Last night I went to bed after watching what to me was an uproriously funny and highly inappropriate Australian TV series called the Rake, season 1 episode 2. There’s an American version from Fox that is evidently based on the Ausie version. Its about the life of a lawyer but not just any lawyer. In the first episode he defends a state economist accused of cannibalism.
Due to a lot of truncated and light sleeping nights I turned in at 9:30 and managed to stay in bed for six hours despite waking up every hour. I’d gone to bed with the beginnings of a sore throat and its evident to me that I’m coming down with a summer cold. I blame the School Board for wrecking so many recent good night sleeps.
I got up early yesterday too and cranked out six single-spaced pages of a letter to be sent to a couple thousand households in Duluth asking for money for the Art Johnston Legal Defense fund. If you interested in contributing, since Art has already accumulated a couple thousand dollars worth of legal fees, send a check to the fund at: PO Box 3075, Duluth, MN 55803.
I have a lot to say but I intend to whittle it down to four pages before mailing it should that become necessary.
To that end I’ve edited it twice so far. When I woke up this morning with a cough I had a brilliant idea. I’d take it to the superintendent and drop it on his desk to nudge him into reconsidering his hopeless vendetta against Art Johnston. Then I got an even better idea. I printed up a copy for each of the five Board members who want to push this “investigation.” There’s not much time to reconsider. I’ll mail it out next week if they are hell bent on Civil War.
Art would really like to shelve this fight for Jane’s sake but the more entrenched the Board majority becomes the more ornery it makes me feel. As for me, I am almost at the point where I’d welcome a fight that would discredit the whole kit’n’caboodle.
So, At 4AM I put my tome in 5 big manilla envelopes, put on a hoodie and stumbled out into a dark rainy morning to hand deliver one to each of the avenging Board members. I’ve only been to Bill Westholm’s house before so I thanked God for my cell phone’s ability to navigate me to some pretty obscure locales in Duluth. It was so dark I’m not a hundred percent sure I even delivered my dynamite to the right houses but I’m sure neighbors will bring them to the right spot if I was one house off.
It took me two hours to finish up. You long time readers know I’m pretty stuck on Abe Lincoln. Well, right now I’m thinking about his right hand man, US Grant, who won him the Civil War. The U stands for Ulysses, a great name for a warrior. Those of you historians out there might recall that from Appomattox on the “US” was given another meaning. That’s how I’m feeling at the moment.
