If you want to vote for Chuck, you can vote for Chuck here.

I have always stressed the importance of voting. Voting is the single most effective tool we have in choosing our government and our leaders. And it’s not just politics. In the past, I’ve voted for pineapples on pizza (totally acceptable), Miracle Whip as the best salad dressing (I’ll die on that hill), and The Last Jedi as the best Star Wars movie (just nosing out A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back).

That being said … a recent Facebook post caught my attention. And boy oh boy did it catch my attention.

What you see here is a carved wooden bear at the tool booth of Cherry Plain State Park in Berlin, adjacent to the New York / Massachusetts border.

Now that’s a nice big bear, and some decent carving construction. I’m suspecting someone took some real time to build this, they didn’t just take a chainsaw to a log and craft it that way.

And with that, the people at Cherry Plain State Park want to give this bear a name. And they’ve opened up a contest to name the bear. The link is here. And you still have time to vote, the polling closes on July 3rd.

And what are the choices for this bear’s name?

Oh, that’s why I’m writing this blog, folks.

Here are the choices for the bear’s name.

• Charlie the Bear
• Cherry Berry
• Chuck
• Big Bob
• Cran-Beary
• Teddy

I mean … do we even have to make a choice? That bear screams “Name Me CHUCK, Humans!”

All the other names are a combination of lazy and twee. Seriously? Teddy? Big Bob? I mean, did NOBODY even think of naming the bear Tetrameter?

Tetrameter, the Bear that’s Trapped in a Tree

Now I don’t think this blog will sway any voting one way or the other. I mean, it’s not like I have a Sunday night HBO commentary show and feel the urge to ballot-stuff the New Zealand “Bird of the Year” competition towards the pūteketeke (Great crested grebe).

But … well … it’s not like the voting is geographically-boundaried. You can vote to name the Cherry Plain State Park bear as “Chuck” if you live in Vermont. You can vote for “Chuck” if you live in Arizona. Heck, you’re not even limited to United States residency. Anybody in Alberta want to throw a vote or three into the mix? How about those readers from New Delhi who keep commenting “great blog” regardless of whatever content I produce?

And trust me. I’m not getting any financial benefit from this. If the bear’s named “Chuck,” it doesn’t add anything to my bank account. Nobody’s sending me CashApp money on this.

All I’m saying is … at least check it out, and if you feel like that grizzled grizzly deserves the name Chuck, then go for it.

Although if there were a write-in choice available …

I’d still pen a vote for Tetrameter. Just because.

Tetrameter and the Bell Tower