Monthly Archives: July 2021

CRT

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A legislative committee has started holding hearings on Critical Race Theory, a 50-year old academic and legal-studies concept that has been weaponized for political advantage in the last few years.  Among the strongest criticism is that it rewrites history, changing the narrative from a nation founded on Christian values to a narrative that makes white people ashamed of their race (even, some critics say, brainwashing kindergartners into being ashamed of being white).

CRT has become so pervasive in our civic discussion that my Sunday School class talked about it a Sunday or two ago.  More accurately, I talked about it to the Sunday School class.

Faith is a personal thing and while I was comfortable discussing it with that class, I am not one who is comfortable publicly waving it about. But I often find myself in these divisive times turning to Paul’s letter to the Galatians (people living in modern Turkey) that admonishes, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” There are slight differences in the wording depending on the version of the Bible you prefer but the sentiment is the same.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where even many professing Christians of all races still seem to miss Paul’s point. Among its virtues, Critical Race Theory points to the many times when the concept of “you are all one” has been violently meaningless.

As for re-writing history: history needs some rewriting so that it is more history than myth.

To pretend that race has not been a major force in the history of the United States is deception, a willingness to accept myth rather than recognize a historical record that should compel us to be better than we are—regardless of our race. To suggest that it does not still influence attitudes and standards is to disrespect those who have walked a different path than yours for generations.

We should not fear raising the issue of ongoing racism in America.  Although I wish it were not true, it is hard for me to dismiss accusations that there remains a current of it in our country—especially after my experience in discussing removal of Jefferson City’s “Confederate Rock” and listening to an African-American woman who favored its removal read an unsigned letter she received that referred to her thirteen time as a “Nigger” and suggest that she is the kind of woman the Ku Klux Klan was created for.

There, I’ve used the word. I refuse to remove its ugliness by turning it into the linguistic pablum that is “N-word.”  We do no service to ourselves as a people by avoiding the issues behind it and barely beneath society’s surface.

I live in a part of Missouri sometimes referred to as “Little Dixie” because of the high percentage of enslaved people before the Civil War—the 1860 census showing almost ten percent of Missouri’s population in 1860 was enslaved.  Cole County, where I live, was at 10.3% and, perhaps because of the heavy anti-slavery German population, was one of the lowest counties in this region.  Across the river, the census showed almost 26% of the population of Boone County was slaves. Callaway County was at 25. A little ways upstream, 37% of the population of Howard County was slaves. One-third of the population of Saline County was enslaved.  More than one-in-five residents of Cooper County were slaves.

Within my lifetime, I remember the day a black couple moved into an upper-middle class white neighborhood in Columbia and in the newsroom where I worked, we listened to the police monitors for any signs of trouble. There was none.

I was ten feet away from Jefferson City’s leading realtor the night he urged the city council to defeat an ordinance saying people of color could live anywhere in town they could afford to live because of what it would mean for property values.

I have seen history and I have read historical myth—-do any of you remember from your elementary or even high school history lessons when slavery was ever discussed except in the context of the Civil War?

Here’s an interesting little piece of information that underlines the history-as-myth proposition:

Massachusetts—where the righteous Pilgrims and Puritans supposedly founded a nation based on Christian values and religious freedom (a myth of its own)—became the first British colony to legalize slavery, in 1641. Did anybody ever hear that in the Pilgrim stories we were taught as children?  Or even the stories we relate each Thanksgiving as adults?

Missouri law has long held that it is a crime “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to…be defiled.”  Our present statutes use different language but that’s the way the law was in 1855 when a Callaway County slave named Celia, purchased by farmer Robert Newsom at age 14 was raped by Newsom on the way to his home. She had three children, at least one by Newsom, When she was 19 or 20, she killed Newsom in self-defense when he tried to rape her again.  She was hanged because the law against defilement of an unwilling woman did not apply to slaves.

Along the way we might have heard something about the Dred Scott Case but we’ve forgotten that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in that case that slaves—as well as free persons of color—could never be U.S. citizens.

Is it useful to know that the Missouri House of Representatives was completely white for a century before Walthall Moore of St. Louis became the first African-American member of our legislature?  Or that, in 1939, the University of Missouri—under a Missouri Supreme Court order to admit Lloyd Gaines, an African-American, to its law school in Columbia used an “out” in the order to establish the Lincoln University law school in St. Louis for black students?

Is it useful to know that no black person served as the foreman of a Missouri jury until 1945? Or that we didn’t have a state Human Rights Commission until 1957 (and, unfortunately, still have to have it today)? Or that we did not have a black member of the Missouri Senate until 1960? Or that there were no black Highway Patrol troopers until 1965?  That we didn’t send an African-American to Congress until 1968?  Or we didn’t have any person of color on our State Supreme Court until 1995?

