Author Archives: bpriddy

Dr. Crain: What is Democracy?

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(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. As the time approaches for the return of the Missouri General Assembly, we offer these thoughts.):

FUNDAMENTALS IN DEMOCRACY

These are axioms of democracy. Think on these things.

  1. The whole people is wiser than any group of men in it. Its judgment is sounder, surer. As Lincoln put it, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
  2. Democracy is not a scheme of voting, a plan for securing rules; it is a spirit.
  3. Remember what Mazzzini* said, that some day a man would arise to whom democracy would be a religion. He would be the Great Man (I quote from memory, and may be inexact.)
  4. Democracy is run for the benefit of the people in it; autocracy for the benefit of the people upon it.
  5. Autocracy is most concerned about efficiency; democracy about welfare. Autocracy is eager to build the house; Democracy, that the builders be happy.
  6. Autocracy is a White Passion; Democracy is a Red Passion.
  7. Autocracy thinks of the State; Democracy of the people that compose the State.
  8. Autocracy is abstract; Democracy concrete. The former exults impersonal aims; the latter aims constantly at men.
  9. Autocracy producers Order; Democracy Initiative. Democracy invents; Autocracy applies.
  10. Autocracy’s efficiency is quick, specious, and temporary; Democracy’s efficiency is cumulative; every success means another.
  11. Democracy is natural; Autocracy is artificial.
  12. Democracy is its own remedy. The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. It carries within itself its own recuperation. Autocracy prepares its own ruin.
  13. Democracy has in it the seed of evolution; Autocracy has in it the seed of revolution.
  14. The strength of democracy is education; the strength of autocracy is obedience.
  15. The God of democracy is the same God the individual has; the God of autocracy has a different moral code from that of the individual. The Kaiser’s God, for instance, approved of the rape of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania.**
  16. The method of democracy is light; of autocracy, darkness. Democracy created the free press; Autocracy the censor.
  17. It is complained of democracy that it debates too much, but only by free debate can the right be winnowed out.
  18. Democracy “washes its dirty linen in public.” True, but it gets it clean.
  19. Democracy is dangerous. And there is no progress without danger.
  20. Democracy is called vulgar, common, cheap. The real truth is that Autocracy is more so, only its defects are concealed and fester, while democracy’s are open and are healed.
  21. Democracy is capable of a more perfect organization and unity than autocracy.
  22. Autocracy is built upon caste; Democracy upon humanity.
  23. “The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World,” is only possible in a world of democratic nations. So long as there are kings, emperors, and dynasties there can be no world unity.
  24. Militarism is a function of autocracy; democracy functions in law.
  25. Art, science, and literature will do better under democracy than under any protection and patronage they may get from autocracy, just as plants and people grow better in the air and sunshine than in a closed room.

*Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) was an Italian politician and writer who was influential in the Italian Revolutionary Movement that argued for a unified Italy

**This column appeared during World War I and was published in one of his books in 1919.

A face of Missouri

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What do we read in the face that is a symbol of our state?   What would she say to us about who we are and who we should be?

Her right hand is outstretched in blessing but her gaze is challenging.

She is waiting for us to say something. What would we say? What should we say?

She will tolerate no nonsense. No fawning. Flattery will get us nothing. Neither will bluster. Threaten her with harm and she won’t change expression while she breaks your arm. Offer her flowers of friendship and she will be thankful but flowers won’t get you very far.

Her eyes see through us.

We wonder what we should say. Nothing that would compliment her beauty. She knows she is beautiful and has no need to flaunt it or to expect others to tell her what she already knows about herself.

She is strong of will, confident in her intelligence that is obvious to those who come face-to-face with her.

What is she saying to us just by her look at us?

This is one intimidating lady.

You can be better than you are, she says. You might have greatness but do not stop achieving it. Get on with the business of loving your neighbor. Don’t ignore those who need you. And stop whining about things. Be meaningful, not just important.

Don’t dispense and don’t accept BS.

Obfuscation won’t work with me. Don’t try it.

Be better. You can be but you too often don’t want to be and you know it.

You can be more than yourself. Get with it.

I won’t tell you how to do it. You’re capable of figuring that out.

I was the goddess of agriculture, grain, and fertility to the ancient Romans. I was kind and benevolent and anything that was “fit for Ceres” was very good, splendid in fact. I represented the love a mother bears for her child.

