{"id":36684,"date":"2025-07-22T20:51:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T01:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=36684"},"modified":"2025-08-07T09:47:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T14:47:14","slug":"the-busy-life-of-a-not-too-retiring-man-pt-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=36684","title":{"rendered":"The busy life of a not too retiring man, Pt. 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=36679\">Last post<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=36691\">Next post<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Crow rescue Society<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54671611260_ed5e895313.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Its dusk the next day and I am going to finish this story. I&#8217;ve added one today. The League of Women&#8217;s Voters held a candidate&#8217;s forum at the PACT office in City Hall. Afterwards I had a sobering chat with candidate and old friend Loren Martel that came too late for me to bow out of the campaign. He showed me three sheets of paper that I will need time to digest. Its been eight years since I paid much attention to the School Board in the DNT news blackout. No Education reporters barely a daily paper. <\/p>\n<p>I have been looking forward to hiring more teachers with the the 20 year Red Plan bonds coming to an end. It doesn&#8217;t look that will happen. It seems that our teachers got a well deserved raise based on the coming end of bond payments. But it was a massive raise and it means that we will not be able to hire additional teachers to reduce class sizes. That at least based on a short conversation is what I imagine will be our near future. <\/p>\n<p>Oh and the Union official I showed my returned questionnaire to informed me that a document I failed to read and sign was the reason I had not qualified to talk to the union endorsement committee. I didn&#8217;t recall seeing it but it strikes me as a particularly small minded thing to stiff a candidate that the union might have to deal with should I be elected. But there were those crows yesterday<\/p>\n<p>I took a walk around Ordean East Middle School. As I rounded the athletic fields where I&#8217;ve watched my younger Grandson play soccer I saw a crow trapped in the batting cage. He claws got tangled in the netting when he crashed from one side to the other. I decided to try and free him so I walked on to third street and walked up Hawthorn to see if I could find a way past the high chain link fences. Nope. That didn&#8217;t stop me from seeing if I was too thick to squeeze under a gate. I got to my hips and realized I&#8217;d leave something behind if I tried any harder. So I made a call to a School Board member I knew Henry Banks. I left a message. Then I called the Superintendent&#8217;s office and explained my challenge. Then I went around the silent building knocking on all the doors. <\/p>\n<p>A petite lady walking a tiny terrier with a night light on its collar said hello. She obviously knew me and when I confessed I didn&#8217;t recognize her she reminded me that she was the girl friend of the sociopath who took me for a ride a decade ago by digging my daughter&#8217;s house into a hole. Oh God. I wrote about him but can&#8217;t think of his name. Anyway we both agreed he was a sociopath and she added narcissist. About the crow she had seen it earlier in the cage and some boys playing soccer told her it had been there a few days.<\/p>\n<p>Back to the other side of the fields I saw an older woman and her dog staring at the crow. We compared notes. She had just seen it. As a person who feeds crows she was as concerned as I was. She asked if I could climb the fences that are posted no climbing. I told her about my failed attempt to shimmy under them. She wondered if a thin kid could climb the fence&#8230;she mention a girl. I told her the crow had been in there for a while. She mused he was probably hungry she went home to get some peanuts to feed him as she fed other crows.<br \/>\nShe wasn&#8217;t gone long when a mother and her daughter showed up. In a flash the daughter shimmied under the fence ran to the cage and lifted the netting to get in. This did not amuse the crow.<\/p>\n<p>I suggested using a stick to lift the netting and went to the woods behind me to grab one with a fork. I returned and tossed it to her. Henry Banks called me. After I told him who I was he said there was nothing on his answering machine. (The next morning the Superintendent&#8217;s secretary would call and tell my my message was too garbled for them to follow) I explained that the Crow rescue society was about to free the crow and thanked him for returning my call. The girl&#8217;s mother went home to get some caramel corn to feed the hungry bird.<\/p>\n<p>I walked home.<\/p>\n<p>Now I&#8217;ll try to keep my eyes open and read more about the war in North Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last post Next post The Crow rescue Society Its dusk the next day and I am going to finish this story. I&#8217;ve added one&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36684"}],"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=36684"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36696,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36684\/revisions\/36696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}