Monthly Archives: November 2020

Fat

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(Dr. Frank Crane wanted to help people be better through positive thinking and in his writings he took that responsibility seriously. But Dr. Crane was not a man without humor. Our Centers for Disease Control says we are a nation of fat, that the prevalence of obesity was 42.4% in 2017-2018, the most recent year the CDC has weighed the facts and the facts show we’re plumping up. The Centers say that in 1999-2000, only 30.5% of us were, shall we say, overly insulated against the cold. As we are now into the season of over-indulging, we call upon Dr. Crane to offer some light-hearted positive thinking about this heavy topic.)

THE FAT MAN

Every once in a while, said the fat man, somebody comes along with some medicine or treatment or system of exercise or plan of starvation to reduce my flesh.

What do I want to reduce it for?  It all feels good.  And every time I lose weight I get peevish.

What’s the matter with people, anyhow, that they can make fun of fat folks?

They are the salvation of the race. They keep humanity cheerful.

Optimism is mostly a matter of adipose tissue.

Fat people like to eat and drink. They don’t have food fads. They enjoy breakfast, dinner, and supper, and a bite between. And that’s the kind of people mother likes to cook for, and the rest of the family like to live with.

People with appetites are human.

Human folks are those who make joys of life’s necessities. Must we eat? They make eating a celebration.  Must we drink? They adorn with songs the inserting of liquid into one’s anatomy. Must we labor? It shall be to music. Must we exercise? It shall be a game.

It’s your fat men that keep humanity form dying of the dry rot. They make existence a poem. They see the jokes of destiny.

Fat men have the sources of humor in them. Some lean persons have been funny, but what would they have amounted to had there been no fat persons to laugh at them?

Your skinny ones take themselves too seriously. They are reformers, prohibitionists, revolutionists, suffragettes. Their gospel is: Whatever is, is wrong.

Why do men admire slender women? They nag.

Slim women are neat, orderly, everything-in-its-place. They are good housekeepers, meaning that they keep the house fit for everybody but the husband and children.

And why do women admire slim men, with no girth? Such men are fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. They beat their wives, if they are vulgar; and persecute them more subtly, if they are cultured.

Take it from me, girls. Pick out a nice, large, round, juicy man, that likes to feed, and whose conscience is not wormy, marry him and, as the Good Books says, “let your soul delight itself in fatness. “

It doesn’t follow that because a man’s fat he’s a slob. Napoleon was roundish. Samuel Johnson was obese, and so was Boswell, who write about him.

The world and an overcoat, it was said, could not contain the glory of Victor Hugo. And believe me, he was some eater. Here’s one of his meals: veal cutlets, lima beans, oil, roast beef and tomato sauce, omelets, milk and vinegar, mustard and cheese, all swallowed rapidly with great draughts of coffee.

They called Rossini “a hippopotamus in trousers,” and for six years before his death he couldn’t see his toes.

Alexander Dumas could eat three beefsteaks to any other man’s one; and Balzac looked more like a hogshead than a human being.

Besides, added the fat man, if everybody was fat, there would be no war.  It’s the lean men that fight.

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Titles 

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Congratulations to all of those who gained titles on November 3.  Representative.  Senator.

Don’t let it go to your head.

Some people get all puffed up about titles, job titles. Some of the puffiest are those who are elected to wear titles on behalf of all of us.  But as pious Sam the Eagle learned to his embarrassment on The Muppet Show, we’re all naked under our clothes and therefore, we are all alike even if we have been given an impressive title.

That’s a good thing to keep in mind for those we elected to lead us into the third decade of the Twenty-first Century.

President, Governor, Representative, Senator (state as well as federal) and others who have achieved loftiness with a phrase they now can put ahead of their names or can keep ahead of their names for a while longer need to remember political titles are temporary and even during the times they carry them, there are people who know what they look like in their underwear.  Or less.