You will not see me this way for the rest of your lifetime, probably. But I will be atop your Capitol and I will be watching you as a mother watches her child.

Do not disappoint your mother.

Straighten up. Behave. Be “fit for Ceres.”

            (Ceres. Sunday night, December 8, 2019, waiting to “go home.”)

 

 

 

 

Dr. Crane: The Real American

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(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. The timelessness and timeliness of his thoughts seems appropriate this week.)

What is a real American?

He is a Patriot, not a Partisan.

He votes.

He pays his taxes honestly.

He keeps informed on public opinion.

He is clean of Race Prejudice, and wants the Black man or the Yellow man to have equal privilege and opportunity with himself.

He hates militarism but is ready to serve in army or navy when his country is at war.

His heat beats a little faster when he sees the Stars and Stripes.

He is made up of three spiritual ingredients: Washington, Franklin, Lincoln.

He respects women, any woman.

He looks you straight in the eye, and says plainly what he thinks.

He honors those who work and has a wholesome contempt for idlers

He speaks slowly and means more than he says.

He is tolerant of anything except intolerance.

He does not care what your religious belief is, so long as you are decent.

He has a humor of his own but laughs with his eyes more than with his mouth.

He is a good loser.

Once in four years he goes on a political debauch, yielding himself up to the most primitive and narrow party spirit; but when it is over he is once more an American, forgets his late passions, and is for the man who was elected, no matter which party was successful.

He is an essential democrat; that is, his creed is not, “I am as good as anybody,” but is “Anybody is as good as I.”

He likes to make money but likes to see everybody around him making money. He does not enjoy riches in the midst of poverty.

He wants a family of his own, a business of his own, a home of his own, and an opinion of his own.

He is not a stock, or a race, or a breed; it is a Spirit. His parents may be French, Italians, Czechs, Polish, or German; but he has caught another Spirit: he has been born again, he is an American.

He is a reformer, not a revolutionist.

He hates class.

When laws do not suit him he does not break them, he changes them.

His is the newest nation; his is the youth of humanity.

He is loyal—to his family, to his friend, and to his country.

But his loyalty does not imply lying and spying, cruelty and inhumanity.

He wants nothing for his own country he would not be willing for other countries to have for themselves.

He does not want the United States to rule the world, but to be the Big Brother to the world.

Notes from a quiet street (holidays edition)

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We’re puzzled by President Trump’s pronouncements that some people are “human scum.” Apparently he has forgotten that there are good people on both sides.

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Ceres will be on display this weekend at the capitol before she’s hoisted back into her position on top of the dome. She’s back from her year-long “spa treatment” at a bronze restoration company in Chicago. We expect a lot of folks to go to the capitol to see her before she goes back up. Who knows, it might be another ninety years before she comes back down.

However, the folks in Chicago did some detailed 3D scans of the old girl. The Capitol Commission hasn’t decided what to do with them yet. There’s been some discussion of creating a Ceres hologram somewhere inside the capitol so we won’t have to wait ninety more years to see her up close.   Your observer has advocated for years flying drones or something around the dome to do just such a scan so 12-inch reproductions could be made and sold at the tour desk.

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Speaking of Ceres: One of the questions we’ve been asked several times is whether she was supposed to face north instead of south (or at least, north as we think of it in Jefferson City—an observation about that in a minute). We think she was always intended to face south.

North advocates say it’s odd that the patron goddess of agriculture isn’t facing the most fertile farmlands in Missouri and is instead facing the rocky Ozarks.   Not really. She’s facing south because that’s the entrance to the capitol and she’s extending a hand of welcome to those who come to the building. It wouldn’t do to have her turn her back on visitors.

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Now, is she facing south? No. We think she’s actually facing, uh, southwest.   Columbia is north; Fulton is northeast. Check a map that shows where north is.

Many years ago, Jefferson City officials realized house numbering was a scrambled mess because some houses, say, were in the 400 block of West Kneecap Street while houses right behind them on West Headache Avenue had numbers starting with 700. It wasn’t a problem in the earliest days of the town when it was a nice grid. But when it spread and the streets began to snake along the high ground that conformed to the meandering river channel, numbering became scrambled.

