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HOG HEAVEN It’s hard to believe that the recent floods
brought good news to any living creature, but that’s just because you
haven’t heard about Doctor, Nicky, Sleepy, and Bucket Head. They’re four of the 65 pigs rescued from a 20-mile
stretch of the “Big Ditch” levee in Oakville, Iowa (just across
the Mississippi river from Galesburg), by a coalition of animal-rights
activists from across the nation, alerted to the fact that stray pigs were
being shot. “There was a certain percentage of them that
were tough to catch because they were so happy,” says Tricia Barry, who works at the
175-acre Farm Sanctuary in New York, where all of the rescued pigs are now
under the loving care of vegetarians, as well as veterinarians from nearby
Cornell University. The slower rescuees had severe dehydration and sunburn;
Bucket Head, a large sow, was so named because she had found a trash can to
use as shade, resting her head inside for naps and walking around wearing
it as a hat. “Tests show pigs are smarter than dogs!”
Barry says. The same porkers, before the flood, lived in confined
animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, where some 37,000 of their former
colleagues escaped the rising waters by taking an early trip to the
slaughterhouse.
POMP AND CIRCUS DANCE A couple weeks ago, city community-relations director
Sandy Robinson,
homelessness czar to Mayor Tim Davlin, said he expected a number of area social-service agencies
to make several exciting announcements regarding homeless services to
coincide with a visit by President George W.
Bush’s go-to-guy on homelessness, Philip Mangano. Specifically,
Robinson mentioned the possibility of increased shelter space and hinted at
a day oasis, but he also said he didn’t want to steal the
groups’ thunder by naming the agencies and their planned programs. To see exactly what’s in store we — and
the homeless — will just have to wait for Mangano to finish
gladhanding Davlin and members of the Greater Springfield Chamber of
Commerce, touring the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, and
making several other stops before concluding the trip with a forum on
homelessness issues, some of which apparently have been solved since early
July. If you want to check out the presentation, it’s being given at
6:30 p.m. today, Thursday, July 17, at the Dove Conference Center of the
Prairie Heart Institute at St. John’s Hospital, 619 E. Mason St.
HIS BLOOD PRESSURE, NOT HIS PAY, WENT UP The past month could be called nothing short of a
media feeding frenzy, as the State
Journal-Register and other Springfield news
outlets circled Brian Fitzgerald, City Water, Light & Power’s project manager.
Fitzgerald’s picture appeared on the
daily’s front page and his name surfaced in several of its recent
articles — all because he was offered another job and CWLP general
manager Todd Renfrow wanted to make him a counteroffer. Fitzgerald’s not happy
with the attention, his kids’ sudden awareness of his salary, or what
he calls mischaracterizations of his loyalty, but, he says, what really
bothers him is that no one from the SJ-R even talked to him. “It’s an issue of ethics . . . the story
leads somewhere and the individual never called,” Fitzgerald says of
the initial SJ-R story
that broke news of his possible career change. The part of the story that hasn’t been told, he
says, is that the new job isn’t all about money — it’s
also close to his hometown and his parents. Even if the City Council
approves an ordinance increasing his salary from $116,153 to $175,000 a
year (the measure failed Tuesday but will be reconsidered at a special
meeting at noon tomorrow), Fitzgerald says he’ll still probably take
the opportunity to move on.
Aldermen will consider salary increases for four
other CWLP managers, who have all received other job offers, Renfrow
reported Tuesday. Including Fitzgerald’s salary hike, CWLP figures,
the managers’ combined raises would total $180,000. An ordinance repealing a salary cap barring pay
raises of more than 5 percent for city employees and an ordinance giving
Renfrow the power to negotiate employee contracts — both without
aldermanic approval — were thrown out Tuesday.
THEY ALL WORE PANTS Something unusual happened Sunday at the Springfield
Sliders baseball game. Sliders shortstop Elliot
Soto led off the homeboys’ first at-bat
with a walk. While the next Slider was at the plate, eventually striking
out, Soto stole second. The third Slider batter telegraphed a bunt, pulling
the third baseman away from his bag and allowing Soto to steal again. And
finally, on a wild pitch that got away from the catcher, Soto came home,
thus wringing a run from an inning during which there were no balls in
play, no errors, and no one left on. “Kind of an anomaly in
baseball,” says Sliders statistician Jay
Gundy.
But even more unusual was the little gaggle of nerds
sitting in the bleachers, squinting against the sun. It was the first
meeting IRL of Springfield bloggers — a group that took offense a few
months ago when Cap City called them pantsless persons living in their
parents’ basements. For days in advance they had chattered about
their baseball outing, but when Sunday rolled around — beautiful
weather, free tickets (every Sunday home game, courtesy of County Market),
and an extra-innings spectacular Sliders victory — a mere handful of
bloggers showed up. Says our brave favorite (a pants-wearing,
truth-speaking soul): “Apparently getting bloggers to dress and leave
their parents’ basement is more difficult than we thought. Turnout
was dismal.”
This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2008.
