Author Archives: bpriddy

Dr. Crane on the heart of the matter

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(Look, we all know it’s the brain not the heart that controls our emotions. But so what? Can you find anything romantic in a song that says, “If I give my brain to you…,” or “Brain letters in the sand…” or listen to someone pick out single keys on the piano that play “Brain and Soul, I’m so in love with you..”??????? Or do you think you could draw inspiration from a well known painting that should be entitled, “Christ Knocking at Brain’s Door?” Dr. Crane goes to the heart of the mater with—-)

THE HUMAN HEART

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen? You will hear mothers’ lullabies, madmen’s shrieks, love-croonings, cries of agonized terror, hymns of Christ, the roaring of lynch mobs, the kisses of lovers, the curses of pirates.

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

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

Us vs. It—part VII, Thoughts from a Quiet Street, Pandemic edition

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A lot more thinking happens on the quiet street when you can’t mingle with your usual social groups and when you have to stand in the middle of the street to talk to your neighbor. It is amazing how profound one can be if the only one you can talk to up close is yourself.

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We’ve been keeping a journal of our thoughts about the pandemic year since March 28. No idea when we’ll stop because there’s no idea when the virus will stop. It’s not too late for you to start one, too. And you should. The State Historical Society has suggested it as a worthwhile time-filler for you and as a valuable historical resource in the future for those who want to see what life was like during this event. The society has some journals from the Spanish Influenza years and they give us some insight behind the newspaper headlines we have in our microfilmed newspaper files (about 60-million pages worth). Personally, a lot of mental wandering goes on as we reflect on each day’s events. Hopes and fears. Anger and frustration. Funny occurrences. Next-door sorrow. The disappearance of our children’s inheritances. Struggles to pay the rent, the mortgage, and the grocery and pharmacy bills. The sound of birds as we take our daily walks. The real story of this era will be found in the daily journals we keep and put into historical societies and other archives. And what we are experiencing can be instructive decades from now (we hope) when another pandemic sweeps the world.

As long as you are cooped up, write about it. It can be therapeutic.

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Today, tomorrow, and Friday are all that’s left of this legislative session, a historic one because of the circumstances facing it. The legislative session of 1820 when lawmakers created state government, the sessions leading up to the Civil War and the turbulent governance years during the war, and the longest session in history after adoption of the 1945 Constitution might be considered equally unique. The 1945 session that started on January 3 lasted 240 days for the House, which adjourned on December 12, 1946, about three weeks before the 1947 session began. The Senate met for 251 days and adjourned on November 25. The legislature met every other year back then but the 1945 session ran through ‘46 because the legislature had to change so many laws to make them conform to the new Constitution.

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This session will be remembered because of the virus that extended spring break, caused a re-write of the state budget, and rewrote the rules for floor debate, not to mention the images of masked people in committee hearings and on the chamber floors. Depending on how irrational the omnibus bills that have materialized in the closing weeks because so many different issues were combined in one bill because of lack of time for regular processes, we might see an unusual number of vetoes or court cases challenging the legality of the bills passed.

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This business of quarantining might not seem as difficult to retired people as those with jobs. Retired people have been working from home for years.

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We do wish our state and national leaders would don masks when they go out in crowds or to check on how well businesses are reopening. This is not a time for, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Please, folks, be the example of what you promote.

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We suppose a lot of you have binge-watched a lot of television in the last several weeks. Your vigilant observer and his faithful companion are going to have to make a list of all the shows we’ve been binge-watching, just to keep track of which ones we’ve exhausted, which ones we’ve tried and didn’t think merited continuing, and which ones are still active. The other night we accidentally watched a third episode of something we gave up on after two shows several weeks ago. If we don’t keep a list we’re probably going to waste another 46 minutes on the fourth episode sometime in the future.

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Nancy has the sewing machine humming today making masks. She made a mask for informal occasions last week and she’s working on a “tuxedo” mask for me now that I can wear for a formal occasion or when I want to look as dignified as I can look with hair that hasn’t been this long since the high school senior play when I was a cousin in “Hillbilly Wedding.” You probably haven’t heard of it. For good reason.

