{"id":12633,"date":"2015-01-14T16:16:02","date_gmt":"2015-01-14T21:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=12633"},"modified":"2015-01-15T08:38:32","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T13:38:32","slug":"12633","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=12633","title":{"rendered":"Harry Welty and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Month"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/2\/25\/ALEXANDER_TERRIBLE_HORRIBLE.jpg\/220px-ALEXANDER_TERRIBLE_HORRIBLE.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hat tip to author Judith Viorst and her book which I read to my children many years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Thank Goodness December, 2014 is behind me. I&#8217;ve never had a tougher public month in my life and the day of my Censure was an absolute low point. The month sounds like one of Garrison Keillor&#8217;s &#8220;worst case scenarios&#8221; only without the Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.  Well that&#8217;s not quite right. During one of my penitent nights after a board meeting Loren Martell looked up at me sympathetically and I told him I used to be a &#8220;pie in the sky&#8221; fellow but was now just a &#8220;pie in the eye&#8221; guy. So, I&#8217;ve been getting some pie.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a brief review. The mistakes began in the last days of November. I inadvertently mentioned the putative sale price of the Central property publicly thinking that only the buyers identities were being withheld. Oops. On November 29th there was a front page Duluth News Tribune story highlighting the price and <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=12215\">pointing the finger at me<\/a> for disclosing it &#8220;inadvertantly.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>On December 1st Attorney Mary Rice showed up to explain her damning report on Art Johnston and I was geared up to put her down. I was doing well until half way through the meeting <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=12280\">I began waltzing around like an ass<\/a> determined to demonstrate how a touch could end up looking like a shove. The meeting recessed with me looking like well, an ass, for five minutes while I thought to myself. &#8220;I&#8217;ve made a huge mistake.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>December 2nd, I was on the front page again with arms upraised in the act of &#8220;pantomiming&#8221; as Richard Thomas put it. But that wasn&#8217;t my only appearance in the paper. Much to the gratification of many of my once silent, long time critics, the DNT&#8217;s editorial board <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=12271\">tongue lashed me <\/a>for giving them what their reporter had been seeking for some time &#8211; the Central property sale price. Ironic yes, but accurate. I could have killed the deal. This was also the day that I was called and told that my Mom wasn&#8217;t doing so well by coincidence.<\/p>\n<p>December 5th <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=12301\">my Mom died<\/a>. It was a blessing but it was a strange and wonderful day. Following this I had a hundred detail related to settling accounts as my Mother&#8217;s legal co-conservator.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the month is something of a blur but I did attempt <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=12403\">a three week armistice<\/a> to see if I couldn&#8217;t work some peace mission with the School Board majority. No dice.<\/p>\n<p>Then On December 21st My fellow Board members <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=12526\">censured me<\/a> for disclosing the price of Central on the blog and for giving the Trib our school board attorney&#8217;s notes on crucifying Art Johnston. The next day my son came home to a third front page story about me on the Trib and my censure which my fellow board members kindly delayed to Christmas so I could get over grieving for my Mom.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m looking forward to more of 2015. I intend to test the theory that <em>whatever doesn&#8217;t kill you only makes you stronger.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On Decemer <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hat tip to author Judith Viorst and her book which I read to my children many years ago. Thank Goodness December, 2014 is behind&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,17,47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12633"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12637,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12633\/revisions\/12637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}