From census to primary election

My census work is winding down.  All the households in my district have been visited and their information has been sent into the Missoula census office.  Because my girlfriend Tammy was here the last two plus weeks and I wanted to spend time with her, my boss tried to offload two pieces of my remaining census work to two fellow crew leaders who were close to being done with their districts.

In theory that was a good idea.  One of the crew leaders did a good job with her piece of the work.  The other crew leader - although he had promised me I would be happy with the work he'd do for me - well... I wasn't pleased with it.  I spent a few days with him, my boss, and a few other crew leaders getting the work he did up to my standards.  Even then I spent over 8 hours the final day fixing the final product.  My effort seems to have paid off as it appears Missoula accepted the almost 300 forms.

While my census area was the largest in both in size and in the number of households it appears I have finished close to when my fellow crew leaders did.  And it appears I finished before a number of other crew leaders in other parts of western Montana.

*** just patting myself on my back ***

Of course the word "census" became a dirty word to my girlfriend as my census work took too much of my time away from her.

Then there was the matter of Tuesday's primary election.   Yesterday was Montana's primary election and I was the chief election judge at one of the precincts.  This was my first time as chief judge so that meant extra work before and after the election.

A big problem was that the election was held the day Tammy left to return to Minnesota. I didn't realize the day of the election was the day she left until she arrived here.  Oppss. The election's hours were from 7 am to 8 pm and I had to be at the election site an hour prior to 7 am to do last minute setup before the polls opened.  So I arranged for Jan to take Tammy to the train station. Not what I wanted, but I had no choice.

The election went well.  On Monday Tammy had helped me do much of the set up at my precinct.  As our election site was held at a church, and some people get offended by religious materials, we had to use a large sheet of paper, and a cloth covering a table, to cover two bulletin boards with cards and posters with religious themes.  We also took down a painting of Jesus.

Monday evening I picked up from election headquarters the ballots and other last minute stuff for the election.

I had five election judges (Ted, Terry, Donna Jo, Peggy and Fred) to help me and they were all waiting when I arrived at the election site at 6 am with the keys to the church the pastor had lent me.  Since Tammy and I had done the preliminary set up we were able to easily complete the set up and preparation before the polls opened at 7 am.

Three of my election judges were new and one other person hadn't worked an election in four years, so it was up to Ted and I and help them with their jobs.  It is not that the judge's jobs are difficult it is that one must be aware of the correct procedures.

As this was a primary election with few high profile offices being contested the turnout was lower than in other elections.  At times it was slow but still a decent turnout.  At one slow point I reviewed one of the election judge manuals and briefly fell asleep.  One of the dangers of being able to sleep sitting upright.

Since Montana allows for voter ballot initiatives we had representatives from two of the eight initiatives that are currently in the signature gathering phase.  Because the people were gathering signatures for initiatives not currently on the ballot they were allowed within 100 feet of the election site.  One group had arranged for a table in the entryway.  The other initiative was staffed by one woman who stood and used a tall stand to hold her materials as no tables were left. I brought her a chair but she rarely used it.

A series of women and one man staffed a table for Constitutional Initiative No. 102 (CI-102). This initiative will amend Montana's constitution to define a person as all human beings, irrespective of age, health, function, physical or mental dependency or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.  Or in short, this is a pro-life initiative as even a few of the signature gatherers called it before explaining the initiative's details.  They seemed to do well in getting people to sign their petition.

The other signature gatherer was for Initiative No. 160 (I-160). This initiative I-160 prohibits trapping of all wild mammals and birds by any means on public lands in Montana, subject to limited exceptions.  This initiative was a hard sell in this area.  At the end of the day she was discouraged by the low number of signatures she had gotten, but considering the area I thought she did better than I expected.  Several people strongly disagreed with her petition and voiced their objections especially as they were trappers but no one was overly rude and I didn't have to step in.

As chief election judge I remained neutral and did not sign, endorse or have any opinion pro or con on the initiatives.

The petition gatherers were respectful and polite.  Even though the two initiatives seemed to generally attract  people of opposing beliefs the two sets of gatherers were respectfully or one another and helped each one with the rules of signature gathering. I only stepped in once when a woman for I-102 discussed her petition with an elector before he voted.  The rules are that the signature gatherers are not to interfere with an elector's voting and therefore were not to talk with them until after they voted.

