Memorial Day
Memorial Day thoughts
Yesterday was Memorial Day in the Northwoods.
Across Wisconsin’s Northland, crowds gathered in remembrance of those who gave their lives in the service of our Country.
The preceding two weeks, as they are every year, were alive with the furious preparations of County Veterans Service Offices, Veterans groups, and a small army of sextons, groundskeepers, and caretaker associations. They set themselves to cleaning headstones, planting flags, straightening and replacing markers, and carefully planning the many parades, speeches, and firing squads of the day. You see, a lot more goes into Memorial Day than one might think.
I spent the morning with my local American Legion post, traveling from site to site to conduct observances. It was a beautiful day, a perfect mix of sun and warmth, and I was impressed by the turnout at each location we visited. But cynics like me can never be happy, we must always have something to pick at, and I found my attention drawn to the minority.
That minority that treats the day, not as one of solemn contemplation, but as the opening day of Summer. I’m usually not one to tell others what they should and shouldn’t do. It is, after all, a free country, and there’s an argument to be made that those who treat Memorial Day as a recreational holiday are enjoying the very peace and pleasures that our Military dead fought to make possible…but I won’t make that argument and I won’t lie, the steady procession of boats, ATV’s, UTV’s, and every other “V” of the aquatic or terrestrial variety, annoyed me.
I know, I’m a buzzkill, but my personal dourness isn’t the only thing at work here and I’ll attempt to articulate the problem as I see it.
WE’RE AT WAR, AMERICA’S AT THE MALL
Those words, attributed to a United States Army Lieutenant Colonel by a CBS Reporter at the height of the Iraq War, really capture my and many other GWOT/OEF/OIF Veterans’ feelings on their time spent fighting America’s wars over the last thirty or so years.
Unlike previous conflicts in which conscription was a very real possibility for younger men, our post 9/11 service seemed to exist in a bubble, divorced and sequestered from the lives of our civilian counterparts. I know that for me and millions of my fellow Veterans, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dominated our lives. We, and everyone we knew, were either returning from, preparing for, or actively on, a deployment overseas.
Yes, we signed up for it. We were a professional, all-volunteer force, fully aware of what we were going to be asked, nay ordered, to do. In that sense, we had and have no right to complain and I, like many others, was enthusiastic about deploying. Before my first tour I remember my excitement at the opportunity to do my job where I felt it mattered. But on my second deployment, 15 months after returning from my first, I started to feel the ache of something eating at my soul.
I was tired, and not just physically. That weariness was a resentment at what, at times, seemed to be the outright ambivalence of the rest of America. It festered quietly in the background as my life seemed to have been waylaid, paused for years at a time, while the lives of my friends and peers who hadn’t joined the Military, continued. We GWOT Veterans gave so much of our lives, sacrificed so much of ourselves, and watched comrades not make it home, while it seemed that America, as a whole, couldn’t have cared less.
It is of course, no match for the similar bitterness felt by Vietnam Veterans, I would never claim that, but it was there and it was real. Personal sacrifice is one of the many burdens of Military service and it’s why I didn’t aim for a twenty-year career in the Army. Perhaps it would be better for Veterans to bear it in silence, and I would, if I didn’t think that doing so would have significantly negative consequences for our Country.
A CHANGING OF THE GUARD
Times change and so do the people. Today, for America’s Veterans, that means saying goodbye to the last of our World War Two and Korean War comrades as that generation has almost entirely disappeared. In the coming years, the number of surviving Vietnam, and Vietnam-era, (VAVE) Veterans will decline and similarly dwindle before vanishing. Statistical projections predict that fewer than one million Veterans of that generation will still be with us fifteen years from now, down from an existing population of approximately six million.
The aging and ultimately, dying off, of VAVE Veterans will prove catastrophic for Veterans Service Organizations like the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, a subject I intend to write more about in the future, but its impact won’t be confined to those groups. It will also be devastating for the relationship between America’s citizenry and its Military.
In 2011 the Pew Research Center studied that very relationship. Adjusting their results for the 15 years that have passed, their results would look like this:
I have an immediate family member who is/was a Veteran
65 and older: >75%
45-64: 57%
33-44: ~33%
As memories of the draft fade from the consciousness of America’s civilians, their distance from their Military, both emotionally and practically, increases. This “gulf” between Service Members, Veterans and everyone else widens with each passing day. In 2022, Anthony Kurta, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness said that “this disconnect is characterized by misconceptions, a lack of knowledge and an inability to identify with those who serve.”
