A post before voting. I always get a little choked up when I vote because it lets me feel my freedom so directly. I've been to places where there is no freedom. Like Sofia, Bulgaria before the fall of communism. A woman on our tour went into the ZUM department store with her husband, confined by multiple sclerosis to a wheelchair. She started photographing the empty shelves in the store's grocery and produce sections. Armed guards rushed her and took her away for hours of interrogation, leaving her helpless husband alone in ZUM's basement. He spoke no Bulgarian, couldn't read or write in the Cyrillic alphabet, and was likely the only black man the passing shoppers had ever seen. He sat for hours right where he'd been left, until his wife returned. She'd been questioned, intimidated and accused of spying. Her film was confiscated. When she pushed her husband's wheelchair out into the street, a van pulled up alongside and a man jumped out, trying to grab her camera. Seems the police realized they hadn't finished the job. If she still had the camera, she could buy more film...
