Monthly Archives: April 2020

Us vs. It—part V, Remembering

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I enjoy Scott Simon’s thoughtful brief commentaries on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday and last Saturday he had one that caught my interest at the beginning—because I disagreed with the opening concept. I understood his point at the end, however, and agreed with that. Here’s what he said about the world we live in today.

Our oldest daughter turned 17 yesterday. It’s quite a time for a young person to have a birthday.

I’ve covered wars where I got to know families with teenagers, and I’d ask parents, “What do you want your children to remember of these times?” The answer was almost always, “Nothing. I want my children to remember nothing of all this.”

This coronavirus is not a war. Yet as in war, there are long spells of tedium, interrupted by episodes of anxiety, and sometimes danger, loss, and grief. No parent wants their children to carry that load through their lives.

But, any parent learns how children rarely remember what we hope. You may want your child to remember when they saw the Eiffel Tower or met an athlete. What they really recall is the ice cream they had at the end of the day, or a man with the lizard tattoo they saw on the subway.

I hope that when both our daughters think back on this time, they’ll remember how many good people worked so hard to keep the world running, often at risk to themselves. They’re often people we can take for granted, and identify just by a job title, a nurse, a driver, a cop, a sanitation worker, or a clerk. I hope our daughters will know their names and remember how much we owe them.

I hope our daughters will remember, too, how they found their own ways to help people now: to walk the dogs of neighbors who can’t venture out, play with children whose parents have to work, and to write cards and make calls to make people smile.

I hope they’ll appreciate the ingenuity of their teachers, who’ve tried to devise new ways to fire their young minds. And I know they’ll remember how their mother has held, nourished, and cared for all of us in all ways.

In a way, these times may help our children appreciate the fortitude of their grandmothers, who are now gone. They lived through world wars and many hard times, but carried themselves with lightness, grace, and humor.

A few days ago, I came upon our daughters as they shared a joke. I asked, “What’s so funny?” and they said nothing—and traded smiles as I turned away. I imagine the joke was on me; and I was delighted. I hope they remember that joke, and their closeness. I hope they remember that when the world may seem cold or dark, they can turn to each other and feel the sun.

The part I disagreed with was, “What do you want your children to remember of these times?” The answer was almost always, ‘Nothing. I want my children to remember nothing of all this.’

“This coronavirus is not a war. Yet as in war, there are long spells of tedium, interrupted by episodes of anxiety, and sometimes danger, loss, and grief. No parent wants their children to carry that load through their lives.”

I WANT my children, or more appropriately my grandchildren, to remember everything: the danger, the tedium, the anxiety. I hope they don’t directly experience loss and grief. But I want them to remember because we might not have to wait another century for a pandemic such as this one to hit again. In fact, a lot of scientists and healthcare people already are saying chances are good this virus will come back with the cooler weather in the Fall.

It’s important for them to remember that one way this version of the coronavirus was limited in the danger, loss, and grief was the tedium of shelter-in-place, the anxiety of wondering if somehow the virus might find you, the feeling of loss with each day’s new death count even if no one we know is among those terrible numbers. In an impatient world of increasing self-centeredness, disciplined patience and respect for the harm we might cause others by flaunting our perceived independence when it is increasingly obvious we are INTERdendent in so many ways is what has, to use the phrase of the day, “flattened the curve” in many places.

I want my grandchildren to remember the good things Scott Simon mentions. But I do not want them to forget the things many people want their children to forget—because memory could be part of their salvation.

Dr. Crane on hate and science

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(A combination of two issues that seem to be part of today’s national dialogue—plus a recent comment from the Texas Lieutenant Governor suggesting old people should be prepared to die so the economy could be reopened—attracted us to this reflection by Dr. Frank Crane, who wrote these thoughts during World War I and just before Adolf Hitler emerged to lift Aryan perfection as a prelude to a greater war and a holocaust. Keep in mind, however, when this was written. Some attitudes that seem prescient in that time might not be fair today. On the other hand, his basic point at the end remains valid.)

HALF SCIENCE

There is a kind of bastard science which is very dangerous.

It gets a glimpse of the great law of “The Survival of the Fittest.” It explains many things. And the apprentice mind in its enthusiasm imagines it explains everything.