My judges and I all had a good time at the election.  Our personalities meshed well and they all had a good sense of humor which helped passed the time during the lulls in people voting.  We had a small 'bet' on the number of electors we would have and one of my judges lost and was suppose to stand up and do the chicken dance.  We never made her actually do the dance but we all had fun lightly teasing her about it.  Even the signature gatherers commented on what a fun group we were and how they enjoyed being there that day.

Since we can't leave the polling place until the election is over we remarked that for the fall election we should bring crock pots and have pot luck.  My girlfriend sells Homemade Gourmet and they make excellent meals for crock pot cooking so I will have to make one for my election team in November.

After the election was over we had to take down the voting booths, posters, etc., return the church to how it was before the election, print out the results from the machine, pack up what needed to be returned to the headquarters that night.  I, and two other election judges, took the print outs and the machines' cards back to the election headquarters and then we were done for the night.

I was back home at 9:30 pm after leaving home that morning at 5:30 am.  A long day, and after eating some of the homemade gourmet dip Tammy had made for me, I went to bed and slept long and hard.

Census stories

A few Census stories...

• when one of my male workers knocked on a house door he was told to come around back of the house.  When he did he found a woman sunbathing topless.  She was not shy at all at being topless. So he sat down and began to conduct the interview.  When she asked if he was flustered at her appearance he said no, but that he was distracted.  So she put a robe on so he could conduct the interview without distractions.  He commented to me later: "Man, I love this job!"

• I learned that the story about the mentally disabled young adult and the little person census worker in Bigfork is an urban myth.  He didn't lock the census worker in a closet and call his parents saying that he captured a 'troll'.

• Joyce saw more bears including a mama bear and two cubs.  Another one of my census workers in the North Fork also saw bears.

• I am almost done with my district.  Since Tammy arrived I have been trying to offload my census work to two co-worker crew leaders who claimed they were pretty much done with their smaller districts.  I discovered they weren't "as done" as they claimed.  While I finished the rest of my district on Saturday they are still working to finish the two pieces I gave them  The only stuff left for me is to "cross the i's and dot the t's" that I missed on the questionnaires I checked over and sent to Missoula and they return to me.  I have checked and signed over 2500 questionnaires so far.  I guess it is to be expected that I missed finding a few errors on some of them.

Working around the rain

The weather in Montana this past Spring has been cool and wet.  The last few days have been very wet.  Yesterday we had a break in the rain and I got part of the yard mowed.  I guess I should have mowed until dark and finished the mowing job as I woke up to rain this morning.  It has been raining off and on all day.

I was able to take advantage of a break in the rain and ride a couple miles on my bicycle.  This is the first time I have ridden all month.  I have always ridden at least 1 mile each month on my bicycle since June 1983.  I would hate to break a consecutive string of so many months.  If I missed riding this month, to exceed 27 years non-stop, I would have to ride until I was 80 years old.

Since I couldn't work outside Tammy helped me organize some of my pantry shelves.  Without organization I have been storing extra cans of food downstairs in the basement.  This doesn't sound like much but organizing and cleaning takes time.

Another day of using my wood stove to warm the house and keep the damp chill at bay.

Mowing the lawn

I don't have any cattle this year.  I've been busy with the census so I didn't buy any.  Dan has other plans so he didn't have any cattle to pasture.  Chris found Fish & Game land for his pairs and Johnny found other pasture for his yearlings.

So I have no cattle right now to eat my lawn down like in other years.  Therefore I had to start mowing today as it quit raining - finally!  What a shame as the grass would have been plenty to feed cattle.

Vet Sign

Friday I learned of a few roads in my Census district I may not have gotten maps, etc. from the main census office for me to check on. Earlier a homeowner living in this area came to one of my workers asking to be counted. (See, not all people are cranky 'don't count me' types.)

This area is a rural area along the mountains so Tammy and I went out there to check on how many homes were there.  A few dozen or more it seems.

Here is one of the signs we encountered.

Gophers again

I took some time from my census work and Tammy and I walked the pasture and checked my gopher traps.  I trapped one pocket gopher (number 70 for the year) and set two more traps at fresh mounds of dirt.

No more regular gophers trapped, though one trap was triggered.  Maybe it was the wind that did it... or a mouse.

The river looks higher too.   A few days ago when we walked the pasture we found a couple teenagers on the opposite river bank.  They were fishing.  They also had a small campfire going, which was producing plenty of smoke.