Your obedient servant has never been one who believes titles of elective office stay with a person once they leave that office.  Mr. Danforth. Mr. Obama. Ms. McCaskill, Mr. Holden. The public endows the person with the title until they leave office, at which point the public usually bestows that title on a successor. Do not presume that a title should be ahead of your name on your tombstone. You are no more distinguished in your final resting place than all of the others around you. You were Joe or Mary to the folks back home before you got here—to the Capitol. They will still call you by those names when you return on weekends or between sessions. And you will still be Joe and Mary when your years here are finished. Titles are nice in the Capitol where many people want to be your best friend.  But to your real best friends, the ones who sent you here, you will still be Joe and Mary.

For many years, I have spoken to the incoming new members of the General Assembly about the Capitol’s history or how to get along with the press.  I have tried to impress upon them that although they might be a Representative or Senator from X-district, they are STATE Representatives and STATE Senators and there will be times when the interests of people statewide outweigh the wishes of the folks at the Friday morning coffee table.

The same is more true for those we send to Washington where the opportunities for perceived self-importance are even greater. It would be helpful if they, even more than those at the Missouri Capitol, remind themselves of the truth of Sam the Eagle’s epiphany.

Sometimes I have told incoming legislators that if they begin to feel pretty important or if they start believing the messages of their importance that lobbyists sometimes spread upon them, to take a walk in the third and fourth floors, the legislative floors, and look at the composite pictures of members of past General Assemblies, even as recently as ten years ago, and see if they can recall anything any of those faces on the wall said or did.  “With luck, you are no more than eight years away from being just another picture on the wall that some small child might look at for ten seconds when told that ‘Great grandpa was a member of the legislature,’ and then want to go back downstairs to see the stagecoach in the museum again,” I tell them.

Whether at the state level or the federal level—or even in our city halls and county courthouses—those we pick to represent us are better served (and we are better served) if they adhere to the words of the eminent 23rd Century philosopher  S’chn T’gai Spock: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” (The Gospel of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.)

So, to the newbies as well as the re-elected veterans: The job is not about the title given to you. It is about what that title enables you to do for the people.  All of us.

 

 

Refusing to accept the truth

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(Dr. Crane is back in his Monday slot this week.  With so many people doubting or being encouraged to doubt the truth of the November 3 election results, we thought it appropriate to share his thoughts on truth and his answer to a question—)

WHAT TO DO

An interesting letter comes to me from a man who says that he has had enough of my finding fault with this, that, and the other in society, in law, and in customs; that he is aweary of this aimless iconoclasm; and that he wishes that I would come out flat-footed and tell him and the world precisely what to do to remedy the injustice and folly of mankind..

I could comply with his requests. I or any other opinionated man could in a half-hour tell the world just what it ought to do.

“I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Why, so can I, or so can any man;

But will they come when you do call for them?”

The trouble lies here: that neither the individual man nor mankind in general becomes better by TELLING.

Didactic teaching may do some good, but only in a very roundabout way; by familiarizing the hearer with helpful principles and ideas.

If an angel from God were to appear and tell the world precisely what to do, and if every man and woman believed him, they still would not, and could not, do what he said.

The reason is a psychological one. It is that the net result of any truth you had a man is the product of that truth MIXED WITH THE STUFF ALREADY IN HIS MIND.  Your information is not ADDED to his, it is DILUTED by his.

It all depends on the kind of mind, the whole set of ideas, habits, temperament, and so on with which the imparted truth is compounded.

Hence we see that progress is a matter of growth; it is slow; it moves by waves a generation apart. Old notions and inborn prejudices die hard, and rule us a long while after they are dead.

The human mind today is haunted by a swarm of ghosts of ancient frauds. Think of how many people today still believe in the divine right of kings, in the “natural” right of inheriting property, in the supremacy of Mahomet, and that criminals can be cured by punishment!

Some day, said Victor Hugo, children will be amazed to hear that there were kings in Europe. And some day, we may say, children will look back with incredulity upon our own era, where mothers can be seen content with their happy children and not turn a hand to rescue the myriad other children from stunting toil.

Many a thinker has thought out an elaborate plan for smashing things and composing them all anew. But not so comes the Golden Age.

It is a tree growing, not a house building. Age after age things get better, as the long rising of the tide.

