Author Archives: bpriddy

We will make our own futures

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(Carl Sandburg, Lincoln biographer and Prairie Poet, wrote his epic prose poem The People, Yes 85 years ago. It’s one of America’s great statements about who we are. Read it sometime. Early in the work, Sandburg reflects:

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
“I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time.”

A quarter-century before Sandburg’s poem was published, Dr. Frank Crane suggested that wishing for more time to “do more for myself and maybe for others” was futile. Get on with the doing, he seems to say.  If you want to lift the language of 1912 to the language of 2021, you might want to substitute “humankind” for “man,” as Dr. Crane asserts—)

MAN CARVES HIS OWN DESTINY

Doing clears the mind. Physical activity has a peculiar luminous effect on the judgment. The soundest views of life come not from the pulpit or the professional chair but from the workshop.

To saw a plank or to nail down a shingle, to lay a stone square or to paint a house evenly, to run a locomotive, or to raise a good crop of corn, somehow reacts upon the intelligence, reaching the very inward essential cell of wisdom; provided always the worker is brave, not afraid of his own conclusions, and does not hand his thinking over to some guesser with a large bluff.

Doing makes religion. All religions that is of any account is what we thrash out with our own hands, suffer out with our own hearts, and find out with our own visions.

Doing creates faith. Doubt comes from Sundays and other idle hours. The only people who believe the Ten Commandments are those who do them. Those who believe the world is better are they that are trying to make it grow better.

Doing brings joy. The sweetest of joys is the joy of accomplishment. Make love and you will feel love. Quit making love and you will doubt love. Be kind, steadily and persistently, and you will believe in kindness. Be unclean and you will soon sneer at anybody’s claim to virtue.

So a man has his own destiny, his own creed, his own internal peace, his own nobility in his hands—literally in his hands. For all the worthwhile wisdom and goodness you have in your head and heart was cooked up from your hands.

Talktalktalktalktalk

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You might think that somebody who has endured the number of filibusters your faithful observer has endured would join those who think they should be banned or in some way limited.

You’d be wrong.

Those who favor limits of some kind appear to miss a point.  A limited filibuster is not a filibuster.

Filibusters are not intended to be entertaining although there were some of those that your observer endured that had their moments—the night then-state senator Sam Graves started reading the names of the high school graduates from his district and started over every time he was interrupted.

Or when Senator Marie Chappelle-Nadal decided to make a filibuster an audience-participation event and invited people listening to the Senate’s internet feed to send her text messages suggesting topics, or asking questions she could answer.

Then there was Senator Matt Bartle’s one-man version of Jimmy Stewart’s imitation of one in “Mr. Smith goes to Washington.”  He lasted something like 17 hours, taking advantage of quorum calls to dash off to the bathroom while the Senate was idle and waiting for enough Senators to get off their office couches and sleepily go into the chamber just long enough to be counted “present.”

I can recall several of them that lasted so long I had to leave the Senate press table to go to the Missourinet newsroom to do the morning newscasts.  At least a couple of times I listened to the internet feed while I was putting the newscasts together.  I think there might even have been a couple of times when I returned to the Capitol and the senators were still burning legislative time off the clock.

They’re most effective in the final weeks when time is running short and the debate calendars are running long with bills that are ready for final votes. The House limits the amount of time someone can hold the floor so the Missouri House doesn’t have much chance of having all that fun.  But the Senate has no such limits.

And it never should.  Nor should Congress.

The filibuster can be a futile time of railing against the inevitable—as can happen when one party has a two-thirds majority and therefore doesn’t need to compromise on anything and can just wait until the minority, or part of the minority, chews up precious hours of debate time and finally runs out of energy.

They’re most effective when the numbers are closer.  Many filibusters are resolved when opposing sides finally decide to find some compromises that previously had been rejected and start talking about lessening the most objectionable parts of the legislation.  But when one party is so dominant that it doesn’t need to compromise on anything, compromise is hard to see

When that happens, the participants in a filibuster hope some members of the other party will start seeing the time their bills needed to gain passage is disappearing, and they start pressuring their majority colleagues to stop this thing so there will be a chance for passage of other bills before the final adjournment.

