{"id":15158,"date":"2015-09-28T05:30:31","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T10:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=15158"},"modified":"2015-09-28T05:43:37","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T10:43:37","slug":"3-am-to-5-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=15158","title":{"rendered":"3 AM to 5 AM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A recurring theme of this blog since the Red Plan smacked me up side the head is my disturbed sleep. I crashed just after the ten O&#8217;clock news began. Claudia was watching Father Brown on PBS instead of news pablum and I crawled into bed. I know I fell asleep immediately because I didn&#8217;t wake up when she finally came to bed. I woke up at 3AM from a dream about the school board race. That was five straight hours of sleep. It probably isn&#8217;t considered sufficient to ward off Alzheimer&#8217;s but it worked for me.<\/p>\n<p>Five hours of making apple cider probably helped me fall asleep. We got a little over three gallons. (So much easier to buy it in the store.) I&#8217;d spent about six hours over the past week repairing damaged cider pressing equipment. The cider is sweet, almost cloying, but its from our tree. <\/p>\n<p>This morning I woke up knowing that I had one last long political job to do before going out and putting up lawnsigns for Alanna and Loren. I have to finish the job of filing six months of paperwork and get it off my floor. Last week&#8217;s rainy weather was great for starting this task. I filled up my recycling bin for the Friday pick-up but now have to categorize, label and stuff folders with the remainder. Once that&#8217;s done I&#8217;ll have the month of October to campaign for some sanity with few distractions.<\/p>\n<p>Very recently I ran across an occasional acquaintance who always starts a good-natured conversation with me about the School Board. He asked me who I thought had done the best at the Chamber forum and I said I thought it was Loren Martell. He told me an acquaintance of his thought Alanna had done the best. I quickly added that I thought Alanna was a close second. <\/p>\n<p>For the record, I&#8217;d say Loren had the most to gain. He&#8217;s such a known quantity based on his disgraceful treatment by our school board and his resultant microscopic column describing our meetings that his presentation had to be a revelation to his detractors. He was not only knowledgeable and articulate but soft spoken. Unlike Alanna, Loren took a macro look at the District and made so much sense that no one could fault his analysis&#8230;..except for me. I think he&#8217;s far too optimistic about our ability to lease Central High.<\/p>\n<p>Alanna demonstrated deep knowledge of the District on the micro level &#8211; in the classroom with the state laws and federal demands made on our teachers. Alanna also had the most laid back, non threatening, and good-hearted manner whereas Loren was focused.<\/p>\n<p>I was curious about where my occasional acquaintance got his view of the debate and it was apparently one of the DFLers who&#8217;s party gave the endorsement to Alanna&#8217;s alternative, Renee VanNett. In this DFLer&#8217;s view Alanna won hands down. I was gratified to hear this and it echoed what I&#8217;d heard from a couple other DFL sources &#8211; that the DFL had some buyer&#8217;s remorse for their premature endorsement which came before School Board filings opened.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not the only critic of the DFL. The Trib tsk tisked the endorsements a couple months ago. The DFL rushed to replace the discredited members of the school board with new allies for the remaining Art Johnston persecutors. I&#8217;ve been quick to point out what I regard as weaknesses in these candidates: prejudgment of Art, failure to attend meetings, refusal to meet with me right here on my blog. As I told my acquaintance this may not encourage these new board members to work with me should they be elected. Oh well. <\/p>\n<p>One more thought about political parties. In a lot of ways political organizations can be &#8220;us&#8221; organizations like a fraternity or a social club. When this happens they promote their team wholeheartedly without ever acknowledging that there may be other folks who are superior to theirs. <\/p>\n<p>Fortunately for my favored candidates, most voters coming to the polls in November will pay scant attention to the phrase &#8220;DFL endorsed&#8221; when they cast their ballots. In fact, a lot of today&#8217;s fractious school board members were <em>DFL endorsed<\/em>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A recurring theme of this blog since the Red Plan smacked me up side the head is my disturbed sleep. I crashed just after&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15158"}],"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=15158"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15162,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15158\/revisions\/15162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}