My mom’s in town. Fresh from Iowa, where she can live through a tamer version of Vermont’s weather three days before Vermonters do. It’s a little game we play.

So we went wandering today. First time I’ve been wandering in the downtown streets of Montpelier in quite some time. And since I was the odd-person out in the threesome of me, my mom and my daughter, I got to wander alone. Cool.

Hello, Montpelier.

I spread tiny amounts of money throughout the town, on coffee, beer, books, pens, notebooks and a barn door handle. Nothing was odd in Montpelier today. It was just as it usually is, reminding me of walking down a high school hallway – so much familiar and yet so much avoided.

Actually, it was odd that the man from Somers Hardware (R.I.P.) was behind the counter at his former nemesis and – ultimately – conqueror, Aubuchon Hardware. Frankly, it startled me a bit, feeling too much like an hallucinatory flashback. Or, for a more modern explanation, try this: My mind went all “WTF.”

But I wasn’t alone. Others made a note of the fact that the man who worked in the family-run hardware store next door for generations was now behind the counter working for the chain-store giant that had (finally!) run him out of business so as to expand (read: monopolize).

He put his best smile on it, just like any small town like Montpelier would require him to. That’s how you survive. And the people who commented on his presence in his former predator’s workspace seemed happy about it all, too.

“This is good,” one elderly woman said, summing up the position that was inevitable from the small town’s residents. Because that’s how you survive.

Smile. Say it is good. And carry on.

Hello, Montpelier.

I saw my old friend and colleague, Mason Singer, while wandering today. He was worrying about the overly eager “parking-meter ladies” when I stumbled upon him. Mason was the creative director at Food & Water for years. He was the design genius who made the Food & Water Journal look the way it did. We conversed as if years did not separate our last conversation, just like a good re-encounter should go.

I saw my daughter’s principal in the bookstore. He was acting just like I’d like my daughter’s principal to be acting: He was engaging anyone and everyone around him in his attempts to remember the name of the book he wanted. And anyone and everyone he engaged didn’t have the foggiest notion of what he was talking about but met his inquiry with just the right amount of proper small-town cheerfulness. And we all expressed joy when he came down the stairs later to proclaim that he had, indeed, figured out the title and author. Expressing joy, that’s how you survive.

I picked up a book by Christopher Hitchens, apparently to counter all the joy in the room. I turned directly to this passage from his book, For the Sake of Argument:

“The real test of a radical or a revolutionary is not the willingness to confront the orthodoxy and arrogance of the rulers but the readiness to contest illusions and falsehoods among close friends and allies.”

Good stuff. It’s just too bad Hitchens is an ass. And I can say that because he doesn’t live in my small town.

I found the new collection of short stories by Lydia Davis, not so cleverly titled “The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis.” Luckily, the title was the least clever thing about the book. Davis is brilliant. Here’s the first story I turned to (Mildred and the Oboe):

Last night Mildred, my neighbor on the floor below, masturbated with an oboe. The oboe wheezed and squealed in her vagina. Mildred groaned. Later, when I thought she was finished, she started screaming. I lay in bed with a book about India. I could feel her pleasure pass up through the floorboards into my room. Of course there might have been another explanation for what I heard. Perhaps it was not the oboe but the player of the oboe who was penetrating Mildred. Or perhaps Mildred was striking her small nervous dog with something slim and musical, like an oboe.

Mildred who screams lives below me. Three young women from Connecticut live above me. Then there is a lady pianist with two daughters on the parlor floor and some lesbians in the basement. I am a sober person, a mother, and I like to go to bed early – but how can I lead a regular life in this building? It is a circus of vaginas leaping and prancing: thirteen vaginas and only one penis, my little son.

Needless to say, I bought the book – happily, just like my small town insists.

That’s how you survive.

So we’re thinking about building a new house. A small house. A house small enough to say: We’re living in a small house because small is all we can afford.

But, then again, not too small. Because too small can say: We’re too small to be happy.

Ha! No problem. Because then you build small enough to be small AND cool. Bingo. I think I’m onto something.

And, remember, I’ll be living in the house with my wife and daughter who most likely wouldn’t be begrudged for saying this from time to time: I need some space from HIM.

I’m him. And, yes, I take up space.

Oh the dilemma of being poor and wanting just the right house.

So let’s start with this: A walk through the neighborhood. And then a horse ride. Followed, of course, by a couple of beers that should be marked: “Feel good about beginning the process of building a new house.”