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Cole County kicks off its bicentennial year with an event at Marion on June 5th. Maybe I can wear my formal mask for that. Marion was the first county seat of Cole County, back before Moniteau County was split away from us. Our first courthouse and county jail were built on Howard’s Bluff, just down Highway 179 from the Marion Access to the Missouri River. For most of the county’s history, we’ve been told it was named for Stephen Cole, “pioneer settler and Indian fighter.” But that’s about all we’ve known about him. We’ve spent the last couple of months or more trying to learn more about him. And we’ve come up with some surprising stuff. If you want to know about it, come out to Marion on June 5th. We’re going to be joined by some Cole ancestors.

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As far as we have been able to determine, Stephen Cole was never in Cole County unless he stopped here while canoeing back and forth from Boonville to St. Charles.

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Something we’ve noticed when we go on our almost-daily two mile walks through the neighborhood. Men drivers who go past us are more likely to wave than the women. And all drivers have a tendency to swerve into the other lane of the street even though we’re hugging the curb when they go by.   We always walk toward oncoming traffic, which we were taught long ago is the proper way to do it.

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A few nights ago we were on YouTube and came across Johnny Carson’s 17th anniversary Tonight Show. It occurred to us that we enjoyed Carson because he was funny. Today’s late-night hosts seem to have lost that spirit. Of course, Johnny Carson didn’t have Donald Trump to kick around.

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Therefore, we’re thinking of using this space next week for some Coronavirus humor.

Dr. Crane on growing old but still growing

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(Just because you have lived through a lot doesn’t mean you are old. Don’t say, “Why, in my day…,” because today is your day, too. Doctor Frank Crane never caught—–)

THE OLD-AGE DISEASE

Boston, said the funny man, is not a locality; Boston is a state of mind. To those who have experienced Boston this is a truth that needs not be proved.

With equal accuracy it may be said that Old Age is not a number of years, it is a state of mind.

It has been observed that a woman is as old as she looks, and a man is as old as he feels; as a matter of fact, both are as old as they think.

There is no need of anybody growing old. For age is entirely a disease of the soul, a condition of ill health, which with reasonable caution may be avoided. It is no more necessary than measles, which the world once thought every one ought to have; now we know better.

The human being begins existence as a vigorous animal, whose body naturally weakens with time and finally perishes. The body runs its course, “ripes and ripes, and rots and rots,” like an apple, or any other organized growth of matter. Hence of course there is a decrepitude of one’s frame.

But this is not at all true of the mind. All things in nature, from mushrooms to oaks, from insects to elephants, and even mountains and suns and systems, have their periods of growth, maturity, and decay. The mind, however, has no such law. It is the “one exception” as Mark Hopkins called it.

And the mind is the real man. And the mind can be as young at ninety as it is at twenty-one.

In asking ourselves what is it that makes youthfulness, we discover the answer to be that it consists in three things.

Work, Growth, and Faith. So long as life functions in these three ways it is young. When any or more of these elements fall off, we are old.

By work is meant an active participation in the interests of human kind. Notice how the boy cannot be idle, he wants to be at something, he burns to play the game.

Idleness or aloofness is the essence of growing old. The business man who “retires” and devotes himself to doing nothing is committing suicide.

John Bigelow recently died at the age of ninety-five, and up to the last retained his interest in affairs.

It is work that keeps men young, more than play. No man should give up selling dry-goods if that is his life business, unless he has found some other business equally congenial and interesting.

I know a woman of eighty, mother of eleven grown children, who is as young as any of them, for she declines to be shelved.

The way to stay young is to keep in that game.

Secondly, growth. That is to say, mind-growth. Let the mind be always learning, alert for new truth, eager for new accomplishments.

It is when one’s intellect closes, ceases to learn, and becomes an onlooker that old age sets in. How many old people impress you as beyond teachableness? They have settled everything, religion, politics, philosophy.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but because he will not learn new tricks is exactly why the dog is old.

It is when one takes up the study of Greek at seventy or at eighty begins to investigate psychology, that his mind breathes Spring air.

As long as a mind is teachable, open and inquiring, it is young.

There ought to be special schools for people of sixty and over. Who goes to school keeps young.

Lastly, faith, not intellectual assent to any statement (which operation is no more to do with faith than sole-leather), but a general belief in man and things; confidence; settled, abiding courage and cheer.

Faith in one’s self, in one’s destiny, in mankind, in the universe and in Him who manages it, this is youth’s peculiar liquor.

Doubt is the very juice of senility. Cynicism, pessimism, and despair are the dust that blows from a dried-up soul.

And faith is not something over which you have no control, it is a cultivable thing, it is a habit.

So long as one keeps at work, continues to learn, and has faith he is young.

