Author Archives: bpriddy

NOTES FROM A QUIET STREET, HOLIDAY EDITION 

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

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

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

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

And My Lord! Do we ever need that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Now, a word from another sponsor):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

What There Is To Christmas

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

CHRISTMAS MEANS THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF JOY

Christmas is the protest of the human race against gloom.

The one thing time nor force can suppress is instinct.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Into this opening poured the play instinct of the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A seldom-told story of the end of WWII

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

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

But few of us probably have seen these pictures:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that’s straying from our story.

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

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

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

But things almost did not turn out well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And what became of him?

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

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

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

 

The Staples Lesson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

The New Civil War

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imagine what backlash these actions could have.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

A Priddy Good Christmas Kiss

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

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

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

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

Mistletoe.

The stuff mommy kissed Santa Claus under.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kind of like relationships, too, we guess.

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

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

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

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

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

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

As in people who steal kisses.

Under the mistletoe.

 

Playbook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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HAPPINESS AWAITS

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(All of us can make long lists of reasons to be unhappy in the backwash of a political campaign, the uncertainty of a pandemic, the lack of job and food security, the potential for holidays apart, and more. In these conditions, it seems almost an insult to be happy. “Not so!” exclaims Dr. Frank Crane as he encourages us to find our—-)

HIDDEN HAPPINESS

Happiness is rarely visible to the multitude, says a shrewd observer; it lies hidden in odd corners and quiet places.

Happiness is a shy thing. Grief is blatant and advertising. If a boy cuts his finger he howls, proclaiming his woe. If he is eating pie he sits still and says nothing.

If you ask a man how he is, he searches himself to find a pain to report. If he has nothing but happiness he hates to mention it, and says, “Oh, not half bad.”

We conceal happiness as a vice.

We are rather suspicious of it, and if we feel particularly well, or have exceptional good luck, we knock on wood.

The fact is that happiness does not come from big events of life, but is made up of innumerable   little things.

Ordinary every-day happiness is composed of shoes that fit, stomach that digests, purse that does not flatten, a little appreciation and a big of this, that, and the other, too trifling to mention.

The big things, such as someone giving you a million dollars, are not only rare, but they do not satisfy when you have the neuritis.

We are so cantankerous by nature that we are usually able to spell happiness only by holding it before the mirror and reading backwards. Leonardo da Vinci used to write that way; that may be why he could paint “The Joyous One” with so enigmatical a smile.

For if you seek to analyze contentment you got at it negatively. To feel well means you do hnot have a headache, toothache or toe ache, you have no dyspepsia, catarrh, gout, sciatica, hives, nausea, boils, cancer, grippe, rhinitis, iritis, appendicitis nor any other itis. And to determine your joy you must reckon by checking off and eliminating the factors of possible pain. Answer—happy, if no pain discoverable. So elusive is joy!

Someday try reversing this process. Note all the pleasurable things. For instance, a good sleep, a delightful snooze in bed after you ought to get up, a delicious bath, the invigorating caress of cold water, a good breakfast, with somebody you love visible across the coffee-cups, half-hour’s diversion with the newspaper, the flash of nature’s loveliness outdoors as you go to work, interesting faces on the street car, pleasures of your business, pleasant relations with your fellow workers, meeting old friends and new faces, the good story someone tells you, and so on—you’ll fill your notebook—and you can get your disappointments and grievances into three lines.

Happiness, they say, is scant in this wicked world and hard to find.

One way to find it is to look for it.

 

Sports fan Christmas gifts

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Let’s take a break from the heavy observations of the contemporary scene and help you with your Christmas shopping, particularly if you have sports fans on your list.

How about t-shirts, sweatshirts, or replica jerseys from some unique teams?  Your Christmas Shopping Advisor was prowling around on the internet the other day during the fifteen free minutes that our president was taking a breath or resting his thumbs and we found some teams your loved one would turn heads by wearing one of their t-shirts, caps, jerseys, or hoodies.

Some are based on movies or television shows:

Crash Davis’s Durham Bulls

and Corporal Klinger’s Toledo Mud Hens.

New York Knights, the fictional team of Roy Hobbs in The Natural

And for the female sports fan: Rockford Peaches—but no crying is allowed when wearing this shirt.

