I wore a t-shirt with a wonderful image of Abe Lincoln on it. I purchased it on my trip to Springfield last year. Halfway through the day I recalled that Lincoln had campaigned under the banner of the “Union Party” when he ran for reelection. As I have chosen the word “Unity” to represent my one-man political party the coincidence was very pleasing. I decided I’d wear it every day while I’m petitioning. I hope it holds up to daily washing and drying.
When I came home after 8 hours in the sun I was spent but I got on the Internet and googled “t-shirts” and “Lincoln” to no avail. I wanted to buy a half dozen more for the rest of the campaign. It might be fun to wear them every day from now till November.
This morning I got an email back from the one connection I could find. The image’s creator was a person with the uncommon name of Trimborn. My googling led me to a music professor with the same name. He had written a book “Encounters With Lincoln.” Sure enough, I’d found the maker of the shirts and he was selling them through a single store the one I had purchased it at in Springfield. I’ll order more of them. Maybe I’ll even let people order them from my website now that I have a paypal account. (even if if the darned thing isn’t configured to my needs yet)
I may not go out of town to gather signatures after all. I can get my quota of petitions in Duluth more quickly and be done with it. Then I could go out of town to simply hand out the bookmarks and shake hands. I’d get more passed out that way and meet more people without having to have them stop and fill out all the info that the Secretary of State demands of them.Â
The Trib didn’t mention my website which was a disappointment so no instant surge in hits. The several hundred bookmarks I passed out yesterday did just about double the traffic to welty4congress but I’m too greedy to be satisfied with that. I want thousands of people – tens of thousands - to check it out. Since I can’t afford major advertising yet it occured to me to make up hundreds of small lawnsigns with the url on it and pass them out around the district as I’m passing out bookmarks.
My next task before I head out to petition will be to tinker with my website to try to shrink it so that visitors don’t have to go back and fourth when they read it. That will make it a very annoying destination indeed and I can’t have that.
