Notes From a Quiet Hill (data intensive version)

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(“Notes” is a series of irregularly published miscellaneous comments that didn’t quite reach the level of full blogitude*.)

Drove past a yard sign the other day saying “Garage Sale.”   Not for the first time, I thought, “There’s only one letter difference between “garage” and “garbage.”

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One of the great artists of the American West, and a favorite of mine, was St. Louis-born Charles M. Russell. We give much praise to the discoveries of Lewis and Clark on their trip to the Pacific but Russell offered a different perspective on them and their discoveries.

You see, the Native Americans already knew all the things Lewis and Clark “discovered.”  The big thing for Native Americans was the discovery of Lewis and Clark—the title of Russell’s painting.

And that brings us back to a frequently contested idea that this country was founded as a Christian Nation. It already was a nation of numerous religions or interpretations of creation and principles for living in harmony. Christianity was only an addition to the spiritual traditions that existed here already.

As in Russell’s painting, the First Nations people discovered the Christians, who became just added another spiritual tradition here. Christianity is just another interpretation of universal truths that have existed far longer than the New Testament.

Here in Missouri, some missionaries opened Harmony Mission in the western part of the state, an effort to “civilize” the savages.  It closed after several years with nary a convert.  The story is told of one of the missionaries telling the natives the story of Jonah and the Whale, after which one of the leaders of the group wrapped himself in his blanket, told the minister, “We know the White Man lies, but that is the biggest lie we have ever heard,” and stalked away.

Followers of our Euro-Christian traditions, as those who followed after Lewis and Clark, might consider toning down their conceit and remember they were not founders but instead were late-comers to nation of religious traditions, some many years older than theirs.

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Anybody care to guess how much Ashli Babbit’s family could have gotten from the Trump slush fund that was going to pay the peaceful tourists of January 6?  Ten figures?  More?

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We don’t know what to think about data centers.  But there’s so many things these days that we don’t know what to think about. Data centers are one of the biggest topics now and their use of water seems to be a big issue.  I guess they process so much data that they have to water-cool their computers.

This sounds like a great diversification opportunity for Ameren, our electric company. It runs the state’s only commercial nuclear power plant, in Callaway County.  Maybe Ameren should add data centers to their properties, even buy more land if needed.  Ameren uses a lot of Missouri River water in its cooling tower.  Why not recycle that water through some nearby data centers before dumping it back into the river as it does now?

This is an example of knowing what we think but not thinking we know anything about an issue, which probably makes us a typical citizen in these confusing times.

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If the Democrats seize control of both houses of Congress in November, when will they have time to work on a budget and other issues because they likely will be too busy doing house-cleaning impeachments?

They probably will be emboldened because the House Speaker will be a D, and the Speaker is third in the line of succession. For reference, The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 lists: Vice President, Speaker of the House, President pro tempore of the Senate, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, Attorney General, Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary of Education, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Secretary of Homeland Security—all of whom probably would be gone quickly if the D’s decide the top two in line need to hit the road.

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The President’s plan to turn the nation’s 250th birthday into a celebration of himself has become a struggle for him. We frankly prefer that he show as much interest in being part of the event as he showed about attending his son’s wedding.

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*”blogitude” is a phrase not found in any dictionary known to man except in this writer’s personal lexicon.

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CBS

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President Trump and his toadies have turned CBS into broadcasting’s Gaza.

CBS News Radio is dead. The CBS Evening News has been abandoned by thousands of viewers. Sixty Minutes has become an ideological battleground that has left the program severely, if not mortally, wounded. Reports that Editor-in Chief Bari Weiss has ordered some stories rewritten to be more favorable to President Trump presaged last week’s blow up that led to the immediate firing of longtime correspondent Scott Pelley because he dared speak truth to power by accusing Editor in Chief Bari Weiss of “murdering” Sixty Minutes.

North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, a conservative nationalist and flaming bigot who served thirty years in the U. S. Senate, once wished he could own what he called “The Communist Broadcasting System” so he could “be Dan Rather’s boss.” Wherever he is now (he died in 2008), he must be rubbing his hands with glee at what Donald Trump and his allies/enablers have done to CBS.

Helms would be right at home in today’s Washington.. Helms was an unalterable opponent of civil rights of all stripes, the National Endowment for the Arts, affirmative action, feminism, and abortion access. Some strongly loved him. Some strongly hated him.

Donald Trump is everything Jesse Helms wishes he could have been.  But Helms was just a Senator while Trump is the President and has salted the ground of government with allies that can carry out the dreams of Helms magnified by Trump.

President Trump and his buddies have succeeded in killing CBS News and they’d like to do it with all other media companies that speak out against their abuses.  Thankfully, so far, Disney/ABC has resisted after mistakenly thinking appeasement would work with Trump. Although Jimmy Fallon has been targeted in the overnight rave-fest from the White House, NBC seems to be a smaller target.

Trump set a new record in May with 861 posts on his social media site, which continues to lose tens of millions of dollars each month.  White House spokesperson Olivia Wales thinks Trump’s overnight behavior is just wonderful, telling the Daily Beast, “Trump offers his unfiltered and direct thoughts to the American people, without the biased media taking him out of context. The American people have never had a president as transparent as President Trump, who shares his thoughts with them in real time.”

It’s hard to argue with that.  The problem is that Wales and her like seem to think that calling all of his lies and biases is bias.

The threat to our republic is that his is the only voice he wants to allow and he’s taking steps to make it so. The firehose of lies that he gushes every night—and throughout the day—cannot go unchallenged in a free country. It is the responsibility of the press in all of its iterations to  challenge, to expose, even if he is provoked into greater personal outrage.