Truth is like a lump of leaven which a woman puts in a measure of meal “until the whole is leavened.”

All we can do is keep on declaring the truth as we see it; putting in the leaven and waiting. We are digging about the truth, watering and cultivating it.  We do not “make’ it; the gardener does not “make” apples.”

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And the winner—

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(Your faithful observer confesses to being less observant than he thought he was, as at least three of you faithful consumers have been good enough to remind me.  For those who don’t or won’t in the future know about that to which I refer, go on with your lives. For those who do, please note that I have made the slight correction you suggest, with thanks.  But Mr. Biden is still P45.)

—won’t be known until January 6, 2021, two weeks before inauguration day.

Not officially, anyway.

We think we’ll know.  The networks will think they know.  The print reporters and the pundits will think they know. But they won’t be correct until January 6.

Officially.

Before we launch into an explanation of those statements, we want to say two things.

First: Joseph Biden will NOT be the 46th President of the United States.  He will be the 45th.  He will lead the 46th presidential administration but he will be the 45th president.  Grover Cleveland screwed up the numbering system when he served two non-consecutive terms and somebody decided he would be the 22nd and 24th President.  He was not two people. But he did lead two administrations.   It’s a small thing. But there are those who get really irritated with the lack of clarity in describing Mr. Biden as our 46th president. If should be apparent who one of them is.

(On Monday, we heard Governor Parson talk briefly about what an honor it is to be Missouri’s 57th governor and to realize how small the group is of men who have led the state in its 200 years.  Actually, the group is more exclusive than that.  He’s our 55th Governor, serving the 57th administration.  Phil Donnelly was 41 and 43 and Christopher Bond was 47 and 49 in terms of state administrations. So Governor Parson is one of only 55.)

Second and more important to today’s discussion: Our county election officials and the hundreds of volunteers who filled various roles on election day—for pitifully little pay—did something remarkable two weeks ago. Not just in Missouri.  Nationwide. With all of the concern about trouble from poll watchers, concerns that the number of voters would overwhelm the system, that the pandemic added hostile and confusing elements, and with the U. S. Postal Service set up to be a fall guy if some absentee or mail-on ballots didn’t get counted, election day happened without noticeable problems beyond the usual ones.  Election days are never easy days for those responsible for administering them.  But November, 2020 should be remembered because our election authorities stayed focused on their jobs and their responsibilities and did a highly-praiseworthy job. Thank Heavens our state went Republican. Otherwise those good folks would be living with unreasonable accusations and insults they do not deserve.

Now, on with our explanation of why we won’t have an official winner until the first week of the new year.

A week ago today we went to bed and we woke up and we didn’t know who would take the oath of office in Washington on January 20, 2021.

There’s a lot about this process of picking a president that we have forgotten about—if we ever knew it.

First, there’s this reminder. You and I were not electing a president two weeks ago.  We were indicating a preference for a president. We were deciding which party’s electors would elect a president.  Missouri Democrats and Republicans each select ten electors, one for each of our members of congress plus two because we have two Senators.  Our system says the person who finishes ahead in the popular vote in Missouri gets all ten of our electors. The electors then vote for the president.  In 2016, Donald Trump won Missouri 10-0.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  Our friend Phill Brooks, who started covering the Capitol about the same time your obedient servant did and writes a weekly political column about Missouri politics, said in a recent column, “the results reported on election night are neither official nor complete.”

Those of us who enjoy reporting the numbers on election night like to think they are, but Phill is correct. Mail-in and absentee ballots are counted after election day if they are postmarked by election day.  That’s why the numbers from the November 3 election were not certified by local election authorities on the spot.

But those are not the official numbers.

“The state law gives the state Board of Canvassers several more weeks before announcing the official state results based on those local reports,” Phill wrote. It is during this time that required recounts in local elections take place and protests or lawsuits are filed.  Once all of that is resolved and canvassers certify no problems with the count, a determination is made about which electoral college panel gets some work to do while the others go home.

