Letter From Iowa

Dear Aunt Ethel,


I hope that life's treating you well since you moved to New York City, and Dad and Uncle Herb say hello.

 We're still here, the farms are still here like the one you grew up on all those years ago, the night air is as clear as it ever was with the constellations displayed in all their splendor when you get outside of the city limits and their mercury lights, and gentlemen are apt to make a point by prefacing their observations with "Well, down on the farm Dad allus said....."....where was I?


Oh, I remember now. How could I forget?

It's the silly season for sure, and we here in the Tall Corn State are fussed over by political operatives and the people they claim to represent  like the farm wife's prize hen in the Grant Wood painting once every four years-or eight as the case may be given the national predilection for two term presidents.

It's kinda like when the state fair is on, and then it's over, everyone's packed up and gone in the night and all that's left is to pick up the litter and empty Kentucky Fried Chicken packages and water bottles that our visitors have unaccountably littered our streets and yards with, given the fact that they *say* they're four square for a cleaner planet. Well, nevermind.

Next Tuesday morning it will be as if they never were here at all, in fact as if they didn't exist at all and we shall then see whether the rich lady talked the farm wife out of her hen, or whether she was observant enough to do some clear thinking of her own and make the right choice.

And for the most part we are. Remember we've been at this for a while, this choosing business, and we're pretty fair judges of people who want our votes. Of course there IS that Steve King fellow, but he's a local boy and folks out his way like him well enough to keep electing him even though he does make a fool of himself on a regular basis.

Well, there you go, I've gone off the rails again, don't you know.

Right now you've got Snowstorm Jonas (who thought up that silly name?) to deal with and we've got a snowstorm of manure to wade through coming right through the big screen television Uncle Herb bought two years ago.

They'll both be cleaned up by next week, and then we can back to what's important-our friends, our values, and our admittedly small problems in a big, angry world.

Still, I think it's fair enough to ask the candidates how they expect to justify:
*"making the sand glow" in ISISlandia and, never having seen war up close and personal expect us to invest our boys in such a dubious project
*how they expect to get through congress free health care and college tuition, much less how they're going to scrounge up the money to pay for it all given the political climate inWashington these days
*deporting eleven million people who are merely trying to make a living the best way they know how
*building a fence that nobody can rappel over and expecting a bankrupt third world country to pay for it
*how taking shotguns away from farmers is going to make Chicago a safer place....
*and, basically changing the hearts and minds of a lot of people .

I could go on, but you get the picture.We'll be here to meet you  for the fair when the train goes through Osceola because we know you don't like to fly.

Neither do I, Aunt Ethel. Neither do I.

Love from all of us,

Robert