No one is watching the filings for the Duluth School Board more closely than I am. Some will no doubt be watching with an equal ardor but none more so. So, of course, I will write about anything but the Duluth School Board.
Its not that I haven’t wanted or attempted to write. To the contrary I’ve penned a thousand or more good words each of the last couple of mornings for the blog. They’ve either been far too ambitious for me to finish or pretentious. Besides they weren’t about the school board exactly. They were all about the books I’ve been reading and the lessons, not learned, but reinforced, about human behavior.
I finished reading the mammoth (to me) book by Jung Chang on her life and the lives of her Mother and Grandmother from the Warlord period to the end of the Cultural Revolution. Now I have to decide whether I want to read her equally weighty tome on Mao tse Tung. I read Wild Swans out loud to Claudia and then searched Goodreads for a good book about the same period of time in Palestine/Israel. I found a great book and had no trouble reading the first two chapters to her after having it downloaded to her Kindle. Its called My Promised Land. I picked it out because Claudia’s study at the Seminary will take her to the Holy Land next winter. She asked if I’d like to go and I said I would. I’ve already cheated her out of a big trip to celebrate our fortieth anniversary.
That I didn’t finish either of the posts I began has two primary causes. First I’m driven to write, not about books, but about the Duluth School Board. Second, I didn’t want to cheat myself out of spending time with my grandsons.
Yesterday after pulling up blog stakes I went to the movie Minions with the whole family. It was very funny but so light on story I’ve already practically forgotten it. Today, after church we went to breakfast then took the whole family again to tour the William Irvin. It was the first visit for Jake and Tan doesn’t remember his previous visit. Then we came home and fought with WMP’s – Weapons of Mass Precipitation.
I set up three reservoirs of ammunition in three locations around our house. We had six or seven thirsty squirt mortars. I chased the boys and they chased me around our house. When the drenching proved only alarming I made sure we got to attack each other with the two hoses, one in front one in back of our house. Claudia said that the unnervingly busy traffic on east Fourth street, due to detours from street construction, stopped at the lights and goggled at the sight of a geriatric old fart warring with his nimble little grandsons.
I’m sorry. Blogging just can’t compete with making a complete fool out of yourself with your grandkids. Hell, I’ve been on the school board for the last year and a half. I don’t know how to be anything other than a fool at this point. I sure hope the folks filing for the Board have a better idea how to comport themselves than I do. The future of our children’s education hangs in the balance.