It wouldn’t be a big deal if emotional distance and knowledge were the only consequences of the gap. Most Americans don’t identify with the people who pick up their trash, build their roads, or grow their food. One more career field being added to that list wouldn’t be the end of the world, but the Military is different because it deals in lethality. At the end of the day, our Military exists to fight, kill, and ultimately die, in defense of our Republic and its interests. Because of that, this gap is alarming and should set off blaring claxons in the halls of the Pentagon and Congress.
Admiral Mike Mullen summed it up nicely in an address he made at West Point when he said that, “I fear [civilians] do not know us. I fear they do not comprehend the full weight of the burden we carry or the price we pay when we return from battle…. people uninformed about what they are asking the military to endure is a people inevitably unable to fully grasp the scope of the responsibilities our Constitution levies upon them.”
The electorate, the American people, who through their elected leaders make decisions about the use of our Military, simply can’t afford to be ignorant of what those decisions mean for the men and women tasked with executing them. As fewer Americans are connected to the Military we need touchpoints, avenues of connection for them to understand the ramifications of their choices, more than ever.
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So what does any of that have to do with Memorial Day and the non-observing minority that rankled me yesterday?
The answer is simple, Memorial Day is one of those points of connection. By seeing the graves and hearing the names of the fallen, America’s civilians can reacquaint themselves with the costs of war and hopefully, make more responsible decisions in the future. I am not going to opine on the reasonableness or legitimacy of some of those past decisions, though I would say that Veterans provide some of the most powerful criticisms of the conflicts in which they served.
Memorial Day is not a day for grilling, drinking, and partying. It is not, and should not be, treated as an occasion for flippant recreation. We should not hear salutations of “Happy Memorial Day!”
Memorial Day is the one day we set aside each year for deliberate reflection, mourning, and gratitude. Treat it with the dignity and respect that it deserves.
I’m not asking you to observe it out of some feeling of chauvinistic militarism or performative patriotism. I’m asking you to observe it for the sake of America’s sons and daughters who serve, and will serve, our Country in the future. By honoring those who have sacrificed their lives for our country, we can, I hope, honor, and do right by, those who have taken their place.
Price SHeriff I
THE PRICE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE RACE
If you arrived here because you want actual information on the candidates and the race you can skip this one. It’s an introductory piece to provide readers with perspective on who I am, why I’m interested, and what they can expect. It’s also painfully long.
Let this be my opening article in a series I intend to write covering the campaigns of Robert Hawn and Waldemar Madsen for election to the office of Sheriff of Price County. Both candidates are running as Republicans and will face off in the partisan primary election scheduled for August 11, whoever wins that primary is almost assured to win the general election in the fall. Polling isn’t really a thing in local elections, but Hawn must be considered the front-runner and favorite to win with Madsen playing the role of challenger. I plan to publish detailed pieces on each candidate but before I begin, I’d like to explain my interest in the election and, in the name of transparency, disclose some things so readers can understand my perspective.
THE ASSASINATION OF DERWIN BROWN
I didn’t grow up in the Northwoods. My Mother, a native of Prentice, had me while she was a graduate student at UW-Madison and we later moved to metropolitan Atlanta when she took a position at Emory. I grew up in a small city that lies directly adjacent to Atlanta itself and serves as the seat of DeKalb County.
When I was in school my parents divorced and my grandmother, a retired teacher, came down from Rice Lake to live with us and help my mother through the process. During the week she would volunteer at the DeKalb County Jail teaching GED classes to juveniles awaiting trial. She found the work rewarding and over time came to know many of the jailers and deputies, one of whom was Deputy Patrick Cuffy, a man she remembers as being both kind and helpful. When summer came my grandmother returned to Wisconsin and her time at the jail ended. Cuffy and the Sheriff’s Office would have faded from her memory, and from our family’s consciousness, were it not for an event later that year.
On the morning of December 15th, 2000, a Captain with the DeKalb County Police Department was gunned down in his home’s driveway not far from where we lived. The victim, Derwin Brown, was not just a police official, but was also the sheriff-elect, due to be sworn in just three days later. Brown, just 46 years old at the time of his death, was a 23-year police veteran and a father of five. He’d campaigned on an anti-corruption platform and had managed to defeat incumbent Sydney Dorsey. Brown’s murder shook the County, not just because of his importance to our community and his family, but because an investigation revealed that it was not a random act of violence, or some kind of revenge by a criminal Brown encountered through his police work. Derwin Brown’s murder was a political assassination, and his killers were DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office deputies, acting at the behest of out-going Sheriff Dorsey, and under the direction of Deputy Cuffy.
