I am in another of those recurring periods where I have 1. oodles of ideas for posts, 2. a great reluctance to shoot my fingers off so as not to muck up my ongoing work, 3 lots of other things to do which I refuse to ignore just for the sake of spilling the beans.
That said, I’m gratified that so many readers are hanging on my posts every word despite the current paucity of posts. Thank you for your indulgence.
Among other things I’ve been ignoring are emails from my Buddy who has things to say relating to recent posts of mine in which I use him as a foil to keep my fingers busy. I haven’t been reading his email because I just know I’ll go to bed stewing about what he says and thus have a hard time sleeping. Sorry Buddy. I will read them and perhaps reply. Every self proclaimed gadfly needs his own gadflies lest his/her self righteousness gets the better of him/her.
Today is rainy and I need it for it to be inclement to stay indoors and whittle down the growing piles of paper in my office. My latest project has been to scrape loose paint on my eves for spot priming before the autumn gets too cold. To my great irritation I discovered a couple days ago that last year’s gruesome ice dams led to water getting behind the eves and the summer long rotting of the wood on one corner of, if not both, eves. I spent most of one day on ladders with limited handyman skills and insufficient tools trying to patch this up. When the rain goes away I’ll be back at my painting. Its the last major detour before I resume full time politicking.
There is one other possible detour, and its would be a big one. I’d like to fix up my attic as an office to consolidate forty plus years of paper detritus which I consider archival and which Claudia keeps nattering on about tossing into a recycling bin. I’d like to have it in one spot before going on a book writing binge. I have blogged about this before haven’t I?
The first book I’d like to tackle is a history of the Red Plan leading up to today. At the moment I still have been frozen out of the loop which could help me make sense of it. That is spurring me to think about next year’s election and my determination to elect an inquiry friendly Board majority. I’m fed up with stonewalling masquerading as a bandage which only serves to cover up old unhealed infections. My Buddy has challenged me to explain why the District needs a “colonoscopy” and I’ve not really answered that question in a blog post yet. In some ways the millions of words and hundreds of questions this blog has trumpeted for seven years is an answer to that. It would be nice not to have so many skeletons rattling around in the closet before we move on to our future. For a second there is trust. I don’t trust the keepers of the Red Plan finances. They also manage the books of the District today. If I can’t expect candor from them how can I trust that any financial decision I make today will make sense? I want a colonoscopy to see if there are any cancerous polyps in the system.
The spur of writing a book to be completed for next year’s election has some competition. I’m not sure I’ll get my new attic office built anyway because of some financial considerations. If I could talk the school board into electing me the next chairman I’d have a reason to hold off on the book. Considering that my ally on the Board, Art Johnston, is persona non gratta to the point that the board has authorized a bum’s rush to remove him that would be a tall order. Still, I don’t think it is outside the realm of possibility.
We spent forty five minutes at today’s Education Committee meeting dissecting the deplorable testing results for Duluth which are about to be dressed up as hunky dory because we did marginally better than the state. As I told my fellow board members at the meeting these results don’t satisfy me because we have been doing a lousy job educating kids since I got elected eighteen years ago. That’s a lot of water and little bodies over the dam. I’m damned if I’m going to put up with more of the same for the rest of my term on the Board. Perhaps as Board Chair I could help move us in a new direction and away from more of the same.
All this leads me to this renewed reticence to spill beans. I got a phone message from one of the majority members on the Board last night after the meeting wishing to explain why this board colleague had attempted to short circuit my questioning of the lousy testing stats. My goodness! An attempt at communication. Cool.
(POSTED AS FIRST TYPED – meaning there has been no attempt to proof read this post yet)
