Author Archives: bpriddy

Banned Book Week

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I have a pin that I wear on rare occasions that says, “I Read Banned Books.”

And I do.

I’ve read Huckleberry Finn.  The Bible (well, parts of it), Grapes of Wrath, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (not just the good parts), In Cold Blood, The Naked and the Dead—–

Probably more.

And as consumers of these columns know, I am clearly corrupted, probably an abuser of something or other, and have read a forbidden word or two that most second-graders already know.

This is the fortieth anniversary of Banned Books Week, It was started at a time when there was a sharp rise in actions to take books out of schools, libraries and even out of bookstores. It was created by Pittsburgh librarian Judith F. Krug who became the director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. Later she joined the Freedom to Read Foundation and after Time magazine did an article in 1981, “The Growing Battle of the Books,” founded Banned Books Week.

One of the biggest promoter is a century-old (founded in 1922) organization called PEN America, which says it “stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide.” Originally the acronym stood for “Poets, Essayists, Novelists.”  But the group has broadened its tent to include playwrights and editors and even more people. So “PEN” is no longer an acronym for anything but the organization is for free exposure to ideas.

Not long ago the organization calculated about 140 school districts spread throughout 32 states had issued more than 2,500 book bans, efforts that it says affect almost four=million students in more than five-thousand individual school buildings. It has identified at least fifty groups with at least 300 local chapters advocating for book bans.  It says most of those groups have formed in the last year.

PEN America keeps an annual index of schoolbook bans.  That list for the school year ending June 30, 2022 lists 2,535 instances of banning 1,648 titles.  The organization says 674 of the banned titles address LGBTQ+ themes or have characters who are in that category. Another 659 titles featured characters of color and another 338 addressed issues of race and racism.

Political pressure or legislation designed to “restrict teaching and learning” (PEN”s phrase) were involved in at least forty percent of the bans.  Texas had 801 bans in 22 districts. Florida had 566 in 21 districts. Pennsylvania had 457 in 11 districts.

The organization says the movement is speeding up resulting in “more and more students losing access to literature that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship.” It says, “Ready access to ideas and information is a necessary predicate to the right to exercise freedom of meaningful speech, press, or political freedom.”  It cites this except from a 1978 decision in a Federal Court case in Massachusetts:

“The library is ‘a mighty resource in the marketplace of ideas’ … There a student can literally explore the unknown and discover areas of interest and thought not covered by the prescribed curriculum. The student who discovers the magic of the library is on the way to a life-long experience of self-education and enrichment. That student learns that a library is a place to test or expand upon ideas presented to him, in or out of the classroom… The most effective antidote to the poison of mindless orthodoxy is ready access to a broad sweep of ideas and philosophies. There is no danger in such exposure. The danger is in mind control.”

Sixteen instances of book banning are on the new PEN index.  Six are from Nixa. Four are from Wentzville.

(3 actions)  Alison Bechdel, Fun House, A Family Tragicomic, banned in classrooms, Nixa May 2022; Banned pending investigation, North Kansas City and Wentzville (October, 2021)

Echo Bryan, Black Girl Unlimited, the Remarkable Story, banned in library, Nixa,  February 2022

Jano Dawson, This Book is Gay, banned in libraries, Lindbergh School District, October 2021

Jonathan Evison, Lawn Boy, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District, October, 2021

Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing, banned in libraries, Nixa, May, 2022

Lisa Jewell, Invisible Girl, a Novel, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District October 2021

(Two actions) George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue, banned in libraries and classrooms, Nixa School District, May, 2022; banned pending investigation, North Kansas City School District,  October, 2021

Kiese Laymon, Heavy, an American Memoir, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District, October, 2021.

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, banned in libraries of the Nixa School District  February, 2022.

Logan Myracle, l8r g8tr, banned in libraries and classrooms, St. Francis Howell School District,  October, 2021

Elizabeth Scott, Living Dead Girl, banned pending investigation, Rockwood School District, March, 2022

Nic Stone, Dear Martin, banned in classes, Monett R-1 School District, December 2021

Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle, banned pending investigation, Nixa February, 2022

I am a writer, a journalist, an author, a longtime supporter of my local and regional libraries. I do not have much patience with those who want to dictate to me what I might read, how I might speak, or what I might think.

Perhaps I am the kind of person those who want to dictate those things fear.  Fear is a lousy reason for running a society or a nation.  People who are different will not go away and keeping someone from reading about them won’t drive them away.

So for the rest of this week, be a good American.

Read a banned book.  There’s a list of them above.

 

 

 

 

Sports: Four-gone conclusion to NASCAR first round; Some dashed hopes in INDYCAR; and a homer watch

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—Some teams are watching their magic numbers dwindle for pennant-clinching.  But many fans are waiting to see magic numbers for two great hitters, one in the full flower of his career and the other watching the shadows move closer.

(PUJOLS)—Albert Pujols continues to add drama to each home run as he heads toward 700 for his career.  Friday night, with his team down by two runs, Pujols blasted a 427-foot shot into the left field stands for number 698.  Five of his six recent home runs either have tied games or given the Cardinals the lead as they went into this week with a magic number of their own: eight.

His renaissance since the all-Star break has been a key in the St. Louis drive for a divisional championship. In games in which Pujols has homered, the Cardinals are 15-1.

Baseball being a game of statistics, here are some about Pujols going into the last 14 games of his career.  His home run off the Reds’ Raynel Espinel was the 89th first-pitch homer of his career.  He has ten more when the count is 1-1 and 92 when he took the first pitch for a ball.

