There is one more candidate for the Duluth School Board…….I’m pretty sure. Loren Martell. Furthermore I’ve asked him if I can be the Chairman of his campaign and he sort of guardedly said yes. I have no idea if he can win in what is effectively half of my old 2nd Distict seat.
There are now three serious candidates for the office that Judy Seliga-Punyko will be vacating and a fourth candidate who really wanted to run for Mayor but who switched to a new campaign when she realized she was biting off more than she could chew.
My wife said she will be voting for Charles Obige (oh-bee-jay). Rosie and Judy are hoping that Dr. Kirby will follow their lead and continue the crusade to keep Art Johnston at bay. Loren will forego his column in the Reader if he, as I pleaded with him this morning to do, files for office the day after the filing was supposed to close. (That’s the story the Trib will explain) He may yet change his mind. I hope he doesn’t. His intention is not to campaign. My intention is to go door to door for him.
I’m not so concerned whether Loren wins or not. I just want to make sure that whoever wins the 2nd District seat isn’t a dimwit determined to drag the school district through more mud by fighting Art Johnston at the expense of our children.
I’m an optimist and a damned near hopeless optimist at that. Despite the worst nonsense that keeps rearing its ugly head I stubbornly cling to it. I told Loren today what my Mom always told me. “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” Loren called me a Pollyanna. I told him to remember the end of that story with poor old Pollyanna doomed to life as a cripple but having brought a whole dysfunctional town to a happy wholesome harmony. That’s what I’m shooting for…..without the broken back part.
The Trib’s substitute reporter at the School Board did quote me accurately as saying the current board is changing its ethics policy to point a gun at my head. But I’m still an optimist. I will not sacrifice my personal brand of “honesty” for a life hiding under the rug with dust. I also believe honesty, dare I say truth, can coexist, must coexist, with prosperity, success and cohesion. Duluth has so much going for it. It doesn’t deserve to have gangrene spreading through its schools.
A maxim from Minnesota’s own F. Scott Fitzgerald comes to mind:
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
Heck, I’ve got a dozen competing thoughts in my mind about a hundred different subjects at all times. (Damn, That sounds more like schizophrenia than a “first-rate intelligence”)
I think Loren can be elected. I know he will lose. Well, by Golly! There’s are two more of those op-positional ideas fighting for supremacy in my poor aching head.
