LeBrea Tar Pits

Tomorrow the School Board is poised to imitate the mammoths and saber toothed tigers who sunk into the LeBrea Tar Pits thousands of years ago. Lured into the tar thinking the pits were full of water they flailed about speeding their sinking.

I gave up trying to stop the sticky school board from pulling the School District down with them last Fall after the School Board majority managed to eke out a victory. The next couple years will be devoted to pulling enough of the District back out to clone its DNA and resurrect it providing I get elected to the State Senate. That seems very doable.

I was busy reading the News at the Lighthouse for the Blind’s Radio this morning and then returned home to babysit. In effect this was like the third day of my weekend. In the late afternoon I was cleaning up our back patio and making enough of a racket so that a neighbor peeked around the corner as he walked up 21st. Ave and paid me a call. I’d didn’t know him although he just lives up on the street above me.

It turns out he moved into his home in 1987 the same year we moved into our home. He refurbishes homes so he told me he has been shaking his head over the wastefulness of the Red Plan from the beginning. He thanked me for my fight and told me he thought I had a lot of support throughout the community even when I joked about being such a pain in the neck.

It turns out his Father is a school administrator in the Twin Cities and when he told his Dad about the Red Plan his father simply shook his head in disbelief.

He told me he had a raft of Let Duluth Vote lawnsigns stuck in his yard just before last year’s election and he’d be happy to return them to me. I told him to go ahead. Evidently someone stole them from other people lawns, maybe even mine, and filled his lawn to capacity with them as a joke.

A friend encouraged me to look at Roger Reinert’s campaign finance reports from 2008 when he assiduously avoided telling anyone whether he would take up the cause of protecting the voting rights of his new constituents. Sure enough I found $3,350 of his money came from obviously pro Red Plan supporters. It might even be considerably higher than that. That would be enough to keep any go-along-to-get-along politician’s mouth shut.

Oh, and I’ve gotten word that a rather surprising endorsement is coming my way.

Carpe Diem!

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