Raynel is the 453rd pitcher to give up a Pujols home run. Pujols hit the first pitch he saw from Espinal for a home run Friday. It was the 89th first-pitch home run of Pujols’ career. The only counts where he’s hit more home runs have come on 1-1 (99 HRs) and 1-0 (92).

His home run off Espinal was his 49th career home run against the Reds.  He has 62 against the Astros, 59 against the Cubs and another 54 against the Pirates.

He admits he’s feeding off the excitement of the crowd.  “I can feel that energy,” he said Sunday, “and when I’m going out there and performing, I’m going out here to represent God, this organization, and also my country.  I want to make my country proud every single day that I step onto that field.”

(JUDGE)—Sometime this week, the Yankees’ Aaron Judge is likely to catch former Cardinal outfielder Roger Maris’s American League home run record.

It’s a record often overlooked because of the overall record set first by the Cardinals Mark McGwire and then eclipsed by Barry Bonds of the Giants.

But Maris’ record set 61 years ago this year, is likely to fall to Judge, who upped his total to 59 Sunday with two homers against the Brewers.  Judge brushes off repeated questions about whether can do it. “We’ve got some big games coming up. That’s really the only thing on my mind,” he said Sunday night.

Maris took a lot of heat in 1961 about whether his 61 home runs really beat Babe Ruth’s 34-year old record of 60. That was the first year the American League went to the 162-game schedule. The National League followed suit in 1962.  Baseball commissioner Ford Frick decided Maris did not really break The Babe’s record because he didn’t hit number 61 until the 162nd game. He ordered an asterisk attached the Maris record because Ruth set his record in a 154-game season.

As of the end of Sunday’s games, the Yankees had played 146 games.  Judge is on course to break the Maris record—and the Ruth record.

However, if you want to get picky about it, Ruth only played 151 games in 1927.

Many do not remember (it has been sixty years and more, after all) that Maris bracketed his Yankee years by playing for both Missouri teams.  He was traded by the then-Cleveland Indians to the Kansas City Athletics in 1968 and after the 1959 season went to the Yankees.  He played his last two seasons in St. Louis, 1967-68.

(THE SEASON RECORD)—To update you on the question we asked last week: Will the Royals win more games this year than the Cardinals lose?  After Sunday’s game, the Royals were 58-89. The cardinals were 87-61.

(NASCAR)—The chaotic first round of NASCAR playoffs has come to a chaotic end with Chris Buescher winning the night race at Bristol, ending a 222-race winless streak and giving Roush-Fenway-Keselowski Racing its first checkered flag.

The last time the once-proud Roush Racing organization won a Cup rate was July, 2017. Roush Racing became Roush-Fenway in 2007 when the Fenway Sports Group bought in, It added the “K” this year when driver Brad Keselowski bought in.

For a time it appeared Keselowski would be the one to claim the teams’ first win.  But a flat tie with 87 laps to go took him out of the lead. He finished 13th.

Buescher is the third non-playoff driver to win a race in the three-race first round of the playoffs, a first-time record.  He’s the 19th driver to win a race this year, the most in a half-century.  He took the lead from Christopher Bell with 61 laps left and held off Chase Elliott the rest of the way.

The race eliminated four competitors from the playoffs.  2014 champion Kevin Harvick, needing a win, was in contention until a tire change problem in his last pit stop dropped him to tenth.  Two-time champion Kyle Busch, clinging to a playoff spot, lost an engine for the second time in three races and finished 34th.  Childress Racing teammates Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick were caught in a 12-car wreck just past the halfway point. Dillon was 31st and Reddick kept going to finish 25th.

Chase Elliott, who finished about a half-second behind Buescher, goes into the second three-race series of playoffs as the top seed. Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, Kyle Larson, William Byron, Denny Hamlin, Bell, Ryan Blaney, Chase Briscoe, Alex Bowman, Daniel Suarez, and rookie Austin Cindric  make up the rest of the field.

The first race of round two will be at the Texas Motor Speedway.

(INDYCAR)—Hopes of INDYCAR driver Colton Herta that he might be in Formula 1 next year have been dashed by F1’s administrative body, prompting strong criticism from both INDYCAR and Formula 1 drivers and teams.

F1 relies on a points system to determine who can have a Superlicense to compete.  The system requires 40 points and Herta has only 32. Despite efforts by Red Bull, the dominant F1 team this year, to get a waiver for Herta, administrators have refused.

Herta, how 22, won his first INDYCAR race four years ago at 18, the youngest driver in INDYCAR history to win in the series.  He drives for Andretti Autosport, which had hoped to get permission to run an F1 team in 2023. But that bid was rejected by the sanctioning body and by other teams. McLaren signed Herta as a development driver for 2022, giving him opportunities to practice in Formula 1 cars.  Alfa Tauri had considered providing a seat for him next year. But all of those efforts have gone by the boards.

Herta will remain with Andretti in the INDYCAR series in 2023.  He had a win, two poles, five top five finishes, and eight top tens to finish in a tie for 9th in the final standings.

(Photo credits; Bob Priddy, Jim Coleman)

 

 

 

 

Why Hasn’t Ukraine Lost?

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Ukraine’s counterattack against Russian invaders appears to have stunned a lot of Russian soldiers and their commanders—and a growing number of influential people in Moscow who are starting to openly criticize Vladimir Putin for his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Putin expected a quick conquest.  Why didn’t he get it?  And why is he, as of this writing, getting his butt kicked by a supposedly smaller, inferior, force?

You might find it interesting to explore a book that explains why.  It’s the same reason Hitler didn’t conquer England, why the United States fled from Vietnam, and probably why the Taliban controls Afghanistan.