As unpleasant as most of them are, as many times as this veteran observer of them realized hours of his life were disappearing in the ocean of blather and boredom (the same hours would disappear more pleasantly at home and in bed), they are an important part of government, a protection against steamrolling the minority or a faction of the majority.  When you have no other weapons; when you are heavily outnumbered even by members of your own party; when you want to kill an abhorrent idea or even one that could be better if the overbearing sponsor doesn’t want anybody tampering with his precious idea—-talk becomes the only weapon.

Filibusters are awful things.  But today’s pest is tomorrow’s ally. The tables might turn and those who are forced to listen today might be the talkers tomorrow and it’s important to recognize that possible reciprocity.  Respecting in others the tool you might need to use someday yourself is important.

They work better when the competing parties respect each other enough to be willing to work out their differences.  But when the two sides are so antagonistic that talk is impossible, extensive talk becomes even more essential.

Filibusters are part of our democratic-republic form of government.  They might not be nice but they’re essential.

Sometimes they result in talking a bill to death.  Other times they talk a bill into a better life.

Tools, after all, often have dual purposes.  And the filibuster is an important tool in our political system.

A Study of Fear

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The uncertainties of political and economic life are leaving some of us fearful. A litany of the fears we might have would be a long one. Long before President Franklin Roosevelt warned us about fearing fear, Dr. Frank Crane defined it in terms of positive fear and negative far when he wrote about—-)

TWO KINDS OF FEAR

There are two kinds of fear: centripetal and centrifugal. One draws me to you; the other pushes me from you.

The noblest quality of love is accompanied by fear.

No man loves his wife duly unless he fears to do would bring upon him her contempt or aversion.

No woman loves her husband as she should unless there are pits and fear all around her love, things she is afraid to do.

You have noticed how, when a young fellow falls in love, he is full of tremblings and dreads. He is as frightened as a child in the dark. “Will she scorn me for this? And what will she think of me for doing that?”

A proper self-respect is not possible without self-fear. George Washington,  in the cherry tree episode, was afraid to tell a lie; afraid not of punishment, but of himself.

This is Tennyson’s meaning in the lines:

Dowered with the hate of hate; the scorn of scorn,

The love of love.

Many persons fall into grievous error by not understanding this. They think all fear is weakness, and timidity is ignoble. Hence they imagine they should be bold and fearless toward their own conscience, and have no timor of their own modesty.

It should be remembered that the very finest quality of courage, and the keen edge of true love, is pure fear. The bravest soldier is afraid to run, the noblest lover is afraid to be unworthy.

These two kinds of fear are brought out in the Bible. On the one hand “the fear of the Lord” is spoken of as a most commendable thing, the fountain of morals, “the beginning of wisdom.”  On the other hand, we are told that “perfect love casteth out fear,” and we are not to fear God but to “boldly approach.”

Which is easily understood if we perceive the two qualities of fear. That which is commended is that sensitive, trembling fear which is always the little sister to a great and pure love.

That which is condemned is the craven fear which has no advice for us but to urge us to flee.

Centipetal is the other side of love.

Centrifugal fear is the other side of hate or repugnance.

If I love you I am afraid of you. If I hate you I fear you. But they are two different feelings.

The love-fear is that of the lover toward his beloved, the child toward his mother, the soul toward God; the hate-fear is that of the criminal toward the policeman; of class against class; of feuds and grudges, of the life that loves evil toward the Lord of life.

Son of Fun with Snowplows

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A few days ago we suggested the Missouri Department of Transportation follow Scotland’s lead and give clever names to its snowplows.  We have seen any signs that the department has a sense of humor yet but Minnesota’s Department of Transportation has joined the fun.

It ran a poll on fifty potential snowplow names.  Participants could vote for eight names. The top eight at the end are:

Plowy McPlowFace (Inspired, no doubt, by a contest several years ago run by the British National Environmental Research Council to pick a name for its new polar research vessel.  More than 27,000 respondents chose “RRS Boaty McBoatface.” The council decided after seeing the results that the name wasn’t respectful enough of the council or its ship and said the contest was meant to just get suggestions, not to pick the real name. The council later announced the boat would be named for naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough. However, one of the boat’s underwater research submarines will carry the less distinguished name).

