Monthly Archives: December 2020

Us vs. It—part XII What’s next?

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It’s been a while (August) since we had a Us vs It entry but with vaccines starting to go into people’s arms, we have reached a new stage in this siege.

Even as we remain absorbed by the fight against the Coronavirus, we must start thinking of what comes after.

We will be different when we emerge from this plague. We will see in a glaring spotlight the shortcomings in our American system of doing things.  The list of issues, which must be addressed in ways that bridge a chasm of partisanship, will be long and should be inescapable.

Tough and thorough evaluations need to be made at the federal and state levels of the conditions of our readiness in the current situation and our preparations for readiness for the next wave. The evaluations are too important for Congress or for state legislatures. We need the brutal honesty of something like the Kerner Commission of the late 1960s.

Given social unrest that has flared during this time of the plague, it is good to recall the Kerner Commission not only to prove the point of this post but to highlight what it said more than fifty years ago that is tragically too close to life today.

Many, if not most, of those who read these entries might be too young to remember the commission appointed by President Johnson and headed by former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. It was formed after disastrous racial violence in 25 cities that far exceeded anything we saw in Ferguson a few years ago or that we have seen in some cities more recently.  The commission’s final report was brutal. It warned that this country was so divided that it was on the verge of becoming two “radically unequal societies—one black, one white.”

We won’t discuss here how accurate that forecast might still be—because we are talking about a different issue that deserves the same tough examination and, if necessary, the same brutal honesty in its assessment.  There are many who think the Kerner Commission’s report, and its severe final assessment, fell on deaf ears. The assessment of what our state and nation need to do in the face of massive threats to our health and to our economy deserves the same severe approach but certainly not the same outcome.

We might need new laws and new regulations to make us better prepared in the public and the private sector for the next pandemic.  It would be unwise to dismiss such things as once-in-a-century events.  Our world has changed and is changing and it’s clear that nothing seems to be constant anymore. And we do not know if our changing world produces a climate more susceptible to new and deadly viruses.

Even now, we recognize the failure to find ways to keep rural hospitals open and the inadequacy of internet communications in many areas (that provide telehealth services, in particular) can no longer be ignored and tolerated.  We are learning that science cannot be dismissed and that those whose roles involve anticipating the next sweeping illness or the next world outbreak must regain their numbers and their status.  We are learning that our healthcare system always must be prepared, staffed, and equipped for the worst—and must not be in a position of determining who lives or dies based on personal financial standing.

We need to be ready at the state level. But pandemics have a tendency to overcome even the best state preparations and financial capabilities. A national crisis requires national leadership, national empathy, and national cooperation with states. It is unfortunately true that states can’t print money but the federal government can and money is a gigantic factor in fighting pandemics all the way down to the smallest communities.

Our experiences might teach us new things about distance learning and suggest some significant changes in our country’s elementary and secondary (and collegiate) education systems.

The economic paralysis should teach us to look more closely at a trend in jobs that we have noticed but to which we haven’t given enough attention—-the growing tendency to use independent contractors instead of having fulltime employees.  The independent contractors often get no fringe benefits and that can have some long-term impacts on retirements but especially (as in times like this) on healthcare.  The number of people who live on commissions and tips who have neither opportunities to create retirement plans nor the money to buy health insurance will grow as our economy changes and their lives should not be imperiled when our country is next ravaged by a new pandemic.

Likewise, the pandemic-caused work-from-home operations will have taught us things about large offices and the need for them.  The entire business model of large buildings for a single business, or single floors in a large building for one company might change because of what we have learned about working away from a central headquarters. The sweatshop still exists in our country but it is rare because of labor laws, fire safety codes, unions, and minimum wage laws that have curtailed those conditions.  Will the Coronavirus doom cubicle farms tomorrow?  Will is lead to a rise in union activity?

What will all of this mean in terms of society—-social gatherings, organizational memberships, business-employee relationships, civic clubs, churches?

We will be remiss if we do not anticipate tomorrow’s society based on what we are learning from today’s pandemic.

Our world is changing in so many categories—climate, economics, education, health, communications—that we cannot continue to have society as usual.

If it takes new laws and new regulations to do something as simple as making sure our healthcare institutions and services maintain adequate supplies of protective apparel, equipment and facilities for treatment,  let’s have them.

To those who would say such positions represent government overreach, there is a basic response.  Government has a role when the private sector abuses its liberties or fails its responsibilities. There is no lack of discussion in these times that such things have happened.  There also is no lack of discussion about how government, itself, has failed to meet its responsibilities to the people who entrust it with their well-being.

All of these issues and more need to be addressed so we know what will come after the virus has gone away.  That’s why new Kerner-type Commissions are needed at the state and federal levels. We are at a point in our existence where the blunt findings are needed and cannot be put on a shelf.  And we, as people, cannot be afraid to address the issues that will be forcefully put in front of us.

