Archive for the ‘blog housekeeping’ Category

Where have you readers been all this time, you little Dickenses?

Friday, May 31st, 2013

The title is a paraphrase of something my daughter’s first daycare provider told me she heard another child’s Mother say.

Joyce from across the street no only took in children like ours but also took in children that the county sent her on an emergency basis. One such child was found abandoned and brought to Joyce for overnight care. The next day the Mother showed up having been told by the County, after spending the night away from home, where they had taken her child. The Mother bent down to her frightened child and said teasingly, “Where have you been all night you little Dickens?”

Its been six or so weeks since I last posted. Its not a great way to keep one’s readership going. Nevermind the millions of posts one can plumb by leafing through the extensive column to the right showing entries going back to 2006. Internet readers want fresh meat and I’ve not provided it. I may not provide much more for a while leaving this short explanation until I find my fingers again.

I’ve been enjoying one of those fertile periods of mind where lots of information is playing around between my ears. I’ve read several books and put two of them on my old webpage’s page for the books I’ve read from cover to cover. I started doing this in 1999 and could do it because I’d been keeping track of such reading since my third year of marriage after I’d lost my first teaching job. (There’s a story there. Can’t recall whether I’ve ever written it up in a post)

One of the two new editions I read out loud to Claudia, The Book Thief. Its the second book by Zusak I’ve read to her. I don’t think I listed the first, “The Messenger” on my book list because I’ve not included young adult fiction like, for instance, the seven Harry Potter books I’ve also read out loud to my wife. Neither did I include another such book by Jack Gantos which I also read out loud this Winter. I did include the Messenger because its clearly a book that straddles the fence between adult lit and books about young people. Hell, the narrator of the book is Death himself, and a jolly grim story teller he is. He was very busy during the years of the Second World War. It brought tears to my eyes at the end for a show of humanity which always has a good chance to paralyze my reading voice as I wipe my dripping cheek.

I’ve cheated a little on the second addition, The Barbarous Years by Bernard Bailyn. I stopped reading it a month ago as I busied myself with another project and had a heck of a time motivating myself to finish the last 60 pages. I still have thirty to go, one last chapter, but I’ve swatted away half that yesterday and today. The last chapter promises to be a good summing up of the founding of British America and the last bit of the chapter I concluded at 4AM this morning (couldn’t sleep) was about the beginning of the infamous “triangle trade” that put Godly puritans on a path to flood America with African slaves.

That’s a subject I’ve never been able to step away from for long. I’ve got the newly purchased “The Warmth of Other Suns” sitting on the reading table next to me but it has been pushed back on my menu by another book that I just started reading to Claudia.

We traveled to St. Louis last week to see my Brother’s family. It wasn’t just to renew family ties but to scout out the digs where my son will soon be moving to pursue a doctorate Degree. Yes, my school hating son, graduation averse son has nearly completed a masters degree and has secured a post in the prestigious Washington University. If you are a long time reader you may dimly recall this ancient column on my publicity shy offspring.

I thought I ought to find a new book to read out loud while we traveled south and Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” came to mind. I knew it was one of my Grandfather Robb’s favorite books. He was a great admirer of Twain and he was contemptuous when the NAACP attempted to have it banned from some libraries because it had the “N” word in it.

Claudia did most of the driving down and back and I managed to finish almost half of the book. It should be the next one I add to my webpage reading list. I have enjoyed reading it and it has piqued my interest again in Mark Twain. On the second day I discovered an interesting old book mark. It was the stub of a ticket dated 1984 for the Six Flags Over Mid America theme park in St. Louis. We had bought the ticket 29 years ago on the same trip where I’d stopped to visit Twain’s old home in Hannibal, Missouri.

While there I’d purchased “Life…” but set it aside unread for nearly three decades. I had to go hunting to relocate it before our latest trip to St. Looey. The first trip was three months after the birth of our son. It had been a cold winter and Claudia was near the end of her three months of maternity leave. We wanted to “find spring” so we decided to take a trip down the Mississippi to find it in the more inviting Missouri environment. We must have regaled our three year old daughter with tales of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer on that trip because she came back to Duluth convinced that her real parents were Becky Thatcher and Jesus’s Father Joseph.

My most vivid remembrance of that trip was a stop on the way North to Galena, Illinois where US Grant had a home and had run a fallen on hard times as a Harry Truman-like small town merchant before saving the Union. The remembrance is aided by a photo of picnic we enjoyed under a cupola in a Galena Park. We’re all in the picture which must have been set for a delayed exposure so I could get in the frame with Robb nestled in a bassinet.

