I was getting ready to hit the sack last night at ten when I got a call from Brenda. She had just gone to the Let Duluth Vote PO box and found almost $4,000 in it. Three one thousand dollar checks got her attention.
She told me that a dozen angry Lowell School Parents wanted to contribute to our cause and asked if I had some return envelopes and pledge forms. I drove right over with plenty of each and told her how we could raise $100,000 in the ten days available to us. She’s still a skeptic. I’m not. If the bond stays at $100,000 we will raise it. If it goes higher we will simply elect a new school board and put as much of the genie back into the lamp as we can. It looks like I’ll have a long summer ahead of me.
Instead of being in bed by ten I was up till midnight. At 4AM our alarm went off and my wife got up to drive our daughter to the bus that would take her to the starting line for Grandma’s half marathon. Maybe its these sleep deprived nights that are making me grumpy but I’m not so sure that’s the reason.
If you’d seen me at the Ordean meeting the other night you would have thought me jovial. I’m an optimist and although for the first time in my life I’m so consumed with a cause that I really am suffering from stress I’m also in a very good mood. Its almost a glow from fighting the good fight. I’m perfectly aware my cause could lose and I’m perfectly aware that whatever stoopidity the Red Plan brings it won’t kill me and Duluth will continue on. Phoenix’s do arise from the ashes.
I get some guff for getting personal when I comment on the shenanigans that have given us the Red Plan. I really have set my Midwestern nice aside in the face of this preposterous mess and my new found reputation is deserved. I’m dishing out some very tough commentary and not hiding my contempt for the contemptible. Honestly, when an important man lies to your face is it really unfair to suggest that he has lied? There’s no question you can’t get much more personal than that. I write all this as a prologue to the next post which will follow.
I woke up this morning with a year’s worth of Ordean on my mind and I sat down to write a post that was equal to its ghastliness. I’m very pleased with it but its so long it requires further editing. Its personal and for some of my critics will prove yet again that I am simply mean-spirited. So was John the Baptist when he said Herod was a bad King. Well, Herod built the Temple all right but he also killed his sons to prevent them from deposing him. He also served the Baptist’s head on a plate.
After writing the yet to be polished post to come I realized the Red Plan had pushed me beyond being merely wry. I am now acerbic. This is new for me and frankly it puts me in interesting company. Acerbic is a word you could have applied to Winston Churchill or Teddy’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longfellow. Alice had a needle point pillow on her room sofa with the inscription, “if you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come over and sit by me.” Certainly the famous columnist (and private jew baiter) H L Menken and any number of theater types like Oscar Wilde would have fit the bill. And now there’s me, failed politician, local eccentric, and gasbag.
I’ve been enjoying it in a grim sort of way. At least I don’t direct my venom at hapless weaklings like the bully who grabs their arm and makes them hit themselves. My wit is directed at the bullies.