Here is a key point:

These commissions should not include elected officials as members.  Partisan Foxes do not belong in Pandemic Assessment Hen Houses.

We appreciate the work our public officials are trying to do in difficult times. It is time to work on the instant issue without wasting time casting blame.  But it is time also to start thinking of what comes after, and what comes after must be an unblinking hard assessment of what is present and what is needed to deal with the next health or economic or health/economic crises that will visit us. We cannot be afraid to do what is needed.

It might make no difference to our generation if we fail to act.  But other generations will sicken and die if we don’t.

Dr. Crane on a New Year, At Last

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(By the end of this week we will have shed ourselves of 2020 and, we hope, soon will shed ourselves of the physical and political ills that have robbed us of our personal and national spirit. The movement of the second hand from one side of midnight to the other side three days hence can move us socially and spiritually to a new place—-at least in our minds, at least for a while. Association Men, the official magazine of the Young Men’s Christian Association, carried this article in its January, 1919 issue, as Dr. Frank Crane reflected upon—-)

THE NEW YEAR AND OPPORTUNITY

The New Year spells Opportunity.

That is its great, outstanding message.

Once a year the old Clock of the Universe strikes, at 12 o’clock on December 31st, and as its strokes thunder around the world they say to men and women everywhere:
“Now, you have a chance to try it again! Begin, begin again!”

Twelve words.

Discouraged boy, tired of waiting, ready to give up, with your heart down and the
devil whispering to you, “What’s the use?” Listen! Don’t you hear the clock? Up
and at it once more! Slough off your discouragement, as a dirty coat, roll up your
sleeves—the world’s your hickory-nut, full of meat, and you’re the boy to crack it.

Young man, wrestling with the Snake called Bad Habit, that is slowly throttling
you, poisoning you, ruining your career, breaking your mother’s heart, and turning
gray your father’s hair—listen! The twelve bells peal across the snow-fields of the earth,
ring out in the mountains and echo in the valleys. They are to you, for you. Begin
again! The Almighty Father thinks of you in every stroke, every beat is a heart pulse
of His meaning, and says, “Life is yours. The Future is yours! Step on your dead
self and rise. All things are yours, for you are Mine.”

Heartsick woman, with your lap full of shattered dreams, there’s resurrection in the New Year. Out of the broken fragments of your hopes you can make something
more beautiful. Heaven and earth are full of unexhausted resources. They are yours.
Only be strong and of a good courage. Don’t give up. No soul can be cheated of its
divine inheritance.

Old man, you’re never too old to come back. A man is only as old as his Will.
Buck up! Don’t you hear the Clock? Opportunity is ringing. There’s a place for
you, work for you, a need for your purpose, a goal still for your high emprise.

No man sinks in the waters of fate but the one cramped with fear. Kick, and
you’ll float.

No man is discharged in the great war of life. Only deserters fight no more.

Come! The Infinite is your friend, surrounds you, presses upon you like the
atmosphere, and will breathe into you tides of power, if you will but open your soul.
And the opener of souls is Courage.

No insuperable calamity can befall me except I be afraid and give up.

What! Have you not lived until this day? Have not the Everlasting Arms held you up till now, even though you be spent, and hungered, torn, bloody, desperate? Still you have Life—then look up to that Concealed One who gave you your Life, and has so far upheld it, and cry, as you tighten your belt, and adjust your gas mask against the asphyxiations of despair, and grasp your good rifle-cry out to Him, who though He seem distant and unknown, is yet “nearer to you than hands and feet, and closer to you than breathing.”

“So long Thy power hath held me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone, –
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

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Dr. Crane in his later years believed himself to be as thorough a Christian as anyone, even though he considered the dogmas and creeds of the churches to be “of little or no consequence.”

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS—-

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—-From two old people waiting for their shots…..

And their two furry companions, who got theirs at the veterinarian store a few weeks ago.

Minnie Mayhem and Maximus Decimus McCattimus have been good but occasionally mischievous company in these times of separation.  They’re not worth a hoot at Mexican Train Dominoes, Rumikub, Five Crowns, or other table games we used to get together with human friends to play but then, our human friends didn’t purr when we rubbed their tummies.

Nancy has gardened in the warm weather, and has continued her work with the church bell choir.  But her trombone in the city band hasn’t been touched for almost a year because the band can’t perform well in masks—except for the percussion section. Bob is trying to find acceptable compromises with the publisher of his book about the history of the Missouri Capitol. This year, his research uncovered the fact that Cole County was not named for the person it had been claiming to be named for, for at least 150 of its 200 years.

We are enjoying Christmas with family and friends as much as possible——in this era of church services on Facebook, and meetings and family gatherings at such strange places as Zoom, Webex, Skype, and GoToMeeting.

Our children and our grandchildren (two of the former, four of the latter) have adjusted, as have millions of others, to the “work from home” lifestyle that includes times of involuntary home-schooling when the public schools decide to do remote learning.