The Missouri electoral college delegates will not meet until December 14.  Our ten D or R delegates will give all ten of Missouri’s real determining votes to the state winner, meaning Donald Trump will carry Missouri again 10-0.

But the winner is not determined then, either.

Congress collects all of the Electoral College reports and will hold a joint session on January 6. It will count the electoral votes and declare the person who got 270 or more electoral votes the winner of the big chair in the oval office.  Two weeks later that person will be inaugurated.

That’s how it works. We voted November 3 to pick someone from our district to represent all of the winner’s voters. That person will present all ten of our votes to one candidate.

And then it’s official.

The Secretary of State reports Donald Trump got 1,711,848 votes in Missouri last week. But actually, he got 10.  Joe Biden got 1,242,851.  Actually, he got none.  But thank you, 1,242,851 Missourians for taking part.

One other thing to mention.  Missouri saw 3,012,436 votes cast for president. The total number of votes cast (because some people did not vote for president but voted for other candidates or issues) is going to be more than that. But the number of votes for president was almost 200,000 more ballots that were cast in the 2016 election.

We are all one big county

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(Normally, we try to have some positive thoughts from Dr. Frank Crane on Mondays but some recent comments on the pandemic seem far more important today)

I suspect the people in this house on this quiet street are not the only ones who are scared today. We responsibly wear our masks whenever we leave the house to go anyplace where there are other people—the YMCA, the grocery store, the bookstore downtown, church (we are back to watching services on the First Christian Church webpage now that the weather has cooled off enough we can’t meet in a park pavilion or in our parking lot and services have moved to our gymnasium).  We wash our hands.  We’ve been “nosed” twice.

But every day we look at the Health Department’s COVID dashboard and we see the numbers of new cases and deaths and the daily record hospitalizations.

Last Friday, Dr. Alex Garza, the head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force pleaded for state officials to go beyond asking citizens to be individually responsible. It is time, he said, for a statewide mask mandate and other steps because this virus is pushing our healthcare system to its breaking point—not just in the St. Louis, but everywhere.  “We’re at war. And right here, right now, the virus is winning that war. It will take significant and decisive action through individual acts and determined public policy to get us through,” he said.

The Post-Dispatch posted a video of his remarks with its web story.  We found his thoughts so important that we transcribed them because we are, frankly and honestly, scared about what is and what is likely to be, we hope you will read what else he said:

For months we have talked about a time, a time when we would run out of options, a time when we would run out of space to care for sick patients and our options would be limited when the virus is hitting us so hard that the healthcare system that we have would be unable to address the people’s needs. That terrible time gets closer with each passing minute, each passing hour, and each passing day.

 The number of people with the virus is skyrocketing in our region. The number of people so ill that they have to go to the hospital is nearly three times what we described as a sustainable level. The number of people with COVID in our intensive care units is higher than ever.

 The real peak of this pandemic has yet to come. At the pace we’re on right now we could easily—easily—double the number of COVID patients in our hospitals within about two weeks. At that point we will not have the capacity we need to sufficiently care for our patients, not just COVID patients but all patients.

 Unfortunately, as has been painfully obvious to even the casual observer, we are past the time when individual behavior alone can address this disaster. Healthcare systems across Missouri need Governor Parson and the state to take additional actions to prevent unnecessary illnesses and deaths.

 When it comes to the virus, we are all one big county now.

 Every day COVID patients are crossing county lines to go to hospitals.  The lack of a mask mandate in one county has implications for residents and healthcare professionals in other parts of the state. The spread in cases is blanketing the state and no locale is safe anymore.

 Secondly, let me be really, really clear on this. A statewide mask mandate is needed to save lives across the state. 

 Secondly, we are also asking the state to work with our system’s emergency managers to start planning for what will happen WHEN the healthcare system becomes overwhelmed. 

 Our healthcare heroes have fought valiantly day after day but we have no reserves. We have no backup that we can suddenly muster to come in and save the day. If we stay on the path we’re on, even just two more weeks, we will not have the staff we need to care for patients. It’s now just a numbers game. We are danger-close.