There is much more to Derwin Brown’s story, and the fallout from his death, than I’m going to mention here but his death is where my interest, and skepticism, of Sheriffs began.
You see, Sheriffs, the holders of the actual office - not deputies, are like little kings and their counties are their kingdoms. Unlike Police Chiefs, Troopers/Patrolmen, or State and Federal agents, Sheriffs answer to no one but voters. In fact, if we don’t count prosecutors, the office of sheriff is the only publicly elected law enforcement office in the country. So long as they avoid the direct attention of say, a state’s attorney general or investigative agency, there’s very little in the way of a check on their power. A judge or district attorney can slap something they’ve done down but that’s hardly a supervisory relationship. They don’t answer to their county’s board, and they can’t be fired for substandard performance like in the case of a chief of police. Incumbent sheriffs tend to win reelection simply because they have considerable name recognition which is often the deciding factor in local elections.
We invest a great deal of trust and extend a substantial amount of latitude to our Sheriffs. America’s freedoms and protections are only as good as the person behind the desk who pulls the metaphorical levers and so it is extremely important that when we vote, we elect the right person for the job. The Sheriff is the only person on the ballot who we give the right to wear death on his or her hip. They are the coercive power of the state personified and we must get things right when it comes to them.
A MIDWEST COWBOY
A long time ago in a Northwoods county far, far away there was once a sheriff who seemed to model himself after television’s Walt Longmire. A motorcycle loving former detective, his bearded visage was never complete without a Stetson. He loved a good photo-op and his social media accounts were flooded with selfies of him at the gym. He seemed to crave attention and even has an IMDB page from his appearances in criminal documentaries. I’ve learned that he’s recently been diagnosed with cancer and as he’s no longer in office I will refrain from naming him, I’ll simply call him Longmire. I now wish him nothing but peace, healing, and happiness, but during his time in office I was less than pleased with him.
I first encountered Longmire at meetings of his county board’s veteran services subcommittee. These meetings were turbulent as there was a great deal of frustration with the chairman of the subcommittee, a man who was later successfully recalled from office, who I’ll call Porky. Porky was also chair of the county’s law enforcement subcommittee and played a prominent role on the county’s budget subcommittee. When an allegation surfaced that Porky jabbed a veteran at the close of one of the meetings, Sheriff Longmire became incensed at a suggestion that it might constitute a conflict of interest for his office to investigate the incident. He spun the suggestion as an attack on his integrity and the professionalism of his office. I found Longmire’s defensiveness to be both immature and odd in a Shakesperean “methinks thou dost protest too much” kind of way, but I let it go.
Later, when a Veteran Service Office employee resigned, Longmire insisted that he investigate allegations against that employee personally. I thought that was strange and a tad bit inappropriate.
At the time, I worked as a non-sworn employee of a Police Department in Longmire’s county and came to hear many stories about the Sheriff. Deputies were unhappy with his leadership, subordinate leaders in his organization lamented his narcissism and lack of management skills, and there were even allegations that he was chasing away detectives, long-time employees, and the state patrol from the county. He was difficult to work with and was quick to berate law enforcement officers on the phone before he had all the facts - he would even hang up mid-call.
A certain amount of complaining is natural in any organization and a leader’s job is a lonely one, but I found the volume and nature of these complaints to be concerning. When Longmire, without any prior consultation or communication of his intentions, took steps to influence a board of trustees to effectively dismantle the police department for which I had once worked, I resolved to look into him.
I spoke to former employees and I submitted open records act requests to departments for which he’d worked and communities in which he’d resided. I heard some interesting tales but was unable to substantiate anything of note and so I ended up relegating much of the legend of Longmire to the domain of rumor.
It is very important that I now say that none of what I have said about Longmire thus far or going forward is objective fact, it is all my opinion and a recollection of my experiences. If you can guess Longmire’s true identity, please do not take any of what you read here as an attack on his reputation or a reason to think less of him. I will say that even today, I think he served his county relatively honorably and did the very best he could, I just take issue with his leadership style and a few of his decisions that I consider to be, quite frankly, bad.
I eventually found evidence of one of those bad decisions.