Or that Missouri did not elect a black woman to Congress until LAST YEAR?

And that, to this day, outstate Missouri is generally not a place where a person of color stands much of a chance of serving in the Missouri General Assembly?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing these seldom-mentioned parts of our past or of our contemporary lives. There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning, at whatever age, what our society has been and, knowing that, understanding what our society still can be.

And, to the discomfort of many who are comfortable with the status quo, what it eventually WILL be.

Critical Race Theory makes a lot of people uncomfortable because it challenges us to understand that we live in a complex human society of colliding political, legal, and social interests that are affected by long-standing and often subtle social and institutional norms.

History, not myth, recognizes that we have painfully slowly grown more equal despite ongoing reluctance to do so and demographics and other studies of our evolving society that indicate the trend will continue. Some feel threatened by that slow growth and have taken to flame-throwing attacks that CRT (as former Vice-President Pence put it recently) is “a state-sanctioned racism, pure and simple.”

“America is not a racist country. America is the most just, noble and inclusive nation ever to exist on the face of the earth,” he said.

He needs to read more history and believe less myth.

What is happening here?  This largely academic concept has been around for decades. Why is it suddenly “state sanctioned racism?”

The answer is obvious.  Donald Trump discovered that this largely-academic topic has become something he can exploit for his personal political purposes and there are those who think their political futures or their grasp on political power can be enhanced by agreeing with his ongoing mendacity and his fear-stoking rhetoric.

How deep is racism in our country today?  I can’t quantify it but I know from watching and listening that we have some distance to go before we are the “most just, noble and inclusive nation” that Pence prematurely proclaims. I do not fear CRT’s reminders that we can be better than we are.

I also lack the perspective of being part of another culture—black, brown, yellow, or red—and comparing my culture’s history to my perceptions of the dominant culture.  I do not descend from slaves and sharecroppers, migrant field hands, people imprisoned during wartime because of their national origin, or people living on reservations—but I have been to those places and I have spoken with those only a generation or two or three removed from the times people were herded into camps because of their Asian heritage or whose not-distant ancestors were taken from their Native families to be “Americanized” at schools..

So I do not resent nor do I fear Critical Race Theory because it demands examination of parts of our history that have been glossed over in the story of our nation as a “shining city on a hill,” as President Reagan called us in misquoting Puritan minister John Winthrop. His 1630 sermon aboard the Arbella before it landed at Massachusetts Bay, although delivered in a different time and for a different purpose, gives us a recipe for national greatness that starkly differs fromfrom what is sometimes heard in criticism of CRT:

“…The only way to…provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with…For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

If we want to be the “city on a hill,” it is clear that divisiveness perpetuated by self-serving narrow attitudes and political rhetoric, is not the face we claim is an example to the world.  Winthrop’s sermon delivered 391 years ago tells us what we yet need to be.

If we are honest, we must not fear confronting our past and dealing with the lamentable vestiges of it that remain. CRT should not be seen as a sudden contemporary push to “shame” the white race.  To the contrary, it should be seen seen as a fifty-year-old challenge to be a better people—of all races—than we have been.

Much of the focus on CRT is on white-black relationships. But be aware that it is much more than that. There are branches to examine structural discrimination against Latinos, Jews, women, the disabled, Native Americans, and white immigrants.

There is no limit to the study of our inequalities, for knowing our inequalities gives us the understanding we need to end them. To paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is ourselves.”   What he said after the actual phrase, however, is valid on this issue—his definition of fear as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” after which he noted, “In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

That’s a hope that will stand us in good stead in a time when some see currying distrust and division as the key to their success, whatever the price might be to the nation.

It is better to remember:

We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Or as the Gospel tells us: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Given a choice of following the words of Paul or believing the words of Pence, I shall always take Paul.

 

Racing: Helio takes over; Brad moves over; F1 looks ahead

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The Olympics overshadows everything and dominates domestic television networks that otherwise would be broadcasting races on weekends.  So INDYCAR and NASCAR are standing down because NBC is in Tokyo.  But there are things afoot in all three major racing series.

(INDYCAR)—Helio Castroneves has a full-time ride for the 2022 INDYCAR season, taking the primary seat at Meyer-Shank racing that Jack Harvey has this year.  The team already is capitalizing on his “Drive for Five,” and effort to become the first five-time Indianapolis 500 winner.  If he pulls it off he’ll be the first driver to win back-to-back 500s twice.  He won his first two races at the Brickyard.

Although Castroneves (shown at the Speedway last week with A. J. Foyt, Al Unser Sr., and Rick Mears) has won the 500 four times, he has never won the INDYCAR championship.  He’s finished second in points four times. “I have been missing racing in INDYCAR full time so much,” he says. “I cannot wait to get a head start on next year with some strong races to finish this season.