My neighbor to the south plowed his sister's field and yesterday he "rolled" it.  That is, he pulled a very large heavy metal roller (think of the Flintstone's car's wheels) and flattened the plowed field.  Maybe his sister will plant grass for hay - finally.   Hope so, else it becomes a weed field every year.

Tree and bird hole

Tammy and I checked out the tree next to the house I where I covered the holes to keep the birds from using.  Didn't work.  They carved out a new hole below the board.

Guitar Cat and the Tulips

In case you only read my posts emailed to you, here is my updated profile photo.

Guitar Cat and the Tulips

On tour and coming to a town near you.

Here is the cover art for his next music album...

Gophers and girlfriend

Tammy has arrived from Minnesota and I am trying to wind down my Census work.  Yesterday we took a stroll around the pasture to check out the trees, river and gopher traps.

I hadn't checked my gopher traps since I started the crazy census work.  We found one dead regular gopher in a trap.  The gopher had been dead a very long time and smelled terrible.  I had to hold my nose when getting it out of the trap.  That chore was hard as I didn't want to touch anything close to the gopher.  Eventually I got the gopher out of the trap and now have the trap dangling in the river in an effort to clean it.

I have hopes this gopher was the mate for the gopher I trapped just before I started my census job.  None of the other traps were triggered and no new holes were found.

The river is higher but not too high.

Tammy took time to pet one of the neighbor's two horses.

I took time to pull up a tree root.

Just how long is that root?!

Flat tires, broken windows and bears

Poor Joyce.  Last week the border patrol checked her out twice while she was doing census work.  And she saw a large bear bear.

This week her luck wasn't so good:

• She saw a mother black bear with cubs wandering down her road,
  
  
• Heard stories about grizzly bears wandering around the people's houses recently,
  
  
• Monday got a flat tire from the rough North Fork road.  Fortunately a guy eventually drove by and helped her change her tire.  One would think that when the County bladed the road it would be better.  Not really true with this rough road.  "Blading" is half ripping the road up by the road grader in order to have some gravel/rock to blade.
  
  
• Tuesday she locked her car keys in her car.  She found someone with a working phone and called me in the afternoon.  From the quality of the call I thought she was calling from some remote area in the other part of the world.
  
  I had to drive to Bigfork to meet with the rest of my team so I couldn't drive up the North Fork to bring her spare car key.  She asked me if some trick with a tennis ball would pop her car lock open but I had never heard of that idea.
  
  Instead Joyce ended up breaking a small window in her car and reaching in to unlock the door. At least her car had a small window as many cars today do not.
  

Where Joyce is doing census work is over 40 miles from 'civilization' (Columbia Fall, MT).  I am not slighting Polebridge, as other than the Mercantile and the Northern Lights Saloon, nothing is there.  All while Joyce was working ten to twelve hours a day on the census.

At least Joyce didn't get into trouble that eventually involved the sheriff department like another census worker in the Valley did recently.  There is a crazy story in that, but one I'm not going to share as it didn't involve any members of my team, and I heard it second hand.

Census work near the border

Earlier this week one of my census workers was canvasing the part of my district up in the North Fork that borders Canada.  She parked her car near the long (since the early 1990s) closed border crossing in order to do census paper work.

She wasn't parked there very long when suddenly a border patrol agent appeared and asked her if she needed help.

She explained she was working on the census and asked if she should move her car.  The agent said no, she was fine, and then he left.

She said it wasn't 15 minutes later when another border patrol agent suddenly appeared and asked if she needed help.

"No.  Should I move my car?  You're the second agent to talk to me.  I am just working on my census forms."

No.  He told her she was fine.

"Then why the interest in me?"

He told her she was parking at a known smuggling drop point near the border.

She asked where the agents were located as they seemed to come out of nowhere and she couldn't tell where they were.  She was told, "We have our hiding places."

I do know the border patrol takes their job seriously.  Last year when I hiked to Mt Hefty I saw the hoof prints from a number of horses on and near the faint hiking trail to Mt Hefty.  Mt Hefty straddles the border with the U.S. and Canada.  This Spring I happened to deliver a census questionnaire to the Kalispell residence of one of the border patrol agents (he was in uniform when he answered the door).  We had an interesting conversation on the areas he patrols along the border, etc.  He was one of the people who patrol on horseback and we compared the time when I saw the hoof prints and when he was patrolling the area.

Also on Joyce's first day as a census worker she saw the largest black bear she had ever seen.  The bear was walking down the road she was driving on and in no hurry.

