seasonal

It was a spectacularly beautiful fall day on campus - many trees with leaves as though they had already had the saturation levels in Photoshop turned up unnaturally high. And signs of Halloween are getting more intense - this spider was only one of a number of inflatable bogies and pumpkins outside this Mine Street house. Not nearly as spectacular as Los Angeles last year (I wonder whether Myrna and family opposite 962 will bring out their severed and bloody human limbs and lay them on their barbecue again? I was very worried about the dethawing meat going bad, till I realized it was plastic...), but much more in evidence than in England, where the most evidence of the upcoming date that I saw was a number of cut out black bats in the window of a house in my parent's street.

But this is also a seasonal picture because of the "Yes" sign in the window: election season (Corzine seems, at last, to be leading in the polls, which even if it's not something to get ecstatic over, is so much better than the alternative). This "yes" is a very localized "yes," however: part of the campaign to vote for New Brunswick to move to a system of ward-based elections, which certainly seems like a good idea (at present, five at-large members are elected). It certainly seems that this would give students who reside here much more of a chance to influence the government of the small city that they temporarily inhabit (and therefore get them more interested in politics generally, which is a good thing) - though a rather badly written editorial in the Daily Targum seemed to advance the idea that student representation would enable basement clubs to operate more easily (to the eventual benefit of the national music scene) with just as much fervor. I can't quite follow the counter-arguments, which seem largely just to assert that a united New Brunswick is a thing devoutly to be wished: ward-elected government (the plan is to have 6 wards, and then 3 at-large elected members) does seem to offer a far greater chance of participation.