 Finally we are asking for a statewide safer-at-home policy. Such a policy would limit the face-to-face interaction and decrease the spread of infection. This policy would instruct residents to stay home except for specific things such as schools, going to the store, seeking medical care, among other things. This would greatly help slow the spread of the virus by eliminating social gatherings that we know continue to be the avenue for sustaining this great pandemic.

 Some counties have had only a few deaths and a relatively small number of cases. Should those counties be required to do the things Dr. Garza thinks need to be done statewide?  Their experience might argue for local control, not a statewide mandate. But even in those places, if someone becomes seriously ill, where can they go if the rural hospital that served their area is one of the dozen or so that has closed in recent years, or if that small hospital remains but its small staff operates on a thin capacity margin and can’t treat them?

A vaccine is on the horizon. But we are months away from its general availability. The virus is here. Now.  It won’t wait.  And we do not know where it is lurking, despite the individual precautions we are taking.

“We are all one big county now,” Dr. Garza said. We think he’s right.

We’re too scared to think otherwise.

It has to be FRAUD, I tell you!

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I’ve been studying the Missouri results of the November 3 election and I believe we need some judges to declare there were fraudulent votes cast.  Thousands of them.

One need only look at the winning percentages of statewide Republican candidates to see evidence of illegal activity.

Missouri abolished straight-ticket voting in 2006.  But look at the winning percentages of top-of-the-ticket Republicans:

Trump 58.26%

Parson  57.17%

Kehoe  58.5%

Secretary of State 60.6%

Treasurer 59.2%

Attorney General 59.5%

Clearly, there’s something fishy here.  It’s impossible to have percentages this uniform unless there wasn’t illegal straight-ticket voting going on.  I’m not sure how it was done but it’s time to hire a lawyer, file a lawsuit, and accuse voters and local election authorities of plotting to assure a Republican sweep.

These votes should not have been counted because the percentages show there was clear tampering going on at the ballot box.  Chances are that a check of thousands of ballots will show remarkable similarities in the way the little ovals next to candidates’ names were filled in by reputed voters.

Furthermore, poll watchers were kept so far away from the tabulations that they could not closely examine the way the ballots were marked, thus being unable to challenge each ballot before it was processed.

All of the votes cast in the election of 2020 in Missouri should be voided because the uniformity of markings clearly shows extensive violation of the state election law against straight-ticket voting.

An investigation must be launched at the highest level to find the actual ballots that were removed so these fake ballots could be substituted and elections officials throughout Missouri should be jailed for their parts in this massive voter fraud that resulted in obvious straight-ticket voting ban.

Maybe the Democratic Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, and nine other Democratic Attorneys General who have no business sticking their noses into a Missouri election should file a petition asking the United States Supreme Court to throw out all of the ballots showing near-uniform voting for President Trump and the five Republican statewide officers.

Note to Nicole Galloway:  This election is not over!

The whole election was a record-breaking fraud, I say.  FRAUD!!!  FRAUD!!!

A presidential favor

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Our president refuses to admit he’s a loser..

But that’s okay—although his personal behavior and his political attitude suggest he should be sent to his room without supper

—because he might be doing the country a big political favor with his stubbornness. .

Mind you, this is being written by a voter who didn’t cover the campaign or the national election returns with the intensity of the national media, whether friendly or fake in the eyes of the president.

The election was unique beyond the combatants.  It was unique in the process by which it was held, a process that is likely to continue in many parts of the country.  Early voting in one form or another is here to stay. Processing of those votes in this election seems to have satisfied most people, but not our president and his loyal supporters. The president is filing lawsuits right and left alleging various kinds of fraudulent actions that have denied him a second term. The complaints appear to lack evidence but our legal system does not require proof before a citizen files a complaint.

Critics have little good to say about all of this even though they are not surprised President Trump is being a poor sport about losing.

Our president is also a citizen and as with all of us, he has a right to ask the courts to remedy what he asserts is a wrong that has been done to him. It would be nice if he had firm proof to back up his attacks on the elections system and the people of both parties who administered it in this terrible time.

That aside, let us look at the positives he might be providing the country rather than dwell on the negative aspects of his personal behavior.