The book is Malcom Gladwell’s David and Goliath, a study of why bigger is not always best, why stronger does not always prevail, and why—believe it or not—the underdog wins so often.

While most analyses of military actions focus on military capabilities and/or failures, Gladwell focuses on people and what happens when their country is attacked by a seemingly overwhelming force.

He writes that the British government was worried as Europe sank into World War II that there was no way to stop a German air offensive against the country. The country’s leading military theorists feared devastating attacks on London would 600,000 dead, 1.2-million people wounded and mass panic among the survivors, leaving the Army unable to fight invaders because it would be trying to keep order among the civilians.

The eight-month blitzkrieg began in the latter part of 1940 and included fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing.

But the people did not panic.  Military leaders were surprised to see courage and almost indifference.  The reaction puzzled them as well as psychiatric workers expecting the worst.

And they discovered the same things were happening in other countries under attack.

What was going on?

Gladwell writes that a Canadian psychiatrist, J. T.MacCurdy, determined that the bombings divided the populace into three categories: the people killed, the people who were considered near misses—the people who survived the bombs, and the remote misses—people not in the bombed areas.  MacCurdy said the people in the third category developed “a feeling of excitement with a flavour of invulnerability.”

While the toll in the London bombings was, indeed, great (40,000 dead and 46,000 injured), those casualties were small in a community of eight-million people, leaving hundreds of thousands of “emboldened” near misses, people that MacCurdy said became “afraid of being afraid,” a feeling that produced exhilaration and led them to conquering fear and developing self-confidence “that is the very father and mother of courage.”

Hitler, like the British military command, had assumed that a populace that had never been bombed before would be terrified. It wasn’t. Instead, it was emboldened.

“Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the touch times start,” writes Gladwell. “Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.”   He maintains that the German expectations that the bombings would terrorize the people and destroyed their courage was a “catastrophic error” because it produced the opposite result. He concludes the Germans “would have been better off not bombing London at all.”

Gladwell explores the “catastrophic error” this country made in Viet Nam when its political and military leaders believed they could bomb the Viet Cong into submission.  Thousands of pages of interviews of Viet Cong prisoners indicated the result instead was that the bombings made people “hate you so much that they never stop fighting.”

Many of the prisoners maintained no thoughts of winning but they didn’t think the Americans would win either.  Nor did they think they would lose. “An enemy indifferent to the outcome of a battle is the most dangerous enemy of all,” Gladwell writes, and leads to a shift in advantage and power to the underdog.

His thoughts might help us understand why, after 30 years, the Gulf War has failed to install democracy in that area and instead has left Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan far from what we dreamed they would become.

We hope the ideas are not tested on Taiwan.

Those who go to war expecting to win through might and power alone are Goliaths. And, as Gladwell sees it, all they’re doing is creating a lot of Davids.  And—although Russia’s invasion is not mentioned—in Ukraine, the shepherds with slings are swarming.

(The book is David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, New York, Little Brown and Company, 2013 (with a revised paperback edition by Back Bay Books, 2015. His thought-challenging musings also cover such topics as class size, prestigious colleges, art, dyslexia, and crime.  If you want a sample of his perceptive interpretation of how underdogs so often prevail, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziGD7vQOwl8 and if you want more on other topics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RGB78oREhM)

(Photo credit: youtube Ted Talk)

 

RACE

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In various forms we are tied up, politically, socially, economically and about every other kind of “ically” with the subject of race.

It provokes anger, fear, and uncertainty.

Am I racist?  Is someone else a racist, too, although they don’t look the same way I do?

Am I a victim? Am I a perpetrator?

What should I do?  Admit it?  Feel guilty about it?  Demand something from somebody? Be afraid of somebody?  Organize and try to stamp it out or stamp out discussions of it?

And where did it come from?

There are those who prefer not to discuss this issue. They have turned the word “woke” into a pejorative describing disparagingly those who are, as the Oxford Old English Dictionary tells us “originally (were) well-informed, up-to-date” but now “chiefly” means someone “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”

A few weeks ago (July 25), we wrote about “Two Popes and Christian Nationalism.”  Recently we listened to a talk by John Biewen, the director of Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, a podcaster, and an author. He called his remarks, “The lie that invented racism,” and offered suggestions for solving racial injustice that began about 170 years before 1619, the date cited by a much-attacked New York Times article that (erroneously, we think) sets the date for racism in America.

Biewen’s talk supplements that July 25th exploration. We do not fear being called “woke” by recommending you watch Biewen’s presentation. Frankly, we are more likely to take it as a compliment, which might only make an accuser more angry. Too bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIZDtqWX6Fk

I jotted down three quotes while listening to his talk—-not a speech, mind you, a talk.  Racism “is a tool to divide us and to prop up systems.”

“It’s about pocketbooks and power.”

“White guilt doesn’t get a lot of anything done”

His presentation is one of many TED Talks posted on the web.  Talks such as these began with a 1984 conference on Technology, Entertainment, and Design (thus, TED).  The program focuses on “ideas worth spreading.”  The talks, limited to no more than eighteen minutes, cover a huge range of topics within the broad fields of science and culture.

Some famous people have made them. There are many whose names are meaningless to most of us—but whose words are worth hearing.  This is a forum for people unafraid to think outside their personal box, not for those who prefer to box out thoughts different from theirs.

There is afoot in our land an effort to ban discussion of race. Some say discussing race is an effort to make white people feel guilty about being white. The greater danger is from those who find no guilt in continuing to consider people of another color as lesser people.

We cannot escape history and we do not serve our country if we try to hide from it, obscure it, or ignore it.