Whoever does not work, does not learn, and has no faith is old even at thirty. Old age is a state of mind.

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(John Bigelow was an author and diplomat, one of the founders of the Republican Party, was described by the New York Times on his 94th birthday as “a marvel of good health and strength for a man nearly a century old. He still takes the liveliest interest in affairs, both in America and abroad, and no one is much better posted than he on existing conditions the world over.” He died three weeks later, December 19, 1911. Actually he was 94, not 95.)

 

Us vs It—Part VI, This better work

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This is the third day that Missouri is open for business and our lives haven’t changed here on our quiet street. The people at our house haven’t been tested yet and we don’t know anyone who has been. Our two hospitals offer testing. Maybe we’ll go see one of them soon. Columbia has five locations. Osage Beach has one. We mention those places because a lot of Jefferson City people work in Columbia, or will when the University reopens. And a lot of Columbia people work in Jefferson City now that state government is getting back to the new abnormal. A lot of these folks never quit working, of course. They just haven’t been in their offices. But we’ll be watching case numbers in Boone and Cole Counties, in particular, because of the numbers of people who pass each other going in opposite directions twice every day on Highway 63. And we’ll be watching case numbers in Camden County and Osage Beach because the reopening means tourism season has begun.

Governor Parson, the state health director, and various other state and private entities have assured us in the daily briefings that Missouri’s most critical numbers have been declining for the last two weeks, one of the main measurements needed to reopen. We’ve been assured the state is ready to quickly respond to hot spots such as meat packing plants in California and St. Joseph (St. Joseph had only one testing station when we checked the list last Sunday and California has none) and Marshall (which has one).

We have welcomed the Governor’s daily briefings. They have been examples of the kinds of Coronavirus briefings adults should conduct and we appreciate the recent change that allows reporters to be present instead of submitting questions. That’s important because answers often lead to other questions and the old system didn’t provide that opportunity very well.

We understand the growing pressure on states to reopen for business but the lack of a vaccine and the admission that the virus has not and will not go away leaves us nervous. The YMCA reopened on Monday with a lot of precautionary policies put into place to keep us safe. We haven’t resumed our three-times-a-week morning workouts yet although we miss our friends a great deal. We’ll go back soon, just not right now.

Our church isn’t going to go back to in-person worship services until the first Sunday in June. I don’t know that we’ll go to a restaurant or to a movie theatre anytime soon. We both plan to wear our masks for awhile any time we go someplace where a lot of people are visiting or shopping.

We are going to tiptoe into the world, not dash into it.

We want things to be okay. We want to be able to be with friends. We want our working friends to get their jobs back.

Your faithful observer has kept a journal since March 28th and it is unlikely that journal will stop anytime soon. Our wish is that there be little to add to it but we’re keeping it going into autumn, into the next flu season and, if the scientists are correct, into the second wave of this virus.

To be candid, we suspect reopening the state and the nation is as much a political decision as it is anything else. But reopening has to occur, or had to occur, sooner or later and most of the people in positions to decide when reopening is appropriate and safe (enough) recognize the responsibility they are assuming by giving the go-ahead. It seems to us from having watched the daily briefings from our capitol that the reopening order has not been hastily or easily given.

We do hope there are thresholds in place that will determine when stay-at-home orders will be put back in place.

If you’ve read these entries this year you know we spent a lot of time looking at what happened with the last great pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918-19, and while our abilities to fight a pandemic are better than they were, the shortcomings in response that we have seen leave us nervous.

We don’t think our governor would unlock the doors if he didn’t think it was safe to go out and responsibly conduct ourselves and our business.

But this is bad stuff and more Americans died from it in April than died in the entire Vietnam War and it is still on the loose.

This reopening better work.

 

Dr. Crane on: The impossible

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(There are people who do not believe good or great things are unattainable, even in the face of great opposing power or circumstance. Where would we be as a society or a nation or an economy if there only such people? Dr. Crane has the same questions. And some answers. Although his list of accomplished impossibilities is a century old, our lifetime’s experiences validate what he wrote.)

IT CAN’T BE DONE

If you’re looking about for something to do, something big, something that will bring you fame and money, find something that can’t be done, and do it.

Whoever is at work that can be done is not indispensable. If he quits, seven others are in line to take his job.

But the man who can do what can’t be done is not to be dispensed with. The business cannot get along without him.

Advertise for applicants for a job in your store…a job any industrious person can hold, and next morning the street will be black with the crowd of seekers.