MSR plans to run a second car full-time next year.  Harvey will not be in it. The team says a new driver will be announced soon.

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INDYCAR fans might see a little history made at World Wide Technology Raceway just across the river from St. Louis next month.  Testing on the rack today (Tuesday) will include Romain Grosjean, the former Formula 1 driver who has run road courses in the series this year. WWTR might be his oval track debut in the series.  The race will be August 21.

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Some big-track names have signed up for the quarter-mile dirt track race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway August 18-19.

Defending NASCAR champion Chase Elliott will drive a midget for the first time. He’ll be joined by fellow NASCAR driver Chase Briscoe, who has a lot of dirt track experience, and INDYCAR driver Conor Daly.

The Speedway created the track inside the third turn four years ago and has run the annual BC39 midget races on it, except for last year when the pandemic caused its cancellation.  The race honors Bryan Clauson, a three-time USAC midget champion and three-time starter in the Indianapolis 500 who was killed in a midget race crash in Belleville, Kansas in 2016. The event promotes organ donor awareness on behalf of the Indiana Donor Network and Driven to Save Lives.

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INDYCAR returns to action August 8 at Nashville.

(NASCAR)—-The decision was made in March, has been rumored for weeks, and is now public—Brad Keselowski is leaving Team Penske and will drive for and have a minority ownership interest in Roush Fenway Racing.

He’ll continue to drive, next year taking the 6-car that has been Ryan Newman’s ride.  Discussions are under way with Newman about driving a part-time schedule next year.

Keselowski’s move is seen as part of the succession plan for the day Jack Roush steps away—although he says it’s not in his immediate plans. “I’ve been asked to say that I’m passing the baton to him, which I am, but I still have one hand on the thing, so I’m not going to give it up completely for a while.  There are no retirement plans for me in my immediate future.”

Roush turned 79 last April.

Keselowski’s ride for Team Penske will go to Austin Cindric, who won the championship in NASCAR’s second-tier series last year and tops the point standings this year.  Cindric is the son of  the president of Team Penske, Tim Cindric. But Penske says the  younger Cindric, 22, has earned his place: “He’s proven to be the driver he is; the individual he is today. It’s a big step for him, but as far as I’m concerned, the team, the sponsors, are fully committed.” Cindric has run six races in Cup this year. His best finish is 15th in the Daytona 500.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 runs the Hungarian Grand Prix next Sunday.  This past week, teams got their first look at of life-sized model of the next generation car that will be campaigned next year.
The new car is designed with new aerodynamic regulations designed to make it easier to pass by reducing the amount of “dirty air” behind the cars.  The air flow over the present body work produces turbulence behind the car, upsetting control of trailing cars wanting to pass. The series says the turbulence is so severe that trailing cars lose as much as thirty-five percent of their downforce when they’re about three lengths behind another car.

The new design’s front and rear wings are expected to push the airflow up and over the trailing car. That coupled the use of ground effects for the first time since the 1980s is expected to produce more exciting racing.

Next year’s cars will run with 18-inch wheels instead of the 13-inch wheels now used.

(photo credits: IMS, Chris Owens; Keselowski, Bob Priddy; Formula 1)

 

Faith, Hope, and Justice

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(A friend of mine observed many years ago:

“I once read about a man

Who went about doing good.

It disturbs me that I am satisfied

Just going about.”

Dr. Frank Crane suggested years ago that faith, hope, and charity—or faith, hope, and love—have an additional component.)

JUSTICE

THERE are many earnest souls occupied in trying to do people good.

There are nine million societies, more or less, organized to improve and to ameliorate.

There are preachers, missionaries, evangelists, reformers, exhorters, viewers-with-pride, and pointers-with-alarm without number wrestling with sinners.

All forms of industry are booming these days in the U. S. A., but the uplift business is still several laps ahead.

It seems ungracious to say a word to any enthusiastic person who is engaged in so laudable an enterprise as that of rescuing the perishing, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick.

And yet, when you take time to think right through to the bottom of things, you must come to the conclusion that there is but one real, radical and effective way to help your fellow-men, and that is the way called justice.

If I want to redeem the world I can come nearer my object, and do less harm, by being just toward myself and just toward everybody else, than by “doing good” to people.

The only untainted charity is justice.

Often our ostensible charities serve but to obscure and palliate great evils.

Conventional charity drops pennies in the beggar’s cup, carries bread to the starving, distributes clothing to the naked. Real charity, which is justice, sets about removing the conditions that make beggary, starvation, and nakedness.

Conventional charity plays Lady Bountiful; justice tries to establish such laws as shall give employment to all, so that they need no bounty.