Nine years later we would take another trip down the Mighty Mississip with our kids in tow during a terrible flood year and make a second stop in Galena to look in Grant’s former home. Robb locked himself in the car at that stop telling us he didn’t want to “see the house of another dead President.” That just about killed my social studies teaching heart. Did I mention that he’s studying chemistry?

Well, back to cases… I’m enjoying Twain’s Life. It came to my head when MPR’s Cathy Wurzer mentioned that Twain had visited St. Paul 100 years ago to do research for his book about the Mississippi. I have heard no mention of Minnesota yet. I did turn the last couple of pages and saw St. Paul’s name leading me to wonder if our state was an afterthought. Twain was a pilot on the river from its most commercially important stretch between St. Louis and New Orleans.

Its about the Olden days long gone from before the Civil War and the ruination of commercial river traffic. Its a paean to passage of time that is easy for a sixty-year old guy like me to appreciate. Blacks are mentioned a couple of times in none to flattering a way although I can’t recall the offensive N word being used. That got me to thinking about how Twain ended up living next to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little lady that Lincoln so famously claimed (maybe) “started” the Civil War. The book has me rethinking Twain and what he was up to. Perhaps, like LBJ, he spent a lifetime hiding behind a popular prejudice only to expend his later years blowing it to smithereens.

In the third of fourth chapter Twain announces to the reader that he has spent about five years writing a book (to become Huckleberry Finn) about characters from his youth and expects to spend another five years at it. This encouraged me because I’ve been sitting on a book for well over five years and can easily imagine it might take me that many more to actually finish it. It also gave me a chance to read a very funny selection from the book in progress which he inserts in this early chapter.

Suddenly I find myself wanting to pour through a chronology of this ex confederate writer who abandoned the sacred cause of the South early in the war to look for gold out west. Perhaps its also wetted my appetite for my own book writing as I’ve just dashed off a rough couple chapters of the very first book I started thinking about writing a quarter of a century ago when I’d made a hash out of my teaching career. I started writing “The Worst Teacher in the World” but gave it up when I couldn’t quite see how to proceed with it. I think I see that way now or at least its early stages and with a possible race for the school board to encourage me maybe I can crank it out in a hasty couple months. Unlike the book on Minnesota Politics that I’ve saddled myself with a book about my sorry teaching and school board career will require very little research. If I do undertake it the writing of it will undermine my immediate interest in writing for the blog.

Oh, its not that there haven’t been plenty of things for me to grouse about. I’ve resisted several juicy stories about the Duluth Schools. One was a remarkable admission that the energy savings weren’t all JCI cracked them up to be. I suspect that the story was built out of lies and that the energy savings are much worse than the story hinted at. Its primary contributor is already a notorious liar. Then there is the annoying news that Hermantown is proceeding with having JCI build it new schools, annoying in part because it seems Duluth’s new Super who bemoans the way things were handled in Duluth seems to have a wife on the Hermantown Board hell bent for leather to use JCI’s services in her community.

What intrigues me about being on the Duluth Board however, has very little to do with the Red Plan other than thinking our way around the disaster to once again offer a good education. It has occurred to me that the unfulfilled imaginings I had back when elected to the Board in 1995 might be a little more possible to do now that the District is desperate for some good news and since the terrible federal NCLB initiatives are being put to the side. What better time for me to tell the world how NOT to be a really bad teacher by avoiding the mistakes I made?

Even if I decide not to run for the School Board that wouldn’t be a bad motivation for writing a book.

(this post really should be proof read and edited but I’m really not into blog posting right now. I’ve got two books to finish reading another to commence and I haven’t even mentioned the herculean labor I’ve undertaken over the past month to organize a lifetime’s worth of family photos. I think there’s a book in them too!)

Mitch McConnell’s sense of history

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

In the NY Times story about Rosa Park’s statue being placed into Statuary Hall there was passing mention of what Republican Senator Mitch McConnell had to say about Rosa:

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said that Mrs. Parks’s decision to get arrested rather than to give up her seat helped unite the country.

“For some, Rosa Parks served as an inspiration to stand up against injustice,” he said. “For others, she was a spur to reflection and self-examination, and the reconciliation of cherished ideals of freedom, democracy and constitutional rights with the reality of life as others lived it.”