In my long career that included years of leadership with a national organization for broadcast journalists, I met a lot of CBS news people, including the founders of Sixty Minutes Don Hewitt, Morley Safer, Andy Rooney, Mike Wallace, Ed Bradley, Lesley Stahl, Harry Reasoner, Dan Rather, not to mention Walter Cronkite and others. Scott Pelley spoke at one our conventions several years ago.  It was a good speech.

I met them. I talked to them. Don’t think any of them would know me if we had met on the street. They wouldn’t.  But I knew them as fellow professionals and I can tell you that they all had more integrity in their little finger than Donald Trump has in his entire administration and cadre of sycophants.

Edward R. Murrow is the patron saint of broadcast journalism.  No, I didn’t meet him (but I did meet his widow).  In 1958 Murrow spoke to our convention—long before I was involved with the group.

In his concluding remarks, he warned against networks that considered still-young television only as mindless entertainment medium. He wanted them to be more, and more responsible.

“This nation is now in competition with malignant forces of evil who are using every instrument at their command to empty the minds of their subjects and fill those minds with slogans, determination, and faith in the future. If we go on as we are, we are protecting the mind of the American public from any real contact with the menacing world that squeezes in upon us. We’re engaged in a great experiment to discover whether a free public opinion can devise and direct methods of managing the affairs of the nation.”

Murrow was speaking of the external threat to this country of Communism.” Today, he might be speaking of the internal threat from our own leaders.

The signature words of the speech: “This instrument can teach; it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance, and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.” Today, Donald Trump wants television to be useful in keeping the American public ignorant, intolerant, and indifferent to his actions.

Murrow concluded, “Stonewall Jackson, who is generally believed to have known something about weapons, is reported to have said, ‘When war comes, you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.’ The trouble with television is that it is rusting in the scabbard during a battle for survival.”  That was 1958. In 2026, Trump prefers that outlets such as CBS and Sixty Minutes throw away the sword and carry the rusty scabbard.

That becomes more obvious with every day, with every collision between Trump lackeys and people such as Scott Pelley and many others who used to be part of a once highly-respected program and its network.

Trump must not be allowed to win.  Ignorance, Intolerance, and indifference must not survive. Jesse Helms must stay buried. Unfortunately, his ideas remain too much alive and in much more powerful hands.

Elections are nearing. We hope voters take their figurative swords to their polling places.

Sports: Re-nesting the Birds; Bring Home a Chief; The Four-Point Field Goal; Consequential Track Wins.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BYE REDBIRDS BYE)—The Cardinals have welcomed back Noot and Nathan to the big nest and have kicked Victor Scott II down to Memphis after low-offensive production in the first couple of months of the season. Nathan Church came off the DL for last night’s game. Lars Nootbar had a solid outing in his return after months of recovery from heel surgery.

The moves can set up an outfield of Church in left, Jordan Walker in center and Nootbar in right. That leaves Nelson Velasquez to rotate in on offense and provide power off the bench.

Scott still isn’t showing he can consistently hit big league pitching. He was sent down with a .194 average, two homers and nine RBIs. Church, on the other hand, has played 45 games with five homers, 18 RBIs and a .247 average.

Nootbar returned Sunday with a two-run game-winning homer against the Reds.

(ROYAL PAINS)—Two key members of the Kansas City Royals are hurting and as this is written, their reappearance in the lineup is uncertain.

Bobby Witt has a right knee that is giving him more trouble as the season wears on. He left the field om the Seventh inning Sunday. Manager Matt Quatraro says its “nothing acute” but it got worse as the game wore on.  Witt has not missed a game this year.

Royals catcher Salvador Perez has missed the last couple of game after getting hit by a pitch on his right thumb. Outfielder Jac Caglianone left the game with a sore shoulder after hitting the wall. Maikel Garcia will move to shortstop if Witt spend some time off the field. The Royals have rookie Carter Jensen ready to go behind the plate if needed.  He’s played 34 games there this year, five more than Perez, who has spent some time at first base.

Although Perez’s overall batting performance is down this year, he and Witt are tied for the team lead in homers with nine. He’s also just five home runs behind the team record for career homers, now held by George Brette, who had 317.

On the good news side, there’s Kris Bubic who began his rehab assignment today in Omaha. He’s been on the 15-day DL with left elbow soreness. He had Tommy John surgery three years ago and missed the last half of last year with a rotator cuff strain.  He had a pretty good season going with a 4.11 ERA and 51 strikeouts in 50.1 innings. He had four quality starts in nine outings.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs are bring back a former teammate who might be able to help a young cornerback corps.  NFL Insider reports the chiefs have signed L’Jarrius Snead to a one-year, potential five-million dollar contract.

The Chiefs cornerback group going into fall camp is their number eight overall draftee Mansoor DeLane, holdover Nohl Williams, and free agent Kader Kahou

The Chiefs traded Snead to the Tennessee Titans in 2024. The Titans signed him for four years, $76 million but he was in only a dozen games in the two seans there and was released in the offseason. He intercepted ten passes in his four years with the Chiefs and was on two Super Bowl winning teams.

(BATTLEHAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks have fallen out of the UFL playoffs in the first round, falling to the Louisville Kings, arguably the hottest team in the league, or one of them.  Louisville lost its first three games and has won seven of eight since then, the latest being 29-20.

The win puts the Kings in the United Bowl, the league championship game, against the DC Defenders.  Louisville blasted one of the league’s best defenses with two touchdown runs of 50 yards or more. It is the third straight year the Battlehawks have lost a chance to play for the league championship.

St. Louis won the statistical game, with double the Louisville first downs (22-11), ran 75 plays to the Louisville’s 42.  But their offense, one of the league’s weakest, didn’t get the ball across the goal line enough.  They led 20-18 going into the last quarter.

But Louisville got the touchdown and then kicker Tanner Brown nailed down the win with a 63 yard field goal. The UFL gives field goals longer than 60 yards four points.

St. Louis finishes the year 6-5.

