Quiche Moraine

I always hate one thing at political rallies. Some candidate will stand up and say “This is the most important election of our lives!” Every year. Is the 2010 election as important as all the rest? I’ll let our readers decide, and then pass this around to everyone you know who wants workable single-payer health insurance.

On a hunch my mother came out into the hallway and found me, faced into a corner and munching away at the remainder of the toast. It was a heavenly meal, forbidden toast. Of course, Mom was angry at first but then burst out laughing at how cute it was for a five-year-old to be hurriedly munching a piece of toast knowing that it was something he wasn’t supposed to do. Toast, forbidden. How absurd.

However, while people try to hide their guilt with denial, we also have a tendency to hide our complacency or even our ambiguity when we think we should be grateful but are not. If you have ever gotten a Christmas gift from a friend that was not what you wanted or needed, and sported an enthusiastic grin while putting on that knitted sweater, then you understand what I mean.

In 2004 I got the chance to sit down and talk to some of the people who make the decisions on the way that our government is run. I found out that for the most part they actually have lives outside of politics, and of all the astonishing revelations that I have found the one that got to me the most was that they had lives before they started running for office.

The kids and I each wrote him a note yesterday, a goodbye and thank you note for being such a good man and a great teacher, for being supportive of me and loving towards the grandchildren. It was our way of telling him while we still had the chance that he has been very important to us. We wanted to say it now rather than regret when he dies that we had not done so.

Just this last Saturday I went to the Teamsters Hall in Blaine so that six DFL gubernatorial candidates could make their pitch for delegates before the big push comes in February. The press weren’t invited (although they would not have been excluded had they come), because this was more of an “inside” meeting. I was, in this case, an insider.

It is a new piece to a giant jigsaw puzzle of the course of human evolution from the earliest protozoan through the mini-mammals surviving the K-T boundary, up to the Cro-Magnons who are reading and typing on the internet . It’s quite likely that the pieces we have put together so far are in the wrong places in the picture that the puzzle represents, and that is why paleoanthropologists do what they do.

I wondered what happened to all of the liberals that I had hoped to pal around with in college. I found a few, but they were far between. I was often the only one in arguments who would take the liberal view. But I didn’t consider myself persecuted. I was just outnumbered, and overall I could have friendly arguments with them. Sometimes they would say stupid things that made my blood boil. It had to do with their racism, and it was a particularly nasty sort of racism.

Organizations whose goal is profit make decisions through a far different process than entities that don’t, and it is best that way. As a property-tax payer, I can go to an opening meeting of the local city council and voice my opinion. Even if I weren’t a property-tax payer, I could do so, because budget meetings for the government entities are open-door proceedings and have time allotted for public comment. I couldn’t do that at a Medtronics board meeting. I have no influence over the way that Medtronics sets its budget or conducts its business, even if the decisions that they make effect me in some ways.

I need some coffee. I have found a big bag of Sumatra beans, and a grinder. But I haven’t been able to find her coffee maker. I feel disoriented. It’s not so much that I need my stimulant; it’s a departure from my basic routine. I make coffee and drink a few cups before I wake up the kids. It’s what I do nearly every morning, and I am separated from it.