I brought my wife to tears yesterday and that brought me to tears. I am very selfish NOT to let well enough alone and stop trying to save the legacy of Lincoln and the United States and Earth by letting go of the idea that after 48 years of running for office my 63 years of intensive reading about every Jeopardy subject under the son isn’t enough to get me elected as dystopia engulfs our nation I still have what it takes to reshape the conversation.
God damn me. Better me than the Nation!
The last four days have been great. I’ve slept well until last night but each day I find myself closer to being able to charge ahead for the three months available to me to dislodge a traitor from Congress. More on my next Reader column shorty with the presentation of five photos I took for today’s Harry’s Diary entry. First up:
In recent years I’ve had to stop at every filing to count the times I’ve filed for various public offices. I won three times but mostly I slam my head against a brick wall for the legislative posts I’ve really coveted. So here is a column I submitted to the Reader two years ago just before filing to run against Pete Stauber and ending my weekly Reader submissions. It mentions that the 2022 race will be my 20th filing for public office. I think I counted very carefully then and that number has stuck with me but this year I haven’t toted them all up. If that column’s title was right this 2024 election is number 21 but without spending an hour looking for the list which I’m not going to do considering the mad dash mentioned in this blog’s title, I’ll just admit I “take a licking but keep on ticking.” to quote an old Timex ad.
Next up the weather:
I have to make every day count. I told Claudia after our good cry that I will not be bankrupting our family budget. Every time I run I spend more than she wants. She thinks over my 20 -21 campaigns its up to a hundred grand. She may be right. Forty percent or more of it went to fight for Duluth’s right to vote on the Red Plan. Except for my first couple of elections back in the 70’s and 80’s when I spent less than a grand per campaign its only recent campaigns that have added up. In most cases I have successfully raised money through what I considered fairly compelling fund raising letters. I hate to ask friends for money personally and rarely do. I’d like to think that at least a quarter of the money I spent came from my fundraising. AS FOR THE WEATHER. I told Claudia that in six weeks or thereabouts I’ll know if my campaign is a bust. I will be asking friends and allies for money to buy my books at $25 a pop. I’ll encourage people to buy four if they can manage it and give or resell them to their friends like a Betsy DeVos Amway franchise. I have a list of reasons listed on one of the three or four flyers I’m passing out for why people might want to buy them. Among them are 1. Remembering all the times I’ve made them smile with my snow sculptures as they drove past my house in the winter. and 2. Wanting a memento of the person more people from Duluth will remember far longer than most others whether I get elected to Congress or not. I told some of the evanescent (meaning fleeting)
college students that if you got any ten old time Duluth residents together and asked them who the best known Duluthian was my name would make the list. I set out with the calculation in the title above 37 years ago with that in mind when my first grade daughter asked me to make her a snow dinosaur. But considering the “Deliberation” in the title I have to economize my time very carefully to make sure the next six weeks are not a bust. A rainy day is not a good day to go to door asking people to let me put my lawnsign in their yard. I will try to put up 100 of them before the six weeks is up. If I can get most of them in in two weeks ahead of the arrival of the book being printed so much the better. The evidence of the eye may give people more incentive to hawk my books and my Earth saving ideals against the billionaires pouring money into a traitors campaign to get reelected to Congress.
And that leads me to this picture opposite the weekly weather forecast:
As I said last night was the first night of four that I didn’t get a good sleep. It was probably from going door to door to perfect my “elevator speech.” I’ve gotten six signs up in two days. I need to get them up at that rate or better for the foreseeable future if I want to rec4uit an army of supporters to hawk my book. And last night I woke up knowing exactly what I needed to write based on one conversation I had with a person who said of the certain Democratic challenger for the 8th District seat it was hard to see the Ventura like charisma that could get her elected. The person I spoke to is a certain Jen Schultz voter but she has been sobered by the rural part of the 8th District she fled before covid and its violent distaste for the Democratic party. Thus my column which will be short and will include the leaflet I never raised enough money two years ago to send to every voter. I hope I can sent it this election.
Which leads me to this picture:
I put this up by the stairs to my attic office to remind me who my idol is. President Abraham Lincoln. I must call Pete Stauber out and I must share my opinion of the ideology of Trump cult he is contaminating his Christianity with but I must not hate him or the people hell bent on sending him back to help Donald Trump compromise our Constitution. As one of my columns was titled a few years ago. Hate the sin not the Trumper.
And lastly before I scurry down to eat the BLT sandwich Claudia is fixing me for lunch this picture:
I’d love to keep my column going through the three months of the election. I’ve got a pile up of ideas for columns but the only way I and probably the Reader can justify them is if I pay for them as campaign advertisements. The wording should be self explanatory.
YESTERDAY MY BLOG GOT AN OUTSTANDING 4 GIGABYTES OF VIEWING…..POSSIBLY AN ABERATION.