It does not. The Survival of the Fittest, the Struggle for Existence, and the whole law that the physically weak are exterminated and the physically strong survive, all this is true only up to a certain point.

It is true of tigers and tomcats; it is not true of human beings.

When Man first appeared in the history of evolution, he brought another element into the arena, the Moral element.

Not to reckon with this Moral power is not to be a scientist, but a half-scientist.

The German mind is half-scientific. That is what ails it. It conceives that the final triumph will rest with “the big blond beast.” With the men of muscle and ferocity, with those who thrust aside all motives of pity and gentleness and concentrate on material force.

The saying that “God is on the side of the strongest battalions,” is a sample of this half-reasoning.

God is on the side of truth, honor, humaneness, and love; and in the end these gentle powers shall overcome. That is what Jesus meant when He said that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” And that is what the half-baked mind sneers at, neither indeed can believe.

But just the same, Civilization means the superiority of the Moral forces and the eventual subjugation of all Brute force.

…Civilization is not a working out of materialistic laws; it is the mastery and direction of those laws by a spiritual, non-material something called Man.

Us vs It—part IV, Best guess

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(Before we get to the main point of today’s missive, your constant observer must confess that he feels a slight fever and has trouble breathing every time he hears the phrase “new normal.” He would quickly recover if the political and media leaders more accurately referred to the next positive step as the “new ABnormal.”   Likewise, he would be interested to see if President Trump could communicate without using the word “beautiful,” including the usual hand gestures.)

Legislative leaders, last we heard, are still thinking of reconvening the session on the 27th despite concerns by some members that the recall will be happening just about the time some analysts say Missouri will hit its Coronavirus peak.

Several issues could be before the House and Senate but the biggest one is the state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The Missouri Constitution says the legislature must adopt a budget by the next-to-last Friday of the session, in this case, May 8.

Our lawmakers face complicated and sad choices. Today we are going to try to explain how our state government has no good alternatives and why. Please stay with us because this will be a long class.

Here’s some history of why the Missouri Constitution requires passage of a budget a week before legislative adjournment and what that means in today’s circumstances.

Last nights of legislative sessions were usually quite wild until 1988. We recall when the legislature adjourned at midnight and the last budget bills, “Midnight Specials,” some called them, hit the floor minutes before the deadline. Chaos might not be an adequate word to describe those minutes when the legislature rushed to pass last minute budget bills. The fact that everybody was exhausted and not a few were feeling the effects of early celebration of the session’s end added to the disorder.

But in 1988, Article 3, Section 25 of the Missouri Constitution was changed to say, “No appropriation bill shall be taken up for consideration after 6:00 p.m. on the first Friday following the first Monday in May of each year.” That left the session’s final week for consideration of regular legislation, created a less chaotic ending, let members get home to their families before midnight and let the reporters file their stories before sunrise the next morning. Your faithful correspondent thinks it was one of wisest laws ever enacted in the state of Missouri. Until then, members of the General Assembly had a tendency NOT to go home after midnight adjournment but to go out to the Ramada Inn after midnight and get really serious about celebrating. And it often was sunrise or later before he could go home from his Missourinet newsroom.

If the General Assembly fails to enact a budget by the deadline, what happens? If economic uncertainty makes it unrealistic to adopt a reasonably realistic budget during the regular session, the Constitution allows the governor to call a special session to get a budget done for the fiscal year starting July 1. The General Assembly also could call itself back. But it will be easier for the governor to do it, and he would. The legislature has never operated a budget on the basis of a continuing resolution, as Congress too often has done, so it is unlikely to take that strategy—-which (to a non-lawyer) seems to be unconstitutional in Missouri anyway.

A special session in June is not unprecedented.

The legislature in 1997 failed to appropriate money for Health and Mental Health, nor did they appropriate money for their own salaries as well as those of judges and statewide officials. That last problem arose when legislators argued they could not appropriate money for themselves and others until they have approved funding for everybody else. Governor Carnahan called a special session that, we recall, started right after the regular session adjourned so the last two budget bills could be approved. It took six days to do it because the legislative process of introducing and passing bills takes a little time.

