2051

I can see myself now in 2051, surrounded by my fifty cats, rocking in my rocking chair and saying, "2011, right here in Wisconsin. Solidarity! We had the spirit! This is where it all began, when Scott Walker signed his ultimatum, and the people peacefully revolted."

"Meow," they will say.

But what happens next? What?

I haven't gone to a protest all week, because I think we've pretty much said what we had to say, because I'm lazy, and because I think maybe we've lost. Yet the national news keeps covering the protests.

I honestly thought, when I first heard of the bill, that I would go downtown and there would be about a hundred people down there with me, mourning the loss of collective bargaining. I have to admit I was terribly wrong about my numbers. I hope I'm wrong again about who is going to win this.

I heard Senator Jon Erpenbach on NPR today, making sense of his decision to flee the state. He wanted to delay the bill being passed so that the people could protest. Okay. That kind of makes sense. The thing that was so odd was that he's my district's state senator. I wrote to him, and he read it! Instantly I feel so much more involved in politics. This was the national news!

I guess when you live in California, it's normal to see or hear your state on the national news, but when you live in Wisconsin, it's really quite rare. That's what I've noticed since I moved to the middle, sometimes called the "flyover zone," because the New Yorkers and Californians just fly over it, but they think that they are really where it's at. Sometimes, they're right. No one normally even knows where Wisconsin is. It's like, you know, somewhere up there with Michigan or Minnesota or something. I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't know that Chicago is 170 miles from my house. I guess that's pretty far, actually. I just digressed. So sorry.

Any predictions, America? How will our labor dispute end?

Reporting live from Wisconsin, this is Cellar Door signing out.