Census district

For the census, in case you are wondering what is my area of responsibility.

The area inside the red Xs is my area.  As you can see I am responsible for over half of Flathead County - at least in area (but not in population).  I also have part of Lake County (shown in blue).

So I have two counties, and my area borders seven other counties. The Continental Divide is my eastern boundary.   I also have much of Glacier Park and most - if not all - of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.  While the wilderness has no housing units (as far as I know as my team hasn't covered those maps yet), the Park has more private homes scattered about it than you would think as many houses were grandfathered in as private property inside the Park when it was created in 1910.

I imagine there aren't too many areas in the lower 48 states that are as large and complex as my area.  Several mountain ranges, wilderness, a number of very large lakes, the three forks of the Flathead River, national forests, a national park, a number of small towns, and people tucked up in the mountains to get away from civilization.

In my district, even though I don't have the major towns in my county, I have over three thousand households to visit. In western Montana my district is the largest by far in both size and households over all the other districts.  Many other districts appear to be a half to a third of my size.   Lucky me.

So, if you haven't sent in your census questionnaire yet, and a census worker comes to your door to get your household information from you, please be kind to my people.  They have a hard enough time without you making their day bad.  Some of my workers need this census job as they are barely living paycheck to paycheck.  A few of my workers have limits on how far they can travel as they are waiting for their first census paycheck so they can fill up their vehicle with gas.

What a difference a week makes

Last week on May 5 we had snow...

Now this week the weather has changed and we have sunny skies and temperatures near 60.

The tulips like the nicer weather.

Tulip snow

Further evidence of global warming, that the earth is getting warmer.

May 8, 2009

May 5, 2010

Morning deer

This morning nine deer were in the corner of my hayfield.  Eating and nervously moving about.  Eventually one, then all, jumped the fence into my front yard.  After a bit a car drove by, and with that most, then all, jumped back into the hayfield and ran to my pasture in the back.

At least they seem to stay away from my house and my tulips.

Census boxes

I am tired.  Last week I worked 70+ hours on the census.  This week I am up to 48 hours with one day left to reach my maximum of 55 hours.

Tired.  Tired.  Tired.

I have 11 workers and tonight I got 6 more people who were just trained this week.  Three of them are doing their field observation tomorrow morning and tonight I got them a couple of binders with lists of address we need to contact to get the information the people did not send in to the census in April.

Just when I got the 11 people working smoothly at the job and had a chance to catch my breath I get more people.  Mind you, I need more people in order to get the work done, so I am not really complaining... but I could have used a few more days to get caught up with the paperwork.

Thursday I got the rest of my binders of census address and maps.   Initially I got 12 boxes (63 binders).  Thursday I got 15 more boxes with the rest of my binders.  One box is double sized and I haven't looked in it yet.  I'm kinda scared to.  Good thing I had my pickup else I would not have gotten all the boxes home.

My living room is full of boxes.  And these aren't all the boxes.

Crazy just trying to keep up.

This past morning I woke up from a dream about me and another person trying to get census information from a house and then filling the paperwork out correctly.  NOT what I rwant to dream about!!!

May means snow

Very busy working on the census as a crew leader.  Very busy!  Last week was a 70 hour week getting my team up and running.

Very high winds yesterday. 93 mph at Logan Pass and 40 to 50 mph in parts of the Valley.  I had to wait while a tractor moved a tree off the North Fork road so I could drive home from Polebridge. I was able to dodge the other fallen trees.  One of my team members working in the Swan saw a fallen tree start a fire.

The sleet yesterday was nothing in comparison to the few inches of snow today while I was in the Canyon area.  At least that was better than the 9 inches the southern end of my district (in the Swan) got today.

And some people think May means flowers.  Not here!

Here are a couple of photos I took while driving through Hungry Horse in the Canyon area.

I better get to bed now as I have another long day tomorrow.

Day 1 of training

I survived.

Barely.

A long day.  I was at the site at 7:20 am, 40 minutes before class started.  I had to wander around the outside of the building until I found someone inside who could let me in.  I got the room ready before anyone arrived.  I also stopped on the way at a grocery store and bought some snacks and goodies for people to munch on.  Also some healthy food.

I was suppose to have 15 people attend the class.  14 showed up.  The 15th (and missing) person was another person trained in taking fingerprints.  Darn!  That meant I had to do it.

