Someone has been in my school mancave all day. It’s a small classroom that is officially mine first period Mondays and Wednesdays. I use it as my office. There’s nowhere else I can be alone. I have no special claim to the room other than squatters rights but I still miss it. I needed to make a private phone call and couldn’t. That’s practical. What really matters to me is just the ability to be alone with no eyes on me. Whoever has been using the room has left it unoccupied though her stuff was here. I moved in. She came back, but she left. I might have made a social faux pas. I was afraid of that but I really needed the alone time.
Now I can sit in peace and listen to classical music as I write. The terms introvert and extrovert create a false dichotomy. I am far from alone in being gregarious but also needing alone time. I can feel myself relaxing as I write.
Last night I went to the Knick game. They were playing the worst team in the NBA, the San Antonio Spurs. The Knicks were favored by 10. They won a squeaker when the Spurs couldn’t get off a 3-point shot on their final possession. The Knicks are a deeply flawed team.
It’s time for a curmudge. One problem with the internet is that it gives a platform for people to state their unfounded ideas. People will pontificate on things they have no way of knowing about as if they understand and nobody else does. You see it in sports all the time. Something unusual happens and people are quick to explain it as a manifestation of things that they have no evidence for. You see it all the time. A player gets injured and they “explain” how the official story is fake and he’s not really injured or he got injured some other way. I try to resist I told you so’s when they are proved wrong. Sometimes the player they said wasn’t injured has major surgery. Just once I’d like to see someone own that they were wrong
Of greater consequence it happens in politics too. Nobody with any real knowledge knows how the Speaker of the House Race will turn out. People with no inside knowledge claim to. If I were to tell you that McCarthy will eventually get elected or that he won’t, that tells you something about how my mind works and nothing about what will happen.
I have no idea though I do have a way of untying the Gordian Knot. I didn’t know it until the last few years but the Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the house. I first heard it more than a year ago when someone suggested that Trump could become Speaker. It could happen but I find it unlikely I have another idea that has more to speak for it, Making Mike Pence the Speaker. I have nothing politically in common with Pence. I would hate him being speaker, but he’d be better than letting the radical right wing of the Republicans, the Election Deniers, have their way. At least Pence believes in democracy. I don’t think you could get Democrats or Republicans to rally around him but perhaps you could cobble together a bipartisan majority that are willing to compromise to maintain democracy. If that happens, remember you heard it here first. If it doesn’t remember you heard that it won’t happen here first too. I’m playing an intellectual game, not making a prediction.
Now it’s time for me to go home and make a delicious steak dinner. I treated myself to a ribeye. Your plan tonight should be to listen to Gord’s Gold tonight on Folk Music Notebook. It’s on at 9 PM.
Farewell wherever you may fare until your eyrie receives you at your journey’s end.
Wise Madness 