The virus has touched our family only lightly but we have lost some friends and acquaintances to this pandemic and will miss their faces when we emerge from this siege. We wish not to lose any more.

We are glad for several reasons to let go of 2020 and look forward to the return of spontaneity to our lives in 2021—and, perhaps, the opportunity to see friends and family we have dearly missed this year.  We wish the blessings of the season for all of you and only good news in 2021. We encourage you to do the things that will make it possible for us to be together again:

Wear a mask:

Socially distance:

And wash your paws.  Often. Max and Minnie do. You should, too.

Most of all:  Be safe.

Merry Christmas from:

Bob, Nancy, Max and Minnie.

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NOTES FROM A QUIET STREET, HOLIDAY EDITION 

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It has been a while since we spoke from our lofty position on this quiet street of things not worthy of full blogitty. We have been saving up these random observations since our last haircut, or more accurately our most recent one, which means there’s a lot here. During your faithful scribe’s most recent haircut the barber thought he had discovered a growth on the side of my head. I was concerned until he announced it was just my ear.

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Your obedient servant does not want to return to normalcy after the Trump presidency. Presidential candidate Warren Harding used the word during his 1920 campaign and his wish for the America mentality to return to what it was before The Great War.  Although the word is found in some dictionaries as far back as 1857, Harding’s use of it made it popular and something repeatable for generations long after his.

Eugene P. Trani, writing for the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, says Harding is ranked by historians as one of our worst presidents because, “Unlike other modern Presidents, such as Ronald Reagan, who possessed conventional minds and who thought simply, Harding never understood where he wanted to take the nation. Nor could he communicate his message effectively, because he had none to communicate. He spoke about a “return to normalcy,” but he had no idea what this slogan meant. Lacking the moral compass of a Reagan, Harding had no guide to follow. He was lucky to have had a few good men in his cabinet who generally ran fiscal and foreign affairs well. In the end, it was not his corrupt friends that tarnished his legacy and undermined his historical impact. Rather, it was his own lack of vision and his poor sense of priorities that positioned him so low in the ranking of U.S. Presidents.”

This is not the kind of man I want setting the standard for the use of the English Language.  From our lofty position, we believe the word should be “normality.”

And My Lord! Do we ever need that.

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About our lofty position—it’s time you learned the truth:

Our loft is in our house on a quiet Jefferson City street.   You can’t actually see where we write these important missives because there’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam between the railing and the writing shrine.  But that’s our lofty position.  If the place looks trashy, let us remind you this is a HOME, not a museum.

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I saw my neighbor working in his yard the other day.  I wanted to go talk to him but I was worried that I’d be run over in the street.

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Anybody else bored. to. death. because of this virus?

We’re hanging in there.  But we can only watch Hamilton so many times.  And we’re sooooooo tired of some kinds of television commercials. One of the greatest insults to intelligence caused by the extended hours watching television because of pandemic-induced mobility limits is seeing an epidemic of commercials from law firms rounding up a lot of people to take part in class-action lawsuits. We have yet to see a commercial telling how much the firm will keep and what the average damage payment will be.

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(Speaking of which, we pause for this message from a sponsor):

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I am a non-attorney spokesperson and if you or any members of your family have ever choked to death or almost choked to death on your own spit, call our law firm. We will fight for you as we seek justice from the makers of Saliva.  Producers of Saliva have incomes totaling in the billions of dollars and could be liable for large damage awards for those who have struggled against spit strangulation.

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Now that we have vaccines against the virus, when will we get one to protect us from the physical and mental deterioration caused by binge-watching. At this point we aren’t sure whether it’s more important to get a shot that protects us from the virus or whether to get one that ends ROKU searches through Disney plus, Acorn, Netflix, PBS, National Geographic, YouTube, or the channels providing old TV shows such as Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life or the Bob Newhart channel or the Story Lady Channel.

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We’ll know when we have exhausted all other possibilities when we start watching shopping channels until midnight each night.

(Now, a word from another sponsor):

(Cute eight-year old kid): “I had to live with ugly scabs on my knees every time I fell on the sidewalk—until a friend told me about Zxxvvqnt. I tried it and within weeks my scabs went away.  Now I have the happiest knees in town!”

(Announcer): Zxxvvqnt, the magical scab healer, can restore your knees or your elbows, or even your forehead to their natural beautiful state in just days!  Laboratory-tested Zxxvvqnt is a non-animal-based cure for ugly scabs wherever they might be.

(Kid): “Just smooth it on four times a day and see pink skin come right back!”

(Announcer then spends the next 40-seconds speaking rapidly while print too small to read on a 60-inch screen scrolls past even more rapidly, warning viewers that Zxxvvqnt should not be taken internally, that it could lead to amputation or permanent scarring.  It should not be used by people who know better than to use it.  Best if used in conjunction with a large bandage over the injured area, leaves stains on sheets the next morning without one, and sticks to legs of pants or to sleeves of long-sleeved shirts unless covered. Not approved by the FDA. Not sold as a preventive or a cure for any disease.

