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12-29-2001 Interview and Omission Sam Solon's legacy was spread across the front page of today's newspaper. It included a fair listing of the accomplishments and mentioned a couple blemishes. The Governor announced that he would set a time for a special election to fill Sam's vacancy to take place in about a month's time. As I type these words I can see a car across the street in Sam's District waiting to cross 21st Avenue to reach my district. I seem to be separated from a run for his seat by twenty feet. I'll be giving the imminent election to replace Sam a lot of thought. I'd like to run, twenty feet be damned. Claudia and I headed over to Barnes and Noble for a little shopping. We both had gift cards to cash in. I spent an hour in the History section torn between two Pulitzers, one on US Grant, the other on Teddy Roosevelt. I eventually settled on a thick tome about Benjamin Franklin. I've been reading Founding Brothers by Ellis and wasn't quite ready to leave the Revolutionary era. I also picked out a discounted book on Wall Street in the 1920's and 30's, Once in Golconda. After a coffee and mocha we headed over to Cub Food where I bumped into my fellow Sunday school classmate Tom, a former school administrator. Tom had read my op ed piece and agreed with me that closing a high school is inevitable. Its too bad that so few people are willing to say this in public. Tom also commented on my column's eerie prescience when I said: "in a few years, the powerful legislators who have been able to win us these special favors will pass from the scene." I was amused to read my column in the Tribune because the editors took the liberty of omitting one of my most salient observations; that Duluth Central was by far the superior location for our easternmost high school. I don't think they meant any harm. Rather I supposed that they wanted to deal with the issue of two high schools before dealing with the lesser issue of, which high school. My piece was nine words too long when I submitted it so some editing was in order. Besides that I had squandered the first three paragraphs on the metaphor about the Emperor's New Cloths. I wouldn't be surprised if Laura Condon, who has been so irritated with my use of figures of speech, is positively apoplectic. We got home early enough from our shopping so that I would be there when Lillian paid a call. Lillian had emailed me a week earlier and asked if she could interview me for her English class. She was writing about the School District's financial woes. She showed up a little after three and brought her tape recorder so that she would get the quotes right. We spent a pleasant hour talking about a decidedly unpleasant subject until her father called to retrieve her. Unlike other young people who had contacted me she was a little less insistent that her school, East, remain open. Perhaps the fact that her family had been uprooted from Laos had something to do with that. A move from one high school to another must have seemed a small inconvenience compared to the upheaval her family had endured traveling from the mountains of Indochina to refugee camps and then to frigid Minnesota.
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