The other seven:

Ope, Just Gonna Plow Right Past Ya; Duck Duck Orange Truck; Plow Bunyan; Snowbi Wan Kenobi; F. Salt Fitzgerald; Darth Blader; and The Truck Formerly Known as Plow.

Some of the others: Buzz Iceclear, C3PSnow, Edward Blizzardhands, For Your Ice Only, Mary Tyler More Snow, Plowabunga, TheWinterstate.

(We could have Winterstate 70, Winterstate 435, etc.)

If you think you can stand it, the others are on the department webpage: Name a Snowplow contest – MnDOT (state.mn.us).

In northern areas such as Scotland and Minnesota, the snow is different than it is here. And people can play in it—and do, for many months of the year. Here, it’s often wet, heavy stuff that clogs the snowblower that we bought at Sears—back when had a Sears store from which to buy things. It’s fun up there. It’s a big pain down here.

But, hey, MODOT, why not let us add at least a little levity our misery. Have a contest.  People who submit the top ten snowplow names get a new shovel they can use to clear out their driveways.

Can’t government be a little fun?

 

 

 

INTERNECINE WARFARE

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There is no joy in watching the divisions with the Republican Party.  Some are forecasting the end of the party as we have known it—conservative leadership at times, loyal opposition at others as the parties have swapped national leadership for more than two centuries.

But it is easy to project the death of either of our political parties.  And times have shown that such projections have been wrong.  Let us hope that Jon Meacham’s recent book that we often wrote about during last year’s campaign remains true: that Americans, when on the brink of destruction of our democracy, have coalesced and not gone over the cliff.

The other day, your noble researcher was going through some old newspapers looking for something else when, as often happens, something else caught his eye.

There was this cartoon at the bottom of page one of the June 23, 1912 edition of the Galveston Daily News:

The Republican Party was so badly divided that there was talk of a third party materializing out of the severe division.

And in 1912 that is exactly what happened.

The Chicago GOP convention nominated William Howard Taft for a second term.  The third tier of the headline speaks of resentment, “wild enthusiasm” for a losing candidate to threatened to form his own party, and did.  Teddy Roosevelt was the Bull Moose among Republicans.  In fact that became the nickname of the Progressive Party under whose label he ran in 1912, complaining that Taft’s policies were too conservative.

Times obviously were much different in 1912.

And this leads to another sidetrack.  When the Progressive Party met in August, it referred to its platform as “A Contract With the People” (so Newt was not particularly original all those years ago). Roosevelt told his followers, “Our cause is based on the eternal principle of righteousness; and even though we, who now lead may for the time fail, in the end the cause itself shall triumph.”

That’s an important thing to recall in these days when those in the progressive win of the Democratic Party are being ridiculed for promoting causes that are criticized as radical.  Her are some of the “radical” issues promoted by TR’s Progressive Party:

The Progressive Party had its own version of “Drain the Swamp” in its platform when it said, “To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”

They called for such outlandish things as registration of lobbyists and disclosure of and limits to campaign contributions. They wanted a national health service that included all of government’s medical agencies. They wanted a social insurance program that provided for disabled, unemployed, and elderly citizens. They wanted to limit abilities of judges to limit strikes. They wanted to establish minimum wages for women, an eight-hour workday for everybody, and a workers compensation system for people injured on the job. They also promoted an inheritance tax—the “death tax” contemporary Republicans have targeted for years. And they wanted a Commissioner of Federal Securities. They said citizens, not legislatures, should elect United States Senators, letting women vote, and holding primary elections for state and federal office nominations. They favored giving citizens of the states the rights of initiative, referendum, and recall.

We haven’t read enough old newspapers to see if these terrible ideas were branded as “socialist” by non-progressive members of the two established parties. But they do show that today’s “progressive” ideas have a tendency to prevail through time.

