At ten pm I wondered if I had suffered from a stroke. I sat down at the computer to send a two line email and couldn’t type a simple sentence. A few minutes before I had just gotten a call from my daughter asking me to do a simple google search and couldn’t manage it. My month long anxiety about whether we would raise enough to cover the bond had begun to dissolve earlier in the day when one of our angels made it clear that a $5,000 donation could be boosted higher. Like others he/she was a little coy about how much would be contributed but then mentioned that $25,000 had recently been transferred to make a big donation possible. This was not our only last minute angel. After I took out my own $10,000 cashiers check I collected two more from this particular angel. We had an understanding that if the entire amount was not needed one of the cashiers checks would be returned. I think it will be returned.
There were other angels whose identities I do not know and I do not care to know. Just how many I don’t know but it appears that we could have raised far more than the $100,000 we handed over to the St. Louis County Court Administrator. This info is being withheld from me because my blog is so candid that I make my own LDV allies nervous. Will I be sued for libel, Will I reveal a secret that our deep pocketed opponents (whose pockets are lined with our tax money) will exploit to thwart us. There are people in this town who could be punished economically by people who are threatened by our suit. I don’t care to expose them. I’m just grateful they exist.
At our press conference the Trib’s reporter questioned Larry Burda closely about these angels and his questions implied that in getting a few large donations only a handful of people had turned the trick. I could have been irritated but I was mostly amused. To date we’ve had thousands of contributors. It was my decision not to send out another fundraising letter for the bond but those thousands of previous contributors gave us money for a legal challenge. You can be sure they were just as anxious about this bond as I was.
I was pretty unimpressed with the Trib’s first summary of our triumph. I linked to it in the previous post. Perhaps my caustic comment online in regards to it caused the Trib to rethink their initial cold blanket take on the story. I just read their subsequent story that actually committed some serious journalism. Mark Stodghill is a pro and can do justice to his craft although he did hang us out to dry on one previous dumb ass story. When I read the follow-up I thought to myself “Well that’s better.”
Its three AM and I’ve been up for an hour. I went to bed worrying that I’d have a heart attack in my sleep but woke up with the curious realization that I had been smiling in my sleep. I had been dreaming about donors coming out of the woodwork to help.
Indeed, just before I collected the cashiers checks I got a call from a woman who’s 85 year old father had asked if it was too late to contribute because he wanted to write us a thousand dollar check. She told me she wanted to add a small donation of her own. I told her that by all means we could use it and to drop it off at our house. I turned their donations over to our treasurer just before she went to the bank to collect the last of the cashiers checks to hand to the taxpayer’s attorney Craig Hunter. He in turn walked them over to the St. Louis County Court Administrator.
We gave a press conference on the steps of the Court House. I stood in the background and one of our group playfully put an LDV lawnsign in front of my face so I wouldn’t say anything inappropriate. I couldn’t help myself when one of the reporters asked how we were going to tell our supporters about our success. “That’s your job.” I shouted.
As I drove away from the conference the reporter gave me a call to tell me that the District’s lawyers were explaining we hadn’t done what the court told us to do and wanted the court to dismiss the case. I laughed and told her that the District always wanted to win on technicalities. I told her to call Craig Hunter.
Its been many weeks since I woke up in the middle of the night. I got out of bed to put another load of dirty cloths in the laundry. I had managed to run a virus check on my computer before bed so I found the computer on after I folded a load of cloths I’d taken out of the dryer. It appears I can still type simple sentences. That’s good because, as Gary Glass told me with a steely look in his eyes this afternoon, I’ve got a book to write. I can’t wait to get started.
Well, yes I can. I could use a couple more hours of sleep.
