Over the past couple weeks I’ve been a bit like a victim of a python realizing that after a last few breaths I will lose consciousness and be swallowed by reality. There is a small chance that a miracle will happen. Perhaps someone with influence will toss me a lot of money to send my campaign letter District wide or perhaps some major news source will decide my quirky campaign is worth showering with attention…..But for the time being I must concentrate on these past few breaths.
Ah but its not that tragic. This is, as I mention time to time my twentieth campaign. I told my wife with true conviction a few months ago that it was my last. Then last week I announced that I’ll likely run against Pete Stauber again in two years if he manages to defteat Jen Schultz in the November general election. She reminded me of my earier “promise” to make this my last campaign. She would do that.
But I’ve been searching for my place in life a long time and in many ways my strength is my patience. I’ve worked on rehabbing the Republican Party for a long time and as I’ve written on Not Eudora before I’m in no hurry to end my life’s quests anytime soon. From the column “On Being a Student Until the Day I die.”:
“Perhaps a paved over, species poor Earth will still allow humans to achieve the Biblical “three score and ten” (20+20+20+10 years) which is far short of my goal. Mark Twain lived a bit longer than that and correctly predicted that he would die with the return of Haley’s comet. It was the same omen that had heralded his birth 76 years before. My goal is more numismatic. I was born smack dab in the middle of the 20th century – 1950. My Haley’s comment would be the turn of the calendar to 2050.”
If the math isn’t obvious I plan on living to be 100 years old. Ironically my heart attack last Valentines Day has only convinced me that this goal, although 29 years in the future, is still within reach.
29 years is plenty of time for me to rescue Lincoln from the depredations of Trump, the phoney pro lifers, and the Proud Boys (I heard that cattlemen call hlstart gelded horses “proud boys”). I hope to have another fifteen or twenty years of productive story telling to continue this work whether I ever get elected to anything or not.
As is the case most mornings I have a dozen items I’d like to blog about today and I’m going to luxuriate behind my keyboard and take the morning to do it despite the limited number of people who will read my day’s work. I have a press release to send out and campaign bills to pay and a room full of campaign clutter to organize but the theme of truth telling runs through so many of the stories I’ve been thinking of I’ll park myself there for the next couple hours.
This post is but the prologue.