On a Sunday, two counties away, Longmire received a speeding ticket from the Wisconsin State Patrol. That ticket isn’t the issue, I have a speeding ticket on my own record myself, I didn’t care about that. The problem was that when Longmire was ticketed, he was driving his official, unmarked, Sheriff’s Office vehicle and, as I learned from State Patrol footage, a woman who I presume to be his girlfriend was in the passenger seat. I reported this to the County Board and filed a formal complaint. In my opinion, Longmire was using government resources for personal errands, an act of corruption, albeit minor, that constituted a violation of the public’s trust and his own office’s policies.
The story doesn’t end there though, a few days later when I visited the Sheriff Office’s records clerk to pay for an open records act request Longmire ambushed me in the department’s atrium. He approached me with aggressive body language and began to argue with me. This was incredibly inappropriate and poorly thought out, an official should not confront the complainant in a complaint against them, but we quickly moved the conversation to a conference room. I’d brought my uncle along because I expected this exact scenario to occur and I wanted a witness.
Longmire accused me of filing a fraudulent complaint against his girlfriend (now his fourth wife) with a governmental agency with which she was involved. I cannot disavow that act in strong enough terms, I had absolutely nothing to do with it and was not aware of it until Longmire brought it up. To this day I do not know who lodged that complaint but I can say that if I have a dispute with someone, it will be about a substantive issue and I will not involve anyone but that person. I was interested in his behavior, not that of his girlfriend.
Longmire told both my uncle and I that he could easily find out where we lived. He also said that he was traveling to, or returning from, a medical appointment when he was ticketed. When I challenged him about what kind of medical appointment would be booked on a Sunday, he retreated and later told the newspaper he was attending some kind of meeting when he received the ticket, so his story changed.
We went back and forth in this manner before the conversation moved in a more productive direction. I voiced certain concerns and he gave me a variety of assurances. I left the conference room satisfied and with my interest in Sheriff Longmire sated. Some months later he announced his retirement.
I am not so self-absorbed as to think that my complaint led directly to Longmire’s retirement, though I’m sure it was a factor. In many ways my time in the United States Army spoiled me. I didn’t realize it in the moment but the leaders with and under whom I served in the military were held to much higher standards and were quite simply better at being leaders than their civilian counterparts like Longmire. I expected a higher level of moral and ethical behavior from leaders like Longmire than a normal person probably would as I’d seen Army leaders, and even Commanders, relieved for much less than what Longmire had done. In that way, I was approaching things from a warped and unrealistic perspective.
When I contemplate my actions regarding Longmire, I realize there’s much I would do differently if I had the opportunity to relive things. I was somewhat petty and vengeful, qualities about myself that I have worked to change. Longmire certainly had and has flaws, as does everyone, including me and I have many. He was not grossly corrupt, he just made some bad choices, as we all do occasionally. I wish him nothing but the best going forward.
I recount this story, not out of pride or to relish in some kind of victory, but rather to establish my investigative bona fides, illustrate my continuing interest in the office of Sheriff, and demonstrate my past willingness to confront bad behavior on the part of elected officials or those seeking election.
WORKING FOR PRICE COUNTY
At the height of the Longmire saga, I was no longer employed by the police department that I’d mentioned earlier. I’d shifted to a position in that same municipality’s public works department, not because of any issues I had at the PD, but because I enjoyed public works more. To this day I haven’t been able to match the unique satisfaction I got from a hard day’s work at that department. For reasons I still haven’t been able to explain I especially enjoyed painting.
I departed that position after the head of the department, who was battling cancer, was forced to resign because of some distasteful machinations of the municipal board of trustees. In a move that I still consider to be blatant nepotism the board replaced that director with a man whose uncle was a trustee. The very word nepotism is derived from the Latin nepos meaning nephew so take from that what you will. I was not the only employee to leave, in a six-month period four other employees of that municipality were dismissed or, like me, departed of their own accord. Not counting the library, which was its own separate entity, every employee but the clerk fell to that small town’s Stalinesque purge, but that’s all a story for another time.
A short time later I sought and obtained employment as a deputy clerk of court with Price County. I’ve always had an interest in law and thought the position would afford me an opportunity to observe the legal process firsthand. The job primarily consisted of taking minutes of court proceedings and filing documents with some small amount of scheduling and customer service. I’d served on the County’s veteran commission since 2020, so I was familiar with the courthouse and some of its personalities. Because I’d served as an adjutant and administrative office manager in the Army, and served as the adjutant/secretary of, at that time, four different veteran and community service organizations, I thought I had the experience and tools to succeed. I was dreadfully wrong.