Advertise for a man who will tell you in a day how to increase your net profits or decrease your expenses ten percent, and all you will need at your door is a policeman to handle the cranks.

Particularly in the higher realm of endeavor, in the domain of thought and of morals, it is the impossible that is essential, dominant, needed.

Conscience always points to what is beyond our capacity.

Reason invariably demonstrates that what should be done is the impractical.

The world progresses only as mankind does what can’t be done.

The eight-hour day, says Mr. Forbes, was socialistic, anarchistic, and absurd when first advocated. Nothing could be more impossible. Still, it lay on the conscience of the humane employer as well as upon the desire of the worker; and it was realized, and without any tremendous upheaval of the industries concerned.

It was once said that seven-day work could not be done away with in the steel industry. The nature of the business demanded continuous labor. Give steel workers a Sabbath rest? It can’t be done. Yet it was done…

Against every demand of humanity it has been objected, “It can’t be done.”

You can’t treat prisoners like human beings, they said, and for centuries the vile birds of horror and cruelty befouled every penitentiary. Today militant reformers are doing the impossible, and the cursed ramparts of humanity are crumbling.

Men could not spread religion without quarrelings, torture, force. But is being done.

Plagues could not be prevented, the ignorant common people could not be educated, little children could not be spared from stunting labor, sweatshops could not be abolished, corporal punishment and trial by torture could not be brought to pass, slavery, dueling, and gladiatorial games could not be abated. At some time or another practical men held all these things impossible.

And now they sagely tell us that war cannot be evaded; nations must have war; to expect to abolish war is ideal, fanatical, theoretical, impossible.

Very well. If it’s impossible, let’s do it.

Us vs. It—part V, Remembering

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I enjoy Scott Simon’s thoughtful brief commentaries on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday and last Saturday he had one that caught my interest at the beginning—because I disagreed with the opening concept. I understood his point at the end, however, and agreed with that. Here’s what he said about the world we live in today.

Our oldest daughter turned 17 yesterday. It’s quite a time for a young person to have a birthday.

I’ve covered wars where I got to know families with teenagers, and I’d ask parents, “What do you want your children to remember of these times?” The answer was almost always, “Nothing. I want my children to remember nothing of all this.”

This coronavirus is not a war. Yet as in war, there are long spells of tedium, interrupted by episodes of anxiety, and sometimes danger, loss, and grief. No parent wants their children to carry that load through their lives.

But, any parent learns how children rarely remember what we hope. You may want your child to remember when they saw the Eiffel Tower or met an athlete. What they really recall is the ice cream they had at the end of the day, or a man with the lizard tattoo they saw on the subway.

I hope that when both our daughters think back on this time, they’ll remember how many good people worked so hard to keep the world running, often at risk to themselves. They’re often people we can take for granted, and identify just by a job title, a nurse, a driver, a cop, a sanitation worker, or a clerk. I hope our daughters will know their names and remember how much we owe them.

I hope our daughters will remember, too, how they found their own ways to help people now: to walk the dogs of neighbors who can’t venture out, play with children whose parents have to work, and to write cards and make calls to make people smile.

I hope they’ll appreciate the ingenuity of their teachers, who’ve tried to devise new ways to fire their young minds. And I know they’ll remember how their mother has held, nourished, and cared for all of us in all ways.

In a way, these times may help our children appreciate the fortitude of their grandmothers, who are now gone. They lived through world wars and many hard times, but carried themselves with lightness, grace, and humor.

A few days ago, I came upon our daughters as they shared a joke. I asked, “What’s so funny?” and they said nothing—and traded smiles as I turned away. I imagine the joke was on me; and I was delighted. I hope they remember that joke, and their closeness. I hope they remember that when the world may seem cold or dark, they can turn to each other and feel the sun.

The part I disagreed with was, “What do you want your children to remember of these times?” The answer was almost always, ‘Nothing. I want my children to remember nothing of all this.’

“This coronavirus is not a war. Yet as in war, there are long spells of tedium, interrupted by episodes of anxiety, and sometimes danger, loss, and grief. No parent wants their children to carry that load through their lives.”

I WANT my children, or more appropriately my grandchildren, to remember everything: the danger, the tedium, the anxiety. I hope they don’t directly experience loss and grief. But I want them to remember because we might not have to wait another century for a pandemic such as this one to hit again. In fact, a lot of scientists and healthcare people already are saying chances are good this virus will come back with the cooler weather in the Fall.