It was a huge deal when the city launched a house renumbering program that brought things into a more sensible system that would make it easier for police or fire or other service people to find out where something was happening or had happened. A lot of folks didn’t like getting new numbers but they had to go out to Westlake/s Hardware or maybe uptown of Schleer Brothers Hardware Store (imagine that: a hardware store on High Street. And a grocery store. And a dime store.) and buy new numbers to put on their walls, mail boxes, and doors.   But they finally did.

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We’ve often observed that our church as a hymn, “In Christ there is no east or west; In him, no north or south” and we’ve suggested the substitution of “Jefferson City” for “Christ” would give us an accurate city anthem.

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Our city has a contest for the best house Christmas lights. There’s a place just up the block from our house where the folks seem to take great delight in the darkening months’ holidays, not with lights but with balloons. This year there are inflatable figures of Snoopy and Charlie Brown and other Christmasy things. We always look forward to the fall holiday season when we see the latest Halloween inflatables , then the Thanksgiving ones and, now, Charlie Brown figures, including Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel, complete with turning propeller.

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Something from the Jefferson City Daily Democrat-Tribune in June of 1914, a headline reading “Beautifying the River Front.”

Nothing is more unsightly than railroad tracks between a city and its river front. It was a mistake to ever permit the railroad tracks to be constructed between the city and the river. Under the circumstances, there is nothing to be done but to arch over the tracks, or at least a part of them…

The article was about an early drawing by the architects of the soon-to-be new capitol showing a terrace over the tracks on the capitol’s river side with steps leading down to the water. That part of the capitol project was never done, of course. But the often-maligned proposed Bicentennial Bridge might materialize that hope of 105-years ago.

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For the record, the last time a state official was impeached and removed from office in Missouri was when Secretary of State Judi Moriarty was removed from office for post-dating her son’s document filing as a candidate for the Missouri House. Eric Greitens quit before articles of impeachment could be taken up in the House. In about 1968 there was a circuit judge in St. Louis named John Hasler who had taken a fatherly interest in a woman whose divorce case he was hearing. But he resigned before the trial could be held. And the last impeachment before THAT was probably State Treasurer Larry Brunk in the 1930s, who was charged by the House but the Senate couldn’t get a two-thirds vote against him. Brunk had been a state senator a few years earlier. The Brunk case is considered one of the reasons the new constitution adopted in 1945 eliminated trial by the Senate and put it before the Missouri Supreme Court.

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And in each of those cases, we are sure there were good people on both sides.

Dr. Frank Crane

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We’re going to start something today and see how it goes.

In prowling through old newspapers seeking out tidbits of Missouri Capitol history I have frequently run across columns called “Four Minute Essays” by Dr. Frank Crane, a long-time Methodist minister who died in 1928. He was a believer in positive thinking long before native Missourian Dale Carnegie started writing about How to Win Friends and Influence People.

One hundred years ago he compiled many of his columns into ten small volumes. Although there will be instances where some of the syntax is antiquated, his thoughts seem worthy of being put back into circulation in our times.   We’re going to try to offer one of his essays each Monday with our regular entries later in the week. Here’s the first one.

PRINCIPLES

Principles are the deep laws underlying life.

Just as gravitation runs through every particle of matter from sun to sand grain, just as electricity pervades all things, and chemical affinity works always and everywhere, so there are certain laws that eternally operate in events and in men’s minds.

That honesty is the best policy, that courage is power, that practice brings efficiency, and that truth eventually prevails over error, are just as evergreen and exceptionless as the forces in dead stones and planets.

The first business of one who would succeed is to find out these principles, his second business is to believe in them, and his final business is to entrust his whole career in them.

A fool believes in a principle when he sees it works for his good. A man of sense believes in principle when he cannot see. The very essence of faith-power is that it works in the dark.

The real man believes most of all in honesty when it is plain that to lie would profit him; believes most of all in cleanliness when the allurements of uncleanliness make their strongest appeal; believes most of all in the power of good to overcome evil when men most clamor for the false remedy of cruel retaliation.

The man of principle steers his course by the north star; in storm and fog he goes straight on; he is an ocean-goer. The man of shrewdness and expediency is a coaster and explores the deeps at his peril.

One gets the good out of a principle only when he is convinced that it is invariable. Behind it is the eternal will of the university, which cannot be fooled, tricked, or dodged.

Rooted in principles life grows stronger and more majestic every day; the years harden it; failures fructify it; the windy blasts toughen it; Junes fill it with flowers and Octobers load it with fruit.