What I had in administrative and organizational skills did not make up for what I lacked in social intelligence. I had not, up until that point, ever worked in an environment that was dominated by women. Aside from the Judge, the District Attorney and his assistant, three men with whom I had very little interaction, the second floor of the courthouse was all women, and then me. I did not think this would be an issue, I was and am not, a sexist or some kind of male chauvinist, but I wasn’t sensitive to some of the things that would come with working in that environment.
I should have known something was wrong when, on my first day, buildings and grounds workers visited and made a show of counting heads. The running joke was that the clerk of courts office was something of a carousel or a game or musical chairs. I was told that I probably wouldn’t last long, the previous holders of my position left relatively quickly, and it was expected that I might do the same.
I entered a workspace that was fraught with animosity and strain.
Within my first three days I was called to HR and asked to identify problems I saw in the office. This more than anything set me up for failure and sabotaged my term of employment because I was thereafter seen as some kind of HR mole. When I entered rooms conversations turned to hushed tones and more than once I noticed peers, some of whom were quite senior and in their fifties, sniggering at me. I felt isolated and ostracized from the very beginning.
When I complained about some of the idiosyncrasies of the computer system in which we worked I was referred to HR in a manner reminiscent of a surprise intervention on an alcoholic. I did not raise my voice, I didn’t use profanity, and I didn’t have a breakdown, I simply expressed frustration in a way that in my past experiences of working in male-dominated spaces, was meant as an invitation for commiseration and fraternity. It was not seen that way by my coworkers.
A particularly bad episode arose when I encountered a visitor to the court with whom I was acquainted from my time at the aforementioned police department. The man was a social malcontent and the municipality had a restraining order against him on behalf of its employees because of his history of harassment. He was there to see the judicial assistant who was not in her office, and he recognized me and began following me. I agreed to help him find the judicial assistant, located her in an empty court room with another employee, and made the introduction. That other employee then lodged a complaint with my supervisor against me for interrupting her. I explained the context and background of my experience with the man and why I wanted to discharge him as quickly as possible, but she, and my supervisor, afforded me no understanding or grace. She, and many of the other employees with whom I dealt, were unwilling to work with me in any meaningful way. I won’t say that there wasn’t teamwork, there certainly was a team, but I was not a member, I was an opponent.
In the past I found it a common workplace practice to exchange personal phone numbers with coworkers, not for social reasons, but for times when coordination is needed. In the Army it was a first-day kind of thing, and I’d done it in every civilian job I’d had up until that point, I’d get my coworkers’ numbers and they’d get mine. I wrote my cell-phone number down on a sticky note in a way I thought was a courteous continuation of that tradition but never received the numbers of my peers. In the first week of the employment of another deputy clerk that person had everyone else’s number. I think maybe this was because I’m a man and perhaps that made my coworkers uncomfortable, but I found the contrast to be very telling.
I could write ten more pages filled with these kinds of examples, but I’ll refrain from the exercise. That said, I’ll add just one more example to the record I’ve begun here. As I’ve previously mentioned, I served on the Price County Veterans Commission from 2020 to 2025. It met once a quarter and required me to clock out from work 30 minutes earlier than usual. It was reflected in my time-card and was something I coordinated with my supervisor in advance so that I could make up for the missed time. When I attended one of these meetings the same sniggering mid-50s employee who’d reported me to my supervisor for “interrupting” her noticed and reported me to Human Resources for what she must have imagined was some kind of time-card abuse. I received an email from the County’s HR director that my pay would be docked, and this was done without coordination or communication with my supervisor. This is illustrative of the kind of environment that existed in the courthouse. That same employee routinely arrived at work ten minutes late, departed ten minutes early, and frequently enjoyed hour long lunches with her spouse in her closed office, but I refused to report her and thus engage in the petty tit-for-tat she seemed to be inviting.
The final straw came about three months into my employment when I made a mistake at work. The sort of mistake I made was serious but should not have constituted an event from which an employee could not recover. It was not a case of gross negligence or malfeasance but the result of taking a position for which no coherent standard operating procedure or continuity book existed and operating a system that lacked any kind of user guide or formal, or even informal, training program. The deputy clerk I’d replaced had made a similar and very serious mistake and was retained. I learned that just a short while later, someone in the office had apparently made the exact same mistake I’d made, yet all of the employees were retained.