It’s important for them to remember that one way this version of the coronavirus was limited in the danger, loss, and grief was the tedium of shelter-in-place, the anxiety of wondering if somehow the virus might find you, the feeling of loss with each day’s new death count even if no one we know is among those terrible numbers. In an impatient world of increasing self-centeredness, disciplined patience and respect for the harm we might cause others by flaunting our perceived independence when it is increasingly obvious we are INTERdendent in so many ways is what has, to use the phrase of the day, “flattened the curve” in many places.

I want my grandchildren to remember the good things Scott Simon mentions. But I do not want them to forget the things many people want their children to forget—because memory could be part of their salvation.

Dr. Crane on hate and science

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(A combination of two issues that seem to be part of today’s national dialogue—plus a recent comment from the Texas Lieutenant Governor suggesting old people should be prepared to die so the economy could be reopened—attracted us to this reflection by Dr. Frank Crane, who wrote these thoughts during World War I and just before Adolf Hitler emerged to lift Aryan perfection as a prelude to a greater war and a holocaust. Keep in mind, however, when this was written. Some attitudes that seem prescient in that time might not be fair today. On the other hand, his basic point at the end remains valid.)

HALF SCIENCE

There is a kind of bastard science which is very dangerous.

It gets a glimpse of the great law of “The Survival of the Fittest.” It explains many things. And the apprentice mind in its enthusiasm imagines it explains everything.

It does not. The Survival of the Fittest, the Struggle for Existence, and the whole law that the physically weak are exterminated and the physically strong survive, all this is true only up to a certain point.

It is true of tigers and tomcats; it is not true of human beings.

When Man first appeared in the history of evolution, he brought another element into the arena, the Moral element.

Not to reckon with this Moral power is not to be a scientist, but a half-scientist.

The German mind is half-scientific. That is what ails it. It conceives that the final triumph will rest with “the big blond beast.” With the men of muscle and ferocity, with those who thrust aside all motives of pity and gentleness and concentrate on material force.

The saying that “God is on the side of the strongest battalions,” is a sample of this half-reasoning.

God is on the side of truth, honor, humaneness, and love; and in the end these gentle powers shall overcome. That is what Jesus meant when He said that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” And that is what the half-baked mind sneers at, neither indeed can believe.

But just the same, Civilization means the superiority of the Moral forces and the eventual subjugation of all Brute force.

…Civilization is not a working out of materialistic laws; it is the mastery and direction of those laws by a spiritual, non-material something called Man.

Us vs It—part IV, Best guess

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(Before we get to the main point of today’s missive, your constant observer must confess that he feels a slight fever and has trouble breathing every time he hears the phrase “new normal.” He would quickly recover if the political and media leaders more accurately referred to the next positive step as the “new ABnormal.”   Likewise, he would be interested to see if President Trump could communicate without using the word “beautiful,” including the usual hand gestures.)

Legislative leaders, last we heard, are still thinking of reconvening the session on the 27th despite concerns by some members that the recall will be happening just about the time some analysts say Missouri will hit its Coronavirus peak.

Several issues could be before the House and Senate but the biggest one is the state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The Missouri Constitution says the legislature must adopt a budget by the next-to-last Friday of the session, in this case, May 8.

Our lawmakers face complicated and sad choices. Today we are going to try to explain how our state government has no good alternatives and why. Please stay with us because this will be a long class.

Here’s some history of why the Missouri Constitution requires passage of a budget a week before legislative adjournment and what that means in today’s circumstances.

Last nights of legislative sessions were usually quite wild until 1988. We recall when the legislature adjourned at midnight and the last budget bills, “Midnight Specials,” some called them, hit the floor minutes before the deadline. Chaos might not be an adequate word to describe those minutes when the legislature rushed to pass last minute budget bills. The fact that everybody was exhausted and not a few were feeling the effects of early celebration of the session’s end added to the disorder.

But in 1988, Article 3, Section 25 of the Missouri Constitution was changed to say, “No appropriation bill shall be taken up for consideration after 6:00 p.m. on the first Friday following the first Monday in May of each year.” That left the session’s final week for consideration of regular legislation, created a less chaotic ending, let members get home to their families before midnight and let the reporters file their stories before sunrise the next morning. Your faithful correspondent thinks it was one of wisest laws ever enacted in the state of Missouri. Until then, members of the General Assembly had a tendency NOT to go home after midnight adjournment but to go out to the Ramada Inn after midnight and get really serious about celebrating. And it often was sunrise or later before he could go home from his Missourinet newsroom.