But wait. I didn’t really start the house.

Fuck. This is going to be harder than I thought.

But wait: Acknowledging the fact that it is going to be harder than I thought deserves a trip around the property in a horse-drawn carriage, no? Of course it does. In fact, I may even make a sign for the carriage – well, cart – that says: Celebrating Accomplishment.

I’m not worried about the neighbors asking me why I’m going around with such a sign because I’ve long since realized that the norm in this neighborhood is going around and around with equipment in the apparent celebration of “accomplishment.”

Yep, they mow.

I, on the other hand, hook horses and smile and wave.

Either way: Accomplishment be damned. Stalemate.

But, personally, I think I’m winning. But, then again, maybe they’re not playing. Maybe they’re serious. About their lawns?

Now I’m sad.

But, really, I’m going to build a house in the woods as soon as I can figure just a few things out. You know, things like: How to build a house in the woods.

Minor obstacles for dreams as big as the dreams we’re dreaming, for sure.

Google should help. Well, once I stop writing to you about the need to Google the information to build the house that I’ve promised to build for my family.

In fact, I got some idea reinforcement for my plan to build a small house from a small-house guru who said what I would have liked to say about the common question of: Why a small house?

Duh. Because I hate to vacuum.

I’m starting to realize that the philosophy of building a small house is almost as important as building the small house. Cool. We can spend years here. Or maybe we have. Shit.

Whatever. It’s a process. And – trust me – I’m working on it.

Donations – and advice — accepted.

Poor Rod Blagojevich. He got caught, of course, trying to negotiate a deal for how he’d go about appointing a replacement for Barack Obama’s senate seat. And the crowd went wild – liberals and conservatives alike. And, while using all the strength they could to keep straight faces, they intoned in a near-perfect chorus: How dare he? How could he? This isn’t the way things are done.

Bullshit. Old Blago was just a bit reckless.

But, cried the bullshitters, you can’t trade favors when it comes to making appointments like that. The liberal darling of the moment, Rachel Maddow, even went so far as to imply that Blago incriminated himself on her MSNBC show because he – rather laughingly – declared that what he was really trying to get in return for the appointment was a legislative promise or two.

Maddow’s knuckle-dragging competition at FOX News displayed a similar sense of “outrage,” only more so since Blago, the other key players and the seat in question were all wrapped in the “evil” D-word: Democrat.

The rules are clear, they all sang, you cannot seek anything in exchange for a political appointment.

Sure, this is a fine theory – not to mention one that ought to be followed and enforced. But, sorry silly talking heads, this is far from the political reality. And, of course, you know it.

Fast forward to today’s news that President Obama will be appointing New Hampshire’s Republican Senator, Judd Gregg, to be his Secretary of Commerce, an appointment that will lead to yet another open senate seat to be filled by a sitting governor.

When news of the potential Gregg appointment first broke last week it was portrayed as little more than a clever “trick” by the Obama team to either look bipartisan by even considering it or by knocking Gregg out of the Senate so that New Hampshire’s Democratic governor, John Lynch, could appoint a replacement – thus securing the coveted 60-seat filibuster-busting majority the Democrats desire.

As a result, the pundits scoffed at the Gregg pick. There’s no way Gregg would give up his seat and stick it to his Republican colleagues, they all chirped.

But that was last week. Because this week – today, in fact – a deal has apparently been reached: Gregg and Governor Lynch have agreed that a Republican will be appointed to take Gregg’s place once his appointment is confirmed. And not only that, they’ve also apparently agreed that whomever they appoint will also agree not to run for the open seat in two years.

So let’s tune into the MSNBC and FOX News pundits to feel their current outrage for the obvious “conditions” that were secured for a political appointment: Nothing. But. Silence.

Bullshitters, indeed.

And the most comical aspect to all of this is that these same news organizations are reporting this morning that the Obama administration has “not been involved” in any of the negotiations surrounding a possible replacement for Gregg. Cue the laugh track.

From a political perspective, I can understand why the Republican cheerleaders are keeping quiet on this one. But what about the liberals? They’re being asked to both “shut up” about the appointment of yet another Republican to the Obama cabinet and “ignore” the deal to appoint another Republican to replace him.

Geez, who put the “kick me” sign on their backs? But, being the good liberals that they are, they’ll just play along, pretending, of course, that maybe – just maybe – Obama will flash his mega-watt grin at them sometime soon.