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However, two days later a celebrity recommends it as a cure for the Coronavirus if applied as hair dressing.

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Ever wonder why in the world you’d use any medication that spends two-thirds of its commercial telling you how it could kill you?  Us, too.  And why would an old, wrinkled, and creaky person be interested in a substance that appears from the people in the commercials to be for young and handsome people to begin with?

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I will believe our economy is as good as we’re being told it is when I see stores opening in our malls and paycheck protection offices closing along our streets.

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Sent a letter in mid-July to Quincy, Illinois.  Got it back on September 2 marked “Unable to Forward. Insufficient Address.”  Zillow found the address with no problem. Showed me a lot of outside and inside pictures of the house, including the curbside mailbox. Told me how much it would sell for it if was for sale. I checked and there’s no truth to the rumor that the letter carrier on that route is related to Louis DeJoy.

 

What There Is To Christmas

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(Christmas week is much different this year, with many traditional family events cancelled, many gifts and decorations remaining unbought because of their unaffordability in these uncertain economic times, and sorrows because of those who have not survived the pandemic to be part of our celebrations—-we could continue, but all of us recognize this Christmas is different more than it is special.  Dr. Frank Crane reminds us, however, of a universal and unchanging message—-)

CHRISTMAS MEANS THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF JOY

Christmas is the protest of the human race against gloom.

The one thing time nor force can suppress is instinct.

In days past religion tried to stamp out earthly gladness, play, fun, the joy of man and maid. As well one might endeavor to dam the waters of the Mississippi.

When we have clamped human nature down with our reasonings and revelations, along comes    instinct, and to use the words of Bennet, blandly remarks :

“Don’t pester Me with Right and Wrong. I am Right and Wrong. I shall suit my own                     convenience, and no one but Nature (with a big, big N) shall talk to me!”

In the fourth century the Christian world was pretty dismal. This world was considered a             dreadful place, to get away from as soon as possible. Consequently, the boys and girls were lured off into heathen sports, for the heathen alone raced and danced and frolicked.

Then the Church established the Christmas festival, which was one of her wisest strokes of policy.

In 342 A. D. the good Bishop Tiberius preached the first Christmas sermon, in Rome.

Into this opening poured the play instinct of the world.

The time of the winter solstice strangely enough had been the jovial period of the year                 everywhere. Then the Swedes of old used to light fires on the hills in honor of Mother Friga,       goddess of Love. Then the Romans indulged in their Satur nalia, the one carnival of democracy  and equality during the twelve months of tyranny and slavery. Then the Greeks lit torches upon Helicon in praise of Dionysius. In Egypt at this period the populace bore palms for the god        Horus; in Persia they celebrated the birth of Mithras, and the Hindus in India sang their songs to Vishnu.

Many of these festivals had become very corrupt. Excess and license darkened the hour of national joy.

The wisest thing Christians ever did was to turn this feast day over to the child.

The child Jesus stands for the childhood of the world, perpetual, evergreen, inexhaustible.

It’s a weary world to those who have lived wrong or too long, but to those who remain healthy in their tastes it’s a wonderful world, full of undying youth, running with sap, recurrent with primal joy.

Christmas means the supreme fact about life, namely: that it is joyful.

In the opinion of many the greatest music ever composed is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As a climax for his orchestral composition the master chose a chorus to sing Schiller’s “Hymn to Joy.”

Christmas means that when this world and all its purposes and deeds are wound up, and the last men and women stand at the end of time and contemplate the complete story of humanity, they will not wail nor hang their heads, but they will shout and exult.

The truest, most everlasting element of mankind is play, accompanied with laughter.

(This article is from Dr. Crane’s 1915 book, Christmas and The Year Round, which can be found at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t3vt2h96j&view=plaintext&seq=7)

A seldom-told story of the end of WWII

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This year has been the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.  We’ve see a lot of publications about the anniversary, including V-J day, Victory over Japan day.  We have yet to see one that tells you the story we are about to tell you.

Most of us probably have seen photographs of General MacArthur signing the peace treaty with Japan in ceremonies on the deck of the USS Missouri.

But few of us probably have seen these pictures:

A few weeks ago my long-time friend, Hugh David Waggoner, called to see if I would be interested in an old trunk full of pictures from World War II that had belonged to a man named R. Sheldon Gentry (his first name was Rusaw, which might explain why he used “R” so he wouldn’t have to explain or repeat “Rusaw.”)  The name rang a faint bell with me but I have not been able to pin down who he was.