A different kind of running game:

(INDYCAR)—IndyCar reached the halfway mark of its18-race season and the halfway point of its six-race schedule for ovals just before midnight at World Wide Raceway, just across the river from St. Louis.  The race was delayed twice—almost an hour, total,  for brief sprinkles of rain.

The Track is a friendly place for Penske driver Josef Newgarden, who won there for the sixth time in eleven races at the track Sunday night. It’s his second win this year.

Newgarden is IndyCar’s ovalmeister, with fifteen of his 34 career wins coming on ovals, two of them at the Indianapolis 500.  He still wears a fiberglass boot because of a leg injury suffered in this year’s 500, although he takes it off for driving.

He finished about seven-tenths of a second ahead of Marcus Ericsson (on the left on the podium) and almost two seconds ahead of Christian Rasmussen (right). The finishes by Ericsson and Rasmussen are their bests this year.

Ericsson led more than twice as many laps as any other driver—Newgarden—114-53 of the 260 laps on the mile and a half track. But it was Rasmussen that Newgarden had to get past after close racing for several laps after the last stoppage.

McLaughlin made a spirited charge toward the front on the restart on Lap 234, climbing from ninth to fifth in just four laps. But the Kiwi and the other cars that pitted for tires didn’t have enough traction from the fresher rubber or speed to challenge the top four down the stretch.

The race was hotly contested all night long with 268 passes for position in he 260 laps, a track record.

Points leader Alex Palou started on pole for the fourth straight race but tried to stretch his fuel one lap too far. He coasted into his pits with a dead engine that then refused to re-fire. He finished 17th, two laps down but he still has a substantial lead on Kyle Kirkwood, who finished sixth.

Newgarden’s win puts him into a ninth-place tie with Al Unser Jr., on the all-time Indycar wins list.  A. J. Foyt is number one with 67, eight more than Scott Dixon, who finished 12th Sunday night.

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin’s 63rd career win—the second time in two weeks that he’s gone from last to first—was emotional one because it lifted him into a ninth place on the all-times Cup wins list with Kyle Busch.  His fourth win of the year ended with him turning a victory lap while holding a black flag with the number 18 on it—-Busch’s number for most of his racing career before his death a couple of weeks ago. Hamlin and Busch had been teammates at one time.

Hamlin had the top qualifying speed but had to start last among the 37 cars because his team made some adjustments in his car after qualifying.

Points leader Tyler Reddick failed to finish and leads Hamlin by only 52 points now.

The race had eleven caution flags, a race record.

(Photo credit: Bob Priddy)

 

The Income Tax Cut

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It’s going to take some pretty strong lobbying to convince me that the governor’s plan to eliminate the state income tax and make up for the lost state revenue by increasing the sales tax is a good idea.

We already have seen a major investment in promoting passage from an anonymous source—almost two million dollars so far.  Our campaign finance laws allow big money special interests or individuals to hide behind a legal campaign money laundering system that has been abused by both side of the aisle.

If I contribute $100 dollars to someone’s campaign (which never have been done or will be done), my name becomes a public record. If I were wealthy enough to buy part of the Missouri Constitution, I could hide my attempted purchase.

Getting back to the topic:

Here is an issue that could have a chilling effect on our public services and public protections that hasn’t been discussed as far as I have heard:

The local sales tax has been used throughout Missouri to improve local infrastructure—streets, sewer systems, parks, and improved public safety.

This last point has been highlighted in the last couple of weeks by requests from sheriffs in Boone and Cole County for temporary sales tax increases to fund jails and jail expansions.  The Boone County Commission is putting a 3/8 cent sales tax increase on the November ballot with proceeds building a new jail.

The Cole County sheriff has just asked his county commission for a temporary sales tax to improve and expand current jail—which was built with proceeds from a temporary sales tax increase.

Temporary local sales taxes need voter agreement.  It seems that if voters are given a specific amount to be raised and significant enough purpose for the increase, they are likely to support it as a matter of community self interest. We make this observation without having seen any professionally-done studies on the subject; it just seems to work this way. The system gives citizens an opportunity to evaluate the benefits they will receive versus the cost of obtaining them.

But if the income tax is cut and the state imposes new sales taxes on a myriad of products and services, the local voter has no say in how that money will benefit their communities. And the higher the state-imposed sales tax is (the legislature can determine what the rate will be), might it become harder for voters to approve temporary increases at the local level?

The income tax/sales tax proposal headed for the statewide ballot in August might be nice for those who have a lot of money and don’t want to share it but a lower income tax won’t much help our lower income residents—and a higher statewide sales tax not only will increase financial problems for the paycheck-to-paycheck families, it could weaken voter support for a temporary tool used by local governments  to increase public services and public safety.

I might find a temporary sales tax for a new jail or improvements to an existing one—or other public improvements and programs— more than my billfold can bear if the state taxes my purchases to make up for the loss of revenue that seems to benefit people higher up the fiscal food chain than I am.

Until we are better persuaded, the proposed income tax cut appears from our hilltop view to be a benefit I can’t afford and that my city and county can’t afford either.

I’m always open to efforts to make me think otherwise.  But for now, a billionaire’s money is unlikely to buy my vote.

Laws for the Presidency

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CNN polling discussed last weekend shows the overwhelming number of Americans are tired of President Trump lionizing himself, especially by sticking his name on  buildings while he remains in office. The data was called “clear as glass” by CNN’s Chief Data Analyst, Harry Enten.

The Surve found one in five Americans think it’s okay to name buildings after Trump—but only after has left office (and, we add, after time and more open evaluation of his behavior is possible).

Only NINE PERCENT say it’s okay for him to stick his name on government buildings while he’s still in office.

How strong is that feeling.  Enten looked at some other ridiculous ideas for comparison.  Nine percent is even lower than the 12 percent of Americans who think the moon landing was a fake.