The good news is that there’s at least one Democrat who won’t be keeping quiet on this New Hampshire deal: Rod Blagojevich. I’ll bet his lawyers are preparing the subpoenas right now for each and every player in the “Gregg deal” in order to prove what we all, unfortunately, should know: Our career politicians are little more than money and power whores.

And once they’re done with their dirty dealing, they rest of us still won’t have the jobs we need, the health care we deserve or the peace we desire.

Until we wake up.

My Dad had an unexpected quadruple bypass heart surgery last Friday in Iowa – our home state, if you allow us to ignore the not-so-short stops in Minnesota and Georgia. He was scheduled for what he told me was a “no big deal” angiogram on Thursday but when the doctors started their poking and prodding they found a heart that was very near quitting altogether.

Ah, there’s nothing like a little major surgery on your father that puts everything in a new light. While I haven’t been able to get there quite yet, he’s been on my mind constantly and on the other end of the phone as much as he can tolerate (“Nurse, more morphine, it’s my Nader-voting son on the line!”).

And my thoughts have returned me to the same place all weekend: I’m a lucky man to have a father like Jim Colby.

He’s never really had it easy, not from his childhood in the lower-class Des Moines neighborhoods, not when he was sixteen and had to take charge of the family when his own father killed himself, not with his (successful) battles with the bottle, and not when he gave forty years of his life to the Hormel Corporation, working himself up from mail clerk to mid-level management.

But he’s always made it look easy – at least from this son’s perspective. Because he’s almost always done it with a magnificent sense of humor and a wit that that could disarm the most arrogant bastard who dared to duel with his street-smart self. He’s not shy about his secret, either: He likes people.

In fact, he’s obsessed with people – their stories, their histories, their troubles and their triumphs. He wants it all from those he encounters – straight, no chaser, indeed. As a little guy who talked tough to survive in hardscrabble East Des Moines (yes, it existed in the 1950s), he knows better than most about the flim-flam exteriors people project and he wants nothing more than to pierce that exterior and find the inner-core that is so much more interesting.

My Dad loves books, movies, music (okay, okay, I’m willing to tolerate his Sinatra fixation) and, mostly, history. He’s always trying to connect with the “little guy.” He knows everything about the “American Indians,” fascinated by their plight and always thirsting for more information on their struggles. And he clings to his sense (more than reality –poke, poke) of being Irish, seemingly hell-bent on living and breathing the story of the ubber-underdog. Well, damn it, he’s earned it.

But my Dad’s best feature has always been his willingness to learn and to grow. He may have hit a few dead ends in his life but he sure as hell wasn’t using them as an excuse to throw in the towel. Hardly. They were all just bumps in the road – some bigger than others – that he eventually traversed with his usual aplomb. It’s the hand he was dealt and he’s going to make the best of it.

And so my thoughts are with him in his latest tangle with fate. I’m thankful that his wife, Brenda, and my older brother, Todd, are with him now and doing what they can to help navigate the glorious ship that is Jim Colby. I look forward to being there with him soon.

Yes, indeed, I’m a lucky man. I’ve got a great Dad. And while I know he’d appreciate a fine line right here that would turn us all toward a smile or a laugh (“Showtime!”), all I really want is for the universe to know what’s in my heart this morning: I love my Dad.

Oh America, you celebrate better than most. But why must you always celebrate with your blinders on? Why must you celebrate the end to the “race wars” with a nasty kick at the queers? Why must you speak of toil while keeping the toilers at bay?

I’m confused, America. I want to attend your parties but I smell of horseshit and I wouldn’t be allowed in. Besides, I can’t stop thinking about the servers at your parties. How do they feel about your $200 million inauguration? Would you like my dignity with that?, they ask.

I want you to think about class. I want you to wonder why it takes a billion dollars to win the presidency. I want you to wonder why Steven Spielberg and not Cindy Sheehan gets a seat at your party.

I want to believe. I want to say, “Yes, we can.”

I want to cry with you, America, when you feel like you’ve reached the top step. But I see many, many more steps to come. And so I cry for the 40 million of us with no health insurance. Or for the 3 million of us who lost our jobs recently. Or for the soldiers like Vermont’s own, Thomas Hermann, who ran for Congress – unsuccessfully – to really (truly) stop the war but found out last week that he’s being called back to serve yet another tour in Iraq under Obama’s army.

