{"id":16084,"date":"2016-04-11T09:15:28","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T14:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=16084"},"modified":"2016-04-11T10:41:59","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T15:41:59","slug":"our-better-angels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=16084","title":{"rendered":"Our Better Angels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cbsminnesota.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/12\/snow-sculpture.png?w=420&#038;h=315\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image found <a href=\"http:\/\/minnesota.cbslocal.com\/2012\/12\/19\/angel-snow-sculpture-honors-teachers-in-ct-school-tragedy\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As my regular readers know I have a thing for Abe Lincoln. No President had a harder row to hoe and he did the impossible. He saved the Union which was his aim. He  spoke about our better angels and I too have always looked for them myself.<\/p>\n<p>I believe the minority in the recent vote on our School Board to at least explore negotiations with our local charter school have been on the side of the angels and I believe the larger Duluth public agrees. The latest evidence of this, though modest comes from the New Tribune&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/duluthnews\/?fref=ts\">Facebook Page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Both Nora and Alanna spoke eloquently in defense of their opposing views about a sale of Central to &#8220;Edison.&#8221; As of this moment Alanna has 78 likes pure and simple and Nora has 45 responses of which three are &#8220;sad faces&#8221; and the likes are split with a slight edge of 23 likes to 19 dislikes. I couldn&#8217;t help but notice that three of the likes were members of my church congregation so I am fully aware that they must disagree with me as well. Its a sign of the education civil war that keeps roiling under the surface of Duluth.<\/p>\n<p>In everything but our public schools Duluth has been firing on all cylinders recently. One of my favorite<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/bb\/not-all-forgotten-american-cities-are-struggling\/\"> public thinkers former NPR commentator James Fallows<\/a> comments on some small cities in the US that are overcoming decades of tough times. Duluth makes his list. A similar thumbs up comes from a writer at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/notes\/all\/2015\/10\/the-american-futures-blog\/411148\/#note-477639\">the Atlantic<\/a>.  How sad it is then, that our public schools over shot for the moon with its vast building plan and are tumbling in space.<\/p>\n<p>There may be hope. Our close mouthed Administration has put a &#8220;placeholder&#8221; on our Business Committee Agenda for today&#8217;s 4pm meeting at Old Central. It is about something concerning our Central Property and a possible offer. It remains to be seen what it might be. Nora Sandstad my have already been let in on a secret. At our Thursday meeting killing further negotiations with the DPSA she said she had recently spoken to a developer about how choice the property is and she expressed confidence that a sale would be coming up soon. Maybe but I&#8217;m always the last to learn what our Administration is doing. I have a leaky blog you see.<\/p>\n<p>Its been a long time since Duluth was getting such positive notice in the national media. I still think we are missing an opportunity to heal some wounds by welcoming our charter as our partner in the education of Duluth&#8217;s children. Its the sort of thing better angels concern themselves with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image found here. As my regular readers know I have a thing for Abe Lincoln. No President had a harder row to hoe and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16084"}],"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=16084"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16089,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16084\/revisions\/16089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}