Secret Screams

Secret Screams

Visiting the brand new Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia is a real treat. While the school is still being completed, the first wave of construction has been finished. My technology meeting yesterday was in the palatial library which is right across an open area from the monstrous cafeteria. I did, of course, visit one of their new restrooms while I was there and found that it was a cross of the modern and the age-old. As I walked in, the lights came on. Somehow, the room saw me. Yet the toilets don’t see you, because you have to flush them manually. Also the walls must have been blind to the graffiti “artists” who marked the freshly painted walls.

With construction ongoing at Patrick Henry, parking spaces are premium commodities. When I pulled in as their schools were dismissed, I turned off onto a side road to the right and parked in a grassy area next to Raleigh Court Elementary. As I got out of my car, I found myself surrounded by men in fancy suits. Their cleanly pressed dress and starched smiles immediately gave them up to be …politicians. Looking over toward the elementary school, I saw a whole gaggle of them; white ones, black ones, female ones. There were also protesting people with signs saying that the governor lied to them. Without knowing it, I had stumbled into a political nest that was about to be visited by the queen bee.

Not knowing where my library was at that time, I walked over to an official looking servant managing the orange cones and directing people who approached the elementary school and asked him if he could direct me to the high school library. He very nicely did just that; but he looked nervous as if he was unsure if he should be sharing that knowledge with me.

I knew, based on experience, that suits like the ones I saw only come out for important people like themselves. Plus the protesters' signs suggested the Guvna might be coming. So out of curiosity, I sought confirmation from him that Governor Kaine was indeed coming to the school. So I asked him, “What’s going on here today?” as innocently as I could.

Immediately his eyes grew shiftier. Looking side to side with rapidly blinking eyes, he whispered to me, “There’s a meeting here.” His face then froze into a non-responsive glare.

“Oh…I see.” And I walked away.

Secret meetings. We wouldn’t want the people who elected these people to know that these people are meeting. That would be…well…not secret anymore. We certainly wouldn't want to let a guy who was dressed in a black fleece pull-over, faded green slacks with black tennis shoes and white socks with a laptop bag slung over his shoulder crash the party. Secret meetings are meant to be secret. Not open to the Public.

I found out today that Governor Kaine visited the school to promote a PE running program for kids at the school.

Earlier this week, I received a letter from my friend, Howard Dean. You may remember my friend Howard from his most amazing “Macca Moment” during the last presidential race. Well, apparently his vocal prowess vaulted him to the top of the Democratic Party where he now screams for money. In his letter to me, Howard thanked me for my past support (I gave Jim Webb some money to defeat the original “Macca Man”, George Felix Allen Jr.) and encouraged me to fill out the official DNC survey and send him $100 within 72 hours. I’m not sure what will happen to me after 72 hours if I don’t pay up. 72 hours aren’t quite up yet, and I’ve put off paying the ransom. I’m afraid that Howard may call my home phone and scream into it.

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, sent me a letter a week or so ago. She included a personal stamped message just for me:

“To Thomas Ryder,

Thank you for your steadfast commitment to winning a Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. I am honored and humbled by this opportunity to serve our nation and our party as Speaker of the 440^th Congress ( I know…you’d think she’d choose a more easily read font…I assume she meant the 110^th), and I will be counting on your help to move America forward in a new direction or I will send Howard to set your house to set your cat afire and scream.

Nancy Pelosi”

A lady wrote a letter to the editor in our local newspaper a week or so ago. In her letter, she expressed deep concern that people were mocking her President. She thought that it is a travesty that previous letter writers called for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. She said the troops all took an oath to serve their country and their President, and if the President wants them there, then that is where they shall serve. I suppose those troops might feel that way; however, the hair on my hairless back bristles when I hear people saying that our citizens serve the President. It should be the other way around. Our founding fathers struggled to concoct our form of democracy. Our system of government was a system born from an intensely sour experience with a monarch who insisted on being served.

It seems to me that the letter writer, the man in the parking lot, the starch pressed suits, the screaming Dean, and Mrs. Pelosi have all fallen in to what we fought so hard 230 years ago to escape. I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican. I’m a person who cares quite a bit about his country and who finds it abhorrent when his government gets hijacked.