It is even one point lower than the number of Americans who think the Earth if flat—ten percent.

Enten said, “On this issue, the rock core, that core Republican base that Trump has relied upon, that stick with him through thick and thin, even on this issue, though, just 17 percent, just 17 percent of Republicans say that, yes, it is. Three percent, not really so surprising, of Democrats say the same thing. So, you get rare bipartisan unity on this issue.

But is he fixated on himself, as if we need to ask? He plans to the celebration of our nation’s 250th birthday in Washington into a celebration of himself, which should remove any doubt, underlining the sentiment of only 29% of Americans in the CNN survey who think he is focused enough on issues that really matter.  More than two-thirds (68 percent) say he is not.

As we have noted in a previous blog, the polarization of America this man is causing is staggering in its scope.  In this issue—focus—only THREE PERCENT of respondents seemed to have no opinion.

Because our current occupant of the White House has so clearly violated or ignored all previous written and unwritten standards for the office, it is time for Congress put serious limits on the presidency, written standards with severe penalties for their violations. Some of these standards must be applied also to those who enact them.

These proposals are based on the proposition that the higher people rise in our political system, the more they must reveal of themselves as a matter public honesty with those who elevate them to those positions.

In short, the higher you rise, the less private your life becomes and the more you “belong” to the public because you are entrusted by that public with increasing levels of power that must be exercised with responsibility beyond personal interest.

To begin with the current example, these laws of the powerful should require:

—The name of no President shall be affixed to any government building, park, military equipment or other federal holding while in office. Such naming shall remain the province of the Congress and its usual process for such designations which shall not be made until the president has been out of office for one election cycle.

—No image, signature or other representation of a sitting or living former President shall appear on any United States currency or coinage used in general public circulation.

—Within two weeks of an individual achieving a nomination for President, or achieving the office through succession, the Internal Revenue Service shall make public the tax returns of the individual for the previous five years and shall release them for each year the individual is in office.

—The same standards shall apply to appointees to the United States Supreme Court, to cabinet positions, and to members of Congress upon their elections. .

—The President and incoming Vice-President, not later than two weeks  prior to inauguration, shall transfer all assets, including but not limited to personal financial holdings and property to an independent blind trust established by the Congress to manage those assets during the time they are in office. No transfer of assets within the families of the President and the Vice-President during the two years before the inauguration date shall be recognized as legal and such assets shall be seized and placed into the trust if so made.

—Failure to place assets into such a trust will delay the inauguration until such time as the obligation is met.  The sitting president shall serve as a President Pro Tempore until such requirements are met.  If the sitting president is incapable of serving under provisions of the 25th amendment or chooses not to continue service, the sitting president shall be replaced according to the line of succession established in the Constitution and that person will continue serving until all trust requirements are met. Impeachment shall be mandatory if it is determined later that these standards have not been met intentionally.

—Within two weeks of all annual physical examinations, the detailed results including (for lack of a better term) “beyond basic” tests of cognition, shall be released.

—No President shall order the unprovoked attack of or invasion of another independent nation without the approval of Congress.

—No President can claim, annex, or purchase any independent nation or territory of an independent nation without approval by Congress and a proven willingness by the inhabitants of such lands to become part of the United States..  “Proven willingness” shall mean a positive vote by the general population of the area proposed.

—No President unilaterally can withdraw this country from international bodies dedicated to the health, safety, welfare, financial stability, and peaceful coexistence with others without approval by Congress.

—No President may interfere with the orderly elections of the states nor with the standards of institutional of higher learning within those states.

—All revenue outside of campaign donations that would personally benefit a sitting President shall be applied against the national debt (ending the pay for play philosophy that seems so prominent in today’s presidential dealings).

—All campaign donations to presidential and congressional candidates shall be listed according to the name of the individuals making them.  Organizations aggregating campaign funds must identify the individuals contributing to such aggregated donations.

—No president shall establish independent political action committees to influence elections at the state level during the term of the presidency.

Nothing in these suggestions prohibits a president from making recommendations nor do any of them limit the president’s constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and expression nor his ability to associate with others who might advocate a cause on his behalf. But they will go far to prevent future presidents from taking the powers of the people from them.

Expecting Congress to enact any of these protections for the nation’s general welfare seems to be quite a reach. But we should know by now that failure to do so only invites something worse, if it is possible to envision something worse, than the inattentive but self-absorbed figure we have now.

Recall that on September 18, 1787, the last day of the Constitutional Convention. Elizabeth Willing Powell, a Philadelphia social leader we today would call “an influencer,” asked delegate Benjamin Franklin as he emerged from the final meeting, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”  Franklin’s answer is well known: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

These recommendations are designed to keep our republic and have been created to respond to the excesses of the current holder of the presidency.  You might have modifications to these ideas or additional limits that Congress could and should impose.  Feel free to share them in the “comments’ section at the end of this posting. No snark please. This is too important for that.

In this campaign year, those seeking federal office should be asked by the media and the voters if they would support limits such as these on the most powerful single person in our government and for those seeking high federal positions. If yes, why?  If not, why not?

We citizens have obligations to ourselves and to our families as well as to our neighbors—known and unknown—to protect ourselves and to protect our nation.  Some might argue that the Constitution already protects us enough.  Your correspondent does not believe that it does, and we have seen demonstration after demonstration of that inadequacy, especially with President Trump.

These issues need to be part of the national dialogue in this election year. If you would like to begin this discussion with others by distributing these ideas, feel free to do so. If you have a chance to speak of these things with your congressional candidates, do not miss it.

A republic is a terrible thing to be wasted.

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Sports: I Got the Fever; Going Opposite Baseball Directions; Playoff Football; Detroit and Nashville for Speed

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BEFORE WE GET STARTED):   There is the NBA and then there is basketball and it is being played by women.