Helped unite the Country?

Well, if it had I would have expected the Senator to say something other than that the GOP’s top priority at the beginning of the First Obama Administration was to see that it was a one term Presidency. Now that’s a call to unity.

I realize that GOP congressman might have a better chance to show their decency if they hadn’t let the dogs of demagoguery out in the Tea Party. But the GOP, the Party of Lincoln gambled everything on a “southern strategy in 1964 and 1968. The Dixiecrats became Republicans and purged the folks who’d invitved them to the party in the first place calling them RINO’s.

For all I know Mitch was being very brave to say nice awkward things about Rosa Parks what with all the folks in his party who are convinced that Obama is a communist. That was very much the message in the 1960′s from stellar folks like J Edgar Hoover. The NAACP was a commie front and you know what that made Rosa Parks. A dupe.

Mitch represents a Party that has taken that attitude to heart. Abraham Lincoln! Who’s that?

I suppose I ought to give Alabama more credit. Their legislature authorized Park’s inclusion in the pantheon of great Americans and that meant its Jefferson Davis inspired Republican Party approved it. That required some of the self reflection McConnell talked about. I’d be less caustic if I thought she wasn’t just being used to hide behind like Herman Cain.

Here are some of today’s Republicans in more candid moments.

Old dog, new trick

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

My thirteen loyal readers are still sticking to Lincolndemocrat even though they are tested every time I pause to live my life rather than blog too slavishly. Its only been a couple days but (aw dammit cat. Yeah, go ahead and sit on my lap……no no don’t brush your head against my hannnnnnnsdsds. And leave the yellow marker alone!)

As I was saying. Its only been a couple days but I haven’t felt compelled to share any thoughts with the blogosphere. I have been busy. I decided to join the seeming new majority of folks who look at their laps while driving and get a real, honest to john super duper cell phone. I also thought about giving this post the title “celling out.” The next post will explain the more hopeful title I’ve given this one.

Up until now I had what I asked for – a cell phone for dummies. Its only made calls and allowed for text messages. I had it three years before I even used the texting function. It was so cumbersome I hated to text. When i finally joined in my son criticized me for sounding like a teenage girl to wit: “Going 2 store c u l8er.” He even sent it to friends to make fun of me. No apolpogies from me. It saved about five minutes in locating the right letters on the keypad. It also gave me an appreciation for the flexibility of language.

I’m not for (4) doing things the old way for tradition’s sake. I just hate to spend time learning new tricks when I’m perfectly satisfied with the old tricks. I got my first computer in 1984 because I hated the time I wasted correcting all my mistakes on a manual typewriter.

The issue for me now is that suddenly my daughter puts loads of instant pictures of my grandsons on her facebook page and I don’t see them unless my wife shows me on her phone. I’ve had to bite two bullets. Facepage and a fancy Samsung Galaxy 3 cell phone. I also learned how to use my wife’s kindle on a recent trip to Chicago to post on lincoln democrat. Pretty soon I should be able to do it on the cell phone too (although I can do it faster on my laptop).

So I’m now a cell out. Please don’t expect to see my driving by ant time soon, however, with my eyes glued to my lap. I’d make an exception where such behavior is concerned and let the NRA perform drive-by’s on such folk. I just hope Google hurries up with its computer driven cars.

I’m in good company

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

Superman is about to become a blogger.

Hard to believe I wrote this almost twelve years ago

Sunday, October 21st, 2012

Long before my blog I tried to blog. I did this at my website www.snowbizz.com. I woke up early today and started writing which led me to some research then some desultory perusing of old stuff I’d written. I found this just a couple days shy of its twelfth anniversary.

From a letter to School Board member Welty:

As a senior at Duluth Central High School I would like to say that Frank Wanner is one of the most interesting teachers I know. I do not appreciate your criticism of him. This type of behavior goes back to junior
high. No one will think less of him and do you really think that anyone would care about it at all? There have been many class discussions of your problem with Mr. Wanner. Please keep it to yourself. Really now, would you like for people to make websites on stupid things you’ve said? Some people just don’t get along and that’s fine. … You… have have an important role in this city. Set a good example…. Please show some maturity. I’m
not being mean or anything, so don’t go making pages on your site about me. I am just giving you advice… thank you

Whenever I’m inclined to think I’ve been too mean spirited in my blog its comforting to find evidence of a little fair mindedness on my part.