If the General Assembly fails to enact a budget by the deadline, what happens? If economic uncertainty makes it unrealistic to adopt a reasonably realistic budget during the regular session, the Constitution allows the governor to call a special session to get a budget done for the fiscal year starting July 1. The General Assembly also could call itself back. But it will be easier for the governor to do it, and he would. The legislature has never operated a budget on the basis of a continuing resolution, as Congress too often has done, so it is unlikely to take that strategy—-which (to a non-lawyer) seems to be unconstitutional in Missouri anyway.

A special session in June is not unprecedented.

The legislature in 1997 failed to appropriate money for Health and Mental Health, nor did they appropriate money for their own salaries as well as those of judges and statewide officials. That last problem arose when legislators argued they could not appropriate money for themselves and others until they have approved funding for everybody else. Governor Carnahan called a special session that, we recall, started right after the regular session adjourned so the last two budget bills could be approved. It took six days to do it because the legislative process of introducing and passing bills takes a little time.

In 2003, Governor Holden and the legislature got into a big snit and he vetoed appropriations bills for education and social services. He called a special session in June that was unproductive. With time running short, he called another one. The legislature told him to take it or leave it. He finally signed appropriations bills for elementary, secondary, and higher education on the last day of the fiscal year.

Special sessions usually cost more than six figures a week, mostly for legislative travel expenses and per diem payments. However, the expenses of one this year would be significantly reduced by savings realized by the shutdown of the legislature from mid-March until late April—except for the couple of days lawmakers returned this month to pass the important supplemental appropriations bill.

After the legislature approves a budget and the governor signs it, he will have to make sure the state does not fall into constitutionally-forbidden deficit spending. Given what is likely to be an indefinite period of economic uncertainty, it would not be surprising for the governor to sign a budget but withhold funds from various services and programs to make sure the budget remains in balance for the entire fiscal year. He can announce spending restrictions when he signs the budget and he can make adjustments throughout the year, although the later in the year he makes them, the harder it is for agencies and their employees to deal with them.

Under the circumstances any budget the legislature approves is likely to be only a best guess.

Governor Parson will have to adjust it downward, if necessary, to keep it in balance. We have seen examples of that within the last few days when the governor withheld $228 million in the current budget because the diving economy makes the amount of money available for the fourth quarter uncertain.

Education has a tendency to absorb the biggest share of cuts and withholds. Here is why.

Joe and Josephine Missouri might have trouble understanding why it’s so painful to make cuts in the state budget of almost $30.1 BILLION dollars proposed by Governor Parson in the flush days of January. If you are a Joe or a Josephine, we hope we can help you understand some important things about that thirty-BILLION dollars.

The legislature can decide how to spend only about one third of that money and even then it is limited in what it can do.

More than ten billion of those dollars come from the federal government for state-run federally-financed programs.

Another ten billion dollars is considered “other” funds. Those are funds that are dedicated to specific purposes. Gas tax money that goes for our road and bridge system is one example. The Conservation Sales tax money that funds our wildlife areas and Conservation Department programs is another. The special sales taxes that help fund our state parks system and help limit soil erosion is another one. Gambling proceeds that fund a tiny part of education. The legislature can’t fiddle with those because the Missouri Constitution sets them outside of legislative control.

That leaves $10,431,666,579 that the governor’s budget proposal said was under control of the state. But even that is not fully in play because other state mandates require funding for some things. One-third of that ten-Billion goes to Elementary and Secondary Education under the statutory formula for funding K-12 education. Other mandated spending eats up another $5.108-Billion.

So out of that thirty-billion dollars-plus, the legislature actually only has $1.881,921,936 to play with, if you will. But remember, that’s the figure the governor recommended back in January when the restaurants and malls and theatres and bars were open and we could go wherever we wanted to go.

When big budget withholdings have to be made or when cuts have to be made—as they have been and will be—that $1.9 billion dollars is the place to cut. That’s only six percent of the entire proposed budget.

Of that $1.9 Billion dollars, two state departments consume $1.102 Billion—Higher Education and Social Services. The next two are Elementary and Secondary Education ($136 million), and Corrections ($107 million). That chews up about $1.345 Billion of that $1.9 Billion dollars. But there are five other state agencies. The governor proposed $365 million to fund them. There’s another $166 million that falls into the “other” category. A good chunk of those “other” funds go to Elementary and Secondary Education and Social Services with relative pocket change scattered through several other agencies.