The pictures you see above are from the trunk.  The photographs and some 70-plus years old newspaper clippings tell the story behind the famous pictures of the surrender on the Missouri.  This story from that trunk is a story not often told, one I had not heard. So we’re going to tell it today because we doubt many of you have heard it, either.

One of the people in the third picture above is of extremely special interest because without him the war might have gone on longer than it did with consequences of immensely tragic proportions beyond the tragedies that had been occurring since Japan invaded China in 1931, the real beginning of the war.

A word, first, about Gentry, who went into the Army as a Second Lieutenant and came out a Major. He was a decorated photo intelligence officer who wound up with two Presidential Citations and two Legions of Merit among his medals because of his expertise in advising bomber crews about their targets. In fact, he went on several missions and helped guide crews to their targets in the southwest Pacific Theatre as the allies closed the noose around Japan.

Three days after the second Atomic Bomb was dropped, Gentry was in an American bomber fifty feet over Nagasaki assessing the damage.  A few days after that, Japan accepted the surrender terms laid down at the Potsdam Conference by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. The notification was announced on August 15 by President Truman, the same day the Emperor dramatically announced to his nation that he had ordered all Japanese military forces to stop fighting. It also was the day General McArthur was designated the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.

MacArthur immediately ordered the Japanese Imperial Government to send envoys to Manila on the 17th to put the surrender into effect. The delegation was to travel from Japan in a white airplane with green crosses on the fuselage and wings to the island of Ieshima where they would transfer to an American plane that would take them to Manila. The Japanese were granted some extra time to make preparations for the flight—painting an airplane, for example.  On the morning of August 19, the sixteen-member delegation boarded two re-painted Mitsubishi G4M “Betty” bombers and flew to IeShima (the Japanese called it IeJima or Iye Jima), an island in the Okinawa Prefecture.

The Betty was the main bomber used by Japan, often as a torpedo bomber—as it was at Pearl Harbor. It was fast, 265 mph, could fly 3,250 miles. One of its most notable accomplishments was the shocking sinking of the British battleships, Prince of Wales and Repulse during the earliest days of the war, the first battleships sunk in a wartime air attack. But the plane had no armor and no self-sealing fuel tanks, making it vulnerable to a few well-placed shots.  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese Navy at Pearl Harbor and Midway, was sought out and shot down in a Betty over Bougainville in 1943.

But that’s straying from our story.

The pictures at the top of this entry were in Gentry’s trunk.  They show the two disarmed Betty bombers, as the Americans called them—Americans gave male names to Japanese fighter planes and female names to the bombers—being escorted by two Army Air Force B-25s.  The second pictures shows one of them landing.

The delegation was met by American officers who escorted them to one of our C-54s for the flight to Manila.   Notice, in the third picture, the man in the white suit, in the center, wearing glasses. He was the only civilian among the seven men who sat at the negotiating table in Manila, across from seven American military representatives who worked out the final agreement in two sessions the evening of the 19th and the morning of the 20th.

In the trunk is the first teletype message that negotiations for Japanese surrender had been completed and Japanese negotiators would arrive later on the 20th in Tokyo.

But things almost did not turn out well.

The man in the white suit at the negotiations was Katsuo Okazaki, a 5,000 meter runner at the Paris Olympics of 1924.  Although MacArthur’s directive was for negotiators only from the Army and the Navy, the Japanese government decided to have a representative of its own with the group and selected Okazaki, the former second secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Washington and then the director of the research bureau of the foreign office.

The surrender flight to Ie Jima had been a nervous trip for those aboard the two bombers. “At that time the Kamikaze corps was still strong.  We had to make our preparations in secret lest the Kamikazes attack us on the way.  It took longer than we expected…

“We flew from Kisarazu airbase,” he recalled in a late 1947 interview with Ray Falk of the North American Newspaper Alliance. “A little after noon we were off Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, where we were met by American planes. We had been given the call signal, ’Bataan.’”

(The Battle of Bataan in the Japanese Philippine campaign of 1942 ended with a 65-mile forced march of 75,000 captured American and Filipino troops to concentration camps. The march was infamous for the brutality of the Japanese, who beat bayonetted the starved and weak prisoners who were too weak to walk. Thousands of them died on the march or in the camps.)

“When we called, ‘Bataan! Bataan!’ the American pilots answered, ‘Yes, we are Bataan’s watchdog—follow us…’”

The group returned to IeShima after the Manila conference to find one of their planes was undergoing repairs and split up, with half of the group going back to Japan and the other half waiting to fly back later.

“Half an hour before our expected landing time in Japan, the pilot came back and said, ‘I am sorry but we found our gasoline tank is leaking, and we have very little gas left.’ We were flying over water. We didn’t know whether we could reach land. We knew the bomber would not float more than one or two minutes.  Come what may, I was entrusted with all the documents.”

“Fifteen minutes later, the plane crashed, and I made a compete somersault. A second crash and another tumble followed.  I was ready to jump out when the pilot came back and said, ‘Please remain calm and swim ashore.’  We had landed in shallow coastal water.”

