Back on the homefront – Harry’s Diary

I know, I know. My eight loyal readers are eager to read about my war footing related to the Atom Bomb and the Court Session last Tuesday. In fact, they are not alone. Just shy of 500 visitors have dropped by daily over the past three days including days when I wrote little. I feel a little guilty everytime I lead my readers to think I’m about to release a flood of data but then get caught up with other things – like life. For new readers I’ll repeat my oft stated determination not to let my personal life suffer too much from being on the School Board. Yesterday began with Grandma back from Florida and a morning with two little boys with dentist appointments we had to take them to followed by a stop at the Lion’s Pancake Day cookout at the DECC. After we got them to school we went shopping for the two rooms that have emptied out in the wake of my setting up my new attic office…….erm “study.”

All day I kept thinking of new things I’d like to write about the court session and the A bomb and scattered them on my computer keyboard. In the evening I made up for two weeks of neglecting television and we caught up on some of the shows that Claudia and regularly watch together. The last two weeks of TV free time was great for me to organized my new digs and edit future blog posts. Even during last night’s television watching we both toiled away. Claudia cleaned out the small two level black file folder in her old sunroom/office and I organized seven years worth of paperwork related to my Mother’s situation. I got my portion down to three file boxes worth which I will soon put into Claudia’s now empty black file drawers. I brought our printer up from my old office this morning and hooked it up in my storage room. Its sitting on the new file box. I tested it out by printing out a revised primer on how to run for the school board. It will be passed out to one or two dozen prospective candidates for the school board at something of a recruiting/bull session in a week or two. Golly, I had an editor to do the proofing. That is unless Judy gets her way and postpones this year’s election to give herself a freebie year on the Board.

In one of Sunday’s editorials about the up coming elections a Chamber of Commerce candidate training session was touted. Its sort of the alternative to Rosie’s organizations attempt to groom liberal candidates on citizen service. I’d put my forty years in Duluth politics up against anyone else’s experience despite my having lost the lion’s share of my own campaigns. In fact, I don’t think there is any living Duluth politician who has filed for office more than me. If its true that you learn more my losing I’m a read fount of knowledge if not wisdom.

BTW – I expect to hear grumbling soon that I’m attempting to take over the school board with allegations that I’ll be running the show. I can understand where that comes from. It comes from paranoia which I myself struggle to throw off. Long before I first got elected I used to joke with a school board friend that: “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.” Of course, Art Johnston seems entitled to such paranoia based on the year he has just endured.

All I want is an adult school board that agrees to disagree. I’ve never faulted any other board member for having their own convictions contrary to my own. If I find myself in the majority after next January I will not tolerate any new board member being put in the untenable position that Art and I have endured pf being kept out of every loop. Art’s endured it for five and a half years and I have for the the last year and a half. We have been excluded from all inside information. My next post on the court hearing will begin with an anecdote about that situation.

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