As I sit down to write this, I realize this may be the hardest writing I have done in a long time. Even though this “candidacy” is a farce, it still has meaning to me and I hope to you the reader. And when I say farce, I mean it in the antiquated definition of the term, not the more modern idea of fakeness. A farce used to be a dramatic or comedic exposition that poked fun or created satire, often with serious meaning behind it. The very fact I proclaim an “honorary” candidacy is satire enough for me. I think the oft heard phrase that one votes for the lesser of two evils is reason enough to give Americans, at least in their minds, a third choice.

But I digress, as they say, probably because I am hesitant about laying my life out for scrutiny. I have only been in the papers twice that I can remember, except while I was a reporter. Once when the local newspaper asked teenagers about life and the second when I ran for state legislature at the age of twenty. Both were not the best of experiences. In the first I had to take ribbing for months afterwards from my peers, in the second I was subject to massive negative press by my own party and more ribbing from my coworkers. Yet I am determined to go through with this, so here goes.

I was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, about fifty-seven years ago. Except for a bit of traveling in my youth, I have lived here most of my life. I’ve worked at many jobs, floor maintenance, food service, rough carpentry, punch press operator, cattle feeder, fruit ranch worker, cat skinner, cemetery sexton, foundry worker, reporter, contract driver, insurance salesman and most recently as a health care aide. I have no hobby except being an amateur historian. True that gets one into a lot of different things, but nothing so concentrated as to be called a hobby. So I’ve tinkered with music, amateur rocketry, drawing, computers, writing fiction ( hmmm maybe this candidacy is an example), poetry, bow target shooting, ancient weaponry and research. I enjoy a good beer, a better wine and hot Chinese food. I am constantly catching up on bills, singing karaoke when I can and palavering with friends over coffee. Pretty much an average American I believe, at least in scope if not particulars.

And I am an inveterate reader and I like to think of myself as a concerned citizen. I try to pay attention to politics, foreign policy, domestic policy, economics and military history. That does not mean I fully understand any of them but I keep trying. Oh, I also make sure to vote, at least in every Presidential election year. I give what I can to charity, too little by my lites, work as much as I can, to try keeping up with the bills, and haven’t had my own TV on in over two years and haven’t seen a movie since The Return of the King. I listen to public radio and when time permits at work I watch one of the learning channels or C-Span. I quit reading fiction a couple years ago and my reading choices are mostly history books or books on human potential, science and socio-philosophical subjects. I try always to be aware of what I don’t know and try to be willing to change what I think I know when I am made aware of new information. I class myself as neither Left nor Right, just a man trying to do the best he can and to keep on slogging.

As a candidate I bring to you a totally ineffectual - - politically - - but maybe interesting choice intellectually. Perhaps, because I am willing to do this, you can think of me as a tiny voice of some, hopefully, of the ideas you have had yourself. Or at least of ideas and questions that you might have asked yourself or wondered why the public dialogue has not asked or promoted. I am a cynical and angry American, though I try to temper those traits in order to remain a reasonable human being. I am constantly befuddled by the lack of long-range thinking in the public and private sphere and the tendency of participants in politics to be quick to call names and cast assertions. And I am affected by that because I have that tendency myself and have realized how little that has gained me. I also fear long-range thinking, when guided only by ideology, big government, when used to abridge rights and hinder creativity rather than to protect and promote them, and the tendency to treat complicated subjects like a choice between fiddle-de and fiddle-dum. I am humbled by the strong currents of history, yet invigorated by historical examples of men and women who have cut across or even tamed those currents. I am hopeful always, though it is often like riding the edge of the Abyss and flipping a coin on which way to steer. I am disappointed by the seeming lack of understanding about many of the subjects brought up in public discourse and further the pride that speakers seem to take in that lack of understanding. I have a deep and abiding Faith which does not allow me to give up and guides me in my life, though I think I often screw up the guidance that I am given. I am confused by the mantra of private is good, government bad. Especially since much of our economics, including the private sector, depends on government spending and programs. I am also confused by the hatred of welfare for individuals but not for companies. Confused by the desire for unbridled choice for some but not for all. Confused by the strong desire for security without thought of consequences, aggression without forethought and the invasion of thought itself with commercial messages. I was raised in a fairly conventional and religious family, yet always, always, with a respect for the differences of others. I have found Americans, in my travels and my hometown life, to be generous and good people, yet always able to reserve a part of themselves for what I can only call good-natured hoodwinking, thus the existence of salesmen, an art I practiced in the past. Americans are not mean-spirited by nature, are strong and forthright in their views and sometimes, like myself, a little bit too self-concerned to look at things as closely as they should. I admire many persons for acts of courage and charity and the compulsion to build and create. I also fear acts of courage in dubious causes and charity towards dubious ends and compulsion without conscience and wisdom in any enterprise. And I will be the first to admit that I may not be an adequate judge of any of these things.