Take stock of yourself. Are there some big things you utterly believe in, and by them govern your days? Out of those things shall grow your happiness and your usefulness at the last.

Do you think everything has exceptions? Are you straight or crooked as occasion dictates? Do you say, “It all depends?” Are you an opportunist? Do you simply act as your judgment decides in each case? Do you think the end justifies the means; that is, that your little mind is clearer than the omniscient mind?

So you do that which is EXPEDIENT or do you do which is RIGHT?

If you have no principles you are but the chaff which the wind driveth away.

 

A Ground-Source Heat Pump Nation

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It’s early afternoon on top of the Langjokull glacier (Langjokull means “long glacier” so I’m being a little redundant here perhaps) in the Highlands of Iceland. The ice is about 1,900 feet thick below us as we stand on the second largest ice cap on an island named for ice. We are about five hundred feet short of being a mile high.

And we are standing on top of two volcanic systems. But we’re relatively safe. There have only been thirty-two eruptions in the past ten-thousand years. We do not think when there might be a thirty-third.

This is a land of fire and ice, of long dark nights and long bright days, of heat and snow, of Northern Lights in the winter and whales and Puffins in the summer. It is a country the size of New York with a population equaling that of Anaheim, California. About 266,000 of the country’s 360,000 people live in one town, Reykjavik.

Iceland has about 130 volcanoes, about thirty of which are considered active. Glaciers melt from the bottom here because of the warmth of the ground. The water is pure and cold and it spills over dozens of waterfalls and careens through canyons carved through the volcanic rock laid down through thousands of years of eruptions.

In some places it’s boiling hot and there are geysers. Visitors are cautioned to stay on walkways lest they break through the thin crust and encounter boiling water. More than ninety percent of the homes in Iceland are heated with geothermal water heated by the underground magma that is part of the ecosystem of this fascinating country, an entire country that is, in effect, a ground source heat pump.

In other places, steam from geothermal sources generates electricity that provides lights to much of the island.

Heat and cold. Light and dark. The darkness of winter is setting in fast in Iceland. During our visit, we could make out outlines of mountains on the horizon about 9:15 a.m. and it was fully light by ten.   But by three o’clock we were headed back to our hotel because darkness was coming on fast.

Christmas lights go up early in November and they stay until February, not because Iceland celebrates Christmas for four months but because the people NEED THE LIGHT.

Actually, Iceland celebrates Christmas for about two weeks, beginning December 23 and running through Epiphany on January 6 with traditional events linked back to ancient Norse customs and figures such as the thirteen Yule Lads.

The lads are trolls, children of Gryla, a part-troll and part animal who lives in the mountains with her husband and the black Christmas Cat. At Christmas time she and her family come down out of the mountains looking for children who’ve been more naughty than nice. She likes to boil them in her cauldron while the boys go around visiting the homes of children.

Icelandic Christmas custom has children putting a shoe in their bedroom windows each evening for the thirteen days before Christmas. Each night, one of the lads comes by and leave small gifts—candy is always popular—for the good little girls and boys. But the child who has been a pain in the neck that day can wake up the next morning and find a rotten potato in the shoe.

The Yule Cat prowls the countryside and eats people who haven’t received any new clothing before Christmas Eve.

Those of us who live in the less harsh but soft and more temperate and light world of Missouri have a fat old man in a red suit who flies around with the help of reindeer.

The country has an officially established church, a state church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Some folks will attend holiday services at Hallgrimskirkja, the church of Hallgrimur Petursson, a seventeenth-century poet and clergyman (although that’s a statue of Leif Ericson in front of the church instead of Pastor Petursson). This modern church is the largest church in the country and at 244 feet is one of the tallest buildings in all of Iceland.

 

 

 

 

 

Simplicity is its beauty. Workers started building it in 1946 and did not complete it until 1986. The original design was for a building not as tall as this one. But it grew in design when the Church of Iceland insisted on a spire that would be higher than the cathedral of Iceland’s Catholic Church.

Yes, we saw the Northern Lights.

Our cameras saw them better than our eyes did. To our eyes, the lights were barely visible. But our digital cameras with slow shutter speeds captured the lights and (if you look closely) the Big Dipper. We had gone out on a Northern Lights tour in a boat the previous night but they didn’t materialize. The second night, we took a bus an hour into the dark interior of the island. We were on the verge of giving up when the first slight glitter caught our attention.