We took in our second Indiana Fever game when we were in Indianapolis recently, chance to watch Sophie and Caitlin play—Sophie is kind of considered Caitlin’s enforcer—and again were greatly impressed by the intensity of the women’s game and the fact that people of normal height but extraordinary skill worked the ball, set up plays, had tremendous assists, fierce blocks, and ran up 90 points in four ten-minute quarters.

And the pregame!  Tiger fans, get a load of this (anytime you see someone wearing number 8, it’s former Tiger Sophie Cunningham)

Now, on to regular business

(BASEBALL)—Neither of our major league baseball teams was much to talk about this week.  The Cardinals muddled along and the Royals sank deeper into mediocrity. In fact, the Royals dropped to a season-worst 15 games under .500 with their sweep by the Rangers, making Kansas City losers of 16 of their last 19 including two straight sweeps and four overall. Manager Matt Quartaro was at least honest when he said, manager Matt Quatraro said Sunday. “I mean, we didn’t play well enough to win a game.”

The Royals were 10-18 in May. Four of their pitchers are out with injuries and the the offense isn’t showing much spark heading into June.  They began the new week with the second-worst record in the American League (Detroit is a half-game behind them.)

The Cardinals took the rubber game of the series with the Cubs Sunday night to hold onto second place in a division in which every team is playing better than break-even ball. They’re five games over .500 but trail the Brewers by four and a half at the start of a new week.

They opened a series last night against the Texas Rangers who are managed by Cardinals fan favorite Skip Schumaker, who played in St. Louis 2005=2012.

(DOWN ON THE FARM)—-A rarity, maybe it’s history—for minor league baseball happened in Springfield Saturday afternoon when Jurrangelo Cinintje, obtained in a winter trade and now the number for player in the Cardinals pipeline, started for the Springfield Cardinals.

He struck out Wichita Wind Surge outfielder Garrett Spain twice.

He did it once throwing right-handed and once throwing left-handed. He wasn’t too spectacular otherwise—three runs, three hits and a walk.

He’s 23, has made ten starts this year and is 3-2 with a 5.21 ERA

(BATTLEHAWKS)—-The St. Battlehawks go into the first round of the UFL playoffs at 6-4 after Friday night’s upset by the Dallas. 20-16.  They had clinched a home field first round playoff spot a week earlier.

Dallas had lost six in a row before finishing the regular season with the victory. St. Louis helped he Renegades get the win by turning the ball over four times in eleven possessions (1 fumble, two interceptions and a 3-and-out).

The Orlando Storm go into the playoffs 8-2 with the Battlehawks at 6-4. The Louisville Kings are 5-4, and the DC Defenders are the four-seed with a 5-5 record.

The first round playoffs next weekend will match Orlando and DC and St. Louis against Louisville in the Battledome, as it’s now called. The ‘Hawks beat the Kings 16-3 earlier.

The Kings started the season 0-3

On the track—

(INDYCAR)—The streets of Detroit hosted IndyCar one week after the spectacular Indianapolis 500  and this this time, the driver who started P1 finished in the same position

—a familiar face: Alex Palou.  If he pulls off a win next weekend at World Wide Technology Speedway, he will have won half of the last 26 IndyCar events.  He’s four out of eight this year. He’s well on the way to his fourth straight series title, up by 62 points over Kyle Kirkwood, the runner up, three seconds behind.

He led 71 of the 100 laps and took the lead for the final time on lap 69 when Kirkwood pitted.

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell, and Chase Briscoe were three-wide at the start of the last lap at Nashville but, as one long-ago broadcaster put it, “it was a wreck that didn’t happen….and Hamlin had the momentum coming off of the last turn.

Hamlin began the race on the pole but jumped the start and was sent to the back of the 38-car field. He fought his way back for the 62nd victory of his career. He is now only one win behind Kyle Busch, who ranks ninth on the all-time Cup list.

(picture credits: Palou at Indianapolis—Bob Priddy; Battlehawks—Instagram; Pitcher—Springfield Daily Citizen)

 

Some Reflections on Memorial Day, Part Four:

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Hundreds of people were at the Speedway as I drove out of town last Monday morning. A few were at the start-finish line—Felix Rosenqvist, his owners and crew for the annual victor’s picture taking. The rest, armed with brooms, shovels, and other equipment, were cleaning up the 500 tons or so of trash left behind by Sunday’s huge crowds. The speedway pays volunteer groups $125 per person to do the cleanup work.

 

Several years ago, I narrated Aaron Copeland’s A LINCOLN PORTRAIT with the Jefferson City Symphony and some of the words began to come back to me as I drove through the rich, flat prairies of the two states.  “He was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and grew up in Illinois….” 

The way to Indianapolis on I-70 takes people through Vandalia, once the state capital of Illinois.  The old capitol still stands, and the House of Representatives where Lincoln began his political career has been recreated.

I wanted to go on a northern route home that would take me through Springfield, where Lincoln lived and owned the only house he would ever own, where he prospered as a railroad lawyer, and from which he left to become President.  This trip, however, was to take me to the little village to the west where he grew up.

New Salem.

Lincoln struck out on his own after his brief stay in the Decatur area and spent several years in this little village as a laborer, and as an unsuccessful store owner.  It was in New Salem that he began the study of the law and began to practice as a lawyer.  It was in New Salem that Ann Rutledge entered his life and departed from it, a relationship romanticized by many through the decades.

Abe Lincoln was a quiet man; Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man.

However deep the Lincoln/Rutledge relationship was, it has been recorded that her death left Lincoln deeply depressed, depression being a condition he dealt with throughout his life.

One of the recreated buildings in the little village is the Rutledge Tavern where Lincoln stayed—a “tavern” being a place offering room and board for visitors and travelers (Missouri’s first official state historic site is the Arrow Rock Tavern, if you want to see what a tavern was in the early 19th Century).