Charity makes the Old Man of the Sea feed sugar-plums to the poor devil he is riding and choking; justice would make him get off his victim’s back.

Conventional charity piously accepts things as they are, and helps the unfortunate; justice goes to the legislature and changes things.

Charity swats the fly; justice takes away the dung-heaps that breed flies.

Charity gives quinine in the malarial tropics; justice drains the swamps.

Charity sends surgeons and ambulances and trained nurses to the war; justice struggles to secure that internationalism that will prevent war.

Charity works among slum wrecks; justice dreams and plans that there be no more slums.

Charity scrapes the soil’s surface; justice subsoils.

Charity is affected by symptoms; justice by causes.

Charity assumes evil institutions and customs to be a part of “Divine Providence,” and tearfully works away at taking care of the wreckage; justice regards injustice everywhere, custom-buttressed and respectable or not, as the work of the devil, and vigorously attacks it.

Charity is timid and is always passing the collection-box; justice is unafraid and asks no alms, no patrons, no benevolent support.

“It is presumed,” says Henry Seton Merriman, “that the majority of people are willing enough to seek the happiness of others; which desire leads the individual to interfere with his neighbor’s affairs, while it burdens society with a thousand associations for the welfare of mankind or the raising of the masses.”

The best part of the human race does not want help, nor favor, nor charity; it wants a fair chance and a square deal.

Charity is man’s kindness.

Justice is God’s

Fly Missouri

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Our son flies for Southwest Airlines.  Living the Dream.

Always wanted to be a pilot.  Went through the program at Warrensburg before it was the University of Central Missouri.  Went through the Ramen Noodle days as a flight instructor to pile up the hours that let him fly cargo planes (I told him he should always fly cargo because a box never hijacked a plane) until he racked up the hours to fly people.  Flew regionally then became a First Officer for Southwest five years ago or so.

Great company to work for.  Loves it.

Pretty handsome forehead, don’t you think? A few months ago Rob got to fly a special plane.   Missouri One.

Back in 2015, Southwest decided to honor thirty years of service in Missouri with a special 737-700.

It’s been six years since Southwest unveiled Missouri One.  Don’t know why we haven’t heard about it until recently but it sure is a beauty.  It was decorated at Aviation Technology Services in Kansas City, the first city in Missouri that Southwest started serving.

Southwest went into business in June of 1971. Flights involving Kansas City began on February 18, 1982 and St. Louis about three years later. Southwest has done so well at St. Louis that everything comes out of the East Terminal and Lambert Airport has become the line’s international gateway.

At the time Missouri One took to the air, Southwest had nine other state-themed planes. And now Rob, who lives about a half-hour from Denver International Airport, has gotten to fly his home state’s plane. It wasn’t intentional.  Crews go to the airport and get aboard whatever plane is headed to the city to which the crew is scheduled to fly.  Missouri One just happened to be THE plane that day.

We can’t write perceptive and always-correct political observations, you know.  Every now and then we have to bust a button about something.

How did Southwest get the state seal and all that other stuff on that plane?

Take a look at this:

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

Missouri hasn’t declared an official Missouri Bicentennial Airplane but if it did, this one would have to merit serious consideration.

Someday, Southwest will have to retire Missouri One.  Maybe the company would donate it to be with TWA Constellation, DC-3, Lockheed 1011, and other planes at the Airline History Museum at the Charles B. Wheeler Airport in Kansas City.  Might not be too soon to suggest it.

(photo credits: Rob Priddy, Southwest Airlines, worldairlinenews.com, Airline History Museum, Kansas City)

 

A NASCAR Cinderella Story at New Hampshire

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(LOUDON, NH)—The rain started early at New Hampshire Motor Speedway but the lightning did not strike until the end.

Aric Almirola, mired in 27 place in the points standings with no hope of making the playoff unless he won a race—

Won the race.

LOUDON, NEW HAMPSHIRE – JULY 18: Aric Almirola, driver of the #10 Smithfield Ford, celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Foxwoods Resort Casino 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on July 18, 2021 in Loudon, New Hampshire. (Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images)

Almirola, with only two top-ten finishes in the first 21 races and an average finish this year of 21.8, took the lead with 28 laps to go and held it until NASCAR ended the race because of darkness eight laps from scheduled 301.  Almirola finished about two-thirds of a second ahead of oncoming Christopher Bell, who noted afterwards, “I was able to get to him, and it was going to be a heck of a race.

The win not only is the first of the year for Almirola, it’s the first of the year for his team, Steart-Haas Racing.

