I’ve just finished dusting and vacuuming my office. I have a full day of things to do and posting a few blog posts is one of them. I’m starting this one now before rushing off to put in another half hour of French. Then I will attend to cleaning up the few papers that have accumulated in my quiet last couple of weeks. Then I will begin organizing with the fresh objective of running for office for a 20th and possibly 21st time. Then I will sort through a much reduced pile of materials for the half dozen books I’m writing. There is a reason this gives me a spring in my step in the time of corona virus.
For one thing I’m doing, I’ve been doing for the last ten years, the opposite of shuffling a deck of cards before passing out a new hand. I have a memory for rules whether they are true or not. They often guide my thinking until they are disproven. In this case decades ago, probably before I was married, I heard that seven competent shuffles are required to thoroughly mix up a deck of cards to the point of randomness that the games call for. I’ve been playing and replaying at organization of files I’m loathe to toss out all my life. In the process of hundreds of piecemeal sorting my files were like a deck of cards shuffled four times. In a sense I’m finishing the process by shuffling my cards for the last three times….only sorting through stacks of papers is more time consuming.
The Corona virus quarantine has kept me from outside distractions to a remarkable degree. So to not blogging a time consuming activity that often requires two to four hours of my day. I have not written much. Instead I have been sending myself notes on vital things to write about and from the beginning of my writing career in 1992 the aim has been to write books. My first and only beginner book was a test to see if I had it in me to crank one out and I did it in a year’s time.
For two decades those unsold books took up space in my garage before I finally had the gumption to recycle 5,000 of them. I still have a couple hundred left.
Added to this long wished for objective is a much newer one – to learn French. If it had not been for the virus quarantine I’d have had a harder time putting in a couple hours a day to work on a job my older, less plastic brain has struggled with. I would have gone to France last October for a 45 day Road’s Scholar intense French immersive experience had it not been for the travel bans. That postponement gave me another year, my fourth, to learn the language. In the next eight months I think I will nearly be there before the class starts. I will need it to polish my French more than learn it from scratch.
But getting these things done doesn’t explain the full spring in my step. There are other reasons for that starting with a five year dream to wrest back our nation’s democracy from a gravely damaged human who’s hunch that Americans didn’t trust each other any more paid off big time, at least for four blood drenched years.
And there is another reason for the spring. Possible election campaign 20 and 21. Ever since my first campaign for public office nothing gets my juices flowing than trying to figure out how to win an election as an overwhelming underdog. I’ve gotten very good at it both being an underdog and losing. As I point out in the column I submitted to the Reader this week the record so far is 16 losses to 3 victories.
Here are my plans as of today and I got to them quicker than I thought I would so there will not be any more parts to this particular post after all.
I think I am likely to:
1. Run for the School Board at large with a very simple campaign promise. I will faithfully attend meetings using my deep knowledge of the schools to offer guidance but otherwise not interfere with administrations that have proven to be hermetically sealed from School Board intervention. My promise with be this. Using my new skills in French I will voluntarily teach French. I was shocked to hear that there is no French in any of our schools. I’m trying to confirm this but what a Red Plan induced blow. When I was last on the Board Denfeld students were being denied a fifth year of French. Now, if what I was told is true, their isn’t any French being taught at all anywhere.
I got my substituting license restored last year to go back into the classroom. I’ll see what I have to do to add French to the mix.
As for the campaign……I’ll stay home and write books. Everyone in this town has an opinion about me already. In fact as the election draws near I’ll be in France studying. If I lose the election I’ll do something else. Depending on how my book writing is coming along I’ll contemplate campaign number 21. Running for Congress in 2022. My goal will be to help remove a Trumplican from Congress nothing more. I will not in anyway harm the candidacy of the most serious opponent to Pete Stauber. If you want to know what I think of Pete check out the new Reader column in a couple of days.
Ah, Now back to French.
NOTE:
Oh, and a note on my proof reading. Sometimes I just have to spill pixels on a blank screen. When something is about to go to print I pour over my columns knowing that every writer’s eyes, and mine are no exception to the rule, don’t easily see their owner’s mistakes. I caught my last mistake on the fifth reading of a piece that was supposed to have been finished five previous readings before. I had to ask Jim Lundstrom to add an s after the word explain to make it explains. I probably won’t be proof reading this. I do go back occasionally and tidy posts up long afterward if they are important enough to me such as the post I wrote the night after my Mother’s death. This one isn’t as compelling.