In 2003, Governor Holden and the legislature got into a big snit and he vetoed appropriations bills for education and social services. He called a special session in June that was unproductive. With time running short, he called another one. The legislature told him to take it or leave it. He finally signed appropriations bills for elementary, secondary, and higher education on the last day of the fiscal year.

Special sessions usually cost more than six figures a week, mostly for legislative travel expenses and per diem payments. However, the expenses of one this year would be significantly reduced by savings realized by the shutdown of the legislature from mid-March until late April—except for the couple of days lawmakers returned this month to pass the important supplemental appropriations bill.

After the legislature approves a budget and the governor signs it, he will have to make sure the state does not fall into constitutionally-forbidden deficit spending. Given what is likely to be an indefinite period of economic uncertainty, it would not be surprising for the governor to sign a budget but withhold funds from various services and programs to make sure the budget remains in balance for the entire fiscal year. He can announce spending restrictions when he signs the budget and he can make adjustments throughout the year, although the later in the year he makes them, the harder it is for agencies and their employees to deal with them.

Under the circumstances any budget the legislature approves is likely to be only a best guess.

Governor Parson will have to adjust it downward, if necessary, to keep it in balance. We have seen examples of that within the last few days when the governor withheld $228 million in the current budget because the diving economy makes the amount of money available for the fourth quarter uncertain.

Education has a tendency to absorb the biggest share of cuts and withholds. Here is why.

Joe and Josephine Missouri might have trouble understanding why it’s so painful to make cuts in the state budget of almost $30.1 BILLION dollars proposed by Governor Parson in the flush days of January. If you are a Joe or a Josephine, we hope we can help you understand some important things about that thirty-BILLION dollars.

The legislature can decide how to spend only about one third of that money and even then it is limited in what it can do.

More than ten billion of those dollars come from the federal government for state-run federally-financed programs.

Another ten billion dollars is considered “other” funds. Those are funds that are dedicated to specific purposes. Gas tax money that goes for our road and bridge system is one example. The Conservation Sales tax money that funds our wildlife areas and Conservation Department programs is another. The special sales taxes that help fund our state parks system and help limit soil erosion is another one. Gambling proceeds that fund a tiny part of education. The legislature can’t fiddle with those because the Missouri Constitution sets them outside of legislative control.

That leaves $10,431,666,579 that the governor’s budget proposal said was under control of the state. But even that is not fully in play because other state mandates require funding for some things. One-third of that ten-Billion goes to Elementary and Secondary Education under the statutory formula for funding K-12 education. Other mandated spending eats up another $5.108-Billion.

So out of that thirty-billion dollars-plus, the legislature actually only has $1.881,921,936 to play with, if you will. But remember, that’s the figure the governor recommended back in January when the restaurants and malls and theatres and bars were open and we could go wherever we wanted to go.

When big budget withholdings have to be made or when cuts have to be made—as they have been and will be—that $1.9 billion dollars is the place to cut. That’s only six percent of the entire proposed budget.

Of that $1.9 Billion dollars, two state departments consume $1.102 Billion—Higher Education and Social Services. The next two are Elementary and Secondary Education ($136 million), and Corrections ($107 million). That chews up about $1.345 Billion of that $1.9 Billion dollars. But there are five other state agencies. The governor proposed $365 million to fund them. There’s another $166 million that falls into the “other” category. A good chunk of those “other” funds go to Elementary and Secondary Education and Social Services with relative pocket change scattered through several other agencies.

In his COVID-19 daily briefing on April 9, Governor Parson was pretty direct. “We’re gonna have to rebuild the budget,” he said. His January proposal is junk because of the pandemic.

It is likely the best-guess budget for the programs and services all of us use will take some really painful reductions for the fiscal year starting July 1. Everybody is going to be hurt to some degree. Programs already dealing with serious problems are going to be dealing with even bigger ones.   The biggest programs are going to take the biggest hits because that’s where the money is. People are going to lose jobs. People relying on those programs will struggle even more than they struggle now.

The people we elect to work for us are facing the possibility that they will have to hurt many of us. Do not think that when they show up at the Capitol on the 27th, or whenever the decision is made to reconvene the legislature, that they will not anguish about what they have to do.

