The Importance of Being Counted (Pop. 842)

[ccharles000]

Ten years have passed since the country last tried to meet the essential, constitutional and all-but-impossible mandate to count everybody; the whole lot of us. Ten years since it last attempted something akin to counting the granules in an ever-filling, ever-leaking bucket of sand.

A decade, then, since the Bureau of the Census undercounted the number of residents here in San Antonio, a very small community in central Florida that is named after — of all the saints in heaven — the patron saint of those who seek missing things.

If the short count caused some celestial laughter, San Antonio’s city clerk and protector, Barbara Sessa, respectfully did not join in. She has bristled ever since with the knowledge that the city’s official population has stood for 10 years at 684, when it should have been 842.

“I know that’s a small number,” she says. “But to claim we had 684! When we knew we had 842!”

The country is again taking roll, asking an estimated 307,006,550 people to raise their hands and say, Here. As part of this $14 billion effort to quantify who we are, the Census Bureau started mailing out questionnaires last week, then followed up this week with schoolmarm postcard reminders that basically said, Boys and girls, please raise your hands!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/us/25land.html