Getting back on-topic:

The second page of the Daily News reported the 1912 Republican convulsions were hardly new:

Different people look at the 2021 convulsions within the Republican Party through different lenses.  Some worry that the party is self-destructing or that the Party is headed down the road that Germany headed down in the 1930s, or that the party will so badly divide and that so many members will defect that Democrats will become even more dominant.

An excellent question.

Predictions of the deaths of either of our two major parties have proven to be remarkably inaccurate.  Democrat Woodrow Wilson won the 1912 election with 41.8% of the vote, carrying forty of the forty-eight states. Roosevelt carried six and had 27.4% of the votes. Taft carried two states and got 23.2% of the votes.  There was a fourth candidate.  A Socialist.  Eugene V. Debs got six percent of the votes.

Wilson was re-elected in 1916 as this country hurtled toward a war he knew we could not stay out of, knowing that the popular campaign phrase, “He kept us out of war” was false.

In 1920, Republican Warren G. Harding got 60.4% of the popular vote.

In 1924, Republican Calvin Coolidge got 54% of the vote.

In 1928, Herbert Hoover got 58.2% of the vote.

It is reasonable to express grave concern about the future of the Republican Party and the sizeable and noisy segment of it that reminds many of a cult. While it is dangerous to dismiss the cult-culture segment of the party, it also is dangerous to declare the Republican Party cannot survive its latest division, and it is dangerous to laugh at the internecine warfare within it.

Remember 1912.  Then remember 1920. And 1924.  And 1928.

And also:

Don’t forget the “radical” ideas of Roosevelt’s progressives.

Time doesn’t heal wounds. It becomes the history that just records them. People overcome them. Or, at least, they have up to now.  And, we hope, they will again.

DOING GOOD

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(We rarely edit Dr. Crane’s thoughts from more than a century ago.  But today we are taking the liberty of updating his thoughts.  This entry is from early May, 1912, almost a decade before women gained the right to vote, at time when it remained a man’s world, if you will. But Dr. Crane’s insights are valid for all and in this instance we have changed his men-only references to reflect timeless truths for those of us who live in much different times from the day this column first appeared.  Call it political correctness if you wish but as you read it, appreciate its value for all.  Dr. Crane originally called it, “The Men Who Make Good.’  That was then, this is now, which is why we call it—-_

THE ONES WHO MAKE GOOD

We are full of hidden forces.

In a crisis, we discover powers within ourselves, powers that have lain dormant, secret reserves of ability, only waiting occasion to leap forth.

You can tell just what weight a bar of iron will bear, just what weight a locomotive can pull, and just how much liquid a glass vessel will hold; but you cannot tell how much responsibility a man can carry without stumbling; nor how much grief a woman’s heart can suffer without breaking.

The human being is the X in the problem of nature. It is the unknown quantity of the universe.

The frightened boy can jump a fence he would not have attempted in his sober senses. A frail woman in the desire to save her child becomes as strong as Sandow.* A soldier battle-mad acquires the strength of ten. Get a meek, timid little man at bay and he may fight like a tiger.

The one thing nobody knows is what can be done in a pinch.

The forceful natures are those that depend on this hidden nerve force. These are the pioneers, to whom the dangers from unknown beasts and savages is a welcome fillip. They taste “that stern joy that warriors feel In foeman worthy of their steel.” **

These are the overcomers…

They do not know what they can do. They only know that when the thing is to be done, possible or impossible, safe or deadly, there is some strength that surges up within them that meets and measures with the task.

Panic only claims them, clears their brain, and steadies their hand while others go mad.

Defeat only rouses in them a dogged strength.

Slanders, sneers, and curses cannot drive them from their work; success or praise does not make them dizzy.

They are not prudent. They are not wise. They are not skilled or trained. They simply make good wherever they are put.

There is no recipe for producing such souls. The choicest heredity cannot breed them, schools cannot prepare them, religion cannot form them.

They are the ones who rise to the occasion. They are unafraid. They are the ones that lose themselves in the thing to be done, and do it, and care not for heaven or hell, or their own life.

The supply of such has never equaled the demand. Every business enterprise wants them. Every profession cries for them.