Your obedient servant sees at least two benefits to his actions.

First, in filing all of his lawsuits claiming the process was badly flawed, he is giving the courts multitudinous chances to confirm it was not.  He is giving the courts—perhaps ultimately including many judges that he appointed—an opportunity to confirm our elections system worked even under one of the most severe tests it ever has faced.

As this is written, he and his lawyers haven’t won a single case. His efforts to de-legitimize the election and the election process are, in fact, legitimizing them, thanks to his losses in the courts.  So cut him a little slack. So far he has proven the process he seeks to disprove.  Let him keep going.  In the end, the establishment of a 21st Century system of voting might be one of his biggest legacies, much as he might dislike the result.

Second, he is proving something upon which he has at times cast doubt—the concept that no one is above the law.  Not even the president.  In filing his lawsuits he is admitting that he does not have the power as President of the United States to void an election.  He has the same authority you or I have, the authority as a citizen to seek redress of perceived wrongs through the court system.  He’s not above us.  He is still just a citizen regardless of his title.

So let him go, even though his accusations and his lawsuits and his lack of cooperation with the president-elect’s transition effort is not good for the nation.  Let’s appreciate that he’s proving—although he doesn’t seem to want to—that two essential parts of our democracy are true—that no one is above or beneath the law including a president, and the election system not only works, it is capable of working under the greatest of strains.  It might need some fine-tuning after this, but once again, this latest use of the system given to us by our founders has continued to work.

Ya Gotta Have Heart

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(We know it’s the brain that controls emotions.  But we still act as some did hundreds or thousands of years ago as if the heart  is the center of emotion, don’t we?  The theme song for Titanic probably wouldn’t have become a big seller if it was “My Brain will Go On,” or “Achy Breaky Brain” wouldn’t have done well either.  Your Cheatin’ Brain, Brainbreak Hotel, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Brain Club Band…..you can make a game of this.  Dr. Frank Crane returns to this space today with a meditation about NOT the brain.)

THE HUMAN HEART

The human heart is a wide moor under a dull sky, with voices of invisible birds calling in the distance.

The human heart is a lonely lane in the evening, and two lovers are walking down it, whispering and lingering.

The human heart is a great green tree, and many strange birds come and sing in its branches; a few build nests, but most are from far lands north and south, and never come again.

The human heart is a deep still pool; in it are fishes of gold and silver, darting playfully, and slow-heaving slimy monsters, and tarnished treasure hoards, the infinite animalcular life; but when you look down at it you see but your own reflected face.

The human heart is an undiscovered country; men and women are forever perishing as they explore its wilds.

The human heart is an egg; and out of it are hatched this world of heaven and hell.

The human heart is a tangled wood wherein no man knows his way.

The human heart is a roaring forge where night and day the smiths are busy fashioning swords and silver cups, mitres and engine-wheels, the tools of labor, and the gauds of precedence.

The human heart is a garden, wherein grow weeds of memory and blooms of hope, and the snow falls at last and covers all.

The human heart is a meadow full of fireflies, a summer western sky of shimmering distant lightnings, a shore set round with flashing lighthouses, far-away voices calling that we cannot understand.

The human heart is a band playing in a park at a distance; we see the crowds listening, but we catch but fragments of the music now and gain, and cannot make out the tune.

The human heart is a great city, teeming with myriad people, full of business and mighty doings, and we wander its crowded streets unutterably alone; we do not know what it is all about.

The human heart to youth is a fairy-land of adventure, to old age it is a sitting-room where one knows his way in the dark.

The human heart is a cup of love, where some find life and zest, and some drunkenness and death.

The human heart is the throne of God, the council-chamber of the devil, the dwelling of angels, the vile heath of witches’ Sabbaths, the nursery of sweet children, the blood-spattered scene of nameless tragedies.

Listen! You will hear nameless tragedies, mandmen’s shrieks, love-croonings, cries of agonized terror, hymns of Christ, the roaring of lynch mobs, the kisses of livers, the curses of pirates.