The race got off to an unhappy start with. One of NASCAR’s officials reported a wet track in turns 1 and 2. Leader Kyle Busch immediately reported it was raining but before NASCAR acted, he and several other cars spun in that area. Busch’s car backed into the wall and could not continue, leaving him 37th and last. NASCAR finally red-flagged the race on lap 7 and didn’t restart it until an hour and 41 minutes later.  That delay led NASCAR to stop the race eight laps from the planned finish because of darkness.

Almirola is the thirteenth winner this year, leaving only three playoff slots available based on points. One of those slots will go to Denny Hamlin, who leads all drivers in points although he is still winless this year. Kevin Harvick seems solid for the fifteenth position.  But Childress teammates Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon are headed for a four-round fight for the last playoff berth.  They are separated by only five points.

NASCAR won’t race again until it runs the road course at Watkins Glen on August 8th. Its season second-half broadcast partner, NBC, will be busy covering the Olympics instead.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR is on its summer break until August 8 at Nashville. And when it comes back, Helio Castroneves will come back, too.  It will be his first INDYCAR race since winning his fourth Indianapolis 500 in May.  He’s driving a limited schedule of six races for Meyer-Shank Racing.

He’s filled the racing gap by running in the SRX series—six races on dirt as well as on paved tracks.  The series wrapped up its season Saturday night with defending NASCAR champion Chase Elliott winning at Nashville, edging series co-founder Tony Stewart. Stewart won the season championship.  Castroneves finished fifth among the ten regular drivers in the series.

(FORMULA 1)—Lewis Hamilton has chalked up his 99th career Grand Prix victory but not without controversy and some hard feelings by his top competitor for the championship, Max Verstappen.  Hamilton’s aggressive move to the inside on the second lap of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone sent Verstappen’s car careening into the barrier.  Verstappen was unhurt but made it clear he was unhappy with Hamilton’s move. Verstappen called Hamilton’s move “dangerous” and his Red Bull team’s principal, said it was an “amateur” move by a “desperate driver.”

Hamilton countered that he had conceded a position to Verstappen in the past to avoid collisions, but, “Unfortunately, the aggression stayed from his side and we collided.”

Hamilton’s victory and Verstappen’s early exit chopped twenty points off Verstappen’s point lead.

(Photo credit: NASCAR/James Gilbert-Getty images)

Another trip around the sun

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(We celebrated at our house a few days ago the completion of another trip around the sun, another anniversary of the birth of the compiler of these columns. Although ascending as gracefully as possible in the number of our years we shall not try to impress you with the number of these trips we have made. But it is enough that contemplating the total journey each year leads to increasing time spent reflecting on the places in life we have been and offering advice to those still early in their journeys—-as Dr. Frank Crane might have been doing when he told readers of Woman’s World in 1913:)

REMEMBER OLD AGE

In youth, one finds himself full of many forces, physical, intellectual, and emotional. He is a bundle of desires. He ought to be. It man’s life’s forces run rich in him. So he desires to make love, to get popularity, to play, to do great work, to see the marvels of the world, to amass knowledge and altogether give vent to the steam and electricity which nature has concealed in his makeup.

Hence, he gives himself to varied activities. By gratifying all these wants he becomes somewhat in the world.

But whether he is a real success or not depends not on how he give way to these desires but upon how he controls them. It is not the things he does and the things he gets that make him a great man; it is the residuary deposit that is left in his soul.

All of these pleasures of getting and doing have their place, but the real object of them is that they shall pass over into the higher values of character.

So it is pitiful to see the old man was once a sensualist, a vigorous merchant, a political leader, and how now has nothing left but regret—for his lost vitality. Had he understood the art of living he would have gained from his more active days a wealth of inner qualities of spiritual strength and beauty; and instead of old age leaving him poverty stricken of happiness, it would have left him with the harvest treasures of wisdom and joy in life.

Adopt the philosophy of Omar Khayyam, take for your gospel, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die,”  seek only “to get all the fun you can get out of life,” and you exhaust all your inner resources, and your old age will be that of a dyspeptic and a banquet.*

But begin in youth to resolutely choose the higher pleasures, to train yourself in independence from the domination of “things” and reliance upon the pleasures of beauty, thought, and love, and old age will come as the golden privilege of life.

It is a question of nobility versus meanness; it must be an ennobling and not a gloomy and narrow religion. Neither poverty nor riches matter; it all depends upon whether you are nobly poor or nobly rich. Sickness or health do not determine the temper of your old age; that is fixed by your being nobly feeble or nobly robust.

It is in old age that all of the higher truths of life shine undimmed by any deceiving circumstances. Then, if you are petty, selfish, egotistic, proud and small souled, there is nothing to conceal it. If you are patient, loyal, and full of love, it is apparent.

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*Although the quotation is often attributed to Khayyam, it actually is a combination of two verses from the Bible and also is found in the Book of Mormon:

Ecclesiastes 8:15—“Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.”