Thanks for hanging in there for the blog

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

If I can believe my blog’s stats my eight loyal readers keep coming back everytime I abandon them because of a vacation or my being in a funk or my being preoccupied with some big project. I don’t mean to tease with the occasional posts. Both my readers and I need to check on each other periodically to see if we still have a pulse. It may be week be neither of us have flat lined yet.

Vacation, Apathy, Metamorphosis, Whatever

Monday, July 9th, 2012

I suspect that my eight loyal readers are close to giving up on me. Every so often since I started this blog in 2006 I have to let it go on hiatus. Whether this is for my peace of mind or to keep things fresh or spare myself from embarrassment is hard to say.

I think its all of the above plus a bit of all the things in the Title. I did have a Disney cruise to Alaska with my family that kept me busy but only for twelve days. Some of that time I was out at sea beyond cell phone contact and reluctant to use precious travel time to putz around on a computer. Then again that was only two weeks of the past seven or eight weeks of negligible posting.

Apathy is part of it. That has been brought about by two successive construction projects. The first I mentioned earlier had to do with a two month replacement of 100% of the tuck pointing on my home. It started out innocently enough as the rebuilding of the stairs in our front yard and morphed into a loud, messy, dusty, lawn abusing project that it was very nice to stay away from. It was a big enough hassle to dissuade me from filing for Congress and pursuing another golden goose chase.

I still managed to blog but then an even messier project developed. It too started small. I was tired of the water that seeped into our second house where our grandchildren live. Instead of a little waterproofing the foundation walls ended up being torn out and footings poured to lay new block walls. Fortunately the house didn’t slide down the hill during the June flooding and fortunately we were in sunny Alaska when the heavens poured fourth in Duluth.

I’ve kept up my reading but I’ve kept my opinions to myself for the hiatus. The Duluth Schools, the Presidential campaign, the book I’ve been writing that has been put on hold……these all are on my mind everyday. I just don’t feel like prattling on about them. Besides, since my daughter had to vacate her house I’ve been hosting two cute little boys all day, seven days a week. If I hadn’t woken up at 3:30 this AM I would have been hard pressed to write this minutiae.

My daughter might get to move back to her home this week but since her yard is little more than a vast pit of slippery clay I suspect I’ll be spending an inordinate amount of July and August helping put it in a fit condition for my grandchildren to play in again. That doesn’t bode well for blogging either.

I did read one very interesting book recently the Swerve and I just got the first hundred pages read of the latest book on LBJ by Robert Caro. They account for the metamorphosis part of the title. They are helping me during this cocooning period to transform myself into a prettier little butterfly, like the one my grandchildren might pull the wings off of. Accidentally of course.

Oh and I looked at the newly drawn districts for the Duluth School District. With all the expenses I’ve been stuck with lately the extra two thousand bucks a year the current school board gave itself as a pat on the back for the Red Plan looks mighty tempting. I wonder if I could speed my book writing up and get it out of the way before next year’s election?

Lincoln’s in better repair

Sunday, May 27th, 2012

A nasty glitch seems to have been taken care of. Back to modest posting sometime soon.

2AM – 5/9/2012 – on waking

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

Been up for an hour thinking random thoughts. Time for a little stream of conscience blogging, perhaps to make up for so little blogging for the past few weeks. I’m a potential candidate for Congress for goodness sakes!

Blogging is a bit of an addiction. I’ve had several other episodes of non communication. Maybe they were bouts of cold turkey. Maybe they were bouts of me forcing myself to concentrate on other important tasks at the expense of my addiction. Well, tonight – this morning – I feel like rewarding my eight loyal readers with something fresh. I may not write every day but I usually check my stats just to see if my eight still show up and they always do.

So, for my only Congressional stream of conscience thought here’s my quick reaction to the lopsided DFL endorsement of Rick Nolan. Wow! I had no idea the other candidates were so weak.

That news is several days old. I seem to recall that 20 % of the delegates at the Saturday convention voted not to endorse anyone. That’s a troubling sign for Nolan. Why didn’t they? These are the hard core DFLers who are anxious to remove Chip Cravaack. What kept them from giving someone their vote? Maybe its a modern day malady like all those Republicans who can’t get on board with Mitt Romney. Call it unenthusiasticitis.