I want to believe, America. I’d like to celebrate. I’d like to wear the proud smile of those who pretend they’ve crossed the finish line of democracy but I can’t be fooled. For it is only the finish line of privilege that they’ve crossed. They have won, for sure. But we have lost. For we have no insurance. We have no jobs. We have no economic equality. And we have no tickets to the glittering inaugural balls.

America, I want you to listen to all of Martin Luther King’s speeches. He was making demands. He was righteously angry. He was right.

Listen to his words:

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

And if “amen” can be said to anyone or anything, it is not to the Rick Warrens and his homophobic rants in the name of the Jesus in his mind, it is to the words of the people who have truly risked something, fought for something, and denied themselves something so that those with nothing had a seat at the table of basic human dignity.

This is no time to celebrate, America. This is a time to push forward with all our might. And to reject false prophets. And to demand what is truly ours: Dignity. Truth. And Happiness. For all, not just those who can afford it or a seat next to it.

Oh yes, I have a dream, too, America. And it’s all about a victory in our next, glorious war: The War on Class.

Ready. Aim. Organize.

Let’s just say it was a bad day to be Bob Butterfield, the state’s attorney from Caledonia County. Because it was Butterfield’s job to go toe-to-toe with the entirety of the Vermont Supreme Court and a genuine legal eagle by the name of David Sleigh. Ouch.

Butterfield, you see, is the prosecutor who has dug in his legal heels and continued with the rather absurd prosecution of yours truly and my trusty accomplice in acts of civil disobedience, Boots Wardinksi. And David Sleigh is our attorney, a first amendment champion who stepped up to take on our case at no cost to us because, as he said, the charges didn’t pass the laugh test.

The case in question goes back to that June day in 2006 when Boots and I, armed with nothing but a couple of tickets to enter, attended the high school graduation ceremony of the St. Johnsbury Academy. The draw for us was the invited speaker, none other than John Negroponte, a man of seemingly infinite acts of horror against the people of Central America during the Reagan Administration and one of the chief architects of the Iraq War during the current Bush Administration. At the time of Negroponte’s visit to St. Johnsbury, he was officially serving as the Bush Administration’s “Intelligence Czar.” And, interestingly enough, we were in the minority at the time when it came to the belly laughs created by that title — and that title alone. Now, of course, it’s an all-too-easy joke.

Make no mistake about it, we weren’t going to let the one and only opportunity to confront a Bush war architect slip away. Because, let’s remember, Vermont is the only state in the nation that Bush himself has not visited during his nearly eight years in office, and Negroponte’s trip to the state is still the only trip by such a high-ranking, Bush-appointed war criminal. And, frankly, we didn’t have much interest in a candlelight vigil.

So confrontation it was – all seventeen seconds of it.

Only moments into Negroponte’s address, I got out of my seat to make my objections to Negroponte’s presence known. According to the court documents, I specifically had this to say:

“In the name of democracy I object to this man speaking. He has blood on his hands from his work in Central America and Iraq. He shouldn’t be at the podium, he should be in jail. He is a war criminal.”

But, technically, the last half of that statement was delivered with a bevy of federal, state and local security officials swarming me, handcuffing me and leading me out of the packed auditorium.

And then Negroponte tried to continue his speech by saying, “Now it’s my turn.”

To which, Boots began this interjection:

“No! It’s my turn! When the headmaster introduced Negroponte, he forgot to tell about all the people tortured, killed and raped (under Negroponte’s helm in Honduras). You should be ashamed to stay in here and listen to this man.”

We were both charged with trespassing and “attempted disorderly conduct.” On the advice of Sleigh, I entered a plea of “no contest” with the promise from him that we’d challenge the entirety of the case before the Vermont Supreme Court.

Boots, however, was Boots and demanded a jury trial. But on the day the trial was to start, the presiding judge ruled that a motion filed by Sleigh regarding the overall legality of the charges had to be reviewed by the Supreme Court before the trial could proceed.

Alas, our cases were joined again — which leads to today’s hearing, in which Butterfield stuttered and stammered to try to make sense out of the senseless.

In the 30-minutes worth of legal back and forth this morning, the court seemed perplexed by Butterfield’s assertion that our 17-seconds worth of objections in a four-hour ceremony resulted in a prosecutable disruption. Instead, they seemed to be agreeing with Sleigh’s reasoning that we were simply exercising our First Amendment right to speak. We did, after all, stop when we were told to stop – nice boys that we are and all.