Isaiah 22:13—“Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.”

2 Nephi 28:7– “Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us.”

We have found a couple of quotes from Khayyam that might apply to Dr. Crane’s theme today:

“Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly-and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing,” and–

“Why ponder thus the future to foresee, and jade thy brain to vain perplexity? Cast off thy care, leave Allah’s plans to him – He formed them all without consulting thee.”

(Omar Khayyam 1048-1131) was a Persian astronomer, philosopher, poet, and mathematician.)

 

Simile When You Say That, Pardner

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One of my favorite satellite radio channels Radio Classics, maybe because I’m so old that I remember when radio was filled with diverse entertainments instead of the steady diet of super-inflated egos who pour division and distrust into democracy’s gears.

One thing television has taken away from radio is the detective show in which the main character is the narrator who explains in often-colorful phrases the world in which he or she lives.  Many of these shows were created in era of hard-boiled detective novels and magazines, thus leading to a lot of similes that left vivid images in the listeners’ minds.

Let’s face it, television and movies cannot come close to showing what we see in our minds and they did it with similies.

The king of the detective simile was Pat Novak, played by pre-Dragnet Jack Webb on “Pat Novak for Hire.”  The other day Radio Classics played an episode called “Agnes Bolton.”

To refresh your memory of high school freshman English, a simile is a figure of speech in which something is compared to something different.

Pat Novak was a tough private eye living on the financial edge with a boat rental business in San Francisco. Webb’s narration throughout the program described his situations and those he met, including a friend who tells him during the show, “You’re never on the right side of things. You’ll always be in trouble because you’re a bad citizen. You’re a shabby half-step in the march of human progress. You don’t know the difference between good and evil. For you, all of human endeavor is a vague blur in high heels…You might as well try to recapture melancholy or ventilate a swamp. Ya haven’t a chance. You’ll never be any good.”

The writers for the show were Richard Breen and Gil Doud.  It must have been fun writing Webb’s narration as Pat Novak.  Even those who were raised after the dawn of television can probably hear in their own minds Jack Webb’s clipped, blunt, reading:

Around here a set of morals won’t cause any more stir than Mothers Day at an orphanage.

It doesn’t do any good to sing the blues because down here you’re just another guy in the chorus.

About as likely he would show up as a second pat of butter on a 50-cent lunch.

A smile as smooth as a pound of liver in a bucket of glycerin.

His eyes swept the room like a $10 broom.

She was at least 50 because you can’t get that ugly without years of practice.

(Her complexion) was red and scratchy as if she used a bag of sand for cold cream.

Her hair hung down like dead branches of a tree.

The way she fit (into a telephone booth), a sardine ought to be happy.

He was making noises in his throat as if he was eating a pound of cellophane.

(I couldn’t get anybody to talk to me.) I might as well have been selling tip sheets in a monastery.

If you keep your foot on a bar rail, you’ll find it’ll do more good for your arches than for your brain.

I better have a drink first; there’s an ugly taste in my mouth. I think it’s saliva.

It wasn’t raining hard anymore…It sounded quiet, almost private, like the sound a woman makes when she runs her fingernail up and down her stocking. It got on your nerves at first and then you learn to enjoy it.

Her main talent is more dimensional than dramatic.

(She was) stretched out as dead as a deer on a fender.

Her skin reminded you of a piece of felt that was almost worn out. But the rest was all right.

Riding with (him) is just about as safe as eating an arsenic sandwich.

The rain was hitting the windshield and it was like trying to see through a mint julep.

—All of those are from that single show.  If a person loves descriptive writing or wants to learn something about it, I suggest they listen to some of these great old detective shows.

Various people have proclaimed, “Theatre is life; film is art; television is furniture; but radio is imagination.”  Have you ever seen on television anything that has shown you someone “as dead as a deer on a fender?”  Or seen anything on television as sensuous as “the sound a woman makes when she runs her fingernail up and down her stocking?”  What we see with our eyes is often so inadequate when compared to what we see in our minds.

This is a good opportunity to pay tribute to those two writers. Their names are unfamiliar. In fact, we don’t pay much attention as the credits roll at the end of our movies or TV shows and name of the writer(s) show up.

Richard Breen started as a freelance radio writer who moved to movies. He won an Oscar as the screenwriter for 1953’s Titanic.  He was nominated for writing A Foreign Affair in 1948 and for Captain Newman, M.D., in 1963.

