…but their friends tell them what I write.
More later.
To my eight loyal readers; I feel like a contractor having to explain to my clients why I dropped work when I did. I’ll be living that experience shortly when my attic is fixed up into a proper office with real storage space. I have little doubt that they will set my project aside from time to time to rush to others that they are working on concurrently. That, in fact, is what I’ve been doing. One of my recent projects is setting up a website for Art Johnston to raise money for his defense. I’ve been postponing doing this for ten months in hopes our Board would back off their insanity. Now we are probably past the point of no return and I’ve gotten some legal advice that fund raising for Art shouldn’t be a problem for me.
The comment at the beginning of this post has been a teaser for the past couple of days of blog inactivity. It was meant to get my readers to return. Frankly, it almost explains itself. It refers to what Rosie told me after our Monday meeting. She said that she hadn’t read my blog but friends of her’s who had reported my comments to her. I actually wrote a rather long piece about this to put in the post but its sitting in my computer wondering if I’ll ever return to it. I probably won’t since it spun off in several unrelated tangents. That happens sometimes leaving me to drop posts that have become unfocused.
I did make one point in the piece that’s is worth considering. In politics as in life we are all subject to by a couple remorseless conditions. One is that “perception is reality” or that what people think happened, even if it didn’t, is taken as the truth. Two is that an unrebutted argument is treated as more credible than one that is challenged. Over my political life these conditions have made me very sensitive to comments that others have made about me. If I were Rosie I’d do more than just take me to task. Of course, Rosie doesn’t have a blog to write and natter incessantly like me. But she could have sat me down and made me reconsider what I’d written for later amendments and corrections.
Judy Seliga-Punyko, our new chairperson, has also made it clear that she wished I would shelve my blog. Her name has appeared in my blog over the years and like Rosie’s it will continue to reappear. The Red Plan which we took opposite positions on made that inevitable. The worst drubbing I ever got in print was for Judy’s benefit when I ran against her in 2007. In response to my debates with Judy the Chair’s husband has also taken a few gallant whacks at me. I’m generally quick to respond either in print or in my blog.
If Rosie’s friends want to spare her my comments they might suggest to her that she call me up to have a cup of coffee to talk about the Duluth School Board’s civil war. I’d be quick to accept her invitation although I’m done extending the first move toward peace talks. I was rebuffed pretty thoroughly during our recent Christmas holiday.
As for the post Rosie objected too – I refuse to feel any shame about mentioning Rosie’s paternalistic treatment of a black fellow when her school board majority put Art Johnston’s face on the front page of our local paper with their accusations that he is a racist and dangerous.
All I know is that if I planned on running for the School Board again and I had a colleague (like that darned Harry Welty) who was chronicling my every move I’d read that blog day and night to make sure my story wasn’t mangled beyond recognition. I would never recommend hiding in a closet. That’s what Jamie Lee Curtis did in that movie Halloween.
