday this is the first time I've lived in a purple state of indecision. Having spent so much time in either New York or New England, it always seemed I was surrounded by like-minded voters. Even when I lived in the Hill Towns of Western Massachusetts where my Kennedy lawn sign was stolen, three times, I knew that Massachusetts as a whole would re-elect the Senator. And then I only had a small portable radio and was in a latitude high enough to catch NPR.

Now I live in cow country, an underpopulated rural hamlet, with too much personal access to hourly updates. I am surrounded by these blue and white lawn signs that say, "McClain-Palin." My neighbours to the right and left of me are staunch Republicans, and on this road, I can count with one hand the neighbours who will vote Democratic.

It's only when I head over to Route 97 and into Sullivan County that the same blue and white lawn signs seem to shout "Obama-Biden" but even in New York, hereabouts, we are talking rural homesteaders or weekenders. I'd hazard a guess that the lawn signs are on those plots of land belonging to the outsiders--a term often applied to those who weren't born and bred in these here hills.

So, I for one will be relieved when this Election is over!