PaMaDoCoBloNaBloPoMoMo, Day 4: Cello Centered gets my vote

So! It's election day! Kind of a big deal, right? Right! Thusly, I tackled the “C” section of NaBloPoMo's November blog roll expecting a barrage of political chatter: Last-minute advocating on the behalf of beloved candidates, fervent ranting, harried tales of voting booth kerfuffles, or at least a bit of griping about how SNL's Presidential Bash last night was kinda super lame. But not one of the blogs I clicked through this morning even so much as mentioned “election day” or “voting” or “democratic process” or “averting the course of American history” or anything. Not nothin'. 

And given that my Google Reader, Facebook news feed, the whole Paste office and, um, basically my whole entire life and the lives of everyone I know and love are almost literally abuzz with excitement and anxiety about the news we'll learn tonight, I found this more than a bit unsettling. There was no way I could blog about a blogger who was not blogging about this, the last day of the longest and perhaps most historically profound Presidential election campaign in recent American history, I decided, so I kept on clicking until I found one who was.

That happened to be Mari of Cello Centered, who I initially mistook to be a fellow Georgian. She wrote this morning about the incredibly long wait times Atlantans experienced during early voting last week, even including a photo of an immense, snaking mass of early voters up in Gwinnett County. For Paste folks, it's a familiar sight: Most of us staffers encountered pretty long waits last week during early voting, and again this morning, and we're expecting to hear more electoral horror stories as regular voting commences throughout the city today.

Turns out, Mari was visiting her daughter from out of town last week when she witnessed the lines up in Gwinnett, but we still appreciate her ode to the tenacity of Peach State voters. “I live in Massachusetts, where early voting can be done only through absentee ballot, so it was quite an eye-opener to spend the last week in Georgia, where people, including my daughter and her friends, stood in line for hours (in weather far colder than I expected, for the South) to vote,” she writes. (She also had a really great experience at a violin shop up in Duluth--  in case, y'know, you're in the market for a new President and a new, finely handcrafted stringed instrument.)

Here at Paste, we're eagerly waiting to see what happens in what Mari calls  “the red, lately pink, state of Georgia.” To our friends here, up in Massachusetts and everywhere else across America, please (please please please please please) don't forget to vote today! Whether it's for Denzel or Zac, and whether you blog about it or not, please go out to the polls and cast your ballot. Make your voice heard and make us proud.