{"id":2056,"date":"2009-05-01T12:38:03","date_gmt":"2009-05-01T17:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=2056"},"modified":"2017-03-02T18:25:36","modified_gmt":"2017-03-02T23:25:36","slug":"faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=2056","title":{"rendered":"Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Faith can be as blind as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.duluthnewstribune.com\/?event=article&#038;id=119094&#038;group=home\">the riposte <\/a>School Board member Ann Wasson aimed at Kent Worley, Duluth&#8217;s renowned landscape architect. (Oh excuse me. As Ann points out he no longer lives one block from Ordean but has moved out of state. That should disqualify his expertise.)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d have preferred to have read the rebuttal of a MNDOT engineer or a City Planner willing to risk their professional reputation than Ms. Wasson&#8217;s views. I have rarely heard Ann ask questions during school board meetings. Silence makes them so much shorter. She finally roused herself to ask a number of questions of <strong>Let Duluth Vote&#8217;s <\/strong>Art Johnston when he made a presentation about how a Plan B could work last Tuesday. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8220;faith is closing your eyes and following the breath of your soul&#8230;&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Kent Worley is a professional who was the brainchild behind Duluth&#8217;s most significant face lift in fifty years &#8211; the remarkable I-35 extension through Duluth. That required a passing understanding of traffic.<\/p>\n<p>Said Ms. Wasson: &#8220;Worley&#8217;s commentary was typical of some of the full-time facilities plan critics who have emerged: Shoot first and discover facts later.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ann does not seem to realize that Kent is no Johnny-come-lately to this discussion. Even before this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.letduluthvote.com\/Debate\/ordean_east.htm\">Sept. 2007 <\/a>item on the <strong>Let Duluth Vote <\/strong> website he had been criticizing the site&#8217;s inadequacy. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Humanity&#8217;s first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And faith can promote condescension such as this: &#8220;The next time Worley returns to Duluth from his new home in Michigan, I invite him to join me for a tour of the Ordean site to get the real facts about Duluth&#8217;s newest high school.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ann says that: &#8220;It would have been easy to keep every school open, to ignore critical repairs, and to tell another generation of students the political climate wasn&#8217;t quite ready to improve education.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There will be regrets. I finally got the open enrollment figures which show that the Duluth Schools are hemorrhaging students. That&#8217;s what had my blood boiling last night. I mean to put a little report together to show that if this tend continues the Red Plan will cripple our schools. The open enrollment figures show a trend line that should keep any thinking school board member awake at night.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, I&#8217;m sure that this trend will not be noticed by the Chamber of Commerce&#8217;s business study to be conducted up at UMD. NOPE! I expect they will find that the short term gains of a dozen local contractors will be more than worth sacrificing our schools in the long term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Faith can be as blind as the riposte School Board member Ann Wasson aimed at Kent Worley, Duluth&#8217;s renowned landscape architect. (Oh excuse me&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056"}],"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=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20754,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions\/20754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}