{"id":30490,"date":"2020-05-09T13:58:15","date_gmt":"2020-05-09T18:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=30490"},"modified":"2020-05-09T14:23:51","modified_gmt":"2020-05-09T19:23:51","slug":"lost-and-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=30490","title":{"rendered":"Lost and Found"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For two years I&#8217;ve been looking for this map.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/49871292423_c05b2e5e80_z.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Its a map from the records of the US military and it shows the terrain my Grandfather&#8217;s company traveled for the days leading up to his getting shot to hell in France at a village named <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=26149\">Sechault<\/a>. In 2018 I finally got a chance to visit the village a hundred years after my Grandfather&#8217;s war came to a bullet riddled end. Not his life. The Congressional Medal of Honor he was awarded afterward really made his life. Its one of several books I&#8217;d like to write. But although I turned my office inside out to find it I never did. Until yesterday when I was working on another book for this congressional campaign. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Although I&#8217;ve been planning to write this book for better than a year (its but the latest of a half dozen such stalled books) I found myself postponing until I began to resemble the Hare in the fable of his race with a turtle. The Month of May was really my last chance to make a go of it before I filed to challenge Congressman Pete Stauber in the August Republican primary. I even sputtered the first two days in May but then I hit my stride as I thought through how to compose the book. My challenge for the rest of May is to assemble it and connect the pieces. And I had a brainstorm yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>Another of the books I previously planned to write was about my epic fight with the Duluth School Board and a fortune 500 enabler that successfully conspired to deprive the citizens of Duluth from the chance of voting on what turned out to be a ruinous public school building plan. I didn&#8217;t object so much to the potential ruin, but I raised hell for four years about stealing our right to vote although I correctly anticipated it would be bad for our children. I took in money for 200 book sales but the fight took a toll on me and my ardor waned. I ended up returning all the money I&#8217;d collected. All that remained was reams of paperwork, court documents, an extensive webpage called Let Duluth Vote, file folders worth of newspaper clippings and a book cover page I had designed that proved to be a pretty successful advertisement for my planned book. The poster has been tucked against the side of my office storage room for five years or more.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/49872135422_5662feb7a1.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Since my book for Congress is about the excellent Congressperson I would be I&#8217;ve wrestled to decide how to cover the expanse called the Red Plan. That was the name of the ruinous school building plan. Yesterday it hit me. I already had a lot of material from my school board experience to pique the interest of voters in Minnesota. I could just use the chapter page on the Red Plan with one or  two page chapter summarizing four  years of Civic trauma. So, I took the poster out to take a picture and place it into the pages I&#8217;ve been putting together. And then I turned the poster board around. Ta da! There was my map <a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=26149\">of Sechault<\/a>. I&#8217;d been searching for it in vain since packing to go to France. Oh how it would have helped me find my way around had I been able to locate it before my trip to the poppy covered fields of battle.<\/p>\n<p>I already have more than enough for a book assembled. But going through my work has been joyful. I&#8217;ve been so pleased to read the things I&#8217;ve written over the past two decades and more. I began teaching myself to write in earnest after losing a teaching job in 1987. I seem to have accomplished it. A lot of people visited this blog yesterday and poured over a number of posts that reflect how busy my mind has been since I commenced assembling a campaign book. <\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;m not only pasting old stuff in here. I&#8217;m still composing. Just this morning I cranked out just shy of 3,800 words that will likely become my call to action at the book&#8217;s end.<\/p>\n<p><strong>On another note:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On Friday I got a phone call invitation to join Congressman Stauber&#8217;s telephone town hall. I accepted it and spent an hour listening to Pete explain all the things he&#8217;s doing about corona virus while his President bollixes up the nation&#8217;s health. I pressed *3 to ask him a question but never got the chance. I did record an hour of his scintillating chat. If I can figure out how to put in on the blog I will do it. Its a great motivation to challenge Pete in August.<\/p>\n<p><em>With a word count of 814 in this post I&#8217;m way over 5000 words today. I&#8217;ll probably add double that with my continuing assembly this afternoon. By Monday I&#8217;ll be able to spend my time editing. I&#8217;m pretty good at it.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For two years I&#8217;ve been looking for this map. Its a map from the records of the US military and it shows the terrain&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,139,19,47,133],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30490"}],"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=30490"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30499,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30490\/revisions\/30499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}