In the aftermath of my mistake my supervisor informed me that “something needed to be done” and that some combination of Nick Trimner, the county’s administrator, and sheriff’s office leadership “wanted my job”. When I asked my supervisor if she would support me she told me that she would not. I was taken aback by her position, in my near-decade of service as an officer in the Army I’d found myself in precisely her position many times and had always backed up my people – it was expected of us to do so. As a leader we were taught that everything our teams did, or failed to do, was because of us. If one of my guys made a mistake I owned it and resolved to prevent it in the future, usually through additional training.
Because of her lack of support, and the general work environment, I immediately tendered my written resignation complete with a two-week notice. I didn’t need the job and felt that, even if I survived the mistake, my continued employment was untenable. Because I felt I had been on good terms with my supervisor I asked her if I could list the position on my resume and expect a positive reference. She replied that I could not, and I then informed her that if that courtesy would not be extended to me, I couldn’t reasonably be expected to extend the courtesy of a two-week notice to her and the county. I quit on the spot.
Later that day I received an email from another employee to my personal email address expressing regret at my departure. Beneath the text of that email was a forwarded email from the HR Director announcing my resignation to several people including Chief Deputy Robert Hawn and Administrator Nick Trimner, people I must, given that context, reasonably assume sought my termination.
I was and still am unhappy with my experiences working for Price County. I found the environment to be toxic, the employees to be, in many ways, unprofessional, and the leadership to be, on the best of days, uninspired, and on the worst of days, incompetent - not at their jobs, but in the actual practice of leading. Trimner’s interpersonal managerial skills seemed to be limited to pizza parties, and the oft-absentee Human Resources Director came off as deaf and blind to the culture immediately in front of her.
I found the Judge for whom I clerked, now retired, to be cold and impersonable toward me, though he was plenty friendly to female employees. His technological illiteracy was frustrating as he would let legal actions linger in his queues for months and once created a small diplomatic incident when I, at the direction of my supervisor, asked if I could turn off his computers at the end of the week, a practice dictated by the county’s IT department. I also distinctly remember that Judge, in a shocking display of unprofessionalism, once chastising my Supervisor in front of her entire office. I could not understand how a person in such a high position could be so ignorant of basic leadership concepts like praising in public and correcting in private.
Yes, my best day working for Price County was my last.
Despite leaving the county’s employment I continued to serve on the Veterans Commission and interacted with characters like Trimner in a cordial manner. I say serve because I never applied for, sought, or received the financial reimbursement that comes with serving on a county commission. I viewed it as volunteer work that allowed me to keep my thumb on two issues I felt were important, rural veteran access to behavioral health programs, and more broadly, access and transportation to, VA healthcare. I continually advocated for a DAV van for the county to facilitate travel of Price County veterans to VA hospitals and clinics, an asset the county now has.
My time on that commission ended more than year after the end of my employment with the county. The precipitating event for my departure was an attempt by the county, through its HR director, to claim me as an employee in an application for a grant predicated on employment of veterans. The director emailed me for certain information, and I informed her that I was no longer an employee and should not be considered one as my service on the commission was unpaid. A little while later I received an unsolicited and unwanted ACH payment from the County to a bank account they’d had from my actual employment and later received a tax form in the mail. I resigned from the commission.
All of this is, of course, my opinion and recollection of events and I must assert that none of it is objective, undisputable fact.
I know this must seem like a laundry list of minor complaints, and it is, but I didn’t write it to convince you that the County is bad or that you should think poorly of Circuit Court and County personnel.
I am a difficult person to like. I know that some of the difficulties I had at the County were because of my personality which can be abrasive and off-putting. I did not play the part of the meek new guy who was just happy to be there and I paid for it. I could’ve handled things much better.
I’ll also say that despite my dislike of how the proverbial sausage is made by the county, the sausage itself is sound. They can certainly improve how they do things, but what they do is more or less acceptable. I saw no great miscarriages of justice and the work that the citizens of our county expect its employees to complete was done, and done to a passable standard. I am not saying that Trimner, the HR director, Clerk of Courts or anyone else is trash and needs to go. I saw absolutely nothing I would consider to be corruption and my bar for that is very low.
The real reason I’ve written this small book is to show that I have reasons to dislike the county, Trimner, and probably Hawn as well. This is important for the rest of the series so that readers understand that when I speak positively about them it’s through gritted teeth. If I endorse them, you can know it’s for the right reasons and not because I personally like them.
I’m calling things how I see it.
Thanks for reading.