If you were in their place, which of YOUR neighbors would you choose to hurt even more than they already are hurting?

Most of us can rage against our circumstances. These folks are the ones we have chosen to get beyond rage and do something about the circumstances facing us. They will have no easy choices.

Us vs. It—part III, Re-opening Day

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This is the third or fourth version of this entry from your faithful observer as he has struggled to keep up with our President and his ping-pong positions on the pandemic.

We started with the anticipation that President Trump would be convening a task force to look at when he can proclaim the country re-opened for business. He called it the biggest decision of his life. Within seventy-two hours he had amplified his position, asserting that he and he alone could order the lifting of social distancing and other policies put in place by the nation’s governors.

Now, after several governors have suggested rather clearly that he didn’t know what he was talking about, he has decided he’s going to “authorize” each governor to reopen states as the governors see fit. This is a big CYA effort (or if you prefer a more elevated phrase, a face-saving effort) and governors are likely to maintain that they don’t need his “authorization” either.

The way things are going, this entry could be out of date before sundown. But we’re going ahead anyway.

The President is under a lot of pressure to get the economy moving again. Some of that pressure is coming from Wall Street, which is highly-important to him personally as well as politically.

The Washington Post reported a few days ago that the Trump Organization had laid off 1,500 people and closed seventeen of its twenty-four properties in various parts of the world because of the virus. Based on previous Trump financial disclosures, says the newspaper, the closed properties generate about $650,000 a day. The organization’s payments on leases and property taxes are coming due or are past-due.

Some of this is increasingly political. He needs a big economic turnaround before the Republican National Convention opens in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 27. He needs the virus to be gone and a major economic resurgence to talk about at the convention and in the weeks before the election. He can continue deflecting criticism of his handling of the epidemic to someone else—as he already has in pointing a finger at China, Congress, Democrats, the Obama Administration, governors, and the World Health Organization. But by late August, he’ll have a hard time generating enough other boogeymen to deflect enough blame away from an administration that had taken exclusive credit for the growing economy and now wants no criticism for its sharp decline.

While he now seems willing to let governors decide what is best for their states, we’ll be watching to see if this new attitude also includes better assistance to the states in the recovery. As we have heard, he has blamed governors for their lack of protective equipment for healthcare workers.

Actually, we were looking forward to a possible legal donnybrook between the governors and the President if he had maintained his position that he has the exclusive power to reopen state economies. We do wonder if his new position still includes part of his previous statement that if he disagrees with a governor’s actions or lack of them, “I would overrule a governor, and I have a right to do it.”

We all know what could happen if he tries to overrule a governor, don’t we? What will the President do if a governor refuses to be overruled? Will he withhold federal disaster aid? That won’t win many friends or votes. Will he sue the states or the governors? Will the states and their governors sue him?

Our Governor Parson, asked on Monday about the President’s remarks about exclusive powers, said the President “well-knows the authority of the states.”  He said he’s not worried.” We might have to go back to the early days of World War II to find a governor who suddenly has so many things on his plate.

The President still hopes something good for him can happen on May 1. He seems to be one of the few who thinks that date is realistic.

Here’s an outlook for Missouri is concerned:

Leaders of the Missouri legislature hope to re-convene the General Assembly on April 27. Governor Parson said yesterday that would be okay with him as long as they maintain social distancing—as they did last week when they passed the supplemental budget bill. Some projections underline the governor’s cautionary note.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which has been cited in several White House Coronavirus briefings, a few days ago lowered the anticipated death toll from the virus at 61,545, quite a drop from a possible 240,000 suggested earlier. It says social distancing is the key to the lower number. But while the 61,545 was the hard number we read about and heard about, the institute admitted it was only an estimate, somewhere between 26,487 and 155,311 in its modeling.

We checked the projection graphs a few hours before posting this entry. The institute has increased its projected death total to 68,841 with the 68,841st death coming on June 28. The hard number falls in a bracket of 30,188 and 175,961.

The forecast estimated that on May 1, the nation’s hospitals will need 49,891 beds, 10,937 in intensive care, and 8,953 invasive ventilators. It suggests 976 people will die that day.

