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New Day

People deserve a more perfect Union, some justice, and domestic tranquility

By Mike Jopek

It started in the northeast, the place where the cold wind lives. The scant clouds lingered with moisture. The skyline turned beet red. It glowed, hollowed purple. As the coffee brewed, a pale sky returned. There was no rain. Lightning loitered to the south.

The land needed moisture. It’d been a long, hot month. Chaos loomed on the horizon. Bedlam overran the decisionmakers. Mayhem ensued as the sky was overtaken by a fierce morning.

There’s an upcoming vote, the biggest of our lifetimes. The Constitution affords an opportunity to change the course of destiny. It feels like people are getting ready for transformation.

People are kind, resilient and fair. We enjoy friendships that go beyond the ideology of our times. A robust bond keeps us united — a common vision that better days lay ahead.

Some buffoon sent the Penguin and his minions from the pages of DC Comics, or rather Washington, D.C., to rip out mail boxes across Montana. The postal system must’ve worked too efficiently delivering billions of pieces of mail during Christmastime while 100 million election ballots were forthcoming.

In the comics, the Joker would have glared with those yellow eyes, laughed and enjoyed the moment. Pain was hurled at the people of Gotham City.

In real life, they reportedly uprooted nearly half the postal mail boxes from places like Missoula and Bozeman, in urban places where those rascally young people live.

To a joker, youngsters represent the outdoors and nasty things like hiking, biking and recreating. They characterize a nemesis, the people who stood in line for hours in previous elections just to cast a vote. Youngsters are the bane of jokers.

They surely laughed, grinned, until the farmer, the now senator who beat them last go, stood and said whoa, hold on partner, put those mail boxes back.

To a farmer, people living in rural places of Montana depend on the mail system. It’s the oldest agency in America, in the Constitution, a service not a business, and a lifeline in rural Montana to things like medicine, commerce or ballots.

Jokers from D.C. scorn the youngsters who sent the farmer from the fields of Big Sandy, growing crops like peas, wheat and lentils, to the halls of Congress seeking justice.

Earlier this month, mom mailed some masks to help slow the virus. She’s made them for months, sending parcels from her town’s post office to people across the land. She uses fabric with pictures of fruit like strawberries or cherries, and says it makes people smile. Joy is the archenemy of narcissists.

Mom mailed her parcel 3-Day Priority. It arrived on day 10, having traveled back and forth between Missoula and Billings twice, like Mister Freeze had awoken and frozen the sorting cogs of the United States Postal Service.

The skyline turned gray. The clouds remained riddled with intensity. Those two-faced clouds retained their water and released the hot sun.

Far off in the distance, the red squirrels chattered from up in the treetops and chucked pinecones down onto metal roofs. The noise pelleted through the morning, calling fall.

In six weeks ballots arrive presenting fresh opportunities on deciding what kind of society our country, our state, will be for the next generation. Vote in person, vote by mail, drop off or mail your ballot. Just do it. Do it right away.

Questions linger, the ideology strong but underscored by ever-changing chaos, a reminder that the last four years have been very hard on regular working people, parents and grandparents.

The jokers of D.C. seem more intent on fighting the people than stopping the deadly virus that has swept across our land. A new day is pending and people deserve a more perfect Union, some justice, and domestic tranquility.