Day 332: About Rush

This is Day 332 of 15 Days to Flatten the Curve. Deb and I are healthy and doing well.

It’s officially Soup Season. Despite lengthening days and glimpses of bright sunshine, we’re staring at early-morning temperatures around zero, occasionally dipping into the negatives. It sure feels like we have a long way to go ’til something better comes along.

A big bowl of hot chicken tortilla soup (pictured) on a bitter-cold evening satisfies, warming my soul as well as my bones. A shot of tequila doesn’t hurt, either.

Ernie is a 16-ton block of ice at the moment, sitting dormant in the driveway, surrounded by snow and ice. Ditto our covered Bumper Bunker in the back yard. This is the first winter I’ve had an RV in my life, and honestly I find myself wondering if I did all of that pre-storage stuff right last fall.

I guess I’ll get my answer in a month or so, when we awaken the bus and bring its systems back online. Our upcoming maiden voyage will tell the tale.

Looking at the extended forecast, I see a stretch of high 30s and low 40s next week. That’s more like it. Once we get there I’ll plug-in the engine-block heater for a few hours, crank up that big diesel and let it run a while. If the weather stays just warm enough just long enough, I’d like to do the same for the generator up front. We’ll see.

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It was a couple of weeks ago, as I recall, on a Tuesday, that Rush Limbaugh last sat behind The Golden EIB Microphone. I listened to that program from beginning to end, afterward remarking to Deb that it might be the last time we’d hear him.

He was sharp that afternoon, but he struggled to be sharp. He misspoke twice, uncharacteristically, issuing his trademark corrections on the back side of Obscene Profit Timeouts. As he’d done the preceding few days, at the end of the broadcast he thanked the “standby guest host” who was ready and waiting had he been unable to finish the program. (That day it was Mark Steyn.) All signs pointed toward what he’d foreshadowed weeks before:

“You have no idea what you all have meant to me and my family. The day’s gonna come, folks, where I’m not gonna be able to do this. I don’t know when that is. I want to be able to do it for as long as I want to do it. I want to, but the day will come where I’m not going to be able to, and I want you to understand that even when the day comes, I’d like to be here. ‘Cause I have this sense of needing to constantly show my appreciation for all that you have done and meant to me.”

Once upon a time I didn’t “get” Rush. One of the most valuable commitments I’ve ever made, with the exception of spending the rest of my life with Deb, was over a dozen years ago choosing to listen to The Rush Limbaugh Show, all three hours of it, every day for a solid year. I’ll forever be grateful for what I came to understand about the man, and for being exposed to his passion for unapologetic Americanism, a passion that he and I shared.

It’s impossible to exaggerate Rush Limbaugh’s contributions to the country he served through his craft, not to mention the impact he had on our public discourse, talk radio in particular and AM radio in general. And though The Hateful Left can’t restrain themselves from celebrating his death, they can no more diminish him than they can defeat the Founding Principles on which he stood.

Since noon yesterday there’s been much public wondering about who’s the likely heir to Rush’s legacy. The list is long, certainly, of high-profile conservative personalities who’ve walked a road he paved.

That misses the point. When we consider who’ll carry the torch from here, I think Rush would agree that there’s a better question to be asking — what about you and me?

Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free. And may you rest in peace, Rush Hudson Limbaugh III.

#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath

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