Signs of the Times

We might not get the fall foliage like they do in either climes, but we know fall is coming just like they do in other parts of the country — with the appearance of Halloween items in Costco in July and the signs of candidates by the end of August.

I’m not sure which candidate put up the first huge BOLD LETTERED sign on the brown landscape of hillsides and frontage roads and school- and city-owned property and a few trash-strewn byways of Novato, but it sure seems they all have them up now. Smaller versions have begun sprouting up in well-kept yards and not-so-well-kept yards.

Do you assign any weight to the placement of the signs? If you drive by a previously bucolic stretch of land and see it dotted with huge BOLD LETTERED signs espousing a particular candidate, do you think, “I’m certainly not going to vote for someone who polluted this area with that!”? If the smaller sign is on a lush lawn, do you think, “That candidate’s got class.” Does the opposite hold true if the sign is on the lawn of a house that looks remarkably similar to the lawn of a bank-owned vacant house?

Or do you just not notice the signs at all anymore?

I do. How can I not notice the signs near the schools when I, along with many others, sit in traffic, reminded yet again that I hold these people seeking a school board re-election directly responsible for my plight on my carpooling days? I encourage the typically silent carpool members, four tweens and teens, to form anagrams from the candidates’ names.

I also assign some value system based on the location of the sign. Placed on an already barren area? Good for the candidate. Staked into the ground of beautifully landscaped publicly owned land? Bad candidate.

Magnetic sign on the driver’s side of a car which does an illegal U-turn? Bad candidate. Taped onto a retaining wall of a friend’s yard? Good candidate.

I was drawn to one sign which listed a website with an “org” domain name. Really? I always thought that domain was the, um, domain of the nonprofits, and, in my mind, organizations vetted by some heretofore-un-thought-of entity with the good of the people their foremost concern. (Yes, I know, I do live in a fantasy land sometimes.)

I was all set to complain mightily when I did the teeniest bit of research and discovered that, in fact, anyone can now use that domain. A quick check of my favorite “.org,” Wikipedia, confirmed that the original intent was to limit it to nonprofit organizations, but that’s no longer the case.

Am I the only person who still has warm and fuzzy feelings about anyone with a “.org” domain? Or are there others out there?

I am suspicious by nature. I know, hard to believe, right? No, really, I am. However, I doubt the use of the “.org” domain was a cunning ploy to garner the votes of the masses. More likely, it’s all that was available.

But I am so going to start registering domains I require with a “.org” from now on. How does “CleanUpYourCampaignSigns.org” sound to you? I think I’ll have it live by the time the first Wednesday in November rolls around.