The pilot had managed to land the plane near a beach at Hamamatsu, about 285 miles south of Tokyo.

Okazaki went into the water and swam ashore, holding the vital documents above his head. “We couldn’t see where we were for it was so dark,” he continued. “Eventually a full moon rose and we went ashore. Two fishermen from Hamamatsu helped us to get to the Hamamatsu airbase.  The villagers had been reluctant to help us when they saw the plane crash because they thought I was a B-29. We were lucky not to have been attacked as enemies.

“Anyway, we reached Prime Minister Prince Higashi Kuni’s office at 9 o’clock the following morning, only seven hours late.  The cabinet had waited for us all night.

“I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had drowned. General headquarters already was mistrusting us because we were two days late in getting to Manila. What measures the allied armies might have taken are pure conjecture. But they would have been unpleasant. It might have caused the war to continue in view of the fact that our party had to escape from the anti-surrender Kamikaze corps which wanted to continue the war.”

There might have been conjecture on Okazaki’s part in 1947 but there was no conjecture on the part of the allies of 1945 who already had been planning one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Downfall, to start in November.  The second phase would have been launched in early ’46 near Tokyo. Japan knew the invasions were coming but hoped the cost to the allies would be so great that the war would end with an armistice, not a defeat.

The forecasts for casualties varied widely. One estimate from Secretary of War Henry Stimson forecast 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities and as many as four-million total casualties, not counting the 100,000 allied prisoners of war who were to be executed if Japan was invaded.

But for Russia’s late-war invasion from the north and the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with threats of more such attacks—and a swimmer named Katzuo Okazaki—history might have been a great deal more “unpleasant” as Okazaki put it in 1947.

The first advance party of American soldiers arrived in Japan on August 26 with greater numbers arriving two days later, with the surrender ceremonies taking place on an American battleship in Tokyo Bay September 2. Okazaki was part of the Japanese delegation on the Missouri that day.

And what became of him?

The man in the white suit was elected to the Japanese House of Representatives in 1949. Two years later, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida name him Chief Cabinet Secretary and state minister without portfolio. He became Foreign Minister in 1952 and during his three years in that office, signed a Mutual Security Assistance Agreement with American Ambassador John Allison. He retired but was called back to service to be Japan’s delegate to the United Nations from April, 1961 to July, 1963.  He died two years later at the age of 68.

And the Betty bomber, the Mitsubishi G4M1 that carried Okazaki and the others on those historic surrender flights? The Japanese called it the Hamaki, meaning “cigar,” a reference to its shape. Wrecked remains of hundreds of them are scattered throughout Southeast Asia and in the Southwest Pacific. The Smithsonian Air & Space Museum has pieces of one it is slowly restoring. A wrecked one is on display at an air museum in Chino, California.  Two years ago Warbird Digest reported two of the bombers had been recovered from the Solomon Islands for possible restoration. There are no flyable Bettys in existence.

There are more stories in that old trunk, It now resides at the Museum of Missouri Military History at the Ike Skelton Training Center near Jefferson City. We might tell more about Gentry in some later entry.  We haven’t learned much about his post-war years, but his trunk sure has some interesting things about that part of his life and the war he saw and helped fight. Now his trunk and the stories in it are at a place where they will be cared for and appreciated.

 

The Staples Lesson

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A lot of time and space is being chewed up in the media—including here—about our president’s desire to dominate the Republican Party after he leaves office.  We’ve heard, read, and seen a number of questions about why the GOP, by and large, refuses to acknowledge that the president lost on November 3.  One answer we have NOT heard suggested was explained in the Missouri Senate during the September veto session of 2002 by Danny Staples.

Senator Staples ran a canoe-rental business in Eminence, in country of Ozark Mountains, National Forests, and Scenic Riverways.  He might have been the greatest storyteller in the history of the Missouri Senate—certainly I never heard anybody better in four decades of statehouse coverage.  Some of his stories were tinged with truth.

When things got pretty testy, Staples often would get up and go off on a long, windy discussion of life in Shannon County’s Horse Hollow, his baseball career, his adventures with his horse Trixie, how he was related (by marriage) to Lady Godiva, defending cockfighting, or the days when he hauled cars from New Orleans to Omaha or something else. When Danny Staples was forced out by term limits, the Senate lost about 80% of its sense of humor.

But getting back to today’s situation in Washington, where it seems all sense of tension-relieving humor left the Capitol long ago.

