Now for some fun

If I can write I can scare Pete the pocket lint Stauber. Maybe I can beat him.

I left college in 1974 thinking the ability to think clearly, write were the chief requirements for the persuasion that necessary to steer the world in a safe passage through uncertain times. In America it was not only indispensable it was taken for granted that our Democracy would be guided by intelligent persuasion. Then I got involved in a party that was sinking in the mire of kneejerk politics. Being stubborn and thinking I was upholding my families values I stuck with the Party of Lincoln through the shame of Watergate, the emergence of a Dixiecrat resurgence, Bone headed Wilsonian wars, and repeated purges by the forces of promiscuous guns, muzzling of independent thinking, Religious hysteria and right wing confidence that the growth and protection of an aristocracy is what will really set America apart. God are we ever set apart! The GOP has set an outhouse over the Lincoln Memorial.

My first break with the traitors to Lincoln was 1992 when I predicted that Donald Trump was the future of the Republican Party. Now that my perspicacity is beyond question I have over a quarter of a century of writing to back up my campaign in 2024. I’ve recently begun thinking of my tabloid columns that began in 2002 as a series of 800-word mini biographies that, should they successfully be threaded together, would demonstrate whether my collegiate confidence in the power of persuasion could be applied to me. If so they would come at a point in American history not unlike that of my hero Abraham Lincoln rose to the fore at the moment the nation was about to split in two.

Sorry, My French pen-pal just texted me. I told her I was working on my book although in fact I paused long enough to write this diary entry in my blog.

When I sent an A plus text I went back to the book and took a picture of my work. That’s when I remembered I was posting here so let me show you what else I have taken pictures of so you can get a sense of a serious author at work on a world changing tome.

First the raw material I’m working with now almost organized for speedy sorting and placement in the text to come:

From 2001 to 2024 I have written over 300 columns in about 14 of the last twenty-three years. Only a few were written between 2009 and 2017. Fighting something called the Red Plan in Duluth distracted me from the Reader but kick started a furious amount of writing in this blog. Donald Trump’s election and the threat he poses to the Earth returned me to the Reader. For the past couple weeks I have been organizing paper copies of I hope all my old columns. Over the last week I have reread all of them except the ones related to the only political outlet the degeneration of the Republican Party allowed me to pursue. The Duluth School board and the subject of Education. I am now going through all 300 of my columns and dividing them by categories that will be listed in my soon to be published blockbuster. Here’s a picture of my colorful filing tags.

Finally I placed the color coated tags on the second of my three ring binders columns from 2003. I meant to start from 2002 but I put it where 2020 was supposed to go and will now do it next. Here is a pic to give you a sense what I was publishing in the then Northland Reader in 2003.

I was embroiled in several hot issues in 2003 and that shines through from all the Barbie Pink tags placed on the columns. I think that when I do the 2002 columns there will be far fewer because that year I wanted to focus my column on other subjects that the Duluth School Board.

On the Pink Education tabs…..I will not include a lot of columns on the Duluth School Board in this first volume of Not Your Usual Republican. It remains to be seen if there will ever be a two or a three. If there are additional volumes education is likely to be a book on its own. I should have a lot to say on that subject. In my blog I just counted 20 x 43 posts worth of columns in the Education category but I’m sure I didn’t tag them all. In my Snowbizz website I have a page set aside for the Duluth Schools that covered the time I finished serving and all the news stories…..since removed at the Duluth News Tribune’s insistence relating to the schools in my last couple years on the School Board.

I will conclude this incomplete description of my work on the upcoming book by reporting that I have had a wonderful time revisiting 300 old columns. I think I have reached the expectations I had for myself when I left college thinking in terms of being a great persuader. In about two months I will be able to put that feeling to the test.

About the author