Not a good day to reopen the country. We expect the modeling will changes from day to day as new statistics are fed into the system.

The IHME’s latest forecast is for Missouri’s peak day is April 29, just one day before May 1, two days after the legislature convenes. The good news is that no bed shortages or ICU space shortages are forecast. But we will need 313 ventilators. The institute forecasts that we’ll be averaging 50 deaths per day by then, part of an anticipated total of 1,712 with the 1,712th death coming on June 16. That’s the hard number forecast so far. The institute model says that’s within a range of 420 and 5,557.

Governor Parson has said more than once that he’s making decisions about re-starting the economy based on Missouri-specific data. He needs a lot more of it. Our testing numbers, although growing, are not impressive and Missouri as well as other states are going to have to have large improvements in testing to make a safe determination of when stay-at-home orders should be lifted and social distancing standards should be eased.

The President realizes that the opposition gains more ammunition each day the virus creates a new hot spot, each day that first responders are overwhelmed, every day that doctors and nurses are exposed to the virus because they lack the personal protective equipment they need. He knows, or should know, that declaring the company open is a great risk if the virus is still killing significant numbers of people each day.

Governors also must be aware that easing the protective steps they have ordered could backfire on them, many of them facing re-election this year. The autumn flu season will have started by the election in November. The autumn sports seasons will draw thousands of people to distances far less than six feet, elevating the danger of a new virus surge. The last thing the President or the governors need is a flare-up of COVID-19 ten days or fewer before the election.

A popular song during World War I proclaimed, “We won’t come back ‘till it’s over, over there.” The lyric can change to fit our times: “We won’t come back ‘till it’s over, over here,” with a new definition of “come back” and another new definition for “it.”

 

 

Dr. Crane goes outdoors

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(We have come to appreciate going for a walk. In these days of social distancing with brief dashes to the grocery store to restock the pantry and the refrigerator, the thirty or forty or sixty minutes we spend taking brisk or semi-brisk walks in various parts of our neighborhood provide a welcome break from seeing the same walls, sitting in the same chairs, and occupying ourselves indoors. Dr. Crane nails it with the first line of this essay. We’re not so sure about the third line, however.)

OUTDOORS

A good dose of Outdoors would cure almost anything.

Quit wearing a hat and let your hair Outdoors for that bald spot.

Go barefoot and your feet will slip back ten years…

Go Outdoors and get rid of Nerves. They live in the house.

Other rats and mice that infest houses are Dyspepsia, Constipation, Liver Complaint, Peplessness, and Insomnia.

Not only Bodily Ailments, but all other kinds of plagues and nuisances are house creatures.

Creeds were all made in stuffy rooms. Religion, faith, hope, love, and courage inhabit the woods and meadows, sail the seas, and seek wind and sun.

Jesus taught Outdoors. Ecclesiastical Council are held behind closed doors. The decline of religion is traceable from the Sermon on the Mount to the Sermon in the asphyxiating Meeting- House.

Education ought to be Outdoors. My favorite dream is The University of Outdoors, where pupils go shoeless and hatless and learn under the starts.

This University would teach the child how to be as healthy as a panther. And healthy bodies would obviate most neurasthenic intellectual vagaries.

Where but the Outdoors can you learn Botany, Geology, Astronomy, and the like? Real Science lives Outdoors, as much as Leap-frog.

Play Outdoors.

Even Kissing is better Outdoors…When you chase a girl a half a mile to kiss her you realize what real Kissing is.

Eating is better Outdoors. A horse is healthier than a man because a horse has to walk after every bite of grass he gets…

Children thrive Outdoors and pine in the house.

Outdoors is cheap and plenty.

God made outdoors; man made Indoors.

And God lives Outdoors; in man-made edifices are—Idols.

Us vs. It—part II, Waist deep

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At the height of the Vietnam War one of the nation’s greatest folk singers began performing an allegorical song called “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.”

When Pete Seeger performed it on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour more than fifty years ago, the song became part of a national controversy because many people, apparently including the CBS censors, thought that the next-to-last verse criticized President Johnson’s increasing investment of American lives in what some already thought was an unwinnable war.