Fingerprinting had me wishing my Uncle Larry was here. Uncle Larry I need you!!!!  Fingerprinting the old fashioned (pre-digital) way is hard.  Especially when people do not have the flexibility to roll their arm and fingers to get a full print.  I had a number of "re-dos".   The other experienced person who took fingerprints was confident going into the fingerprint session but had as much or more trouble than I.

It took well over two hours for us to fingerprint the nine new-hire people, and we finished the last person right at 4:30 pm when we had to leave the building.

Another challenge we had was our ink pads were pretty dry.  Almost always the problem in the past has been too much ink.  We had trouble getting enough ink.  I even called the Columbia Falls police department to see if I could borrow an extra fingerprint ink pad of theirs.  Nope.   One of my team found that the ranger station we were training at had an extra ink pad that we could use.  Imagine that!  I would have never guessed.

The fingerprints have been Fed Ex'd and it will be interesting to find out how good or bad of a job I did.

Another challenge was the ranger station mistakenly double booked the room all four days we had it.  I just fit all of my team into the room and now, a few hours into my class, the station manager was asking me to squeeze into half the room so they could close the divider and let the other group use half the room.

What?!

I looked at the room with the building manager and asked how I could do that?  I supposed I could put all the tables together and everyone would have to walk sideways when moving about the tables to reach a door as there was no space left.

She said she would think about it and when we took our lunch break in an hour we would rearrange the room.

*sigh*

But a short time later, as I was lecturing, she slid a sheet under the door telling me "never mind".  I could have all of the room all week.

*whew*  Another crisis averted.

After having an early breakfast I never ate until 7 pm after I got home.   I had to verify and sign all the documents the people filled out in the morning.  Pages and pages.  I also had to verify their id documents, either a passport or two other forms of id such as a driver's license and social security card.  It took me all lunch hour to do so between the questions people asked me.

One woman brought me back a Burger King cheeseburger but I had no time to eat it.  I microwaved it to warm it back up after I got home.

Due to the time it took to fingerprint people the other people waiting to be fingerprinted had to wait.  Some more patiently than others.

Organized chaos at time.  Manged insanity at others.  With boring paperwork and dull reading mixed in.

Showtime tomorrow

It starts tomorrow.  My census job. 8 am.  I have to be ready as I am teaching the four day class.

I have an incentive to teach the class well as the students will be working for me for about the next month gathering census information from the households who did not return their census questionnaire.

My team is suppose to be 18 people but I am already down to 14.  Two people changed their minds and didn't want the job, one person because she is now homeless.  One person accepted but then had to drop out a couple days later because their vehicle broke down and they didn't have money to fix the transmission.  One person was from way out of my area and should have been assigned closer to their home.  I got him transferred but that was a challenge due to the census bureaucracy.

But I'll get the job done in my large district even with only 14 people.

My one concern tomorrow is fingerprinting.  Everyone working for the census must be fingerprinted by two different people on the first day else they cannot work for the census.  I was trained on how to take a person's fingerprints but I don't think I am very good at it.  I wish I could have been able to practice on more people.  Who I need is my uncle Larry but he lives in a different state.  He is a retired police detective and I bet he is an expert at fingerprinting.

In addition to preparing to teach the class I have been still trapping pocket gophers and gophers.  Today I got the last pocket gopher I know of in my neighbor's property.  I must have trapped 45 or more pocket gophers from his land.  I imagine there are still just as many over there.

And today I finally caught the regular gopher in my middle pasture. I am positive this is the guy I have trying to trap since last Summer.  Once he opened up all those holes mid week when it got to 80 degrees, I have been trying to get him.  He had been avoiding the traps for the most part thought I did find two sprung traps and nothing in them a few days ago.  He would dig new holes to avoid the traps.  But he slipped up and I caught him.  Hopefully this is the last one, but I doubt I could be so lucky.

That makes 69 pocket gophers and 1 regular gopher so far this year.

Harrow and snow

The harrow work on my hayfield and pastures are done for this year.  This year I drug the harrow across all of the pastures, and not part of them like other years.  If I had more time I would have drug the harrow across some pasture areas more times in an effort to smooth out the bumps, but that will have to wait until another year.  I also drug the harrow across my neighbor's field to break up cow pies and knock down dead weeds.

The activity was hard on my harrow sections.  In the beginning I had two good sections and a decent part of the third section.  By the end of the work one of the two sections was bent and the third section was down to a few small pieces.

The start... and the end.

It snowed one day while I was working.  At times it was snowing so hard my previous track was already covered when I came around again.