In his COVID-19 daily briefing on April 9, Governor Parson was pretty direct. “We’re gonna have to rebuild the budget,” he said. His January proposal is junk because of the pandemic.

It is likely the best-guess budget for the programs and services all of us use will take some really painful reductions for the fiscal year starting July 1. Everybody is going to be hurt to some degree. Programs already dealing with serious problems are going to be dealing with even bigger ones.   The biggest programs are going to take the biggest hits because that’s where the money is. People are going to lose jobs. People relying on those programs will struggle even more than they struggle now.

The people we elect to work for us are facing the possibility that they will have to hurt many of us. Do not think that when they show up at the Capitol on the 27th, or whenever the decision is made to reconvene the legislature, that they will not anguish about what they have to do.

If you were in their place, which of YOUR neighbors would you choose to hurt even more than they already are hurting?

Most of us can rage against our circumstances. These folks are the ones we have chosen to get beyond rage and do something about the circumstances facing us. They will have no easy choices.

Us vs. It—part III, Re-opening Day

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This is the third or fourth version of this entry from your faithful observer as he has struggled to keep up with our President and his ping-pong positions on the pandemic.

We started with the anticipation that President Trump would be convening a task force to look at when he can proclaim the country re-opened for business. He called it the biggest decision of his life. Within seventy-two hours he had amplified his position, asserting that he and he alone could order the lifting of social distancing and other policies put in place by the nation’s governors.

Now, after several governors have suggested rather clearly that he didn’t know what he was talking about, he has decided he’s going to “authorize” each governor to reopen states as the governors see fit. This is a big CYA effort (or if you prefer a more elevated phrase, a face-saving effort) and governors are likely to maintain that they don’t need his “authorization” either.

The way things are going, this entry could be out of date before sundown. But we’re going ahead anyway.

The President is under a lot of pressure to get the economy moving again. Some of that pressure is coming from Wall Street, which is highly-important to him personally as well as politically.

The Washington Post reported a few days ago that the Trump Organization had laid off 1,500 people and closed seventeen of its twenty-four properties in various parts of the world because of the virus. Based on previous Trump financial disclosures, says the newspaper, the closed properties generate about $650,000 a day. The organization’s payments on leases and property taxes are coming due or are past-due.

Some of this is increasingly political. He needs a big economic turnaround before the Republican National Convention opens in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 27. He needs the virus to be gone and a major economic resurgence to talk about at the convention and in the weeks before the election. He can continue deflecting criticism of his handling of the epidemic to someone else—as he already has in pointing a finger at China, Congress, Democrats, the Obama Administration, governors, and the World Health Organization. But by late August, he’ll have a hard time generating enough other boogeymen to deflect enough blame away from an administration that had taken exclusive credit for the growing economy and now wants no criticism for its sharp decline.

While he now seems willing to let governors decide what is best for their states, we’ll be watching to see if this new attitude also includes better assistance to the states in the recovery. As we have heard, he has blamed governors for their lack of protective equipment for healthcare workers.

Actually, we were looking forward to a possible legal donnybrook between the governors and the President if he had maintained his position that he has the exclusive power to reopen state economies. We do wonder if his new position still includes part of his previous statement that if he disagrees with a governor’s actions or lack of them, “I would overrule a governor, and I have a right to do it.”

We all know what could happen if he tries to overrule a governor, don’t we? What will the President do if a governor refuses to be overruled? Will he withhold federal disaster aid? That won’t win many friends or votes. Will he sue the states or the governors? Will the states and their governors sue him?

Our Governor Parson, asked on Monday about the President’s remarks about exclusive powers, said the President “well-knows the authority of the states.”  He said he’s not worried.” We might have to go back to the early days of World War II to find a governor who suddenly has so many things on his plate.

The President still hopes something good for him can happen on May 1. He seems to be one of the few who thinks that date is realistic.

Here’s an outlook for Missouri is concerned:

Leaders of the Missouri legislature hope to re-convene the General Assembly on April 27. Governor Parson said yesterday that would be okay with him as long as they maintain social distancing—as they did last week when they passed the supplemental budget bill. Some projections underline the governor’s cautionary note.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which has been cited in several White House Coronavirus briefings, a few days ago lowered the anticipated death toll from the virus at 61,545, quite a drop from a possible 240,000 suggested earlier. It says social distancing is the key to the lower number. But while the 61,545 was the hard number we read about and heard about, the institute admitted it was only an estimate, somewhere between 26,487 and 155,311 in its modeling.