Gil Doud also wrote for the Sam Spade radio series.  He wrote one episode of the radio Gunsmoke and adapted five of John Meston’s Gunsmoke radio scripts for the early television versions of the show. He didn’t match Green’s screenwriting credentials but he did write Thunder Bay starring James Stewart in 1953, Saskatchewan with Alan Ladd the next year, and Audie Murphy’s To Hell and Back in 1955.  He also wrote episodes for the radio shows Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

These guys were writing for radio in the era when people such as Mickey Spillane were beginning their tough murder mysteries with (from Spillane’s The Big Kill):

“It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world.  The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men and enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick.”

Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels and the radio shows written by people such as Breen and Doud create images no television program or movie could ever show.  It’s the power of the written word.  And the spoken word.

Let’s conclude this colorful reminiscence with part of the script from the opening of the tenth Pat Novak show, “Go Away Dixie Gilliam.”  It’s from https://www.genericradio.com/show/07d5af03664522b5:

Ladies and Gentlemen, the American Broadcasting Company brings transcribed to its entire network, one of radio’s most unusual programs:

MUSIC: BRIEF, DRAMATIC INTRO, THEN SOFTEN FOR NEXT LINE

ANNOUNCER: Pat Novak, For Hire.

MUSIC: UP AGAIN BRIEFLY AND FADE OUT

SOUND: HARBOR AMBIANCE DURING NOVAK’S INTRO LINES

SOUND:FOOTSTEPS OUT OF THE FOG

 

NOVAK: Sure, I’m Pat Novak, For Hire.

SOUND:HARBOR OUT

MUSIC: CUP AS HARBOR FADES. PLAY BRIEFLY AND THEN SOFTEN AS NOVAK CONTINUES.

NOVAK:

That’s what the sign out in front of my office says: Pat Novak, For Hire. Down on the waterfront in San Francisco you always bite off more than you can chew. It’s tough on your wind pipe, but you don’t go hungry. And down here a lot of people figure its better to be a fat guy in a graveyard than a thin guy in a stew. That way he can be sure of a tight fit. (Pause) Oh, I rent boats and do anything else which makes a sound like money–

MUSIC: OUT

NOVAK:

–It works out alright, if your mother doesn’t mind you coming home for Easter in a box. I found that out on Wednesday night at about 9 o’clock. I closed the shop early and I came home to read. It wasn’t a bad book, if you ever wanted to start a forest fire. It was one of those historical things and the girl in it wandered around like a meat grinder in ribbons. Ah, I was moving along alright. She was just getting her second wind before going for the world’s record when the door to my apartment opened and the place began to get kinda crowded. From where I sat, the crowd looked good.

SOUND: SOFT FOOTSTEPS APPROACH UNTIL LEIGH’S FIRST LINE

NOVAK:

She sauntered in, moving slowly from side to side like a hundred and eighteen pounds of warm smoke. Her voice was alright, too. It reminded you of a furnace full of marshmallows.

 

My God!  “Like a hundred and eighteen pounds of warm smoke….”  Let NCSI or Law & Order try to match that.

Some of our women readers might consider this language blatantly sexist.  It’s hard not to agree.  Perhaps in our comment box below, some might want to suggest some similar similes describing men. Just remember, this is a family blog, rated no higher than PG.

This concludes our refresher course on SIMILIES.

And how much better our minds were when radio brought them to us

Racing: Brothers going 1-2 in NASCAR? Rare, but done

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(NASCAR)—Kurt Busch beat brother Kyle in the Atlanta race Sunday, raising questions about how often that has happened in NASCAR history. It’s rare but not unprecedented. The Busch brothers have done it four times, each finished ahead of the other twice.

There have been several sets of brothers who have run against each other since June 19, 1949 when NASCAR ran its first race at the old Charlotte track.

After Sonoma six years ago, NASCAR combed through its records and found the first time brothers finished 1-2 was in the second year of the series. Tim and Bob Flock finished 1-2 at Charlotte on April 2, 1950, the first of thirteen times they went 1-2.  There was a third brother, Fonty, but he never made it a 1-2-3 finish for the family and was never part of a 1-2 finish with either Tim or Bob.

Bobby and Donnie Allison did it four times. Herb and Donald Thomas went 1-2 in a 1965 race in Hillsboro, NC.

Terry and Bobby Labonte went 1-2 three times. Bobby was on top two of those times.

Jeff Burton won three races with brother Ward in second.

So the answer to the question of how many times is 28.

Other brother combinations failed to do it.

Darrell and Michael Waltrip never did it. Nor did the three Bodine brothers—Geoff, Brett, and Todd.  The Wallace boys of Missouri, Rusty, Kenny, and Steve didn’t pull it off. Benny and Phil Parsons didn’t either. Neither did Richard and Maurice Petty.