Minor league baseball teams:

Richmond Flying Squirrels

Hartford Yard Goats

Montgomery Biscuits

Modesto Nuts

Binghamton Rumble Ponies

Clinton Lumber Kings

Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp

Wichita Wing Nuts (although they folded in 2018)

Akron Rubber Ducks

Traverse City Beach Bums

Albuquerque Isotopes (the town is the home of the Atomic Museum)

New Orleans Baby Cakes

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City has some great shirts or jerseys:

Homestead Grays

Kansas City Monarchs

New York Black Yankees

New York Elite Giants

Atlanta Black Crackers

Detroit Stars

Chicago American Giants

—and a lot of other great caps and other souvenirs

A few colleges:

University of California-Irvine Anteaters

Webster University Gorelocks—right here in Missouri

The University of Missouri-Kansas City Kangaroos

University of California Banana Slugs

Campbell Fighting Camels

Scottsdale Community College Fighting Artichokes

Presbyterian College Blue Hose

Youngstown State Penguins

Fort Wayne Mad Ants—actually it’s an NBA development league team

Hockey:

Toledo Walleyes

Halifax Mooseheads

Macon Whoopee

Odessa Jackalopes

Kentucky Thoroughblades

Lewiston Maineacs

Minot Minotaurs

And a wild card:

Thailand Tobacco Monopoly Football Club—we call it Soccer here.

We’ve also come across some great high school sports team names but we don’t know if any of them have t-shirts.  But here’s an article from T. R. Robertson about some of the more unusual names he has come across. You might check various websites to see if the schools do have a potential gift for you.

http://www.thevistapress.com/unusual-and-creative-high-school-team-names/

The Washington Football team in the NFL is playing without a name this year after being the Redskins since 1933.  Other teams with ethnic names at all levels and in all sports have come under some scrutiny from those who find the team names derogatory.  What we have seen in these shopping suggestions, however, is that there is no lack of creativity in naming sports teams. We’re confident that they’ll find a new name in Washington.  The Memorials.  The Navy Yards.  The Malls. The Air and Spaces. The K-Streeters.  Maybe they could name themselves after the man who designed the city, the Washington L’Enfants.  But probably not that one.

Or maybe they could name themselves after the city. The Washington Washingtons.  After all, George was a pretty good quarterback in his day. Stood six feet-two. And he could throw.  He did NOT throw a silver dollar across the Potomac River, which is about a mile wide at Mount Vernon, which is just south of town.  But his step-son, Washington Parke Custis, claimed he once threw a piece of slate across the Rappahannock, and threw another one over a natural bridge 215-feet high.

Whatever, we hope this has helped those of you with sports fans in your family have a happy and an unusual Christmas.

 

 

 

 

Poster Child

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Three weeks ago in this space, I argued that we should give our president some slack so he could protest perceived shortcomings in the November 3 election.  But enough is now more than enough. The final straw came last Sunday with his interview with Maria Bartiromo on FOX.

His seemingly unending and increasingly bizarre and wild claims that the election was stolen from him, his efforts to hamper his successor’s transition to the presidency, his ongoing lack of concern about the thousands of his fellow citizens who are falling ill and losing their lives at increasing rates, and his seeming (though perhaps intentional) appearance of ignorance of how elections and the courts work have exceeded the tolerance of many who were willing to give him one final chance to grow up.

I am out of patience.

Quite early in my career as a reporter, I determined there were two qualities in public figures that I would not tolerate.

I would not tolerate rudeness.

I would not tolerate liars.

Our incumbent president pegs the needle on both counts.

I pity the man.  I’ll tell you why later.

Every day, our president justifies his role as a poster child for the worst qualities anyone in elective office can have. He is toxic to the American system.  And as long as members of his political party refuse to stand up for their roles in the American system of checks and balances, he will spread his blot upon the office of President of the United States.

I take a risk in writing these words for there are issues and causes in which I believe that will need support of members of his party—and I know these words might create hurdles that are not needed to accomplish some goals.  But there are times when tolerance reaches its limits. These comments are sure to arouse the tempers of those who believe Donald Trump is our country’s greatest president.  None of them, however, believe it more than he does. To be honest, Mr. Trump was my seventh-favorite candidate in a field of two in 2016.  Hillary Clinton was my fourth-favorite candidate in the field of two—and I don’t remember who ranked above them nor do I care anymore. Those who found Mr. Trump number one by far are free, as always, to leave comments in the box below these remarks. But I urge them to follow the guidelines if they expect to see them attached to the entry. I respect differing opinions but I respect them more if they are courteously presented and are more than echoes of his unfounded assertions.

