{"id":32499,"date":"2021-11-15T10:45:29","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T15:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=32499"},"modified":"2021-11-16T23:00:23","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T04:00:23","slug":"proof-that-harry-welty-is-still-an-optimist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=32499","title":{"rendered":"Proof that Harry Welty is still an optimist"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ll write this post for tomorrow but not now.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In April of 1950, just days after I made the journey from egg to ovum my Dad took $500 he’d gotten in military separation pay and invested it in a magazine called the Optimist. You can read about this inception in his optimistic first paragraph. The Optimist sold three copies. So much for the separation pay.<\/p>\n

And yet my Dad would be the first to say he had a very good life. He was an optimist to the end and a few years after his death I wrote a book<\/a> in hopes of using it to finance a Congressional Campaign. I spent $5,000.00. I sold about 250 of the 5,000 books I had printed. It was not enough to challenge the incumbent Congressman. In my book’s first pages I wrote this dedication: “In Memory of ‘The Optimist’.”<\/p>\n

My Dad’s now empty red Captain’s chair was mentioned in the early chapters with him, as he was then, recently departed.
\nMost of the unsold books long ago enriched Duluth’s landfill. <\/p>\n

And yet, despite my adoption of the very grim new tagline about the end of the Earth I believe it can be, if not will be<\/em>, stopped before the world becomes unrecognizable. So, I’m with my Dad. But “knowing hope” isn’t enough. Optimism must be earned through hard work. And to that end I may not be finished with the project I set forth in 2006 with the publication of my book. But my fear is of long standing. Witness the next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ll write this post for tomorrow but not now. In April of 1950, just days after I made the journey from egg to ovum…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32499"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32513,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32499\/revisions\/32513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}