They are not heroes. They are better…

When you meet them, they seem commonplace, often shy and awkward.

But don’t be deceived. They are the only really great ones. They are the ones who make good.

*Eugen Sandow, Prussian bodybuilder and showman (1867-1925) won numerous strongman competitions and is credited with organizing the world’s first major body-building competition, held in London in 1901.

**Walter Scott, the English poet, in his classic 1810 poem, The Lady of the Lake spoke of:                                                                 “Respect was mingled with surprise                                                                                        And the stern joy that warriors feel                                                                                           In foemen worthy of their steel.”

How a Possum Stopped Radicalization 

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We’ve seen something such as this before:

A political party seized by a charismatic leader with radicalized followers at a time of national division sees voter suppression as one of the keys to maintaining its power and threatens to drive the other party into oblivion.  But the party develops an internal fracture between the radical wing and the more traditional element and there are fears that IT will be the party going into oblivion.

From this contentious time there emerges a possum and over time, it rescues both parties.

This was the political situation in Missouri fifteen decades ago.

During the Civil War, the interim government—Governor Price and several members of the legislature had fled to Arkansas to set up a government in exile that finished the war headquartered in Texas—Radical Republicans left in control in Missouri adopted a loyalty oath to make sure Missouri would have only Union-loyal officials in charge.  The Radical movement had begun about the time the Republican Party began in the mid-1850s, their name coming from their demand for immediate end to slavery. During the war, they were opposed by the moderate wing of the party led by Abraham Lincoln, who had run fourth in the 1860 election in this state, as well as by Democrats, who were more oriented toward southern sympathies.

The Radicals confirmed their control of Missouri government with the election of Governor Thomas Fletcher in 1864, thanks in part to the organizational skills of St. Louis lawyer Charles D. Drake who in 1863 argued for a new state constitution and disenfranchisement of all Confederate sympathizers. Carl Schurz, a future U.S. Senator and a leader of Missouri’s German citizens, called him “inexorable” and said Republicans “especially in the country districts, stood much in awe of him,” which might sound familiar today.

Radical Republicans pushed through The Drake Constitution, named because of his influence, in 1865. It contained a harsh loyalty oath that basically denied citizenship rights to anyone who would not pledge that they had given no support to the rebellion. Regardless of loyalty during the war, even if a person were a Union General, citizens could not vote, practice a profession, or serve in positions of public trust unless they swore to that oath. Drake and his Radical Republicans produced a list of 81 actions that defined disloyalty. For six years the Drake-led Radicals controlled politics in Missouri and Drake became a United States Senator.

Missouri’s moderate Republicans were reeling during those years and Democrats feared for their own party’s existence.  And this is when the possum was born that saved both political groups.

Drake’s Radicals began to see rising opposition from those who called themselves Liberal Republicans—remember this was 1870 and the two words, “liberal” and “Republican” were not an oxymoron.

The Liberals had had enough of Drake and his Radicals by the time the State Republican Convention was held in Jefferson City on August 31, 1870.  The Committee on Platforms filed two reports, a majority report from the Liberals favored immediate re-enfranchisement of former Confederates.  The Radical, minority, report favored a statewide vote on the question. With former Confederate supporters banned from voting, the outcome of the election pretty clearly would have maintained Radical Control.  When the convention adopted the Radical position, about 250 Liberals walked out and nominated their own ticket with Benjamin Gratz Brown its candidate for Governor.  The Radicals nominated Joseph McClurg for a second two-year term.

Democrats, still weak shortly after the U. S. Supreme Court threw out part of the loyalty oath, decided not to put up a statewide ticket.  William Hyde, the editor of The St. Louis Republican, a Democratic newspaper despite its name, is credited with creating what became known as “The Possum Policy.”  Instead of running its own slate, the Democrats threw their support behind the Liberal Republican candidate, Brown.

Walter B. Stevens, in Missouri, the Center State, 1821-1915, records an exchange of telegrams after the State Democratic Convention decided to support Liberal Republicans in which former U. S. Senator John Brooks Henderson—who did not run for re-election after voting against convicting President Johnson of impeachment charges—told Brown, “The negroes of this state are free. White men only are now enslaved. The people look to you and your friends to deliver them from this great wrong. Shall they look in vain?”