The mere fact that we are discussing this issue as much as we are is proof enough that race remains one of the greatest overarching problems in our society and in our country.  It remains a problem and a problem is never fixed by denying that it exists or denying there never was a problem.

I hope Mr. Biewen’s remarks make you think.

(Photo credit: TED talks/youtube.com)

 

Sports—Albert, Patrick, Bubba, Will, Max, and two questions

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

It’s the autumn of baseball season, the spring of football season, and racing heads toward its last turns.  We begin with stick and ball sports today because, well, they’re more important right now.

(BASEBALL)—Next up for Albert Pujols: The Babe.  Albert’s dramatic homer in the ninth gave the Cardinals the lead  that held up against the Pirates. Home run number 697 broke a tie with Alex Rodriguez for fourth place on the all-time homer list. Next up: Babe Ruth with 714, realistically out of reach even with Pujols’ remarkable surge in the closing weeks of the season.

The ball was retrieved by Matt Brown in the right-center field grandstand.  Pujols let Brown and his wife, Samantha, keep it and even gave them two signed balls when they offered to give him homer 697.  “It’s just a baseball,” he said. “They deserve to have it. It went out of the ballpark. We play this game for the fans. So whether they want to give it back or they want to keep it, I don’t have any problem with that.”

The Kansas City Royals won their 57th game with a 4-0 shutout of the Tigers Sunday.  And that sets up our first question:

Will the Royals win more games than the Cardinals lose this year? The Cardinals’ win on Sunday ran their record to 83-58. 

(FOOTBALL)—The rebuilt Kansas City Chiefs seem to have eliminated a lot of the concerns fans might have had about the players they lost in the off-season and the number of rookies they kept after training camp.

Although the Arizona Cardinals blitzed quarterback Patrck Mahomes 54 percent of the time, he threw four touchdown passes against the blitz and added a fifth when the defense stayed back. Clyde Edwards Hillaire showed signs last year’s injuries are in the past with 74 yards rushing and receiving and two touchdowns.  Travis Kelce got a good start on his 7th straight 1,000 yard year with 121 yards. The Cardinals had little to offer offensively or defensively as the Chiefs rolled to a 44-21 win on the road to open the season.

-0-

The real world came calling on the Missouri Tigers during the weekend.  Missouri got an early field goal for its only lead in the game and left Manhattan after absorbing a 40-12 drubbing. The Tigers won convincingly 52-24 in their first game of the year, against Louisiana

The Tigers have a chance to feel better next week against Abilene Christian University, a school with about 4,600 students that plays football in a stadium holding 12,000. It completed its move to NCAA Division 1 five years ago.

The Tigers won convincingly 44-21 in their first game of the year, against Louisiana Tech, a school of 12,600 students.  So the second question:

How good will Missouri be this year against big-time competition?

RACING:

(INDYCAR)—It’s all over for INDYCAR in 2022 with two winners in the last race—the race-winner and the series champion.

Defending series champion Alex Palou ran away from the field to win the race.  Will Power, who finished third, racked up enough points to win his second INDYCAR championship.

Power broke Mario Andretti’s record for most career poles by starting from P1 for the 68th time.  Although he won only one race this year, he was in the top five in twelve of the seventeen races. He finished twenty points ahead of Penske teammate Josef Newgarden, who had five victories this year.  Six-time champion Scott Dixon was never a threat in the race but finished third in the standings.

Power and Dixon were the only drivers to complete every lap in every race this year. Power also won the series championship in 2014. He said after the race he had driven “on the edge” all day because his car was “very loose.”  He credited his championship to a mental adjustment early in the season to play the long game by not overdriving his car’s capabilities and forcing mistakes.

Palou’s last race of the year might be his last with Chip Ganassi Racing but he made it a memorable finish. He finished more than half-a-minute ahead of Newgarden.  He started eleventh after a six-position starting penalty for an unapproved engine change. But he was in the lead on the 16th lap and finished by leading 67 of the 95 laps on the Laguna Seca road course near Monterey, California.

His future in the series is uncertain. He, Ganassi, and McLaren Racing are in court because he appears to have contracts to run with both teams next year.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s playoff applecart has been fully upset by Bubba Wallace’s win at Kansas Speedway.  It’s the first time two non-playoff drivers have won the first two races of the ten-race playoff series. His win leaves fifteen of the sixteen driver to fight for twelve positions in the next round at the next race—on the “world’s fastest half mile” at Bristol, Tennessee.

Wallace dominated the closing stage of the race at Kansas, leading the last 43 laps and beating his car owner, Denny Hamlin, to the finish line by a second. It’s his first win this year, his second career Cup win.

Although Wallace is not one of the playoff drivers, his car is one of eight still in the running for the owner’s championship.  It’s the car that Kurt Busch had been driving before a crash at Pocono left him with a concussion that he couldn’t shake in time to be one of the 16 playoff drivers. The car is owned by the 23XI team owned by basketball legend Michael Jordan (who wore number 23 most of his career) and Hamlin (who drives the 11-car for Joe Gibbs Racing).

He led Hamlin by almost 2.1 seconds with ten laps to go but Hamlin couldn’t catch him. Hamlin admitted mixed feelings about finishing second to a car he owns but commented, “Bubba has just really worked hard on his craft and we’ve just given him fast race cars and now he’s showing what he has got”

Christopher Bell is the only one of sixteen competitors with enough points to be locked into the second round of playoff races. Former Cup Champion Kevin Harvick, who finished last, is 35 points out of 12th, the cutoff line, and needs to win at Bristol to advance.  But the fight for that 12th position is a fierce one with only thirteen points separating tenth from fifteenth.