It didn’t help that Seeger was among those blacklisted during the McCarthy Era (he was part of The Weavers, the group that brought folk singing to early popularity. But the group was too liberal for McCarthyites) and he was still considered somewhat “leftist,” therefore, “subversive.”

The CBS censors cut the song out of the show but when Seeger performed it on a later program—one of the last in the show’s brief run—it was allowed to stay in, perhaps because of the public reaction to its deletion the first time.

We keep hearing President Trump talk about the need to re-open the country or to get big-time sports going again even as he also says we’re headed for the deadliest part of the Coronavirus assault. The shutdown of a part of the economy—the hospitality industry—is a big blow to his personal interests and reopening the country, as he likes to put it, would certainly be to his benefit. We make the observation without implying that he is driven only by his personal economic concerns but his insistence that reopening business in the wake of the ongoing pandemic brings Pete Seeger’s song from another era to mind. It was the next-to-last verse that got Seeger and the Smothers Brothers in trouble then and it might get this observer in trouble today, at least with some people. Have at it in the comment area at the end if you wish—either way. Just remember our civility guidelines.

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Louisiana,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That’s how it all begun.
We were — knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.

 

The Sergeant said, “Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?”
“Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
‘Bout a mile above this place.
It’ll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We’ll soon be on dry ground.”
We were, waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

 

The Sergeant said, “Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim.”
“Sergeant, don’t be a Nervous Nellie, ”
The Captain said to him.
“All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I’ll lead on.”
We were, neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

 

All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain’s helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, “Turn around men!
I’m in charge from now on.”
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

 

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn’t know that the water was deeper
Than the place he’d once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
‘Bout a half mile from where we’d gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

 

Well, I’m not going to point any moral,
I’ll leave that for yourself
Maybe you’re still walking, you’re still talking
You’d like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;

We’re, waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.


Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man’ll be over his head, we’re
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnJVkEX8O4

We are not implying in this entry that President Trump is “the big fool” of today’s “war.” That would be name-calling and we do not believe name-calling either solves problems or ennobles the person who has nothing of intrinsic value to otherwise add to a conversation.

A blogger, Chimesfreedom*, has a nice piece about Seeger’s performance of the song on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Tom and Dick Smothers were constantly at war with the CBS censors and Seeger’s performance of the song on their season-opening show in 1967 led to a loud public fight about censorship.

http://www.chimesfreedom.com/2014/01/28/the-censored-pete-seeger-performance-on-the-smothers-brothers-comedy-hour/

The brothers’ constant fight with CBS about the content of their show led the network to abruptly cancel it, despite good ratings, after just two years. It was replaced by Hee-Haw.

Chimesfreedom is a blog with an unnamed “editor-in-chief” who describes himself as “a writer and professor in New York.”

Dr. Crane on TR

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(A little more than five years ago, I landed on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. This week’s news of the firing of the ship’s commander because he sought help he felt he wasn’t getting to combat an outbreak of the Coronavirus on his ship brought back memories of a mammoth ship with a crew half-again as large as the Illinois town in which I grew up, and visions of what could happen to the population of a city-ship whose people had nowhere to flee and nowhere to seek medical help except in the small part of the ship that is its hospital. The commander left the ship in Guam to rousing cheers of the large crew he sought to protect. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a “hero’s sendoff.” He was removed because he violated the chain of command and in the process showed a negative light on the Navy. He was a man who cared about his people. Dr. Frank Crane wrote about the man for whom the ship was named when Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919. What he wrote leads me to think he and Captain Brett Crozier have some things in common. It also leads me to wonder what will be written of today’s leaders sometime in their futures.)

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Theodore Roosevelt is dead.

He has stepped from the midst of controversy and taken his place among the immortals, against whom no man can speak.

For the moment, the conflict ceases, friend and foe stand with bared heads to do homage to a great and valiant soul.

There is a sudden and loyal silence throughout all the hosts. For no man has ever been more a part of every man in the United States than Theodore Roosevelt.

His friends will rush no more quickly to speak his praise than his enemies.

For he was a man’s man, and it was a joy to fight him, as well as to agree with him.

His spirit was a fierce and beautiful flame.

His opinions were simple, and always avowed with the wholeness and self-abandon of a true believer.

