Page stats, apologies, and a preview of coming attractions

PAGE STATS

Actors have applause, Comics have laughs, I have page stats.

2016..Unique visitors…# of visits.Pages….Hits…..Bandwidth
Jan 2016……….3,267…6,755…..14,790…18,850…543.92 MB
Feb 2016……….2,659…5,625…..11,663…15,183…406.50 MB
Mar 2016……….2,695…7,122…..30,217…42,254…1.05 GB
Apr 2016……….6,157…14,814….47,829…78,924…2.02 GB
May 2016……….5,620…12,770….35,768…59,368…1.64 GB

These are mine though May 31st – the day which I failed to file for Jen Schultz’s seat in the state legislature. I simply had to turn on the light at 2AM this morning and continue reading Second Kings to take my mind off of the 5,000 word post in which I intended to mercilessly ridicule myself for failing to proceed with. I’d woken up on filing day 85% certain that I would file. However, my best laid (very poorly laid) plans collapsed after I made a phone call to the County Auditor’s Office to check on the fine points of filing.

I don’t think its sour grapes but at this moment a little before noon I’m not at all unhappy with my last minute plans falling through.

However, the stats above are a hint at what I was thinking of. I’ve spent the last quarter century learning to write and my little blog about school board politics in a middling sized city doesn’t quite measure my ambition. I will confess that I am a little worried that its limited readership is a better measure of my literary abilities.

My plans, which kicked in on May 26th with the news that the Duluth Planning Commission was hog tying Edison (It struck me as a dogpile) had very little time to gestate. By Sunday I had plans to rally Independents across Minnesota, if not America, to take back our state legislature, if not the Congress of the United States from two self-righteous parties locked in a death spiral and taking the rest of us down with it. Its been sort of like the Duluth School Board’s of the past writ large.

As in my independent campaigns for Congress in 1992 which netted me 7.99% of the general election vote and my “Unity Party” race for Congress in 2006 I thought a Lincoln Democrat race for the sorry Minnesota House of Representatives might attract widespread enough attention to fund a race that ……well. You get my drift.

APOLOGY

I got an email from a reader who explained that I had misidentified a critic of mine and took me to task for unfairly trashing the wrong people. Guilty as charged. That will be my next post after lunch. I’ll post the email by itself in a few moments before returning to respond to it.

PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

First of all I’m not sure how many coming attractions I will have. One thing that impressed itself upon me over the last five days of plotting a legislative campaign is how much I would like to expand beyond simply being a dubious local know-it-all. My long time readers know how often I threaten to write a book. Now that I’ll have a quiet summer it would be a shame to stiffle all the pent up fury I rediscovered thinking about running for the Minnesota legislature. Its been an ambition of mine to serve since 1972. I’ve run for it ingloriously at least four times. This one might have been the charm……..had I investigated the rules of filing for a third party candidate a week or two in advance. No way I could gather up 500 signtures on a petition in the five hours available to me before the filing closed yesterday.

So, today I’ve spent three hours catching up on all the News Tribs I’ve only skimmed for a week. Golly, there are a lot of things I’d like to write about based on that little catch up. There was a wonderful article about past Memorial days in Duluth. There was a three-parter on parental harassment of high school coaches……I’m still not fully caught up with my reading.

Now that I’ve written this…….I think I only want to write my correction and apology.

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