Tyler Reddick, who started on pole at Kansas, blew a tire and hit the wall early and finished one slot ahead of Harvick, 35th.  He will start at Bristol eleventh in the standings. Rookie Austin Cindric is clinging to the last playoff slot with Kyle Busch, Austin Dillon, and Chase Briscoe within two to nine points.

(Formula 1)—Six races are left and only a miracle can give somebody other than Max Verstappen his second straight Formula 1 championship.  Verstappen won his fifth race in a row at the Grand Prix of Italy on the Monza course. It’s his eleventh win this year, one more than he had in last year’s championship season.

The race finished under caution after Daniel Ricciardo crashed with five laps left and stewards could not get his car’s transmission into neutral so it could be moved to an off-track area. Officials said the situation was not serious enough to warrant stopping the race so it could be finished under the green flag.

Verstappen has a shot at equaling, or breaking, Michael Schumacher’s record of 13 grands prix wins in a season, out of eighteen races in 2004, the year he won his seventh and last championship. That’s 72 percent, also a record.  This year there are 22 races.

The next F1 race is in two weeks, at Singapore.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

 

 

Irreverence

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I was talking with one of my friends at the Y last Friday morning and the conversation drifted, as it always does, all over the place.

We eventually started talking about family heirlooms and how the current generation—Nancy and I have two members of one, she doesn’t—has no interest in them.  The silver service grandma used to dig out of the bottom dresser drawer when people were coming over for a special occasion, the doilies great aunt Marge made, the quilt (oh, lord, the quilts!) from who knows?

The nick-nacks from the places we and our forebears visited—the ash tray from the Great Smokeys (a clever pun of a souvenir), the paperweight with a picture of an enrupting Old Faithful embedded in it, matchbooks galore from hotels and motels long closed and either rotted or demolished, dried up pens from the same places, an old felt pennant that says “Rock City.”

All of that STUFF.

The coal oil lamp from the days before farms had electricity, the radio with a built-in 78 rpm record player, the salters that used to be placed on the dinner table for special occasions so people could dip their radishes in some salt before eating them, the stiff old baseball glove that great uncle Herb used in the 1920s.

My mother-in-law, Yuba Hanson, referred to STUFF as things having a “sedimental value,” being as meaningful to someone else as the dust that gathers in the corners of seldom-used and thus seldom-cleaned rooms, like sediment.

And then we slid into discussing disposing of this or that relative’s clothes after their deaths—parceling things out to surviving relatives who find something close to still being in style and giving the rest to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, and taking dishes and cooking utensils to this or that re-sell-it shop.

And I asked—–“What do you think will happen to Queen Elizabeth’s clothes.”

Yes, we really should be more reverential about the late Her Majesty (by the way, how long to do you have to be dead before you are no longer “late?).  There are millions of people, probably, in the United Kingdom who would take umbrage at such a comment.  But this is the United States and we cut to the chase.

We do not expect to see a sign on Buckingham Palace Road with an arrow pointing the way to London SW1A 1AA reading “Garage Sale.” It’s not uncommon to see a few racks of no-longer-fitting clothes in garage sales.  But we’re not going to see anything of the sort at Buckingham Palace.

Queen Elizabeth was known for her hats—which matched the rest of her attire when she was out in public.  What is to become of them?

This grossly irreverent thought has occurred that should offend so many people:

We understand that it is customary within the Catholic Church for the galero, the red ceremonial wide-brimmed tasseled silk hat of Cardinals, to be suspended from the rafters of the cathedral in which they served a month after their deaths.

The first Queen Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry VIII, the king who broke with the Catholic Church and created the Anglican, or Episcopal, Church as the Church of England. Perhaps her large collection of hats could be distributed to the oldest Anglican churches in England, one to each, and be lifted to the rafters as a tribute to the person who headed the Church of England longer than anyone in its 488-year history.

We are aware that some will find this discussion unsavory.  But to common folks such as most of us who deal with the disposal of the worldly goods of family members who have left us, the question might lurk somewhere in the recesses of our minds but we are afraid to ask.

And she had an irreverent side to her, too.  Ten years ago, some might remember, she opened the London Olympics by “parachuting” into the stadium.  She did a video with James Bond (Daniel Craig) who went to Buckingham Palace to provide her security as she went to the royal helicopter and headed to the stadium where a stunt double jumped out of the chopper and moments later the real Elizabeth was introduced in the stadium.

Or there is the video she shot of tea with Paddington Bear in which he offered her a marmalade sandwich only to see her reach into her ever-present purse and pull out one she claimed she always kept for emergencies.

Both are on Youtube along with other moments when the Queen was just Elizabeth.  I have a feeling she would have enjoyed doing a turn on Downton Abbey if the story line were to continue another eighty years beyond where the latest movie left off.

We probably would not have written this irreverent entry if we had not seen three news stories the day after Her Majesty’s death.  One asked what would become of her beloved dogs?  She had four or five dogs, “two Corgis named Muick and Sandy, a Dorgi called Candy, and two Cocker Spaniels,” as Newsweek reported them.  There was much speculation already.

The second news story reported that the producers of the Netflix television series “The Crown,” a biopic inspired by the life of Queen Elizabeth II, had decided to pause the filming of the sixth and apparent final year of the series “as a mark of respect” on the day she died. We have seen no date for resumption of the filming although it appears it won’t happen until after her funeral. The series’ website says it is about “the political rivalries and romance of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign and the events that shaped the second half of the twentieth century.”  The writer of the series, Peter Morgan, says it is “a love letter to her.”