Nolan who I’ve described as a Humphrey-like spectre from the past left Congress after only four terms back in the 1980′s. Its so long ago I can’t recall the details. One of the dozen comments about the DNT news story on the endorsement recalled something vague about Nolan having gotten some bad press for being something of a male swashbuckler. (that’s my dramatic interpretation of the somewhat more vague comment) If there is anything to it I’m sure it will be rehashed during the summer by some superpac.

I paid more attention back in the 1980′s to my old Mankato-area Congressman, tom Hagadorn. He cheated on his wife as I recall. His campaign manager, Vin Weber, took over for him. I knew Vin from my College Republican days. Vin told me he was allergic to marijuana. Today he’s a top level GOP strategist and sometime media talking head.

I’d say the DFL’s non-existant support for other candidates was the most telling. Tarryl Clark got zip and Jeff Anderson got 10%. I don’t see how either of them can expect to pull off a primary win if the folks who saw them up close and personal won’t support them.

If they decide to make it a three-way despite their poor showing I’ll be far more inclined to join them. It would be fun to see if I could pull more votes out of Duluth than Jeff without bothering to campaign.

Posting past 10PM

Saturday, March 17th, 2012

For the past four days (nights) I’ve refrained from uploading posts until ten at night. As I expected its lowered the number of daily visitors but it has freed up my time which was the point of the experiment. I’m far too pooped out by this hour of the day to crank out a lot of new posts.

I’m reevaluating this tack at the moment. I’m not quite sure what the point of my running for Congress is. I am far more intent on getting a book written. The main issue for me is that I want it to be a book worthy of my skills as a story teller and the story being told. It seems highly unlikely that gutting it out in three months will allow me to accomplish this.

Maybe I could finish it unhurried over the course of two years and still sell it in a run against Chip Cravaack in two years time. That would require that he survive what will be a very tough campaign. I certainly want the GOP to lose the seat. I want that much more than I want Cravaack defeated.

Or maybe I could keep working on it and run for Congress but make no promises when it will be completed. Certainly a fluke election by me would set my book’s completion date back.

While I’m thinking about this I’ll just point new readers to my hastily constructed and written website welty4congress.com.

Waiting for my website

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

I missed two appointments to donate my usual pint of blood this morning. I slept through the 7:50 appointment because after waking up and working on the new website at 3am I was taking a nap. I missed the rescheduled blood draw at 10:20 because I was working furiously on additional changes to the site. They finally told me to just walk in around noon. They gave me a green bandage for my arm in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

My website is ugly and wordy and has lousy linkages between pages. Its got far more links to various things I’ve written than the typical voter would want to traipse through. Oh well, I’ll announce when my web provider finally points the URL www.welty4congress.com to the correct site. After that I’ll only do little touch ups and add a donations page after I’ve got a good 75 pages to my book written. From now on until I make it through most of the book I’ll give my best hours each day to the book. The blog will be composed in the secondary hours of the day. At least that’s my plan.

I’ll try to get a word search in every day at least. It’ll be pretty boring but as I get further along in my book I’ll post more passages in “bookin it” posts.

Damned typos

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

My buddy is dancing on a pin.

His email:

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 11:40 AM, ********** wrote:

Harry:

From http://lincolndemocrat.com/?p=6390:
Our better angles would find something less repellent to say… …when an adversary, no matter how odious, died. But better angles, as the previous posts hints, are in short supply in America today.

I suggest that although better angels might be in short supply in America today, there are oodles of okay angles.
[your Buddy]

To which I replied:

Ah, That’s one of those words I’m best reveiwing before spelling. At least its a little less embarassing than writing pubic for public.

Harry

Word Search of the Day

Monday, February 20th, 2012

Mea Culpa

I make my share of mistakes. I don’t worry too much about misspellings, typos, and other pretty constant static in my blog posts. I’ll occasionally find a blooper and quietly correct it. For instance yesterday when I was going through “uncategorized” posts which I had simply forgotten to file in one or more of the topical categories on the right side of the blog I found one that mentioned Der Spiegaj…….Oops. I meant the German publication Der Speigel. I changed the j to an l without remarking on the correction.

When I do make substantive mistakes I take pride in noting them even when it burns a little to admit my human frailty. I just ran into an old post called “I stand corrected” and it made me wonder how often I’d used the phrase. Then I wondered about how many other ways I could locate past apologies for providing misinformation in the past.

Here are a few other trite phrases I’ve used to correct past posts.

I stand corrected

I was wrong

my mistake

Ad Space?