Brown wired back, “The confidence of the people of this State shall not be disappointed. I will carry out this canvass to its ultimate consequence so that no freeman not convicted of crime shall   henceforth be deprived on an equal voice in our government.”

The Democrats’ “Possum Policy” helped Brown defeated McClurg by about 40,000 votes, effectively ending the Radical Republican reign in Missouri.

The Liberal Republicans, created for the sole purpose of ending radicalism within the party, could not survive on their own. Governor Brown’s Secretary, Frederick N. Judson, reflected, “A party based upon a single issue, called into being to meet a single emergency, could not in the nature of things become permanent…and though its party life was short, it is entitled to the imperishable glory of having destroyed the last vestige of the Civil War in Missouri. A nobler record no party could have.”

National Democrats failed to follow the Missouri party’s “Possum Policy” and in 1872 nominated a presidential ticket of Horace Greeley, the New York newspaper publisher then in failing physical and mental health, and Benjamin Brown of Missouri—-a move that antagonized the national Liberal Republican movement and led to a crushing defeat for Democrats as Liberal Republicans opposed to the Grant administration had no place to go and so supported it anyway. With that, Liberal Republican movement died nationally.

In Missouri, the re-enfranchised Democrats elected Silas Woodson to succeed Brown as Governor, beginning Democratic control of the governorship until Republican Herbert Hadley was elected in 1908.

Missourians adopted a new constitution in 1875, throwing out the punitive Drake Constitution.  It lasted until our present State Constitution was adopted in 1945, the longest-standing constitution in state history.

Republicans paid a price to overcome the radicalization of their party 150 years ago but paying that price made sure that the rights of thousands of people were no longer endangered or no longer remained limited.

Being out of power did not and does not mean being without influence. History tells us we became a better nation because political courage manifested itself at the right time within the Republican Party.  In the long term both parties saved themselves.

We are not advocating that the Republican National Committee adopt a “possum policy” in 2022 or in 2024 to stamp out radicalization within the party nor are we saying splitting the party will be the solution now that it was then. But history reminds us of the dangers of radical politics and the sacrifices that have to be made, sometimes on both sides of the aisle, to make sure it does not overwhelm us.

An Antidote to Uncertainty

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(We might forgive ourselves for feeling uncertain about so many things these days—our political system, our health in a time of pandemic, our personal relationships, our employment future, the uncertainty of our climate, the instability of governments throughout the world—

But Dr. Frank Crane encourage us not to be consumed by uncertainty. He warns against —-)

THE POSTPONEMENT OF LIFE

Many of us are like the boy taking a “run and jump” who ran so far that he couldn’t jump. We spend so much time and strength getting ready to enjoy ourselves that we never enjoy ourselves at all.

We are like businessmen who break down brain, nerves, and body accumulating a fortune to wherewith to take their ease, and when they are at last ready to play they have lost the knack of it.

With too many of us, Today is a fevered compromise, a make-shift something we’ve got to get through with we known not how, something to be forgotten as soon as possible. It is “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.” We have no joy but for a sort of reaching for joy, no satisfaction but expectance, no comfort but hope.

Would it not be better to give each day some kind of finish as a good workman perfects each ornament of a temple? Every day has possibilities for the perfect exercise of life’s functions. Emerson said, “Every day is a day of doom.” Here are a few hints.

First, remember that the one thing that has most to do with making life worth living is love. Let no day pass without some expression of affection.

Don’t postpone play. No day ought to go by without some moments of diversion. Play a game. Have a bit of a chat with your neighbor. Do something useless each day lest you become an enemy of the human race.

Don’t postpone physical exercise.

It is not the occasional sport that counts in buttressing health and avoiding flabbiness.

Don’t postpone mental gymnastics. No mind should go a whole day without sweating over some knotty problem, some book hard to read, some genuine, solid thinking.