The park was closed the day I stopped on the way home, “closed” meaning the visitors center, restrooms, and the village buildings were unoccupied by staff and reenactors.  But visitors could take a quiet walk among the businesses and homes, the mill and the gardens and the stores.  And I did.

Copeland’s narration and his music went with me.  The composition was created in 1942 but its passages from Lincoln’s speeches seemed appropriate that day as I walked where he had walked. I remembered pieces of the narration and when I got home I pulled the script from that performance with the symphony.

The first segment:

Fellow Citizens, we cannot escape history.  That is what he said. That is what Abraham Lincoln said.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation…. We — even we here– hold the power, and bear the responsibility.

The second:

He was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and grew up in Illinois. And this is what he said. This is what Abe Lincoln said:

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.  

Both were from his 1862 message to Congress, what we call the State of the Union today.  The third segment:

When standing erect, he was six feet four inches tall. And this is what he said:

It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

Lincoln said that during his last debate with Stephen A. Douglas, in Alton, Illinois in 1858. Lincoln lost the race for the U. S. Senate that year but his debates with Douglas brought him national attention.

Segment four:

Abe Lincoln was a quiet man; Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man. But when he spoke of Democracy, this is what he said. He said:

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Again, from 1858.

And the concluding segment:

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of these United States, is everlasting in the memory of this country.  For on the battleground at Gettysburg, this is what he said:

From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

“That cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,” he said—-referring not to the war but to the re-commitment to the document that created the Union, that created a government “by the people, for the people,” the Declaration of Independence.

I have had a front row seat to the operation of the people’s government for many decades and as I walked the quiet streets where Abraham Lincoln walked I was reminded that the people’s government requires a people’s responsibility whenever there is a “stormy present…piled high with difficulty.’

“We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country,” Abe Lincoln said.

Today, it seems, we are locked in “the eternal struggle of these two principles—right and wrong…The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings.”

“Disenthrall:” —to free ourselves of the present condition, “and then we shall save our country.”

This, again, is what Abe Lincoln said to us in 1862:

The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation…. We — even we here– hold the power, and bear the responsibility.

Tens of thousands of ours have died creating this country, creating and defending a nation that can celebrate its holidays with great noise, great drama, and frivolity while pausing for a few minutes to be grateful for their sacrifices and recommit to keep their faith—–

From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

After about an hour or maybe an hour and a half, I resumed my drive home. I crossed the Mississippi River with my dashboard telling me I had seventeen miles worth of gas left in the tank. A hundred yards from the bridge at Louisiana Missouri, I put 15.6 gallons of cheaper Missouri gas into a tank that’s supposed to hold 15.5 gallons.

And then I came home.  I had decorated no graves on Memorial Day but I was glad that I lived in a country that those in their graves protected for us, a united nation despite our differences that  pauses for a  gaudy celebration of its existence even in a “stormy present,” knowing that we have the power to restore our nation to one that is of the people, by the people, and has the ability to be made better—-

—-for the people.

(Various prominent people are on YouTube narrating A Lincoln Portrait. I suggest you look at one, or some, of them.)

(Picture credits: City of Vandalia; Bob Priddy)

 

 

Reflections on Memorial Day, Part three  (5/30/26)

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Sunday, things got very serious.

And incredibly intense.

And scary.

The 350,000 fans who would watch the Indianapolis 500 (or just have a big party) had started arriving days earlier, many setting up their tents and mobile homes in the numerous parking lots around the track, some spending the night before the race in their cars on 16th Street.

They began surging through the gates when they opened at 6 a.m., many wearing shirts for their favorite drivers, shirts for cars’ sponsors, and shirts commemorating the event about to unfold before them. The souvenir facilities quickly were swarming with people wanting to buy memories of what they were about to witness.

The grandstands were filling by the time the Borg-Warner trophy was moved to the start-finish line for the race about 9 a.m.

The cars were rolled to their starting spots at 10:30, drivers soon to follow, passing through a few thousand reporters, guests, sponsor representatives and car crews.

Pulses start to quicken with each step of the opening ceremonies saluting veterans and first responders with the presentation of colors, a prayer by Indianapolis Archbishop Charles Thompson, a fourteen-gun salute and taps. Indiana composer, singer, and band leader Emphraim Owens did “America,” and Grammy Nominee Jordin Sparks performed the Start Spangled banner ending with a flyby over the main straightaway by F-16s from the South Dakota National guard.

And then comes the goosebumps moment for thousands—Jim Carnelison’s annual performance of the state song, “Back Home Again in Indiana,” punctuated by a return, east to west by one of the F-16s.

And at last, Roger Penske’s order, “Drivers, Start Your Engines.”

Should you want to share the entire opening ceremonies:

2026 Indy 500 Opening Ceremony | INDYCAR

Weather forecasters for several days had warned that rain could interrupt or even shorten the 110th running of the Indianapolis 500.  The race would become official after 101 of the 200 laps. The pressure was on from the drop of the green flag for drivers to get everything them could get before the rain ended the race. The rain generally stayed away although enough drops fell to pause the race for a few minutes before the intense race against rain resumes.

More than one-fourth of the race was run under caution, the cars circulating at 90-95 mph while crash debris and car remnants were removed from the track. The green flag was out for 149 laps.  The intensity of the competition is reflected in these statistics:

There were seventy lead changes, a record.  Even more telling is this:

One-hundred and thirty seven of the 149 full-throttle laps produced a margin between first and second place of less than one second.  Cars lapped at better than 220 miles an hour, weaving in and out of lines, passing and re-passing.  Thirty-three started; 24 were still challenging one another at the end of the race. Eighteen were on the leader’s lap, the top four within four-tenths of a second of each other.

