God on a sign

I walk my dog, Jimmy, every morning. I really enjoy this time. It’s just me and Jimmy. It’s usually pretty quiet and still. The temperature is not bad. Jimmy likes to sniff all around — he’s part hound after all. We walk, he sniffs, does his business, and occasionally attempts to run after a random bunny or squirrel. I’m never sure what he thinks he’s going to do with one once he caught it — I would guess he doesn’t either.

It’s now the beginning of August and for the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed political yard signs starting to pop up in the neighborhood for a variety of candidates running for a slew of offices. Since when did we start putting up political yard signs in the middle of summer and think that this was normal? I’m not sure. Back when I did politics professionally, the rule was you couldn’t put them out more than 30 days from the election. And no one wanted them in their yard before that. Now, there are many people who put these yard signs out months in advance.

Something I learned from doing political campaigns was this — after about 2 weeks, people don’t actually notice the signs. They just become part of the landscape. Which means that it’s much better to wait to put your signs out until closer to the election, but that seems not be followed much any longer. But I don’t think it changes the reality that the signs just become part of the landscape.

In our neighborhood we have signs for Democrats and Republicans. The humorous thing about this is that they all seem to be surrounding our house, with us being the buffer…