Don’t postpone beauty. The best-known soul food is admiration. Find today some cloud or flower or picture that warms you. Drop in at the picture gallery, or at least pause a moment at the art dealer’s window. Never go to sleep without having seen some beautiful thing since the last sleep.

Don’t postpone work. Produce something useful, something of distinct value to the world, and if possible, something the world is willing to pay for. The sanest thing a person can do is work, and for wages.

Don’t postpone laughter. A day without one good laugh is a bad day. No drug you can take, and no belief you can embrace will do as much good for the health of your soul and body as a real hearty laugh, from the boots up.

Now, isn’t one day with a dash of all those ingredients a pretty good affair in itself? Think of it! A little love, a little play, a little bodily and mental exertion, a little work, a little laughter, a ltitle wonder; what is that but a whole life in a nutshell?

Love, as the carpenter might say, by the day and not by the job. For after all, life is too much for any one of us, but a day, well, we might manage that perhaps, if we would.

Having Fun With Snowplows

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Having fun?

We aren’t likely to look at snowplows humorously and the people who have spent hours in bitter cold and snow driving them recently probably don’t find much about their work that is funny.

But in Scotland—-snowplows are funny. They call them “Trunk Road Gritters” there, perhaps because—as with our snowplows the trucks have blades on the front and grit-spreaders on the back.

Scotland is a nation almost as large as South Carolina. It is less than half the size of Missouri but has almost as many people (5.454 million there, about 6.1 million here).

The gritters in Scotland have names. Punny names.

Salt Disney

Blizzard of Oz

Lord Coldemort

You’re a Blizzard, Harry

Mary Queen of Salt

Tam O’Salter

Ice Destroyer

Salty

Rumble

Sprinkle

William Wall-Ice  (William Wallace was a Scottish patriot. Mel Gibson played him in a movie)

Gonna Snow Dae That

Oor Chilly

Sled Zeppelin

Traffic Scotland has an interactive map that tracks each of them and records where they’ve been for the last couple of hours. You can check their locations  on the Traffic Scotland map: https://scotgov.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2de764a9303848ffb9a4cac0bd0b1aab

Perhaps the Missouri Department of Transportation can add a little glamour to our hardworking snowplow crews by giving Missouri names to its snowplows.  One is a Kansas City journalist who covered China for decades. His name really was E. C. Snow.

Maybe Thomas Hart Bensalt

Snow Faurot

John J. Persnow

Harry Ice Truman

Slusch Lite

Sam Salton (for the Columbia native who founded WalMart)

Slush Limbaugh

Charles Cinderbergh

(stealing from the Scots): Salt Disney

Or more generically:

Where Have All the Plowers Gone?

Windchill Wills (for the old movie star)

Snowchilly Distanced

The Boone Slick

Cold County

Chillycothe

Monsandco

Political Slush Fun

Skid More

Slide-dalia

Snow Daze

Okay, this is getting sillier and siller. But that doesn’t mean you can’t join the merriment by adding better suggested snowplow names in our “comments” below. Who knows? Maybe MODOT will try to lighten the mood in the next big snowstorm by send out plows with names.

Nancy and I are hoping to go to Scotland later this year, Covid willing. We hope we don’t need to witness Sled Zeppelin at work but we’ll be on some of the roads where these gritters operate. Nancy is a property owner in Scotland and thus is entitled to the title of “Lady.”  A few years ago I gave her a Christmas present of one square foot of land in a nature refuge. She has the title to the land and everything.   I doubt that we’ll visit her property and we probably won’t spend any money making improvements to it.

On those bitter, nasty winter days when your car is progressing at seven miles an hour behind a snowplow, the time might pass a little faster if you try to think up a good name for the plow.

No, it’s not what you call it.  It’s what you would name it.

‘Snow big deal.  You can do it.

Notes From A Quiet Street—Winter of Our Usual Discontent Edition

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This is one of the best days of the entire year.  It might be colder than Hell (actually the weather in Hell, Michigan last night was quite similar to ours—zero with 2-4 inches of snow expected) but today PITCHERS AND CATCHERS report for spring training in Florida and Arizona for the Cardinals and the Royals!