Bend close!  You will smell the lily fragrance of love, the stench of lust, now odors as exquisite as the very spirit of violets, and now such nauseous repulsions as words cannot tell.

Nobilities, indecencies, heroic impulses, cowardly ravings, good and bad, white and black—the mystery of mysteries, the central island of nescience in a sea of science, the dark spot in the lighted room of knowledge, the unknown quantity, the X in the universal problem.

Not good enough 

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A lot of people woke up losers today.

We have covered far more than one-hundred elections and we have noticed something about the losers. They seldom blame themselves for their loss.

It’s always somebody or something else—lying television commercials, lack of funding, an October surprise of some kind, misuse of the power of the incumbent during the campaign, a national or natural disaster, unfair media, among other reasons.

We’ve heard dozens of concession speeches. But not once has a losing candidate ever said, “I wasn’t good enough.”  But quite often that’s the reason people lose.  The voters have decided they’re not good enough for the job the candidates wanted.

A lot of factors go into voter decisions but in the end many of the votes are cast because citizens think the other candidate is better even if “better” is a matter of choosing a lesser evil—a self-condemning statement because surely there would have been better candidates if voters wanted to do more than complain on the day after.

Read or listen to the concession speeches this year.  Let us know if anybody says they just weren’t good enough.  Because, in all honesty, they weren’t

A departure 

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Dr. Frank Crane will resume his normal Monday place next week.  But tomorrow is an election day, perhaps the most consequential election day since 1860.

These are fearful times in which we have a choice of thinking the worst of a system that has sustained our free country, or believing that we are capable of being better tomorrow than we are today.

Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, in 1861, with a nation crumbling before his eyes into what he knew would become a terrible struggle to determine whether any nation could live half-slave and half-free, hoped for a nation that would not turn upon itself:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, published in 1960:

One thing I believe profoundly: We make our own history. The course of history is directed by the choices we make and our choices grow out of the idea, the beliefs, the values, the dreams of the people. It is not so much the powerful leaders that determine our destiny as the much more powerful influence of the combined voice of the people themselves…Surely in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.

And in the fearful years of Joseph McCarthy’s rantings about Communists in government (he never provided the names he claimed to have on his famous list and changed the number from time to time), journalist Edward R. Murrow closed one of his “See it Now” broadcasts:

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular…. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility.

For the past several Fridays we have drawn upon Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America, in which he argues this nation has several times been driven by fear to teeter on the edge of losing its democratic republic system of government. Each time, he says, the people have shown this nation to be one of hope, not fear. Let us go forth responsibly tomorrow, not in fear, but in hope, in this time when fear, bitterness, and degradation of others has been sewn repeatedly, and seek the better angels within ourselves and those we select.

Normally in this space on Mondays we have shared with you some thoughts of Dr. Frank Crane. But tomorrow is an election day, perhaps the nation’s most consequential election day since 1860.

These are fearful times in which we have a choice of thinking the worst of a system that has sustained our free country, or believing that we are capable of being better tomorrow than we are today.

Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, in 1861, with a nation crumbling before his eyes into what he knew would become a terrible struggle to determine whether any nation could live half-slave and half-free, hoped for a nation that would not turn upon itself:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life, published in 1960:

One thing I believe profoundly: We make our own history. The course of history is directed by the choices we make and our choices grow out of the idea, the beliefs, the values, the dreams of the people. It is not so much the powerful leaders that determine our destiny as the much more powerful influence of the combined voice of the people themselves…Surely in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.

And in the fearful years of Joseph McCarthy’s rantings about Communists in government (he never provided the names he claimed to have on his famous list and changed the number from time to time), journalist Edward R. Murrow closed one of his “See it Now” broadcasts:

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular…. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility.

For the past several Fridays we have drawn upon Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America, in which he argues this nation has several times been driven by fear to teeter on the edge of losing its democratic republic system of government. Each time, he says, the people have shown this nation to be one of hope, not fear. Let us go forth responsibly tomorrow, not in fear, but in hope, in this time when fear, bitterness, and degradation of others has been sewn repeatedly, and seek the better angels within ourselves and those we select.