And ABC was quick to assure subjects of the United Kingdom that their money with Her Majesty’s face on it would still be the currency of the realm.  She was the first British Royal to have a photo on paper bills, in 1960. The Bank of England has indicated more details about changes in currency will be announced after the 10-day mourning period.

A spokesman for the Bank of Canada says there are no plans to change the face on that country’s currency. The same is true in Australia although a new $5 note with the image of King Charles will be issued at some undetermined date.  New Zealand has the same plans although its new bill will be a $20 bill.

That’s paper money.  Coinage?

The custom of the reigning monarch being on coins began with the last King Charles, the 17th Century Charles II.  The custom is to issue new coins with the new monarch facing the opposite direction the immediate past-monarch faced.

It is said she had a “wicked” sense of humor—or humour as her people would spell it.

I wonder if she ever counted the number of hats she had and laughed.

(photo credit: elle.com)

The more things change— 

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The more, well, you know.

We are reminded from time to time that today’s lamentations about our deteriorating nation are not particularly new.  Each generation seems to have those who believe the nation is taking a handbasket ride to Hell yet the country somehow has muddled through. We came across this 1959 letter from the noted author John Steinbeck to former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, who had lost the previous two Presidential elections to Dwight D. Eisenhower.  You can find it and other pretty fascinating letters and memos at lettersofnote.com.  Steinbeck, just returned from England, was worried about the nation’s moral bankruptcy.

Back from Camelot, and, reading the papers, not at all sure it was wise. Two first impressions. First, a creeping, all pervading nerve-gas of immorality which starts in the nursery and does not stop before it reaches the highest offices both corporate and governmental. Two, a nervous restlessness, a hunger, a thirst, a yearning for something unknown—perhaps morality. Then there’s the violence, cruelty and hypocrisy symptomatic of a people which has too much, and last, the surly ill-temper which only shows up in human when they are frightened.

Adlai, do you remember two kinds of Christmases? There is one kind in a house where there is little and a present represents not only love but sacrifice. The one single package is opened with a kind of slow wonder, almost reverence. Once I gave my youngest boy, who loves all living things, a dwarf, peach-faced parrot for Christmas. He removed the paper and then retreated a little shyly and looked at the little bird for a long time. And finally he said in a whisper, “Now who would have ever thought that I would have a peach-faced parrot?”

Then there is the other kind of Christmas with present piled high, the gifts of guilty parents as bribes because they have nothing else to give. The wrappings are ripped off and the presents thrown down and at the end the child says—”Is that all?” Well, it seems to me that America now is like that second kind of Christmas. Having too many THINGS they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick. And then I think of our “Daily” in Somerset, who served your lunch. She made a teddy bear with her own hands for our grandchild. Made it out of an old bath towel dyed brown and it is beautiful. She said, “Sometimes when I have a bit of rabbit fur, they come out lovelier.” Now there is a present. And that obviously male teddy bear is going to be called for all time MIZ Hicks.

When I left Bruton, I checked out with Officer ‘Arris, the lone policeman who kept the peace in five villages, unarmed and on a bicycle. He had been very kind to us and I took him a bottle of Bourbon whiskey. But I felt it necessary to say—”It’s a touch of Christmas cheer, officer, and you can’t consider it a bribe because I don’t want anything and I am going away…” He blushed and said, “Thank you, sir, but there was no need.” To which I replied—”If there had been, I would not have brought it.”

Mainly, Adlai, I am troubled by the cynical immorality of my country. I do not think it can survive on this basis and unless some kind of catastrophe strikes us, we are lost. But by our very attitudes we are drawing catastrophe to ourselves. What we have beaten in nature, we cannot conquer in ourselves.

Someone has to reinspect our system and that soon. We can’t expect to raise our children to be good and honorable men when the city, the state, the government, the corporations all offer higher rewards for chicanery and deceit than probity and truth. On all levels it is rigged, Adlai. Maybe nothing can be done about it, but I am stupid enough and naively hopeful enough to want to try. How about you?

Do we Americans and Missourians grow no worse because concerns such as these somehow drive us to sink no lower?  Or, despite concerns such as these that are repeated generation by generation, are there signs that we are a better people and a better society than we were in 1959 when Steinbeck wrote his letter? Are we motivated as a nation and as a state to make progress because we continue to worry as Steinbeck does and because there are people like him who are “stupid enough and naively hopeful enough to want to try” to make things better?

 

Sports—Racing: Chaos at Darlington; INDYCAR Champ Race Tightens at Portland: And some baseball: Albert does it again

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s ten-race runoff for the championship has become a race of crumpled and burned cars, bruised hopes, and a historic win.

The historic win of the Southern 500 at Darlington is by Erik Jones, driving for Richard Petty’s team, now rebranded as Petty GMS racing, who took the lead with 22 laps left when Kyle Busch’s car’s engine blew up while the field was running under caution and he was leading. Busch, who led 155 of the race’s 307 laps, had taken the lead when teammate Martin Truex Jr., also lost an engine a few laps earlier.

The on-track chaos almost obscured the historic nature of Jones’ victory. It was number 200 for car number 43, a number usually associated with “The King,” Richard Petty.  It’s the first time that number has been in Victory Lane at Darlington since Petty won with it in 1967.  The number hasn’t been in victory lane anywhere since Aric Almirola won the July race at Daytona eight years ago.

Jones is not one of the sixteen drivers competing for the NASCAR Cup Championship and is the first driver not in the running to win the first race of the runoff series.