For those worried about the Republicans in Congress who don’t dare speak even slightly ill of our president, we turn to a story told by Danny Staples in his farewell remarks to the Senate eighteen years ago.  Your reporter had the foresight to turn on his tape recorder to capture many Staples stories and has transcribed most of those recordings. Here’s part of his last speech to the Missouri Senate:

“…This is the greatest place in the world to try to make a living.  Sometimes the food is free.  Sometimes the beverages are free.  But I can tell you now…that I had to come up here two weeks ago on constituent services business and I went over to the Deville Hotel.  There was 18 lobbyists sitting there eating and drinking. And I’m term limited out. They know I can’t ever vote again.  And I set over in the corner, all by myself like an orphan boy at a picnic, bought my own Bud Lite and bought my own steak dinner.”

Danny died seventeen years ago, a little more than seven months after leaving the Senate.

The Deville Hotel has a different name. It no longer is a hangout for lobbyists around a restaurant table because it doesn’t have a restaurant anymore. And the Senate doesn’t have Danny Staples.

Nor does the Senate, or the House, in Washington have anyone who can step in when things get too self-important and tense, and cool things down the way Danny Staples did in the Missouri Senate.  And man-oh-man do they ever need it.

As far as why Republicans in Washington—or even the Republican candidate for the Senate in Georgia—continue to parrot Trumpian hogwash that the election was stolen from him, the answer might become more clear on January 6, 2021.

That’s the day after the two U. S. Senate elections in Georgia.  After that, our president will be considerably weaker because there will be nobody over whom he can threaten harm. Disparaging remarks on Twitter will mean far less because all elections have been decided. The control of the Senate has been determined. While he still might bark loudly, most of his harmful teeth will be gone—for at least two years. And with the passage of time (and the potential for legal difficulties that might mean more than another four-year term), his bite will be even less fearful.

Walking into a room of the powerful when you are in no position to help them or to seriously harm them will be a far different experience for our president from the days when he could walk into a room or into a Tweet before that senate election and hurt somebody.

As of January 6, it might be the president who “sets over in the corner like an orphan boy” because the people he will leave behind in the House and the Senate will have a much reduced reason to deal with him.

As far as being “relevant” within the party or whether a Trump will lead the national GOP: other people will be making a lot of decisions once our president no longer has the cover of his office to protect him and those decisions have the potential to make some decisions for the party regardless of the number of true believers the president now has when he has the power to do something for them. Sooner or later the party might recognize a need to move on and the path might be clearer when there is no sitting president blocking the view.

Regardless, both parties and   both houses of the Congress still badly need somebody such as Danny Staples to tell them to quit taking themselves so seriously that they lose sight of the broad public that believed it was electing them to serve in its interests.

 

 

The New Civil War

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We are giving Doctor Crane the Monday off today because the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election continues to degenerate to the point that positive words from Dr. Crane seem out of place today.

The U. S. Supreme Court made quick work last Friday of the Texas lawsuit challenging the presidential votes in four key states. One does not have to have a law degree to understand how this latest collapse of national norms is self-contradictory in a large manner and is a violation of the American system of justice in another.  People who should know better are the instigators of two of these attacks.

Missouri’s attorney general is one of eighteen attorneys general who attacked the integrity of elections in those states.

But that’s not Missouri’s only involvement in the last-ditch efforts to overturn the results.

A resolution demanding that six key states prove to the Missouri legislature that their elections were run properly has been assigned to a committee of the Missouri House. It will be up to the outgoing speaker, who did not sign the resolution, to decide whether to spend state money and to recall the full House for a few hours to consider the resolution—-if it gets out of committee.

Many of those who think either of these actions is proper also are those who strongly support states rights.  Yet Missouri is sticking its nose into the elections processes of some of its sister sovereign states, impugning the rights of those states to conduct their elections under their laws and to resolve any questions within those states. These states are under no obligation to prove anything to the Missouri House, which probably would loudly reject any suggested by any of those states that it prove to them that our presidential results were not tainted.

Imagine what backlash these actions could have.

What is to keep Mississippi from challenging Missouri’s gambling laws?  What is to keep the attorney general of California from challenging a Missouri environmental law?  Why should not the attorney general of Minnesota challenge Missouri’s clean water statutes?   Why shouldn’t the attorney general in Arizona assert that suitcases full of pre-marked Trump ballots were spirited into local election officials’ offices and demand Missouri prove the assertion is untrue?

They can’t do that, you say. Yes, they can. The Golden Rule invites them to do so under precedents that now are being set. .

The results of the November 3 election have fueled a new Civil War that seems to say it is okay for one state to take another state to court because the first does not like a law in the second state.

The House resolution flies in the face of the cherished standard of innocent-until-proven-guilty.  It assumes six states are guilty of fraudulent election practices and demands that they prove their innocence.  Has this election so damaged the nation’s intellect that a foundational part of our justice system is invalid—or arbitrarily and selectively invalid, which is even worse?

Maybe we’re missing something here, but it appears this resolution signed by more than sixty members of the House of Representatives has extended their job descriptions to be a judge and a jury that already has passed judgement on other election returns in six other states. Would you, in the normal course of your daily life, think it’s a good idea that one of your neighbors can be a judge and jury pronouncing your guilty of improperly doing the family laundry and demand that you prove you did not?