If you have the endurance, here is the entire race as seen from Rosenqvist’s car—and hear his spotter and his conversations with his crew chief (be prepared to be seated for more than three hours):

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=rosenqvist+cockpit+video&view=detail&mid=3BB33C474F5056FF64F83BB33C474F5056FF64F8&

Marcus Amstrong took the lead at the start of the last lap with contenders  David Malukas and  teammates Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist and David Malukas tightly behind racing at speeds forty miles an hour faster than the takeoff speed of my son’s Southwest Airlines 737.

The race evolved into a 23-second duel between Malukas and Rosenqvist. Want to take a white-knuckle ride with Rosenqvist on that last lap?

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=felix+onboard+for+the+last+lap+of+the+500&refig=6a18ca50d02f4504805071

Malukas led out of the fourth turn but Rosenqvist had the momentum.

Rosenqvist by 0.0223 second, the smallest victory margin in Speedway history.

The win was worth $4.3 million of the record $30 million purse.  By the time Rosenqvist took the ceremonial last lap around the track, in the back of a pickup truck, so the crowd could appreciate what he had done, and he and his crew knelt at the start/finish line for the traditional kissing of the bricks, a light rain was falling.

The finish was bitter for Malukas, who wept when he stepped out of his car. He had finished second to Alex Palou last year by 1.142 seconds, meaning he has been separated from two straight wins in the Indianapolis 500 by a combined 1.7 seconds. But he wasn’t the only one disappointed.

 

Santino Ferrucci, whose uniform reflected the nation’s patriotic 250th anniversary theme of the day, finished in the top ten for the eighth straight year. Pato O’Ward, racked up his fifth straight top five including two runner ups.  O’Ward was only 0.4271 seconds behind Scott McLaughlin, finishing fourth. Ferrucci was 8th, 1.571 behind.

Will their time come for Malukas, Fdrrucci, and O’Ward?  Or will they join the long list of men who year after year were within reach of being immortalized on the trophy but never made it.

They’re all yet young and God willing, there will be more chances for their faces to join those of Rosenqvist and 76 others on the big trophy.

Shortly after the 500 ended, the longest race of the NASCAR season was helping Charlotte, North Carolina, observe Memorial Day.  In a few weeks, those cars will roar around the first race track in the world to use the word “Speedway” to describe itself. The cars will be bigger and one-third slower but the fans will be as devoted to them as IndyCar fans are devoted to their cars and drivers, and the competition for a prestigious Brickyard 400 victory at the greatest race track in the world will be equally fierce.

The great track is silent now. But in a few weeks a new roar of engines will be heard as the great track once again knows he heat of racing cars being driven by people doing heroic things.

For me, it was time for a long, quiet ride home, hoping I could make it back to Missouri before having to buy more of that awfully expensive Illinois gas. I found myself thinking of the era that gave us this holiday. After all, I was going to spend the day in the land of the man who was the central figure in it all.

Join me in that ride, if you wish, on Monday.

(picture credits—Bob Priddy and Rick Gevers; Borg-Warner; Finish—The Guardian)

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Some Reflections on Memorial Day, Part One 

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This was a Memorial Day that has taken some time for us to process.  The holiday’s origins are easily overlooked each year by the rush of noisy celebrations that seem far removed from the original intent of the day.  I was awash in those contrasting “celebrations” that have overshadowed the “observance” and “commemoration” originally intended. But I found toward the end in a closed state park a quiet reminder of why Memorial Day is and should be recalled for its origins—and why this contemporary noisy version of Memorial Day anticipates the next great holiday that this year will challenge our honesty about who we have become.

This might be written more for my benefit more than for yours and I hope you will excuse me for these ruminations.  I didn’t plan on them stretching into four chapters but a lot was going on, not the least of which was “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”

We’ll talk about the race but this series is not all about racing for the race is only part of the story.

The weekend had been spent in a city that observes/commemorates Memorial Day throughout the entire month of May. I know of no other city that rivals Indianapolis’s Memorial…..Month.

Indianapolis is a prototype that diminishing cities might use to reinvent themselves.s  through the course of several decades and several setbacks, Indianapolis has emerged as a dynamic, livable place of major league proportions in spirit and enterprise. And each year it throws one big party in May.

Reconciling the big party in that prototype city with the solemnity the holiday was originally created for, reconciling what men and women in the military died for in the war that created Memorial Day dwith what we are and what that the city is provided the ingredients for a lot of thinking on the long drive back to Jefferson City on Monday that took me through a lot of American history and some of my own.

I was born in Decatur Illinois, a town where Abraham Lincoln’s family briefly lived after moving from Indiana. I was raised in two small central Illinois towns, Mt. Pulaski (population about 1,500) and then Sullivan (a bigger place of about 3,300 when we moved there in fourth grade). Abraham Lincoln practiced law in both places as a circuit-riding attorney.

Lincoln scholars point to 1843 as the first time Lincoln and a couple of friends first quoted the phrase from three of the Gospels that “a house divided against itself can not stand” as they helped organize the Illinois Whig Party.

Fifteen years later, he spoke them again in accepting the nomination to run against incumbent Senator Stephen A. Douglas: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. . . .A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”  He lost that election but it paved the way to the presidency two years later and the great test that followed that determined the correctness of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and by 1858 Abraham Lincoln.

A civil war that tested that assertion took Lincoln to Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, where more than seven-thousand soldiers from both sides had been killed and more than forty thousand had been wounded. He paid tribute to those who died defending the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that our nation had been “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

He called upon the nation that day to complete what he called the “unfinished work”  and “the great task remaining before us,” not referring to the war but to the words of the Declaration. He called for the people to recommit themselves to that cause so the nation should have a “new birth of freedom” flowing from, by, and for the people—a united people, a house NOT divided.

