Originally published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune

by Susan Lenfestey

MACKINAC ISLAND, MICH. -- This is just where I needed to be. It's as devoid of any reminders of the crushing last weeks in Minnesota as anywhere I could go, short of Jupiter. Almost. Occasionally a small plane drones over the foggy gray woods, banking low over white pine and cedar, and brings back the obvious horrifying images.

The whole island is closed up. Only one bar and the grocery store are open. No one comes anywhere near my old, unheated house. No TV, no newspapers. I can pull extra comforters over my head and ignore the morning.

I came here to write but I'm not getting around to it. There's an old project hanging over my head but it seems as insignificant now as a spider's web. Maybe I should write instead about how it felt when the Wellstone campaign, hurtling toward victory like an overloaded freight train, had to put a screeching halt to all that momentum, and how the Mondale campaign had to cautiously pick through the smoke and debris and then quickly gather steam of its own.

Or how the Wellstone memorial service, hastily pulled together out of raw anguish by a handful of friends and two brave brothers, came to be so cruelly exploited by such mavens of taste as Jesse Ventura and Rush Limbaugh.

I've thought about tracking not only the chaos of those horrible days but the quirks of the various hangers-on who flocked to the campaign after the plane went down because they felt they had to do something: The ageless Mom Eaton, who flew down from Banff in her Lear Jet and spent every day rearranging endless platters of donated food for the campaign staff. The rock star's ex-wife from New York City or the hunk from L.A. with a rock star's name. The volunteer nobody knew but who said he knew everybody. The con who managed to get on the phone bank and tried to make dates with the women he called: Are you between the ages of 28 and 45? Yes? Good, would you mind meeting me for a drink later tonight? Not exactly what we meant when we said get out the vote.

Their stories are colorful, but it's the thousands of regular working people who came out on that bitter Election Day to knock on doors, wave home-made Mondale signs, and feel something they hadn't felt in years, who deserve some ink.

But I can't do it. My soul feels as if someone's pinning it down with a muddy boot.

I'm haunted by an image of the last days of the campaign. All of us in Minnesota are floating in lifeboats in the dark choppy ocean surrounded by ice chunks -- very post-Titanic. Along comes an elegant old ship, its worn but classic prow slicing slowly through the wreckage. SS MONDALE can be seen faintly, but distinctly, on its side. Ah, we breathe. We're saved. It's going to be OK.

But the brawny young men rowing the lifeboat don't get it. They don't like the look of this old ship. Instead, they turn us toward the buzz of a noisy motor, throttled back to near-idle. Over our protests they pull hard on the oars until we see the long snarky nose of a cigarette boat, painted in neon, advertising fast food and fuel. Norm Coleman's at the helm, in a faux nautical cap, beckoning.

"There's the answer!" they crow.

The SS MONDALE glides on by into the blackness, and the young men scramble on board the SS NORM, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves in the inky night.

Well, I'll quit with that. Looks like grief's moving to anger for many of us. I'm so sick of people saying, "It has to get worse before it gets better." Whose rule is that? Pretty silly way to run the universe, if you ask me.

The truth is, all I want to do right now is write a love letter to Fritz and tell him how his steady decency comforted us in our darkest time. How his energy lifted us. How his courage and selflessness made me proud to be a Minnesotan -- at least until that bleak Wednesday morning. And even then how his grace and dignity in defeat made me proud to be a Democrat.

I guess I'll go sit in the middle of this mossy island and listen to the woods and leave it at that.