After my Congdon visit this morning I served lunch at the Damiano Soup Kitchen. Chicken gravy over fresh mashed potatos. It was very popular. Tomorrow, Saturday, I’ll be painting our church. I’ll be grateful for the distraction. American politics and ISD 709 weigh me down.
After watching PBS News Hour tonight I told Claudia that we needed to go see Bridget Jone’s Baby. Its a comedy which has been given favorable reviews and I recall enjoying the first of the Jones movies nearly twenty years ago. I told Claudia I was in no mood to see any more news and off we went. That’s something we probably haven’t done on a Friday night for a decade.
The movie was a hoot but when I got home I looked at my cell and saw a Facebook post from reliable journalistic pariah for the Republicans, Dan Rather. I agreed with evertything he said critical of Donald Trump. His jerimiad was about the threat to First Amendment press rights Trump would be. He left out one of the threats; Trump’s desire to lower the standards of libel so that he could sue reporters for defaming him. Its a good thing he has no shame (as witnessed today by blaming Hillary Clinton for starting the Birther movement) because he descends deeper into the lunitic fringe. Those are the myopians who believe he is telling it like it is. This is what the Republican Party of Lincoln has descended to. No wonder I’m depressed. Every day Trump gains another point in the polls is another blow to the idea of American exceptionalism. Naw, we’re susceptible to Hugo Chaves’s and Duterte’s and Putins. Far too few Republicans are standing in his way lest they lose the Congress. Ah yes! Better they lose their souls than a death grip on a paralyzed Congress. Its jaw dropping to watch preachers supporing this abombination over a Methodist who stuck by her cheating man. The remind me of Pat Robertson saying American deserved the 911 attack because we had been so ungodly as a nation. I guess Trump is the next plague for an undeserving nation.
I danced at Condon. I sang while serving lunch. I howled at Bridget Jones. Then I came home to an email message from our administration forbidding me and the other school board members from talking to the press about a delicate topic. I wrote a stern email back suggesting that it was high time for the school board to have a closed session to discuss said topic. I may only be one of onehundred-fifty million voters in November. But on the School Board I’m one of seven votes. Sanity seems tantalizingly close here in Duluth.
I joked with my Buddy a few weeks back saying that whoever wins the Presidency will force half of America to seek asylum in Canada. Thank God Canada hasn’t built a wall.
I feel another sleepless night coming on. I hope I don’t fall off of my ladder while painting tomorrow.
