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Did you vote today? I did.

If you did too, then show me your sticker. To mark this historic day, I want to assemble a photo collage of all my friends, family, peeps, admirers, fans, stalkers, and other acquaintances with their “I voted today!” stickers.

So please, leave a comment on this post with a link that points to a photo of you with your sticker (faces not necessary if you’re camera shy). Wherever the photo lives is fine – Flickr, TwitPic, MobileMe gallery, Picassa, whatever. You can even email it to me if you want – send it to stickerpic@delgrosso.com.

Now, go click those levers, hang those chads, check those boxes, press that touchscreen button, or whatever it is you do in your crazy state to mark your votes. Then get that pic, and show it off.

What are you waiting for? Go!

David Sedaris nails it on the “undecided voters”, in the New Yorker:

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I’d really like to meet some of these people, and then kick them right in the junk.

Everyone is aware of the difficult and menacing situation in which human society — shrunk into one community with a common fate — now finds itself, but only a few act accordingly. Most people go on living their every-day life: half frightened, half indifferent, they behold the ghostly tragi-comedy which is being performed on the international stage before the eyes and ears of the world. But on that stage, on which the actors under the floodlights play their ordained parts, our fate of tomorrow, life or death of the nations, is being decided.

Those words are as true today as when Albert Einstein wrote them in 1950.

Have you called your member of congress or senator about the criminal $700B Wall Street bailout plan?

Have you taken any steps to protect what’s left of your dwindling civil rights?

Have you considered what will happen when the state owns and controls the industry you work in?

Have you had honest and open discussions within your family about what your future holds, and how you’re preparing for it?

Have you given thought to how else we could be spending the $12B per month that we’re currently throwing at the Iraq occupation¹?

I could go on. But I think you get the idea. Am I being wee bit histrionic? Sure. And I know you don’t come here to read this sort of thing². But I’m getting so weary of the lack of outrage around me. Things are going from bad to worse on a daily basis, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You have a voice.

Look, I’m not saying we all have to be activists; we have jobs and families and more responsibilities than we can manage as it is. And I’m not saying that we all need to stop what we’re doing and spend our time in a sky-is-falling mood; we all need our hobbies and distractions to keep us entertained and healthy and creative. But please, think of just one thing that is of great concern to you right now, and do something about it. Civil rights, energy independence, corporate welfare, Iraq or Afghanistan, breast cancer, autism, whatever. Make a phone call. Send a fax. Sign a petition. Hell, just make a $5 online donation to a local progressive candidate or a cause that’s meaningful to you. But do something. Today.

(I now return you to ddc’s usual nerdery and snark. Thanks for indulging me.)

[ 10:55am - 4th paragraph edited slightly for clarity ]

With the fiasco of the Fast Ferry and the looming failure that is Renaissance Square, it’s likely not the best time to be talking about new money-pit projects for western New York.

But one issue that has always mystified me is why there has not been a more intense, or at least more vocal, push for extended light rail and commuter rail in the area.  I’ve talked to many local and state legislators about it over the past few years, and the answers given have been hollow and unsatisfying.

The Buffalo-Rochester-Syracuse-Albany corridor is stuck in a death-spiral of economic stagnation, yet connecting them via a robust commuter system would let businesses tap into a regional workforce rather than merely local ones.  And that’s not even mentioning the additional boost that connecting such a system to the NYC/Hudson region would bring.  Add in connections to Canadian rail via Toronto and Montreal, and the BUF-ROC-SYR-ALB corridor could thrive.

I’ll admit I’m not up on the economics of the situation, or the administration of such a system (private vs. public), but in my mind the largest obstacle is the running joke that is NYS government.  On a local level, I think getting Bob Duffy¹ and Byron Brown together to talk about such a system would be a good start.  Add a couple of business leaders like Tom Golisano and Bob Davis to the conversation, and something might come of it.

I can only imagine that there are hundreds if not thousands of workers and jobs that are separated in cities only 60 minutes from one another upstate.  So we have the fuel.  How can we not want to build an infrastructure to get that economic engine running at full throttle?