NOTE: I may or may not proof read and edit this. Frankly, whatever mistakes are contained herein I’m not sure I’m all that worried about them. The truth is the truth even with a few typos and the errors a dashed off piece of writing is sure to contain.
I asked the night manager at Perkins if there was anyone in the restaurant when I bought my raspberry muffin. He told me a couple police officers were in the back having coffee. Its a quiet place this hour of the day. I’ve gone their twice in the past couple weeks at about the same time and I was the lone customer both times I bought a muffin and or coffee.
The night before I spent a couple hours at a meeting on one of the priorities one or another of my confederates tells me I have to put first in line. This one was about the fall elections. Someone else got all the people there and it was a rather impressive collection of folks who, as one participant said, resented the “rape” of Duluth. No one objected to the term.
I’d already spent all of a beautiful Sunday closeted in my office grinding away but in that oddly serene state I think I mentioned a few posts ago. My priorities have been set in the stone for a couple years now. First family, Second Community, Third personal ambition. Actually, these were set in stone by the time I was in college and while they’ve competed and occasionally thwarted each other, keeping them in this order has left me a relatively content fellow.
Shortly after the Tan Man awoke (He and his Mother stay at our house a couple nights a week) I took over watching him before Church and he decided he wanted to go out for a walk. I could tell because he went to the back door and pushed on it calling, “outside, outside.” I’m pretty smart about reading little minds.
A little before that I’d found his Grandmother and Mother and him in my son’s single bed in the bedroom where the Tan Man’s crib is. Claudia had left my side at 3AM and took refuge in the Tan Man’s room. Maybe it was my snoring. I had crawled in too grateful to rest my back and pretty soon one of our cats piled in too. It was obvious to me that of the four two legged occupants of the bed two needed more rest. So at the call of “outside” I announced we were going for a walk.
I simply followed where my Grandson wished to go and went at his pace. When he found a grassy patch of ground to roll around in to feel the blades tickle his neck I stopped too. When he stooped at a joint in the sidewalk to look at the eensy weensy ant hill to brush it aside and see what happened I gave him a lecture about how the ants built the hill. I thought it might spare the second ant hill along the joint the first hills fate. “Nope.” It didn’t.
When we got home an hour later after I decided to tell him that his Papaw needed coffee and that my mug “Joe” was probably eager to be put to good use the women of the house joined us for cereal. At some point in the breakfast one of the ladies made a statement, I don’t know what, and the Tan Man said, “Nope.” I’d never heard him put a “p” at the end of that favorite of all toddler words so I said, “yup” popping the p at the end. We had a “nope” and “yup” contest which he found exceeding funny popping our p’s at each other.
So, with my priority behind me I skipped church and slaved away on three major tasks the remainder of the day. Rich Paulson, retired banker, School finance expert, ex school board member dropped by and we went over the picky details of getting the bond that would be required by Monday, today. I’m still working on them and by the hour on my watch I see I still have two hours and ten minutes before the business day begins to complete them. (Before typing this I printed out mapquest directions to the surety company in Montevideo, Minnesota.) If I can’t convert our cashiers check and wire the money to the Surety Company I’ll have to drive the check to them and hand deliver it. Its a 250 mile drive. That’s about an hour and a half longer than my regular trips to the Twin Cities.
My next task was one I intended to do a month ago. I wanted to share my thoughts with the 15 or so members of the Planning Commission on the stupidity of permitting the Ordean site to be constructed without an environmental review. I hadn’t had time to put it together before and I didn’t have any more of it, time, today. But when necessary one makes time.
I sent a brusque email out to the folks in the Ordean email list telling them what I intended to do and asking that if any of them would be so kind as to find the addresses of the Planning Commission members and bring me the envelopes I’d mail my correspondence to them. Before the end of the day I got two offers of help. I’ve got the envelopes sitting on the table next to me – two sets of them – and I’ll need to square that away. Because the meeting is tomorrow night and the earliest the mail will get it to them is tomorrow I’m using the second set to have it placed in the commission members mail slots in City Hall. I didn’t know they had mail slots in City Hall but one of the Ordean neighbors did. Now I can be sure, that despite the late hour, most of them will see my blistering correspondence before they meet to vote on the EIS.
As I’ve got them analyzed, and I hope I’m wrong, JCI and company have had two years to guarantee a pliable group on this most important decision. They got the City Council’s power to override removed at the City Councils behest. They managed to salt a couple “development” oriented folks into the mix. And by God have they ever cranked up the Pro Red Propaganda machine. People in our group tell me that wherever they go people in Duluth tell them they thought our group was gone and that the Red Plan is a fiat accompli. Under those circumstances with all the business associates of Planning Commission members hounding them to set the Environmental study aside I frankly can’t imagine that they would let common sense rule. There are simply times when small minds go with the flow.