Sleigh even dutifully informed the court that Negroponte’s address centered on the theme of encouraging the students to “raise your voices.” And when Chief Justice Paul Reiber asked if we objected to that theme, Sleigh quickly retorted that his clients had “no objection” to that message (and the courtroom chuckles ensued).

But the best questions came from Justice Marilyn Skoglund, who seemed absolutely baffled by Butterfield’s steadfast assertion that our 17-second objections were illegal. Skoglund asked Butterfield, for example, if she would have been arrested if she was attending and stood up to congratulate a family member for their graduation feat. It would, after all, be a “disruption.”

It’s all about “intent,” replied Butterfield, who was totally unable to ascribe any intent on our part other than to venture into the land of make-believe and declare that “had the authorities not succeeded [in arresting us], their disruptions would have been further.”

In other words: Facts be damned, because we were now entering the realm of Butterfield’s fertile imagination.

Here, Mr. Butterfield, let me fill in the gaps in your logic: Our intent was to object to John Negroponte speaking in our state. Period. We stated our objections and we were arrested for doing so. End of story.

And it was nice to see Vermont’s Supreme Court see through the nonsense of Butterfield’s arguments. Now let’s hope its ruling – expected within 60 days — will lead to an instant dismissal of any and all charges against us.

Because the American people must fight for the right to object.

Oh boy. This is getting uglier by the hour. The campaign, that is. It seems like just yesterday when the “boys of change,” McCain and Obama, were telling us all that this campaign was going to be different. They were, as you’ll recall from way back in….in…well, August, going to respect one another, focus on the issues and “change” the way political campaigns are conducted. Yeah right.

Oh America, when will you ever learn?

Because the boys of change have shit-canned the issues and the decency faster than either one of them could bend over for their next $10 million in campaign contributions. In fact, the last time they played nice with one another was when they were both bending over for that right-wing religious lunatic who – for some strange reason – got to play the political Godfather and have his toes sucked and his audience pandered to by both of them. And what, exactly, was Obama doing there?

Now the nation is in that self-inflicted torture zone known as campaign season, whereby logic is seemingly forbidden, the issues are apparently off limits and activism is seen as simply impolite to the process – never mind, of course, that the process is masquerading as democracy. Shut up and watch, you fools.

Because it’s now all about pigs, pit bulls, lipstick and – yep – kindergarten sex-education. Thus replacing the war, gas prices, health care, energy policies, the economy and global warming. Fuck it, can’t someone just put lipstick on the planet and bring it into the discussion?

Watching McCain and his Republican overlords toy with Obama and the Dems reminds me of watching Ali employ his famous “rope-a-dope” strategy against his flailing and frustrated opponents. Ali would just cover up, get in the heads of his opponents with a couple quips or cocky dance steps, and then protect himself for as long as he could while his opponents tired themselves out with their wild and mostly off-target barrage. And then Ali would pounce. And, usually, win.

McCain and the Republicans laid low while the Dems danced and pranced through the spring and summer, convincing themselves that Obama could, indeed, part the electoral waters and deliver the White House. But the Dem strategy was out of their same old playbook. You know, the one that says this on every page: Bush sucks.

Well, yeah, Bush does suck. And that’s why so many of us had been pleading with the Dems to use its control of Congress to indict, impeach or, hell, just plain stop him once in a while. No such luck there. And now we know why: Running against Bush is all they’ve got in terms of strategy.

Let’s see, how’s that working for them? Zero-for-two, so far, with each loss feeling a whole hell of a lot like the script that is playing out this year: Intense cockiness followed by anxiety and capped off with dismay.

Instead of learning from their mistakes, the Dems keep flailing and obviously hoping that the third time will be the charm with Bush. Hmm, I guess someone needs to tell them that Bush isn’t running.

And please, tell them quickly. Because I’ve got a hunch that voters out there are seeing through this strategy, mostly because they know that the Dems have had more than enough power in Congress to stop Bush but have failed – or worse, not even tried – in nearly every instance.

Quick, name a Bush nightmare that wasn’t preceded by a gentle goodnight kiss by the Dems. The war? Nope. The Patriot Act? Nope. FISA? Nope. Anti-union and environmental “free” trade agreements? Nope. Soaring deficits? Nope. The Mid-East debacle? Nope. Alito to the Supreme Court? Nope.

No wonder they wouldn’t move on Bush’s impeachment, they were too busy playing his mighty enabler. Well, that and counting on one more campaign against him.

Oh my, fifty-four more days of this shit….