A 1904 newspaper article reported that in October 1864, almost a year after Gettysburg and about six months before the Civil War ended, three women in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania decorated the graves of Union soldiers.  Boalsburg, an unincorporated area of 4,600 today, makes the disputed claim that the event was the earliest documented observance of a memorial day.

On May 1, 1865, just three weeks after Lee’s surrender and two weeks after Lincoln’s death, as many at 10,000 people in deeply Confederate Charleston, South Carolina dedicated the graves of Union soldiers who had died in a Confederate Prison. Reports tell us many in the audience were Black.

Waterloo, NY claims to have held the first FORMAL annual observance of a memorial day on May 5, 1866. Local druggist Henry Welles is credited with thinking of the event.

The first national observance was on May 30, 1868 when former Illinois white supremacist John A. Logan, who had become became strong Lincoln supporter at the start of the war and abandoned his racist sentiments after fighting alongside black troops, issued a national proclamation calling for “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country. ” Logan, a wartime Union General, was the Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization for Union Army veterans such as my great grandfather. The day originally known as “Decoration Day” was expanded after World War I to honor all of our country’s military dead. It officially became Memorial Day in 1971 when it became a national Monday holiday that now is most often considered the unofficial beginning of summer.

Logan County, where Mt. Pulaski is, was named after Logan’s father. My great grandfather enlisted in the Union Army in Moultrie County, where Sullivan is.

My journey Monday, the now designated Memorial Day, took me back through that area of Lincoln and Logan, and Private Robert T. Priddy—who served under General Sherman at Vicksburg—where Logan was with another Union Army unit.  I had been thinking a lot about the cacophony that the holiday weekend had become as the miles of pavement disappeared beneath my car, I found myself in a quiet place that helped me put the day, the weekend, into a context.  I’ll take you from the cacophony to the quiet in succeeding chapters.

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Notes From a Quiet Hill 

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In case you are wondering—-

Triple-A says the highest recorded price for regular unleaded fuel in Missouri was $4.683 on June 16, 2022. The record for diesel was set just nine days later at $5.375.

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We either are still in Indianapolis or on the way home after witnessing two races—one of which we hope to have more about later (and we don’t mean tomorrow). We took this picture last year of the starting field—only six cars, if you want to call them that.

This year was the second annual Wiener 500.  All six of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile raced for two laps, each with a two-person crew (both college students who have spent a year touring the country promoting Oscar-Mayer products.  It was so much fun they decided to do it again Saturday, weather permitting (we are writing this on Wednesday night before heading to the Circle City Friday morning).  We’ll have a full report.  Last we knew, two young women from the MU Journalism school had been part of the traveling show. If one of them drives one of these machines to victory, she will be the first woman to win a race in the 117-year history of the Speedway.

Last year, the 500 broadcast crew had fun with their straight-faced coverage:

Inaugural Oscar Mayer Wienie 500 🌭 Full Race | INDYCAR on FOX

Unofficially, the last 2.5 mile lap was turned in 3:17.5, about 65.2 mph.

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Another example of the political amateur hour in Washington crossed our desk a few days ago when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told the House Natural Resources Committee advocates for solar energy are wrong because, “”All of these projects …in Nevada have one thing in common. When the sun goes down, they produce zero electricity….The whole machine doesn’t work when the sun goes down. And there’s examples from around the world of this happening.”  He suggested committee members have secret briefings about how solar energy doesn’t work.

California Congressman Jared Huffman couldn’t resist a response, asserting there is an “amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of, it’s a battery.” And solar system batteries hold the day’s electricity for use at night.  Burgum seems to have been in the dark about that. Ignorance such as this in this administration stopped being a surprise a long time ago.

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I’m an immensely popular guy. Or maybe a lot of people are interested in my welfare. My phone is ringing from sunup to sundown from people wanting to make sure my Medicare program is good enough. Even when my caller identity says they’re call from some town in Missouri (and other places nationwide) it turns out that they’re not calling from those places at all.

And many voices sound as if they’re coming from places without Medicare.

A dozen calls a day probably is below average. I answer the calls because I don’t want to fill up the answering machine with non-messages. The thing beeps and drives me crazy.

One day our caller ID told us we were calling ourselves. But we recognize our own voices and the voice calling us was neither of us.

It’s time we re-examined the Attorney General’s no-call list to see if we can have a law (maybe it has to be federal) that says any call originating from someplace other than where the caller ID says it’s coming from is a crime.   It has been many years since we heard of the Attorney General racking up a big fine against a robocall company.

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Here’s something that is really, really serious in our country’s politics.  There are conspiracy theorists who claim that President Trump faked his assassination attempts. While there is no Christmas card exchange between his mailbox and ours, we can’t see how that assertion is true. If it is true, it means that Donald Trump planned for the death of one or more onlookers—Corey Comperatore, who did get fatally shot, and two other people on the platform who were wounded in Pennsylvania. There are those floating the idea that he somehow convinced some guy from California to give up the rest of his life as a free citizen to go to Washington and do something at the correspondents’ dinner to justify tearing down part of the White House and building a ballroom that is more secure than the Washington hotel ballroom where the dinner was scheduled this year.

All of that is rubbish. Perhaps the discussion we should be having is about what Trump does and/or says that has encouraged three unbalanced people to try to get him in their gunsights.

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Here’s a way to end Mr. Trump’s war with Iran.  We buy all of its enriched uranium and make an exclusive contract with Iran to be our exclusive supplier, with American management involved. Payments for the uranium would come from the funds this country has confiscated from Iran not only to pay for the uranium but to constitute reparations for our bombings. Turn management of the Strait of Hormuz to the United Nations which could charge reasonable fees that would finance programs in the world’s poorest countries.

Maybe we could make Iran our 51st state. Or the 52nd.  Or the 52rd.  Or 53rd.  We almost need a scorecard to keep track of the possibilities.

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