Guilty, says the jury that is the Missouri House.  Without a trial.  Prove yourself NOT guilty.

Maybe there are reasons within the current political climate and the current administration that are driving these actions. A person who is even minimally aware of the current national political situation could construct some scenarios to explain these things and perhaps someday someone will reveal what has triggered this meddling in other states’ elections.

We would rather see Missouri’s officials paying attention to the problems of Missouri than becoming involved in a new civil war that pits states against states.

Or do we no longer believe in the Pledge of Allegiance’s description of one “indivisible” nation?

 

A Priddy Good Christmas Kiss

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A lot of people have visited towns bearing their names.  But your faithful correspondent’s name is not so common that it can be found in very many places.   There are two that I know of, one in the historic area of England, of Glastonbury and the territory of King Arthur, an area that legend records Jesus walked during the “lost years” not covered in the traditional Bible, taken there by his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant.  The area is known for its tin mines.  .

We shall not delve into a theological discussion today, however.  We shall instead tell you of a little Texas town and a seasonal crop that is a central part of the romance of the Christmas season and its seldom-discussed questionable reputation.

A few years ago, Nancy and I satisfied a long-held desire of mine to visit the other town named Priddy. It’s in Texas, south of Dallas and about 100 miles northwest of Austin, a community of 75-100 people with (it appeared to us) more cemeteries than churches, a one-bus school district (at least, we saw only one bus parked at the school), a former gas station that is now the town store, and some nice people.  Some might say it’s out in the middle of nowhere, of which Texas has plenty, but the people in the little town—as people in small towns throughout the nation—think it’s just fine, a good place to live, and to raise their children.  It’s the quality of the people, not their number, that makes any town a nice place to live.

Priddy, Texas is one of those towns that becomes important at certain times of the year.  And this is the time of year for Priddy because that area is prime growing area for one of the most important crops for Christmas.

Mistletoe.

The stuff mommy kissed Santa Claus under.

Scott W. Wright wrote for the Cox News Service thirty years ago, “This out-of-the-way little town is the place where the makings of romance are ripe for the picking. Where kisses are conceived.”

Mistletoe grows in a lot of places. It’s the state floral emblem of Oklahoma.

The Tiemann family has run a mistletoe business in Priddy for many years. Some years they don’t ship any because the stuff just didn’t grow in enough quantity to make processing and shipping worthwhile. Other times, there’s been a lot. Wright wrote about the company processing 2 ½ tons of it in one day.

Dozens of folks have gone out and harvested it in the good years and when they do, other plants are probably glad—as much as trees and bushes can show gratitude, because—and this was a surprise to us—mistletoe is a parasitic weed that attaches itself to trees and bushes.

Sort of takes the romance out of things, doesn’t it?

Kind of like some relationships, we suppose. Clinging vines.  Parasitic.

But it’s a symbol of how we can recycle something bad into something nice.

Kind of like relationships, too, we guess.

And who really cares, especially if two people can use it as an excuse for some public or private osculation?

Priddy, Texas never claimed to be a mistletoe capital of anything. It’s just been a big business in a little town on the vast central Texas plains.

We wonder if people who work on this weed all day find anything romantic about it.

And what do you suppose the school athletics teams call themselves in a town known for mistletoe?

The missiles?    Surely not to Toes.  The Parasites?   The Osculators?

Pirates, as the town sign says.  The Priddy Pirates.

As in people who steal kisses.

Under the mistletoe.

 

Playbook

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We offer this observation from a book called “My Fight,” an autobiography written in 1925 by a German World War One veteran who refused to acknowledge his country’s leadership had lost the war and who was  looking for someone else to blame.  This is a 1939 translation by Irish writer and translator James Murphy. You may draw from it anything you wish, or nothing at all.

…It remained for the Jews, with their unqualified capacity for falsehood, and their fighting comrades, the Marxists, to impute responsibility for the downfall precisely to the man who alone had shown a superhuman will and energy in his effort to prevent the catastrophe which he had foreseen and to save the nation from that hour of complete overthrow and shame. By placing responsibility for the loss of the world war on the shoulders of Ludendorff they took away the weapon of moral right from the only adversary dangerous enough to be likely to succeed in bringing the betrayers of the Fatherland to Justice.

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

“My Fight” in German is Mein Kampf. The description of “The Big Lie” has been widely attributed to Hermann Goering, the information minister for Adolph Hitler.  But no attributable source has been found for Goering. But it is attributable to his boss, in this book.

A further discussion of the author of this technique can be found in A Psychoanalysis of Adolph Hitler, His Life and Legend  that was compiled for the Office of Strategic Services during World War Two. (The OSS morphed into the CIA after the war.)

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-02646R000600240001-5.

Again, we offer this material without comment.  Make of it what you will.

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