Back to the weekend’s  NASCAR:  Kurt became the twelfth driver to lock in a playoff position with his first win of the year.  Until the run at Atlanta he had been fighting to stay in the playoff picture on points after a slow start in 2021. He led more than half of the laps; Kyle led a little more than a third of them.  Kyle blamed his brother’s teammate, Ross Chastain, for slowing his charge for the lead, allowing Kurt to stretch the margin between the two brothers. Observers say Chastain did not exactly block the younger brother but he did take away Kyle’s preferred line around the track in the late running. The margin of victory was a little more than 1.2 seconds. Chastain finished a lap down in 21st.

Martin Truex, Jr., Alex Bowman, and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five. The all have victories to clinch their places in the playoffs.

Only five races remain to determine the sixteen drivers who will run for the title in late November.  Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick, who won sixteen races between them last year but who are winless in 2021, Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick fill out the remaining playoff slots based on their points. Chris Buescher, Matt DiBenedetto, Chastain and Bubba Wallace have the five races to win their way onto the list or gain large quantities of points to force their way into the final four slots.

NASCAR races at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway at Loudon next Sunday.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR is taking a summer break and will race next on August 8 at Nashville.

This weekend was one of the great party events of big-time auto racing, the Goodwood Festival of Speed which this year paid special honors to Roger Penske. One of the events at the festival each year is a hill climb and Penske, who is 84, took the wheel a 2008 Porsche RS Spyder that won the Sebring 12 Hours to run the annual Goodwood Hillclimb. Several of his cars that raced at Indianapolis or in NASCAR and Formula 1 also were featured.

https://www.goodwood.com/grr/event-coverage/festival-of-speed/2021/7/gallery-roger-penske-celebrated-at-fos/

(SRX)—INDYCAR veteran Marco Andretti has won his first race in a stock car.  He won the SRX race at the Slinger, Wisconsin quarter-mile oval Saturday night, beating back a challenge from 17-year old Luke Fenhaus, who earned a chance to race against the bigger names in the race by winning the Slinger Nationals earlier in the week.

The series wraps up its six-race first season next weekend at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. Series founder Tony Stewart has a 38-point lead in the standings.

(FORMULA 1)—F1 was off this weekend before running the British Grand Prix at Silverstone next Sunday.

It takes a town to make a town

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(We want our city to be greater than it is, more than it has been to its own citizens and to those who visit or will visit it.  But the town has to WANT to be greater than it is and that means its citizens must want it to be more than it is, not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of generations to come.  It’s not a job to be left to the city council or the chamber of commerce. This observation, written by Dr. Frank Crane shortly after the end of the First World War and published in The Delineator magazine, remains valid today as he suggests we put—)

YOUR HOMETOWN FIRST

Work for your own town.

Beautify it. Improve it. Make it attractive.

The World War and the Treaty of Peace and the Protective Tariff and all such things are important subjects but what’s the good of cleaning up the world unless you sweep your own doorstep?

The city whose main street is dirty, sordid-looking, cluttered, uninviting, suffers much. Such a city wants to be cleaned, recreated, made a thing of beauty so that people will come from miles to see it.

The best advertisement of your business if the town you live in.

Towns get reputations as well as men. Make your town talked of all through the state. It will thus draw people. And where the people come, there is prosperity. It does not take money. It takes cooperation.

Get together. Organize for civic improvement. Develop the civic nerve.

Rid your town of one eyesore after another. Clean up the vacant lots and plant them in gardens. Make a cluttered yard a disgrace. Make public opinion too hot for those who will help.

It pays.  It will promote law and order. It will help in the education of your children. It will draw factories and other business enterprises to your locality.

Shiftlessness, untidiness, dirt and selfishness as shown in your streets and buildings react upon your people.

Such things make your boys and girls grow up hating their home town.

Make your home town a children’s paradise, something their memory will lovingly turn back to.

Look after your amusements, your parks, your playgrounds, your theatres and all other forms of communal enjoyment.

Make your home town happy.

It pays.

The Future of Water (update)

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We seldom update one of these posts, and even less often do we do it immediately.  Had we posted on this topic today instead of yesterday we would have changed some information. But here’s an important update that underlines the point we made.

The Corps of Engineers announced yesterday that it was implementing drought conservation measures on the Missouri River.  June runoff from rain (very little) and snowmelt (much reduced) was just 52% of the average amount. The Corps has updated its forecast for upper basin runoff to finally be 60% of average.

It says this will be the tenth driest year in the upper basin since 1898.  Water storage in upstream reservoirs is expected to decline further.  That means less water coming downstream for all of the purposes defined by federal river law.

This doesn’t mean we who live in cities that rely on the river for our water will have to stop watering lawns, wash dishes once a week and clothes once a month and ourselves only on Saturday nights using the same water for everybody in the family (as many of our pioneer ancestors did).  But it adds further weight to yesterday’s discussion.

There isn’t “water, water everywhere” in more and more places.