There are one or two members of the Commission who are very smart and honorable. The subset of them who are members of the Zoning Board did clip the School District’s wings a couple months ago much to my surprise. But would they call for a year long delay with the bum’s rush being pulled today. I just don’t see it.
My third task of the day was “discovery.” Actually I’d burned the midnight oil the three previous days figuring out how to whittle 9,000 or so old emails down to some manageable level. I could have tried to figure out how to print them all up on some fancy printer at a remote site. I could have tried to transfer them all en masse to CD’s and handed them over. The problem was I’d promised my allies, a skittish lot, that I’d rather die than give the dirty b******* a single piece of email with their names on it.
That’s a good example of why a smart politician never makes any promises. I’d already had to fess up that this was all bluster on my part in email to my group. As you, my loyal readers now know, I do a lot of explaining here in the blog and spelled that out here. In fact, I put it in the blog before I emailed the bad news. There’s a simple reason I did that. Time.
I no longer have the luxury of time and it turns out I can give people marching orders…….or at least warn them what I’m doing so that they can act accordingly, by simply making a lot that I’m doing public. Yeah, I broadcast my activities to the enemy that way but it sure saves me time typing stuff up twice.
The result of my confessional email, however, had the effect of calming people down. I’d only had one person say they wanted to redact their name from everything I was printing out but by the end of the day that person said they were no longer worried about exposure. That frees me to honor the good faith expectations of the court with a free conscience.
I could at this point discombobulate my adversaries by giving them 9,000 emails. That would require hiring an army’s worth of researchers. Sure they could do a word search on a super computer but in doing so they would have to charge the defendants $100,000 to go through everything I’ve transmitted over the last year. And, in my estimation, they’d find zip. Not that Dr. Dixon would pause to consider this expense any more than he has any of the other useless fancies he’s gotten his Board to ante up for. Like that consultant who was hired for $70,000 by the Board to host a welcome party for Gary Glass after he was seated to warn him that the other Board members could remove his sorry butt if they decided he was not their kind of Board member.
I’m not at all worried about what the drones that could theoretically be hired to pour through these emails might find about anybody I correspond with. Years ago I made a note to myself never to write anything I’d feel a need to disavow. I simply expect that anything I write will be made public. That makes it much simpler to push the “send” button.
One of the things I typically eschew is name calling at it crudest form. I might call “them” bastards but I rarely call anyone other than a prominent national figure or a historical figure anything like that. I did make one exception to that recently. Its in an email I sent a couple days ago while I was trying to figure out how much email I’d really have to make available to satisfy the good faith expectations of the court. I used the word to describe the Superintendent.
This particular email was being address to an ally of mine who has been getting more and more short tempered about me. Its a matter, in my view, of the folks in our group getting tired. Were getting on each other’s nerves. In this case my use of the word was a useful way to communicate my feelings and re cultivate a frayed rapport. It certainly was not a word I’d be caught dead using in public.
If the District’s lawyers go through everything I’m giving them, which will include every bit of email I’ve ever gotten from or received from Gary Glass they may find some entertaining reading. I recall a string of stinging emails I sent Gary when I was pushed beyond endurance and blamed him much as the fellow I was referring to has recently gotten sour at me.
I’m not sure if those emails survived my computer crash 14 months ago. I don’t know how far back they go. If they do exist its just the kind of irrelevant stuff being demanded that I suppose the bastards will have every right to make public. That’s just a heads up to my loyal readers who might be shocked to learn that when push comes to shove I can swear up a storm just as blustery as any sailor.
Well, now I see I’ve only got an hour and a half before business opens. This has been one of the longest posts I’ve cranked out about nothing of any importance. Who gives a rip about my sanity?
The thing to note is not so obvious and I’ll make that point clear. Time is on my side now. Whether I get the bond in today. Whether the Planning Commission behaves like sheep and goes along to squelch the environmental study at Ordean. Whether we get a court order to halt construction. We may not even have to win our court case although that would help. None of this makes any difference.
All our side needs is four candidates. They don’t even have to be particularly good candidates. In two months time we can show that the truth has been hidden from the Duluth Public and reveal how dark and ignoble it is. In two months we can organize the most impressive local school board campaign in Minnesota history. In two months we can show all the folks in Duluth who’ve been fooled into thinking that the Red Plan is unstoppable that a simple election can save them a couple hundred million dollars. Teach an important civics lesson to the people who stole their vote. And reveal that those thieves are the most accomplished and unscrupulous liars since Bernie Madoff.
The bastards!
Now its time for me to go to work.