We checked the projection graphs a few hours before posting this entry. The institute has increased its projected death total to 68,841 with the 68,841st death coming on June 28. The hard number falls in a bracket of 30,188 and 175,961.

The forecast estimated that on May 1, the nation’s hospitals will need 49,891 beds, 10,937 in intensive care, and 8,953 invasive ventilators. It suggests 976 people will die that day.

Not a good day to reopen the country. We expect the modeling will changes from day to day as new statistics are fed into the system.

The IHME’s latest forecast is for Missouri’s peak day is April 29, just one day before May 1, two days after the legislature convenes. The good news is that no bed shortages or ICU space shortages are forecast. But we will need 313 ventilators. The institute forecasts that we’ll be averaging 50 deaths per day by then, part of an anticipated total of 1,712 with the 1,712th death coming on June 16. That’s the hard number forecast so far. The institute model says that’s within a range of 420 and 5,557.

Governor Parson has said more than once that he’s making decisions about re-starting the economy based on Missouri-specific data. He needs a lot more of it. Our testing numbers, although growing, are not impressive and Missouri as well as other states are going to have to have large improvements in testing to make a safe determination of when stay-at-home orders should be lifted and social distancing standards should be eased.

The President realizes that the opposition gains more ammunition each day the virus creates a new hot spot, each day that first responders are overwhelmed, every day that doctors and nurses are exposed to the virus because they lack the personal protective equipment they need. He knows, or should know, that declaring the company open is a great risk if the virus is still killing significant numbers of people each day.

Governors also must be aware that easing the protective steps they have ordered could backfire on them, many of them facing re-election this year. The autumn flu season will have started by the election in November. The autumn sports seasons will draw thousands of people to distances far less than six feet, elevating the danger of a new virus surge. The last thing the President or the governors need is a flare-up of COVID-19 ten days or fewer before the election.

A popular song during World War I proclaimed, “We won’t come back ‘till it’s over, over there.” The lyric can change to fit our times: “We won’t come back ‘till it’s over, over here,” with a new definition of “come back” and another new definition for “it.”

 

 

Dr. Crane goes outdoors

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(We have come to appreciate going for a walk. In these days of social distancing with brief dashes to the grocery store to restock the pantry and the refrigerator, the thirty or forty or sixty minutes we spend taking brisk or semi-brisk walks in various parts of our neighborhood provide a welcome break from seeing the same walls, sitting in the same chairs, and occupying ourselves indoors. Dr. Crane nails it with the first line of this essay. We’re not so sure about the third line, however.)

OUTDOORS

A good dose of Outdoors would cure almost anything.

Quit wearing a hat and let your hair Outdoors for that bald spot.

Go barefoot and your feet will slip back ten years…

Go Outdoors and get rid of Nerves. They live in the house.

Other rats and mice that infest houses are Dyspepsia, Constipation, Liver Complaint, Peplessness, and Insomnia.

Not only Bodily Ailments, but all other kinds of plagues and nuisances are house creatures.

Creeds were all made in stuffy rooms. Religion, faith, hope, love, and courage inhabit the woods and meadows, sail the seas, and seek wind and sun.

Jesus taught Outdoors. Ecclesiastical Council are held behind closed doors. The decline of religion is traceable from the Sermon on the Mount to the Sermon in the asphyxiating Meeting- House.

Education ought to be Outdoors. My favorite dream is The University of Outdoors, where pupils go shoeless and hatless and learn under the starts.

This University would teach the child how to be as healthy as a panther. And healthy bodies would obviate most neurasthenic intellectual vagaries.

Where but the Outdoors can you learn Botany, Geology, Astronomy, and the like? Real Science lives Outdoors, as much as Leap-frog.

Play Outdoors.

Even Kissing is better Outdoors…When you chase a girl a half a mile to kiss her you realize what real Kissing is.

Eating is better Outdoors. A horse is healthier than a man because a horse has to walk after every bite of grass he gets…

Children thrive Outdoors and pine in the house.

Outdoors is cheap and plenty.

God made outdoors; man made Indoors.

And God lives Outdoors; in man-made edifices are—Idols.