History sometimes offers a cleansing perspective to events and people who are despised in their own time.  But it is difficult for those who find Mr. Trump reprehensible as a person and as a politician to anticipate a time when that might happen for him. Despite his self-proclamations of greatness, he seems during these years when his massive character flaws have been flaunted likely to be listed among the worst presidents in our national history.

I am afraid his positive accomplishments in office have been obscured by his own behavior and his own personality, by his lies and his rudeness.

He has shown manifold instances of believing the Congress is unnecessary and of believing that the Supreme Court is his to command.

He respects no one but himself and is quick to turn on those he has praised when they speak truthfully to him the first time. He shows little or no respect for the political party he claims to represent or for those within the party who place truth and service above loyalty to him. His attacks on Republican election officials and his firing of a lifelong Republican who headed the Homeland Security Cybersecurity program—who had the temerity to say this year’s elections were the most secure in history—are so clearly antagonistic toward the party that it is hard to accept that the party leadership can remain so acquiescent.

He’s a manipulator, an intimidator and with his run for the presidency and his securing that job, he has stood upon his own pedestal to proclaim greatness. He has walked on and over people to get where he is and has left no significant record of ever helping someone else up.

He lies.  If he were say to me, “Good morning,” I would not believe it.

He has no class.  No dignity.  He is not a man who brings out the best in us.  He doesn’t even try.  Everything is about him.

I wonder how many of the thousands who have gathered at his rallies want their children to grow up to be like him.

His behavior has been such that a record number of people voted on November 3 against him and his truculent behavior since bespeaks his lack of respect for the greatest symbol that our country can show the world—free and fair elections and peaceful transfers of power.   He seems incapable of understanding that his looney conspiracy theories are so outlandish that his own judicial appointees have found them embarrassing.

He knows he is the one thing he fears most.  He is a loser.

He believes in power over others, selective recognition of rights, and the idea that he might lose that power frightens him. He wants to remain “relevant,” meaning he wants to continue intimidating the timid souls in his own political party who only enable him to speak and behave outlandishly because they are afraid.

Instead of worrying about the minority that pledges undying support to him, the leaders of his party should turn away and seek an identity that draws a new constituency that makes ideals a goal rather than a constituency that idolizes a figure who cares not about his followers except in terms of their numbers. It is the party that must remain relevant and if the penalty for doing so is loss of control for a time, so be it. Relevance to a changing nation will pay off eventually. Obeisance is temporal but weakening.

Despite these harsh words, I pity him.

He is a man who grew up in a world of concrete, steel, tall buildings, wealth and privilege, in which money could replace apologies and in doing so encouraged unapologetic behavior.  He was never a Boy Scout. His military service consisted of being sent to a military school as a young teenager where he rose to the rank of captain of cadets until he was replaced. His version of why he was replaced differs from the recollections of other cadets whose recollections indicate he was not the team player or leader he should have been, which is no surprise to those who witness him today. There is no record that I have seen that he was ever been on a nature hike, never visited a national park to appreciate beauty outside the harsh scenery of tall buildings, never placed value in anything growing naturally.  He participated in few team sports—although he once claimed to have been the best baseball player in the state, he never made the varsity team at either of his colleges although he was on the Squash team at one of them. He has a car collection but it is unlikely you’ll find the kinds of Chevrolets, Fords, Dodges and Plymouths that are part of our lives. It is unlikely he ever mowed the family yard or raked the leaves after enjoying the colors they brought to the change of seasons.  He sees people such as us as pawns in his political games, playable pieces that have no meaning other than the ways he can move them to his benefit. He doesn’t appreciate people such as us because he has never shared any of our real-world joys, pleasures, responsibilities, and challenges.

As angry as I have become with his behavior, I feel pity for someone who has never truly had a chance to live outside of himself, to be one of the people he uses.

But pity does not generate tolerance.  He’s not the kind of person I would want as a neighbor.  We have neighbors who voted for him, probably, but we appreciate them more than he does.  He would never be invited onto my front porch for a quiet conversation over Cokes.

He wants to keep control of the Republican Party after he leaves the White House.  But the nation is changing and he cannot stop it.  It would be wise of his party to embrace the changes but it can only do so if it breaks his grip and becomes once again a party of Republicans rather than a party of someone who only claims to be one.

The success of down-ballot candidates of the party indicates many believe it is a viable part of our political system.  The results that show confidence below the top surely must be the guide that cannot be ignored when the party determines its  soul going forward.

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