Much of yesterday and all of today and no doubt most of tomorrow will be devoted to the Duluth School Board’s fractious situation. I know. You readers are waiting for my nail biting expose mentioned in the previous two posts. I’ve been sitting on it trying to decide what to do about it. Last night I made the decision to stop the renovation of our attic to prepare to spend money on a potential lawsuit for violating the grossly ridiculous data protections offered to government bodies that allow them to hide unflattering truths.
I planned to show my work to my wife who earned most of our retirement money before uploading it. While sleeping on the 3000 words I’ve also be going over Mary Rice’s report with a fine tooth comb. I asked for a redacted copy to see what had been hidden from all but we privileged school board members. So far, I haven’t really changed my mind from my caustic appraisal (the stinking fish) that published in the Duluth Reader a couple weeks ago. On the other hand a few new facts are making an impression on me and pushing me back from the brink.
I find myself torn between gearing up for a year long world war III and beating my swords into plowshares. I don’t suppose my readers will believe this but I think everyone on the School Board would like to avoid Armageddon. A historical parallel keeps running through my mind. The Guns of August. It was a wonderful description by the Historian Barbara Tuchman of the ignorance of the various leading states of Europe leading up to the accidental war we know as WWI. My Grandfather who won a Congressional Medal of Honor in that war thought the war was a great stupidity by the time I was able to talk to him about it. It led to 75 Years of the Cold War when Russia went Bolshevik, the Second World War, helped create the conditions of the great flu pandemic of 1918 that killed people far away from the war zone.
The world came a hair’s breath from Nuclear annihilation because of the Cold War when I was in fifth grade. Why didn’t we? Perhaps because of Tuchman’s book. John Kennedy was reading when he learned that the Russians had put nuclear tipped missiles on Cuba ninety miles to our south. As his advisers screamed attack in his ear he kept Tuchman’s message of the stupidity of nations hurtling to war to heart and grappled with finding a way of disarming the rush to war that would almost certainly have resulted were it not for his ultimately successful search for a step back.
I don’t take back anything I’ve said up to this point. I don’t expect those who disagree with me to either. We got out of World War III in 1962 without demanding that the Soviets renounce communism or our abandoning capitalism. Maybe we can do the same.
I’m taking a brief rest before I get back to my lugubrious reading and the continuation of the “Dismantling Art Johnston” posts. I’ll take a detour through the issue that has consumed me much of my life and particularly since Fergusson, MO. erupted close to my son’s and my brother’s homes.
