a woman approaching me pushing a stroller told me she loved my tee shirt.
Some months ago I carped at a dismissive statement an old friend tossed off telling me that running against Pete Stauber only to get a couple percent of the total was a waste of time. When I thought about this it ruffled my feathers enough for me to have written somewhere in the blog that I might not win but I sure to better than a few percent of the primary vote.
I’ll find out how much better than that I’ll do by ten or so tonight although my guess is I’ll have to wait till morning to find out if I’ve cracked ten percent. I didn’t run the campaign I had hoped to. Beyond Duluth no one read about me in any newspapers. Most locals are long since shut down. Even the Biggies in the Twin Cities didn’t contact me and I only sent out one Press release shortly after I filed that I suspect was ignored by everyone. I’m disappointed by not discouraged. I’m still the (not very good) missionary of Republican moderation that I set out to become when I moved to Duluth 48 years ago.
I want to get out of town and next week I will take up my wife’s desire to follow the trail the Lakota Indians take down the Minnesota River Valley. They ride the 150 miles every year from Montevideo, MN, to Mankato where, on Christmas 1862, 38 of them were hanged for starting a war because the US was allowing their families to starve. We will follow the trail for a few days and have dinner in Mankato on the 48th anniversary of our 1974 wedding. I’ve written about Mankato on a number of occasions and about the city’s long vanished monument to the 1862 atrocity we will be honoring with our short tour. After proposing this to Claudia I ran upstairs to show her the book I bought for a song a few days ago at the Duluth Public Libraries book sale. I read her the introduction.
We’ll read it next week.
I started my day practicing French followed by a lively text correspondence with my pen pal, mostly in my faulty French. She told me she was looking forward to seeing the results of my race against Stauber. I told her I was chagrinned (which is also a new French word for me) but only because I wish I’d been better able to finish what I’d started. This is her second time to follow my campaign over our three year correspondence. However in 2020 I made clear I only spent $300.00 on a filing fee so that what passes for the press would have to mention Pete was being challenged. I wasn’t even going to be in town for the fall electioneering as I would be spending October in France. I wrote to her that my politicking was sort of a hobby or a loisir. I wrote to her that running for office was: “C’est comme mon loisir” like my hobby. But then I added this: “Mais pour moi un loisir du couer” which translates: But for me a hobby of the heart.
I’d like to think I have a Lincoln-like heart beating under my election day t-shirt.