I grew up in Oshkosh, attending Catholic grade and high schools. I went to college for about two years in an off and on way, working a semester, schooling a semester and spending way too much time in the student lounge. I am a little dense, so it took me some time to realize higher education was not education but job preparation, so I left college for a lifetime of work. I went to California to work in the fields, reveling in one of the best jobs I have ever had. Nothing like looking over acres of orchards you have competently disked during a beautiful hot sunny day. I came back after a couple years (truthfully I couldn’t earn enough and I missed the winters - - call me weird) and worked various jobs till about twelve years ago I wound up helping challenged individuals for a living.

I have always tried to be a learner. And not the rote type of learning, but the type that puts what we learn into a context of living. The difference I think is that between learning how to play a musical instrument and learning how to make music, it lies in the more complete application that true learning allows. And such learning also, I believe, leads to a chance to attain wisdom, something not often valued today. Needless to say I haven’t attained that lofty goal either. And some would say this candidacy proves it.

For most of my life I have been an observer, content to fend off life’s problems and watch others, including my nation, do the same. In the last few years I have just begun to try taking more active control of my life, and success has been moderate to say the least. From such personal attempts, I have begun to appreciate the immensity, the complication, of the web of life that has been created in America and the world. My Dad, I realized late in his life, had lived to see the major developments of all that I took as a given. He was born before massive use of autos, before radio, television, flight, world wars, nuclear energy, big government, large labor movements, the Panama Canal, Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building and mass production. My Mom was only slightly younger, so she lived through those times too. And both of them weathered them all. They focused on family, church and community and did the best they could. It would be like me living through the dawning of space flight, zero-point energy, trans-dimensional gateways, warp drive and practical immortality. They lived through inconceivable change and kept on slogging. They raised us kids, paid off their house and took part in all the connections of social life and society. They lived through it all, not by adopting some high-faluting paradigm, not by espousing an all encompassing ideology and not by endless discussion and complicated planning. They lived by concentrating on the human, the bonds of family, the bonds of community and the basics of food, shelter and health.

Almost every day of his life, until he began getting sick, my father would work. When I was young, he was up with the sun and still hitting it long after it set. Often he went to work when sick, injured and disgruntled. It was only on the day of my mother’s death, while I was hugging him, that I really felt the strength, the granite-like solidness of the man. It was a lesson, still not fully integrated, that I have carried through my life. A product of times he had not formed, except by his labor, and a man swept by incredible currents of history, yet he had created a strength, a center, that allowed him to operate in a world alien to that in which he was born. In many ways he shows all of us the very basic virtues we need before we can begin to tackle any of the problems we now face or soon will face.

I never saw him afraid, except in the face of death. And not his own death, but that of my mother. That and the time he was “temporarily fired” by a hotheaded boss who soon realized he needed my Dad’s skills and called him back. Those faces of his fear have helped form my own basis for fear. I decided long ago, and I hope I can keep that mind set, that only the suffering of others and the loss of ability to take care of those I need to take care of are the real fears I should be concerned with. I have not always been able to be true to that, and I remember a time in the Wyoming mountains when I displayed personal cowardice as our car was about to go over a precipice. I started to get out of the car, leaving the driver to whatever fate. I was always thankful he called out to me, “Thanks a lot Gamsy.” I got back in the car, grabbed his jacket in my hand and determined if I couldn’t pull him with me then we would both go over. I was lucky, the car stopping just before the edge. I have never forgot the shame of that, that I was so callous that I would leave another with no attempt to save him. I can’t help making that a principal I have used as a lens to look at all things in life. If we can’t at least try to save others, then we might as well give up being human.

