{"id":36475,"date":"2025-06-10T22:11:39","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T03:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=36475"},"modified":"2025-06-13T15:45:59","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T20:45:59","slug":"harrys-diary-it-was-the-best-of-times-it-was-the-worst-of-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=36475","title":{"rendered":"Harry&#8217;s diary &#8211; It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=36469\">Last page<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=36480\">Next page<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Other than the comma in the middle I remembered, as do a great many others, the first sentence of Thomas Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. I read it in 8th or 9th grade. I think I read Pride and Prejudice in 7th grade. So in this post linked only to Harry&#8217;s Diary&#8230;..an AW shucks, Books, I know just what Dickens meant.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54581576758_8683f6bdb9.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nAn image I drew that I didn&#8217;t quite trust to be OK in my recently published book for copyright and esthetic reasons. Love Calvin and Hobbes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It was the best of times.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Tonight we watched three episodes in the middle of the second season of Ted Lasso. We are bingeing it and we love it. My Brother raved about it at the beginning of covid but we were too cheap to order Apple to see the rest of the series after the two free episodes they made available to tempt subscribers. I thought after a couple years I didn&#8217;t need to see any more but we began watching it from the beginning and got through the first season in two days. I&#8217;m so glad I did&#8230;..I recall reading the Brits didn&#8217;t much care for it. I&#8217;m going to google that to see if its still true&#8230;..Hold on&#8230;..I feel better. Nobody much watched Ted Lasso for the same reason we didn&#8217;t. They don&#8217;t, and we didn&#8217;t, subscribe to Apple. I gather that the people who do watch it like it quite a lot except for the soccer, football, stuff that is on the ridiculous side. If the Brits turned the tables and had a ridiculously positive soccer coach bring life to the Detroit Lions we might like the humor but it might also be hard to suspend our knowledge of how the American game is played.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It was the worst of times<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I lost my messaging service when I my Facebook account was hacked. Its saved me time but one casualty is the messaging system my immediate family uses. Over the weekend I sent a photo of my grandson and his family at his graduation ceremony. After I composed it and set the picture I did what I always did with messenger. I ticked all the family members I wanted to see it. But unlike messenger everyone could comment on it and see the comments of others. My sister didn&#8217;t know who all the other people were because they were unnamed and she  puzzled over it before she realized I was the sender and what the message meant. She first sent me a ? message and when she did the &#8220;duh&#8221; She sent a gif that made no sense. It was of a woman with a couple dozen cold hot dogs being dropped on her head. <\/p>\n<p>Then she wrote I didn&#8217;t mean to send that one to which I replied something to the effect &#8220;Oh that&#8217;s OK. Its easy to send stupid things like the viscous simpleton in the White House&#8230;oops I meant to say vicious although that works.<\/p>\n<p>It had been a few hours since I&#8217;d sent out the message and suddenly one of the people who got it remarked that politics had suddenly intruded on what was supposed to be a non political post&#8230;..this was absolutely true and I kicked myself for not going through my head and remembering that one Trump voter was on my list. <\/p>\n<p>I apologized but got no response. We had pretty scrupulously avoided talking politics when we last visited and suddenly I made myself very clear&#8230;..Actually. It is the worst of times. The vicious simpleton has unconstitutionally sent the marines and national guard to foment riots in California. What I said about the viscous (meaning &#8220;thick&#8221; or stupid) president was extraordinarily tame considering I knocked on a thousand doors last summer telling whoever opened the doors &#8220;My ambition is to become Donald Trump&#8217;s worst nightmare.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I pointedly quickly forgot the two people who said Trump should be assassinated so I couldn&#8217;t rat them out in the SS state Donald Trump wants to borrow from his good pal Vladimir Putin. <\/p>\n<p>I have over the last year launched three massive organizing events in my office to clear up 10 years worth of my stabs at book writing in this Trumpian miasma. Two days ago I was sufficiently provoked to make a third good attempt but today I got word our church needed to quickly clean up the cluttered offices of our departing minister who has finally retired after a quarter century. Oh what a clutter. I abandoned my organizing to go to the church. My work there is not done. I&#8217;m going to sand and varnish some windows and paint the walls. <\/p>\n<p>I was able to do this and remain confident that I would finally finish my own organizing only because I just gave up my summer gig lambasting Trump in the Duluth Reader. But this week I have yet to prepare a flyer to start knocking on doors for my school board campaign. I wanted to finish my organizing because it is preparation to continue my writing but in a far more organized and productive manner. I stacked up an inch thick passel of columns I never finished. Maybe some should still be finished.<\/p>\n<p>I got more work ahead of me.<br \/>\n*******<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54568493295_1a4b2255cb_w.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54349942484_f98a4e4649_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nI&#8217;ve posted 35,000 posts on <strong>\/Lincolndemocrat.com<\/strong> since 2006. To find something particular in what may be 10 million words type something in its search engine. It ain&#8217;t Google so good luck.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54568216820_94aa7155ac_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nGoogle is worth a shot too. Be sure to type Harry Welty with whatever subject you are researching. Try &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=snow+sculptures+by+Harry+Welty&#038;sca_esv=9029ba9225533b3d&#038;sxsrf=AE3TifPbekbBHwX2ITvSwnEA2qkHGqZP8w%3A1749078697146&#038;ei=qdJAaP7WCNX-ptQPwsmZiAo&#038;ved=0ahUKEwi-z7Xz8diNAxVVv4kEHcJkBqEQ4dUDCBA&#038;uact=5&#038;oq=snow+sculptures+by+Harry+Welty&#038;gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiHnNub3cgc2N1bHB0dXJlcyBieSBIYXJyeSBXZWx0eTIFECEYoAEyBRAhGKABMgUQIRigAUjuL1C8B1j6HnABeACQAQCYAZ4BoAHcBqoBAzAuNrgBA8gBAPgBAZgCB6ACqAfCAggQABiwAxjvBcICCxAAGLADGKIEGIkFwgILEAAYgAQYsAMYogTCAgUQIRirAsICBRAhGJ8FmAMAiAYBkAYFkgcDMS42oAe0HLIHAzAuNrgHngfCBwUyLTYuMcgHLw&#038;sclient=gws-wiz-serp\">snow sculptures by Harry Welty<\/a>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/54568285040_01493d4442_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nSince 2001 I have written close to 400 columns off and one for the paper that can&#8217;t be bought. Type &#8220;Harry Welty&#8221; in search at their online site: <a href=\"https:\/\/duluthreader.com\/home\">https:\/\/duluthreader.com\/home<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/m.media-amazon.com\/images\/I\/81wK3HLP4sL._AC_UY327_FMwebp_QL65_.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nI wrote a book to introduce myself and raise a little income to spend in my 4th challenge to Congressman Pete Stauber. You can order it here from Amazon: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Not-Your-Usual-Republican-Lincoln\/dp\/B0D575CVTC\"><strong>&#8220;Not Your Usual Republican&#8221;<\/strong><\/a> If it starts selling I would happily challenge Pete a fifth time. I needed four campaigns to get elected to the Duluth School Board. Like Hillary, I persist.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/65535\/52143933220_c5ccc62758_w.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nI have long neglected a campaign website that was put together for that 4th campaign here: <a href=\"https:\/\/weltyforcongress.com\/\">www.weltyforcongress.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.snowbizz.com\/images\/logos\/Snowbizzlogo.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\nAfter being elected to the School Board I started a website called: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snowbizz.com\/\">www.snowbizz.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last page Next page Other than the comma in the middle I remembered, as do a great many others, the first sentence of Thomas&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36475"}],"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=36475"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36485,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36475\/revisions\/36485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}