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In my previous life I would have gotten up at 4, put on a coat and a tie and my best winter coat, gone out in the 6-below darkness, swept about four or five inches of snow off of my car, backed out of my snowy driveway, and hoped a snowplow had cleared the way to the Missourinet newsroom.

I have a friend at the Y who used to deliver the mail.

Don’t tell us retirement isn’t great.

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Shot number one is in the arm. It’s February.  By the time of the second shot, there will be baseball. And racing.  Soon after that, there will be color in the back yard grass. And a green a haze will be seena few weeks later in the trees.  This is the season known as Ulocking (see an earlier entry).  In so many ways, it feels as if a cell door has been unlocked—or did until the coldest week of the year hit. Your faithful observer who despises winter almost had to whip himelf to force a trip to the end of the driveway for the morning paper and the afternoon mail.

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Years ago I heard the story of an old farmer who had just endured a drought year and the snow brought little relief.  “The snow was so dry,” he said, “that I just pushed it into a ditch and burned it.”   It kind of seemed like that when I trudge out to get the morning newspaper—snow so cold it crunched underfoot  and even seemed to squeak a little bit, and lacked enough moisture to hold it to gether and make a snowman.

But at least it’s not January.  That’s kind of a glass only half-full-of-snow optimism speaking.

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Congratulations to our General Assembly for proving me wrong.  Recommended pay raises for elected officials have been approved, their first raises since 2008. Enough of our State Representatives refused to disapprove  of the recommendation that it has gone into effect. The House needed a two-thirds vote to reject the recommendation and it came up about ten votes short of disapproval.

Good for them!  The legislators won’t benefit until their next terms, if they get them.  The statewide officials will get 2.5% hikes in each of the next two years.

Your faithful observer can’t be correct all the time.  Our forecast a few weeks ago that the raises would be refused again was wrong.  And that’s okay.

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Late-night talk show hosts are facing a grim reality now that we have a new president.  They need to do a lot of new shows because re-runs of the shows of the past four years that have featured Trump-based humor, or what they hope was Trump-based humor,  are terribly dated. Donald Trump’s exit from the Oval Office must place enormous strain on the writing staffs because, well, Joe Biden is so relatively bland. Where’s the humor in somebody who puts fighting the COVID pandemic at the top of his to-do list?  HAVING a to-do list, at least one that is not self-centered, is a poor match for what they’ve been writing about for four years.

The low-hanging humor fruit has fallen off the tree and rolled to Mar-A-Lago.

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Speaking of the aforesaid ex-chief executive—-we watched the town hall gathering last night with the current chief executive. We thought he wandered more than necessary, interrupted himself too often, talked around some questions and went on excessively to the point that some of the answers to particpants’ questions got lost in the talk.  But we also thought, “Can we imagine his predecessor doing this?  Just talking to folks about the concerns they have?  Would he ever have reassured a child she shouldn’t live in fear of the virus?” Some people care about other people. Some people care about themselves. We think we know which one we saw last night.

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A bill in the legislature would bar any state law enforcement officer, or other state officers or employees, from serving as a law enforcement officer or sheriff or community police officer if they enforce, or try to enforce, any federal firearms law the act defines as illegal in Missouri, the Constitution notwithstanding.

Unfortunatley, this proposal doesn’t go far enough.

During the recent political campaign, one party accused another party of advocating a “defund the police” policy.  This proposal simplifies the process.  Just “de-police” the policy instead.  And let me be the first to suggest that after de-policing the federal law, the funds used for the police could be given back to taxpayers—who could use them to buy guns.

Genius!

As long as we are forbidding Missouri law enforcement officers from enforcing federal gun laws, let’s think of other things our Missouri peace officers should be banned from doing. How about taking away a Highway Patrolman’s badge and banning him or her from any other law enforcement job if they write a ticket for speeding on a federal highway? Funds saved under that program could be used to buy more ambulances and pay for more EMTs who could be stationed on those roads.

You might be inspired to suggest other amendments that would extend this idea to other areas where state officials have no business enforcing federal laws. You may suggest them in the comments box at the end of this entry.

Let the fun begin.