He would have made a wonderful knight in the days of Charlemagne, a fair and worthy companion to Roland.

He conceived of life, of duty, and even of love in terms of conflict. His make-up was militant. But his conceptions were always sincere.

His chief characteristic was courage. Whatever may have been charged against him in the extravagances of dispute, his bitterest foe must concede that he was to the last a warrior unafraid.

And that quality of fearlessness, that indomitable bravery, when lodged in this weak humanity, is always a thing of beauty, a little spark of God. We love it. We respect it just for itself. It is the great worthwhile thing in an immortal soul.

So he was a friend, conceived of as a friend, in a passionate and personal way, as no other statesman of American history, except Lincoln.

He was very near to the American heart. And even in the stormy days of these vast issues that have beyond him, the tribute of respect that this people pays to him will be honest and profound.

He had a public mind and gave himself to the service of the people with a singleness of purpose that will be an inspiration to American youth.

He was thoroughly human. He was frank, overfrank sometimes, but we love the man whose heart outruns him.

Kings may pass and be followed to their graves with “the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power.” Presidents and premiers may die and their statues be set up in halls of fame; but none will go from the midst of the living and leave a sense of deep personal loss than this splendid man, this impetuous companion, who has been snatched by death from the intimate affection of a great people.

The Bull Moose has made his last charge.

The Rough Rider has led his last assault.

Bwana Tumbo, the mighty hunter, is back from this perilous expedition we call Life, and is gone home.

Friends and opponents, with equal earnestness, cry out, “God rest his soul!”

Upon his tomb there can be inscribed an epitaph, than which there can be no nobler, no prouder, no truer tribute:

“Here lies a real American.”

 

Us vs. It

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Finger- pointing is not going to solve the health problems we are facing or will be facing in the next few months as the pandemic sweeps from both coasts into the midlands. And it won’t do any good after the Coronavirus runs its course. We have serious problems and we can’t afford to waste time blaming this person or that country if we’re going to overcome those problems. So enough of the name-calling and blame-shifting already.

Things aren’t happening to other people They’re happening to us. And that’s what’s so unsettling. The Coronavirus isn’t something happening only in some distant countries. It might be next door. It might even be in our house and we don’t know it.

It’s not a tsunami at some remote Pacific Island, a tornado in another town, a flood in another state, or even a fire down the block.

It’s……somewhere. Close. Everywhere, maybe. It’s even making the stock market sick.

My friend Joe, a retired homicide cop, lamented at the YMCA before it closed indefinitely that back in the day he could see who might shoot at him and he could do something about it. But this Coronavirus, well, this is something impossible to relate to because we’ve never experienced anything like it. It is forcing us to become patient in a short-attention-span world.

Joe and I and several other friends at the Y all fall into the demographic group that this virus likes to hit. We like to think that our regular activities on the machines and with the weights and on the walking track make us a LITTLE more bulletproof.

But who knows?

The YMCA and the church are the main social outlets for several of us retired folks. Our church is doing worship services on its Facebook page instead of in the sanctuary now. The only activity still going on is our food pantry distributions. When we all left the Y for the last time before it closed, we didn’t know when we’d see each other again. This virus is shrinking our world, generally and personally. One good thing is that the weather is warm enough that we can at least go outside and walk about the block or something and at least breathe outside air—when it’s not raining.

Our fortunes are becoming unfortunate, something that didn’t happen in the Spanish Influenza era when retirement plans, health savings accounts, and insurance were not so much a part of life.

There is a choice to be made—people or the economy.   We can always rebuild the economy, though it might take more time that we wish. But we can’t rebuild the people we will lose if our leaders who think the economy is the key to their continued employment choose to make people more vulnerable and less valuable than the numbers on the stock market. The health of my body is more important than the health of someone’s portfolio.

We already are past the finger-pointing stage. It matters not where this outbreak began. What matter is how it is ended. Blaming others for the start of a crisis that we must help end is not an excuse for disarray in combatting it.

When this ends, as it will, there will be much room for a national soul-searching with the understanding that talk is cheap and the protections, treatments, and cures will require financial commitment based on our responsibility to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper.

Will this change us? It better change us. It already has, in fact.