Hey, readers.
I’m getting lots of “Hey are you okay?” messages from readers who know I have a home in Sarasota Florida!
Yes, I am very okay! I weathered the storm from 1000 miles away, but it was harrowing, nonetheless!
See, my mom lives down there, and so does my daughter and her husband, and a whole pack and parcel of various other beloved relatives.
All are okay!
And all of our homes survived with little to no damage. (A fence came down! Power’s still out for most of us and cell service started out really spotty and has become only partly spotty! Improvements! Yay!)
My mom originally wanted to stay in her condo, but the storm was approaching as a Cat 5 with the center of the track literally over both my house and hers. (The final track wasn’t too different!!)
My house (about a mile from hers) was in evacuation zone C, and we got the word pretty early that it was go-time. (Easy for me, since I’m in MA!)
Mom’s in zone D (which is just a slightly higher elevation), and I was afraid if she waited, she wouldn’t be able to get out if her zone was called to evac. IMO, the time to go was right then, on October 8th, when the weather was still mostly calm. My daughter Mel and her husband were going by my house to put out some chemical sandbags called Flood Sax (really cool things, they absorb water and become a barrier!) at my back slider. (See there’s a swale at the back property line of my little house, and the yard floods even when there’s not a hurricane approaching!)
Anyway, Mom really didn’t want to leave. She was very unhappy about the fact that the storm was coming on her birthday, too. (Her 93rd birthday!! Two years ago, Hurricane Ian dropped in on my dad’s 92nd birthday. Apparently it’s the Hot New Thing in Florida, to celebrate with a hurricane when you hit your nineties!1)
But I threw a lot of science at her, courtesy of my fav hurricane tracking site, Levi Cowan’s Tropical Tidbits. His video blogs are so calm and soothing and filled with facts, facts, and explanations of scientific facts. (Shades of ASMR for me, at least!) And then, I unleashed my secret weapon: Mel.
My daughter got the job done, texting me that Grandma was safely in Mel’s car and on the way to her (new! built to hurricane code! very safe!!) house a few dozen miles south of Sarasota. And yeah, there were some tense moments when the approaching storm track slipped south a bit, closer to them, but in the end, after downgrading to a still scary and powerful Cat 3 thanks to dry air and wind shear (thanks for the education, Levi!), the eye really did go directly over our Sarasota homes!
So, aftermath: Everyone’s safe, everyone’s home is still standing and dry, my yard’s swale swoled but it did it politely and didn’t come uninvited into the house.
Still, I wanted to share this picture with you, because my mother insisted she do this on October 7th, as the hurricane was approaching—especially because the hurricane was approaching:
So now that you know everyone’s okay, let’s talk about what my mom is doing in the photo above.
She’s voting early.
As soon as she got her mail-in ballot, she researched the various local elections and amendments (Florida: Yes on Three! Yes on Four!) via a website I recommended to her. It’s called BlueVoterGuide.Org and it’s super easy to use.
On the homepage, you input your address and the Blue Voter Guide site provides you with all of the info that will be on your ballot, including details about amendments and down ballot races, complete with lists of recommendations and endorsements.
For example, there are judges up for election in my very progressive mom’s district in Florida, and the Blue Voter Guide let her know which of those candidates were supported by the Heritage Foundation (the right-wing group that helped to bring us Trump’s Project 2025! Yikes!), and that the local Democrats recommended she vote NO for them. (Keep your stinkin’ Project 2025 away from my local judiciary system!!)
The Blue Voter Guide is a very useful tool for the local, down-ballot, allegedly non-partisan races that will directly impact your life.
Here’s that link again: https://bluevoterguide.org
So! Good job, Mom!
With info from the Blue Voter Guide as well as info from other trusted sources like Equality Florida and other progressive groups she belongs to, my mother filled out her ballot as early as possible AND RETURNED IT.
Returning her ballot was part of her hurricane prep: Making sure her voice was heard and her vote counted in the face of an approaching Category 5 storm.
(That is kinda what this election feels like, even to those of us living outside of Florida, isn’t it?!)
I’ve been spreading the word about the importance of democrats voting as early as possible. It’s our superpower, particularly in this too-close election, where our very democracy is on the line.
You see, when you vote as early as you can, particularly if you are a registered democrat living in a swing state, this allows the democratic campaigns to focus their Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts on less likely democratic voters.
If you vote on Day One you’ll have:
Faster lines
Fewer election day reminders (You know all those phone calls you’re getting, readers-who-live-in-swing-states? They will stop as soon the campaigns get the word that you’ve voted. The campaigns won’t know HOW you voted, but they will know that you filled out a ballot. And they will stop calling!)
The chance to help grow the democratic turn-out, because yes, we stop bugging YOU and can turn our attention to all those maybe-they-vote-maybe-they-don’t-find-time-to-vote registered democrats.
I can confirm all of this! I’ve been phone banking for nearly all of the special elections that’ve been held in 2023 and early 2024, and in all of those bigger races, the democrats have won because of large turnouts. And that’s because there are massive number of volunteer phone-bankers like me calling super-dems and telling them why they should vote early. Because those voters paid attention and understood the assignment, we phone-bankers could then call those busy sometimes-voters-who-are-registered-democrats and talk them into going to the polls. (Sometimes on the very day that we called!!)
It works.
Your voting early (ASAP!!) can help us win this life-and-death election.
For the record, Ed and I also voted on Day One.
I used the Blue Voter Guide to research our ballot in advance, and on the very day our ballots arrived in the mail here at our home in Massachusetts, we filled them out and took them to the drop box at our local library.
I’ve already checked the TrackMyVote site for Massachusetts, and yes my ballot has been accepted, which means “Submitted to be Counted.” (Hoo-yah!)
So now, come hell or high water (or Category 5 hurricane!) I’ll know my voice was heard.
One last important thing: This Saturday—tomorrow, October 12—the romance writers and readers gang at Fated States will be phone banking into Arizona. I’ll be there!! It’s fun(ish)!! (Just ask Laura Moher!!) Join us! Here’s the link to the sign up: https://fatedmates.net/fatedstates
Or you can sign up here: https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/665089/
Help us save the world!
#VoteBlue all the way down the ballot, and please never stop fighting for our freedom, for our democracy, for equality, equity, peace, love, hope, and for the rights of ALL of our neighbors both here and around the world,
Suz