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

I just got an email from someone looking to advertise on Lincolndemocrat. I said I’d consider it. It’s probably worth ten dollars a month. Would that be too cheap for me to sell out my soul?

I’ve asked those inquiring who’s interested. I sure hope its not a bunch of porno sites.

If the ads were for someone I might end up running against for Congress I think it would be a hoot. I’d have to make sure there was no provision in an advertising contract preventing me from lampooning them.

I’ve got the all clear

Monday, October 24th, 2011

After two cruel weeks without being able to blog it appears my blog is ready to go again. Just think of all the useful time I’ll be squandering once more.

Moldova in retreat followed by me

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

After six weeks of incredible interest from Moldova it appears they were only interested in using my blog as a platform to send out spam. The last four days of their stay they kicked me out. I had my web host freeze them out until I can get a little more security on this blog. I’m making inquiries to update the antique blog software I’ve used for the past six years. That may take some getting used to.

This all comes at a time when I’ve decided to ratchet back my blog posts for a couple months. Don’t worry. I plan to keep sticking my foot in my mouth. I’ve gotten used to the taste.

He’s back!

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Yup, I’ve been frozen out of my own blog for a few days now. Hope no one is suffering from extreme withdrawal. I’m not. When I couldn’t log on it occurred to me that maybe it was a sign, from whom I don’t know, that I needed to spend my time on other projects. Today, for instance, I spent a couple hours cleaning elder berries I’d picked in my daughter’s yard. I thought they were some poisonous ornamental bush but a pal who picks fruit for wine told me I ought to get them before the birds.

So maybe I’ll only be back sporadically for a while. I’ll still kick around the Republican presidential canidates but probably not nearly as hard as they will be kicking each other. For example I don’t think Perry even needs to mine the Mormon angle with out-of-context punches like these:

I love lamb. I love good blog feedback

Wednesday, July 20th, 2011

This is a blog post where the many replies put the original post in perspective.

As for lamb. People who haven’t grown up with it tend not to like it. Thank Goodness my grandmother cooked it a couple times when I was little. Now it tends to be what we serve for special occasions like birthdays.

Baaaaaaaaaa

My Blog intentions

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Its been hard keeping new posts coming while I’m away from Duluth. I just spent an interesting week in Florida listening to a lot of Fox News and enjoyed the dismay of the bloviators as they scrambled to avoid eating crow over Osama killing Obama. Yeah, and they kept getting the names wrong too.

I’ve got another project, long deferred, that I’m ramping up to work on. It should cut into my own bloviation time much to the relief of my detractors. Much of my energy has been directed at helping the public look at the foibles of our current Superintendent of Schools and since he is deparating, albeit with Ann Wasson clinging to his ankles, a major reason for my ranting will be no more. The Red Plan is here to stay and Duluth will simply have to make the best of it. That includes me.

I have a great deal of sympathy for the new superintendent who will probably earn nearly twice what my last Superintendent was paid a short eight years ago. It will be both waaay too much and waaay too little.

I haven’t had the temerity to tell my better half that I’ve been thinking about running for the school board. Its likely to be as hopeless for the new Board members as it will be for their Superintendent and I say that as a sometimes hopeless optimist. In any event if I did file I’d probably refuse to campaign just to give the DNT another excuse to find fault with me. Like I said I’ve got a major project underway and a serious campaign might derail it.

If I should take the plunge I’ll probably start blogging more but there are few locals who will suffer from my most incindiary posts. I’ll reserve such posts for Fox News and the Red Plan School Board members who might find themselves reelected. Gosh, what an awful thought.

BTW – I may just be hinting at a run for office to give the old Board members sleepless nights. They don’t deserve any rest.

Landing safely

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Having just completed a trip with ten flights there-and-back I took comfort when catching up on my yellowing DNT’s to read that Congressman Chip Cravaak wants the Federal Government to check out the sale of Cirrus Aviation to China for the sake of our nation’s military security. As an old air line pilot I’m sure Chip understands that if we let the Chinese have Cirrus there is great danger that the Chinese will equip all their military aircraft with parachutes thus giving their air force an unfair tactical advantage in any future aerial conflict between our two nations. Heck, they’re probably using all the money they loaned America during the GW Bush years to pay for the purchase.

I’m sure as I read through more of my stockpile of month old Tribs that I’ll find even more news nuggets to comment on. Oh, how I missed making wry and cynical comments on this blogsite while I was in New Zealand and Australia……..No, wait. I didn’t!