It has been such instants in my life, and I think in everyone’s, which gave me permanent mind sets about a lot of things. I acquired acrophobia, something I have been blest to overcome, by being “stranded” on the side of a quarry wall when I was in grade school. I learned patience, a little bit along with some new cuss words, and the value of constant effort, when I faced a washout while irrigating fields in California. I learned a modicum of coolness when bees, in those same fields, decided the diesel cap on my tractor was a good place to swarm. I realized I had some musical talent when I strummed my first guitar chord. Realized I could learn whole new things when I wrote my first line of Basic on my first computer. Realized what being a father and parent was really about, the very first time I held my first son in my arms, moments after his birth. Realized that for the first time in my life, here was a being totally dependent on me for just about everything, and it sobered me, literally, for the rest of my life. At least if I have anyone depending on me. I experienced in meditation what I had been taught, less than effectively, all my life by religion, that I could come into the Presence that is the ground for all existence. And I learned instantly, when one of my “challenged” clients suddenly displayed savant capability, that there were others than I who were able to excel far beyond anything I had conceived possible. The list is long. And only recently I have begun to grasp the fate of death in a very personal way, and that it must be prepared for as with anything else important in life.

My present family, other than allusion to it, will not be dealt with here. I might submit myself to scrutiny, but they have no part of that and the possibly onerous consequences. Suffice to say I love them and honor them and am proud of them. They are in large part my reason for toiling and learning and trying. And they are not the business of this candidacy. Since I am not really running for office, they are not a subject of discussion or scrutiny - - - please.

And as I grow older, I have come to respect what is. And that is all of it, religion, business, government, virtues, pollution, overcrowding, starvation, war, peace, science, holism, books, tyrants, saints, media, nature, Sun, moon and stars. All of it. I am coming to realize that existence is truly a stage, a canvas and an ongoing story. I marvel at how the skyscrapers can be built, how the internal combustion engine operates, how a bullet can end a life. It is part of what I live in, what I am still learning to understand. It is that wider world we are all part of, though it may not be on our mind all the time, sollipciously slipping out of focus for much of our lives, yet always there in the waiting room of attention. And I grapple with how to put it all in my frame of meaning. How do I think of it all? How do I reach out to it for knowledge and wisdom? How do I operate on and with it for the best of results for me, mine and all of humanity? Perhaps that is what the Work of life is about. To have a sense of everything, to make sense of everything you can. And to keep the art of love alive through it all.

Well, enough of such thinking, back to the bio. Lord, you’d think I’d have learned terseness by now, but verbal venting is one of my faults (as if you couldn’t tell). And that is the subject of this next section, my faults. After all, if I am going to claim honorary candidacy, then I should give you a complete picture of who you are reading about. And I have often been amazed the “regular” candidates never seem to get to this subject. My Mom would say “all work and no play” makes Ken a human version of a plow horse. I think, along with the sterling qualities our politicians tell us about, they should also tell us of their darker side. Heck it might even garner the vote of those who read Gothic fiction, where dark heroes win the day from more one-sided competitors.

And boy am I dark. Impatient, rude, grouchy as only someone over fifty can be, egotistical, sexist, two-faced, lying, cheating, irreverent (as if you couldn’t tell), over-critical, picky, prejudicial and just plane dumb. Luckily I am seldom all of those at once. No, I take my time and meter out these faults, in part so they are less visible to my friends and family. And I will not use the techniques of the resume to convince you these are really strengths, such as “I am very two-faced when it comes to saying negative things about a friend, instead choosing a less than honest appraisal of that person.” Nope I am simply two-faced on a lot of things and make no bones about it.