Denny Hamlin, who is in the competition, finished second. He was able to get to Jones’ back bumper in the closing laps but couldn’t get past and finished a quarter of a second behind. Playoff drivers Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano and Christopher Bell rounded out the top five.

Chase Elliott, who started the race as the number one seed in the playoffs hit the wall and collided with the car of 12-seeded Chase Briscoe early in the race. Elliott finished last. Briscoe went three laps down but was able to continue but finished 27th. Elliott has fallen to ninth in the seedings.

Former champion Kevin Harvick, who started as the sixth seed, bailed out of his burning car on the 274th lap and finished 33rd. Defending series champion Kyle Larson had engine problems early, went four laps down but climbed back to the leader’s lap and wound up 12th. Busch remains seeded 12th despite his early exit after finishing 30th.

The field of sixteen will be cut to twelve after the next two races. Rookie Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon, Briscoe, and Harvick are outside that group heading into next weekend’s race at Kansas.

(INDYCAR)—The INDYCAR championship is Will Power’s to lose next weekend at Laguna Seca.  Power finished second in the Grand Prix of Portland to teammate Scott McLaughlin and enters the series’ final race of the year with a twenty-point lead over Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon.

The race at Portland, however, belonged entirely to McLaughlin, who led 104 of the 110 laps and at one tinme was 7.5 seconds ahead of Power, who closed to about 1.2 seconds at the checkered flag. His win makes him a long-shot possibility for the championship, along with Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson.  “I don’t care,” he said about being a long shot. “We’re a shot and I’m looking forward to it.”

Power, the 2014 INDYCAR champion says he wants to win the title “for the guys that have been with me for more than a decade. It’s a lot less selfish for me this time around because they deserve it.”  He can claim the title if he finishes third or better next weekend. Newgarden won the championship in 2017 and again in 2019. Dixon, who drove to third from a 16th starting position, is looking for his seventh championship, tying him with A. J. Foyt.

This is the seventeenth straight season that the INDYCAR championship will be decided in the final race of the year. It’s the first time in five years that five drivers have a mathematical shot at winning it in the last race.

(Formula 1)—It’s not quite time to engrave Max Verstappen’s name on the Formula 1 trophy for 2022 but it’s close. His win at the Dutch Grand Prix gives him a lead of 109 points over Charles LeClerc with seven races left that will generate 190 points to the winners.  F1 veteran observers say the championship could be decided during the next three races at Monza, Singapore, or Japan.

Mercedes’ George Russell was second and LeClerc was third with Lewis Hamilton a disappointed fourth.  He was critical of his team’s tire strategy late in the races that took away his lead and dropped him off the podium.  But the Dutch Grand Prix appeared to be the first race of the season when his Mercedes worked well enough to give him a shot at winning.

Hamilton has recorded at least one grand prix victory every year since his debut season of 2007. Although he was gravely disappointed at the results of this weekend’s race, he commented, “If the car feels like this at other races we’re going to be fighting for a win.”

(BASEBALL)—Albert Pujols’ farewell tour is turning into a series of dramatic memories as the Cardinals plunge toward a post-season extension of his career.  Pujols, called to pinch hit late in a scoreless game with the Cubs Sunday, responded with a two-run homer that gave the Redbirds a 2-0 win. It’s his 695th career home run, one short of Alex Rodriguez, who is fourth on the all-time list, and gives him 27 more games to reach 700.

(Photo credits: NASCAR, Bob Priddy at WWTR)

 

The debt

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In these times when word “self-aggrandizement” appears to be an admired quality in some who are or who want to be our leaders, we want to highlight someone we find much more admirable.

Giles H. Stilwell was the president of the Chamber of Commerce in Syracuse, New York for 1929-30.  When he stepped down, he had an observation for those who thought their city owed them something.  No so, Stilwell said. It’s just the opposite.

My city owes me nothing.  If accounts were balanced at this date, I would be the debtor. Haven’t I, all these years, lived within the limits of the city and shared all its benefits?  Haven’t I had the benefit of its schools, churches and hospitals?  Haven’t I had the use of its library, parks and public places?  Haven’t I had the protection of its fire, police and health department?  Haven’t its people, during all this time, been gathering for me, from the four corners of the earth, food for my table, clothing for my body, and material for my home?  Hasn’t this city furnished the patronage by which I have succeeded in my business?  Hasn’t it furnished the best friends of my life, whose ideals have been my inspiration, whose kind words have been my cheer and whose helpfulness has carried me over my greatest difficulties? What shall I give in return?  Not simply taxes which cover so small a part of what I have received.  I want to give more, I want, of my own free will, to say, “This is my city,” so that I  can take pride in its prosperity, in the honors which come to its citizens, and in all that makes it greater and better.  I can do this only by becoming a part of the city—by giving to it generously of myself. In this way only can I, even in small part, pay the great debt I owe.

A similar, shorter sentiment was expressed by the headmaster George St. John at Choate Academy, a prep school in Connecticut, who quoted a Harvard dean’s statement to his students, “As has often been said, the youth who loves his Alma Mater will always ask not ‘what can she do for me?’ but ‘what can I do for her?”‘  One of St. John’s students was a kid named John F. Kennedy, who made a modified version of the phrase famous in 1961.

Some might find Stilwell’s speech pretty sappy.  Some might think substituting “state”  or “nation” for “city” would work as well.

Something to think about in our present climate, we suppose.

Tread Carefully

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The Missouri General Assembly convenes in a special session in a few days to consider a significant cut in the state’s income tax and other issues.

The past and the present and two seemingly unrelated situations suggest this is a time to tread carefully—-although, this being an election year, politics could take a higher priority than should be taken in considering the tax cut.

