The disappearance

Yesterday I had "vote" on my task list. As was the case with so many days, things got busy, and by late in the day I still hadn't done it. In principle I know that if I chose to wait until later in the early voting process, the odds would be better that there would be less of a line.

But fuck it, there it was on my task list, simple and stark. So at around 4:15 I saddled up and headed out to the early voting sites to get it done. First I went to University Mall (now University Place -- perhaps they are moving away from calling it a mall because there are ever fewer stores there). As had been the case Thursday, the first day of early voting, there was a pretty substantial line there, so -- after depositing all the plastic bags that had been rattling around in my car for days in the bins at Harris Teeter -- I went on uptown to Chapel of the Cross, where I reasoned that students being out of town and lower population density would make for a less-populated voting site. Not true. The line was almost an hour long, but I stuck it out and plunged my little dagger into the heart of the Trump administration.

Since I was uptown and hadn't exercised yet, I decided to take a walk around up there. First I went across campus as far as the student union and libraries, then I turned and went back to Franklin Street. Overall, my impression was of great sadness. These public spaces that should be full of people bustling about carrying out the business of autumn, exchanging pleasantries and ideas, were instead largely empty. Many businesses were closed. The emptiness and wetness of the day called attention to buildings in need of attention, first and foremost the Campus Y, the east side of which needs a bunch of plaster and paint. As an aside, let me note that this empty time is a great moment for the application of WPA-like strategies to putting people to work. 

Or, rather, it would be a good time to attack these problems if labor was abundant and cheap. In fact unemployment in the Triangle was at around 6% in August (the last month for which we have data) and is at 6.5% statewide. We could truck people in from Fayetteville (where unemployment is at 9.1%) and put them up at underoccupied hotels at bargained-for reduced rates and do deferred maintenance on buildings. But the university in fact had to do major headcutting because it was plugging a $300 million budget gap.

There is a shortage of institutional agility and will.