The same with the rest of my faults. I practice them as seldom as I can but wholeheartedly nevertheless. I make no excuses, cop no pleas and deny nothing. I am guilty, guilty, guilty. And I cannot understand how other politicians have escaped such grossness. Perhaps, if they are unsuccessful in getting elected, we have a whole new crop here of human potential gurus, who could put out $39.95 courses on how to be perfect beings. I know I am not, and depending on what day you catch me, I might be slightly inebriated, cussing like a muleskinner, cheating on a stop sign, envious of a better card player, lying about the size of fish I caught, or other matters of size, grouchy about anything that pricks my thin skin and judgmental about everything (or I wouldn’t be doing this). And always, always, always, as President Carter would say, “lusting after women in my heart.”

And the worst part of all this is that my virtues seldom make up for my vices. It is a constant battle, stopping myself mid-thought a hundred times a week, to keep from practicing my faults to the exclusion of all else. Infrequently I have learned to suffer fools gladly, and boy do I have a large list of fools, have compassion for others and practice Christian love for all the least of the earth. I too seldom practice almsgiving, patience and forgiveness. I practice even less the seven virtues, and honor few of the eternal verities by attention to them. I too often dwell on what I’d do if I were king, better yet emperor. I focus on perceived wrongs instead of possible challenges. I look darkly on the future, leaving Hope broken-winged on the lip of Pandora’s box. I see mostly problems and have a hard time working out solutions. I plan almost nothing, learn very little and understand even less.

I think you get the idea, I am a fallible, foppish and feeble human being. I do not know what I’d do if I were offered those fabled “deals” that supposedly abound in politics. I cannot guarantee, if I were a real candidate, that I would be immune to bribes and graft, much less corruption of other kinds. I am just honest enough to let you all know this, so never, never, vote for me in the real world, should I ever be dumb enough to run. Such as I are better in the fantasy realm of the pseudo than the realm of real politick. I think, if given the chance, that I would wind up a millionaire and you would be poorer for my term in office.

However, perhaps I am wrong. Maybe in the world of the half-measures, brokered deals and spin laden sphere of politics, we actually need a scoundrel. If so, I apply for the job. And you, the voter, will at least know what you are getting. Perhaps it would cause you to keep a very close eye on me. In fact, using a method from the criminal justice system, you might put an electronic bracelet on me so you would at least know where I am. In fact, maybe that is a possibility for all our leaders. At least we would know some of those who are in meetings together. Maybe we should also extend that to advisors and the captains of industry. Heck we could really get information about skullduggery then. And getting back to my “candidacy,” I will be the first to apply for the cuffs.

I am reminded that one of the family members of those murdered in 9/11 recently said that if the government cannot keep us safe, then all the other duties of such government are for naught. I want to second that notion, and let you know that it is the example of those family members, as well as of the heroes aboard the plane that did not make its target, who have in part inspired me to create this candidacy. They are mainly average Americans, citizens personally affected by what their government does and does not do. In other words, they are us. True we do not often think of that, yet it is fact. At least for me, there is a tinge of selfishness in my candidacy, I want to live in a modern, safe, thoughtful and competent America. I want to live in an America which does not act upon needless fears, does not abet hatred, and always, always calls upon its citizens to let shine that light of freedom and public good our forebears brought into this world so long ago.

Humbly, I am a beneficiary of that lineage. Of all that I am, this is one of the most important. I am an American. Blest by principals and ideals I had nothing to do with the forming of. Saturated by civic responsibility, moral rectitude and patriotism, though seldom practicing them effectively, I generally know what is right, proper and good for this nation. That does not mean I can create a plan to bring that about. Rather, I often gripe and snipe at what others are doing or suggesting for America. In one way this candidacy is by way of apology for letting those others determine the playing field. This time I am creating the structure and ready to be judged upon its adequacy. If I can offer nothing else to my country, at least I can offer this one effort to try and present ideas I think neglected or orphaned. I do not really know what good this will do in the long run, yet I am determined to give it a try. Hopefully it will be of some use to my fellow citizens and the country we love. Thank you.