Let’s set aside politics for a few minutes and raise some concerns based on years of watching state tax policy be shaped.

Days after Governor Parson announced he was calling the legislature back to cut the income tax, President Biden announced his program to eliminate a lot of college student loan debt.  The two issues, seemingly wide apart, actually are related in this context. It will take some time to explain.

We begin with the Hancock Amendment. In 1980, Springfield burglary alarm salesman—later Congressman—Mel Hancock seized on a tax limitation movement sweeping the country and got voters to approve a change to the state constitution that tied state government income to economic growth.  If the state’s tax collections exceeded the calculated amount, the state had to send refund checks to income taxpayers.

Some of the Hancock Amendment was modeled on Michigan’s Headlee Amendment adopted two years earlier. But the timing of Hancock could not have been worse.  While Michigan’s amendment was passed during good economic times, Missouri’s Hancock Amendment went into effect during a severe economic recession considered to be the worst since World War II.

Missouri therefore established a limit that had a low bar. There are those who think the state has suffered significantly because of that.

Except for one year the Hancock Amendment has worked well.  Too well, some think, because it has encouraged state policy makers to underfund some vital state programs already hampered by Hancock’s low fiscal bar.

In 1998, the state revenues exceeded the Hancock limit, forcing the Revenue Department to issue about one-billion dollars in refund checks (averaging about forty dollars per household).

The legislature decided it did not want to repeat that. So it decided to cut taxes to keep from hitting the Hancock limit again.  Not a bad idea, except that when the national and state economies took a dive, financing of state institutions and services was severely lowered.  Had the refund program remained in effect, the economic downturn would have meant no refunds but institutions and services would have been hurt far less because the tax base would have stabilized funding.

The MOST (Missouri Science and Technology) Policy Initiative, a fiscal think tank, has recorded twenty tax cuts from 1993-2013.  The result is that Missouri is almost four-billion dollars under the revenue limit set by Hancock, according to the latest annual study done by the state auditor.

Missouri is unable to do a lot of things it could be doing because the legislature eroded the state tax base instead of issuing checks.

Now the legislature will consider an even deeper tax cut.

Nobody likes to pay taxes. But there has been cultivated in our state and nation a culture that seems to think the benefits of government—education, public safety, infrastructure, care for the sick and elderly and indigent, and other parts of our lives we take for granted—should be free.  Or, to the way of thinking of some people who don’t need those things, eliminated.

How does the Biden program to forgive billions of dollars in student loans provide a cautionary element to consideration of the Parson tax cut?

When I was in college in the previous century, I knew many people who worked their way through school. Some could do it with part-time jobs on campus or in the community. I had one friend who worked for a semester and then took classes for a semester.  I have one friend who  financed his college education by selling thousands of dollars worth of Bibles and other religious books during the summer.

But the expense of a college education today makes that kind of self-financing impossible, or almost impossible.  And here is a major reason why.

Back when my generation and the generation after us, probably, could work our way through school, the state provided for a substantial cost of higher education.  Today, the percentage is much lower.

Last year, one of Missouri’s most distinguished attorneys—who also was appointed by Governor Parson to the Coordinating Board for Higher Education—W. Dudley McCarter, noted in The Columbia Missourian, “After striving to attain this goal over the past 10 years, the state of Missouri has now succeeded in becoming the state that is at the very bottom in funding for higher education. No, it is not Mississippi, Arkansas or Alabama — it is Missouri. Over the last 10 years, state funding for higher education has increased nationwide at an average of 12.40% with some states increasing funding by over 40%. In Missouri, however, funding has decreased during that same period by 13.70% — the only state that had reduced funding. When adjusted for inflation, the decrease is actually over 26%. The national average for funding is $304 per student, with some states providing over $700 per student. In Missouri, the funding is less than $200 per student.”

The downward trend has been going on far longer than that. The internet site Ballotpedia has noted that state appropriations per full-time student dropped by 26.1% in the first decade of this century, about twice the national average.

A study done a few years ago for Missouri State University showed that, nationally, student higher education tuitions made up 30.8% of higher education revenues in 1993. By 2018, tuition was financing 46.6% of higher education costs—and the costs were higher. It was during that time that student borrowing ballooned to offset declining percentages of state and federal higher education support.

The Biden student loan forgiveness program deals with those who have debts already. It does nothing to prevent current or future students from incurring crippling student debts, because government has reduced its support for higher education.  And now, the legislature is being asked to reduce state revenues even more.

We lack the expertise to get too far into the weeds of economic nuance.  But reducing the state’s ability to meet its fiscal responsibilities in the future, whether it’s in higher education or numerous other fields is a long-term issue that must be approached with great caution.

Things are flush right now, thanks partly to inflation and the massive injection of federal Covid relief funds in the last few years.  But Missouri still is far short of its own limit on the state tax burden and still far short in funding numerous human-service needs.

It is politically popular in an election year to cut taxes. The public seldom recognizes the long-term penalties that might result.  Tomorrow’s college graduates might be among those paying a high price for today’s popular tax cut and incurring new student debt burdens.  And if a recession hits next year, as some economists keep predicting, some unfortunate results of this year’s tax cut could become painfully clear.

Governor Parson has taken a wise step in meeting with members of both parties to explain why he thinks a tax cut is appropriate today. We suspect he had an easier sell with member of his own party than he did with the other side. We expect some passionate discussion of this issue during the special session.

We also expect a cut will be enacted.  We hope, however, that we do not have a repeat of the unfortunate post-refund tax cuts of decades ago. We must be careful as we consider what we might do to ourselves, our children, and our friends.  Tread carefully.