How looking up my growing Internet expenses side tracked me

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Yesterday Claudia brought up this months internet bills. She’s bothered both that its impossible to tell what they are and that as our retirement….her retirement earnings have shrunk I keep these abstract expenses going. And we bought me a nice little hybrid a few months ago and…there are more expenses.

I have set myself “next week” to do these things for about a month of weeks. One week I organized fifty years of our church choir’s sheet music. One week I went to Orlando. Other weeks I organized my overflowing books. Yesterday I took the last six campaigns worth of disorganized election campaign files and organized them and filed them. It was a lot of campaings…some quite thin. 2018 ran for Congress, 2019 ran for third District school Board, 2020 ran for Congress, 2022 Ran for Congress, 2023 Wrote a book for 2004 when I once again ran for congress……also helped the best school board member in my years watching the Board try to fight a vile Facebook whisper campaign to earn a third term. Broke my heart when Alanna Oswald lost. 2025. Well that is this year and I have a seperate set of folders for a school board campaign and I’ve started a filing system for a possible 2026 congressional campaign.

I’ve just queued a snow sculpture. One minute while I find it:

I checked out Spotify and found there was no money involved. I had about five more sites I thought I spent money. There was Duolingo which I’m keeping my 2053 streak going with a $55.00 annual payment. For two months my daily time has been about six minutes tops. Then I began checking Newspaper.com which come with my Anscestry.com subscription. I still haven’t figured out if I pay them an annual or other fee. That will be a job for tomorrow or next week if I let another week slide by.

But I discovered that I still have access to Newspaper.com which is a wonderful site and one when I solve the world’s problems I will likely bury myself in. Its often said that newspapers are the first draft of history…..and thank got for the half dozen still left in the US. They are also a wonderful source of family history beyond obituaries.

I spent four hours at least searching for news stories (and not for the first time) on my Dad’s side of the family. Its probably been seven years….before all my campaigns… since I looked through their newspaper selection. I have gotten four or five emails a year since I stopped checking them telling me that they’ve acquired the microfilm for hundreds of other papers. I found a lot of stuff about the Welty’s in Kansas and Missouri from 1900 to 1950. That was roughly the lifetime of my namesake Harry H Welty Jr.

I copied fifty stories and pasted them into a word doc I just printed out that will help me put a chronology of Welty life together. It is obvious from looking through them why the great middle class of the early 1900’s bought them. They were full of gossip that their subscribers gave them to seen their names in the local press. Everyone has a little Donald Trump in them.

Here is one that made me wince:

About the author

Harry is a ferociously good natured eccentric in Duluth Minnesota who detests traitors dressed up as Uncle Sam. You can find somewhat better edited writings of his at the Duluth Reader "contributors." page. The URL is:

https://duluthreader.com/contributors/h/84/284-harry-welty