Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th District – all the water surface area in the state.

Holiday Greetings, Constituents!

I’m delighted to send you this message from our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.! While it’s true most of my colleagues in the Senate are fuming about the one or two Senators whose tactics are
making it impossible for everyone else to go home, I’m free as a bird to go wherever I please because the House has adjourned.

But still I remain here. Why am I not back in my district pressing the flesh?

If you know anything about the 9th District, you know that now is not the time of year to press your flesh against anything. We try as hard as we can to keep from touching any other object, because air is a great insulator when it’s standing still!

But I do sympathize with the Senators. It’s frustrating to be held up by people who insist on going slow. You see it on our highways and you see it in the grocery store when old folks looking at all the different varieties of grape jelly park their carts in the middle of the aisle and ponder the possibilities. Perhaps they are imagining all the different types of toast that exist in our bountiful world,  and what each one will look like slathered in purple goo!

There is a characteristic of people from the 9th District that makes us especially well suited to public life – we are fishing people and fishing is all about patience. I was born waiting for a gigantic walleye to strike, and I’m still waiting.

The legislators who are pushing Senators Cruz and Coburn to hurry things up are not people with an angler’s mindset, clearly!

What’s the rush? Christmas is still more than a week away!  And while we all love our families,  my nearest and dearest have spent months getting psychologically ready to have me at home through the beginning of the New Year.

In the first few days after I return from Congress I have been told I am not fun to be around because I have a tendency to make long-winded speeches about everything, including what’s for dinner and the state of the laundry.  Yes, it’s a habit.

So I have been told to stay here until the Senate adjourns even though I don’t have to, as a way to let some of the pomposity drain away before I get home.

I am more than happy to do that, but I am not sure where to find the valve that lets the pomposity out. Maybe it was something evolution already removed?

Just in case there is no biological release, and to be sure I’m ready to return when the time comes, I have been ambling around Washington, visiting our beautiful monuments, and quietly lecturing the marble statues of our ancestors about my view of the Way Things Are.

Unsurprisingly, they are dumbstruck.

At any rate, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Jolly Kwanzaa to you all. May you be blessed with relatives who know what is required to make you tolerable!

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

What makes you tolerable?