But on our boat trip we did see a light—Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace Light that is turned on during the winter for various periods.

This year, she went to Reykjavik to turn it on in honor of husband John Lennon’s 79th birthday, October 9. It will be turned off for the season on March 27. “Remember, each one of us has the power to change the world,” she wrote in a message in October. “Power works in mysterious ways. We don’t have to do much. Visualize the domino effect and just start thinking PEACE…

It’s Time of Action.

The Action is PEACE.

Think PEACE, act PEACE, Spread PEACE.

PEACE is power!”

It was late at night when I took that picture and I’m surprised it turned out as well as it did. It looks lighter than it was because of the slow shutter speed. And we were riding on a boat. Actually there are fifteen searchlights that form the column. The stone monument housing the lights features “Imagine Peace” in two-dozen languages.

Now—back to the glacier, back to where we started. Standing on a glacier is one thing. Going inside one is something else. But we did.

With sixty feet of ice over hour heads and hundreds of feet of ice and volcanoes beneath our feet we explored the interior. The tunnel was designed by a geophysicist and snakes through the glacier far enough that the trip through takes about an hour. We were given spikes that we stretched over our boots; some of our group had toe-warmers that they inserted inside their boots but it wasn’t all that bad (we thought), especially as long as we kept moving. In fact, it was warmer inside the glacier than it was outside.

There are some rooms carved into the ice, including a chapel where weddings are held from time to time, not something we could ever anticipate doing because of the hassle, if nothing else. Plus, we observed, who wants to start a marriage with a frigid spouse?

In the middle of our tour, one of our group was startled by the ringing of his cell phone. Somebody from Jefferson City was calling.   We’re sixty feet underneath the top of a glacier in Iceland, for goodness sakes, and a cell phone still found him.

The geology that shapes the island and the people who live there and the environment in which they choose to live produces some amazing lifestyle developments (at least amazing to us).

This is the biggest greenhouse we have ever seen, at Freoheimar. And it’s only one in a complex that covers about 1.25 acres that grows tomatoes and cucumbers and has restaurant facilities scattered throughout the vine-growing area. A computerized climate-control system takes care of temperature, humidity, lighting and carbon dioxide. Geothermal water heats the greenhouses. Pure cold water irrigates the plants. Plants are protected from pests by biological controls and bumblebees that care nothing about humans help pollinate the plants.

We’re not sure how tall the plants are—more than fifteen feet, we suspect. Visitors can have tomato soup and home-made bread for lunch. And, oh, is it good soup! And the bread is to die for. Each of us tasted a little tomato and this consumer who tolerates tomatoes on hamburgers tried one. Very low acidic content. It was almost sweet.

And the plastic container that these folks market their small tomatoes in: After the purchaser has eaten all the tomatoes, the container can be held under hot water and it disappears.

Iceland, where people live on volcanic lava rather than good rich (or not so rich) dirt could teach us Americans a lot about efficient, low-waste, natural living.

Two or three final things: Remember we mentioned the Christmas lights going up early and staying up late because people in long winter-dark time need light? How about this gas station/car wash?

Gas was costing about nine dollars (US) a gallon there. But people don’t drive little bitty cars. In fact, Iceland has an amazing variety of cars available from Skodas made in Czechoslovakia to Volkswagens from Germany and Jaguars from England, Subarus from Japan, and Fords from the United States, among others.

The Icelandic language is very old. It has no dialects. Old Icelandic is a derivation of Old Norse. The oldest written documents in Iceland date to about 1100 CE. Most modern Icelanders can read those documents because their language has been so unchanged. The Icelandic alphabet is based on the 12th Century First Grammatical. It also has six letters our alphabet doesn’t have.

Reykjavik also is the home of the only museum of its kind in the world. You’ll have to go to Google Images to see more about it. I cannot imagine the public reaction in most of this country if somebody opened a museum like it here. I did take some pictures of it (although I didn’t have time to get any farther inside than the gift shop—and some of the gifts would have made interesting objects on the airport luggage security cameras). Actually, it’s called The Iceland Phallological Museum but it’s best known by its sign.

Almost all of the land and sea mammals found in Iceland are represented. Including, uh, Homo Sapiens. In all, there are 282 specimens from 93 different species of animal. Should anyone want to create one of these museums in this country, we suggest locating it in Olean, the Miller County town of about 125 or so souls who have held an  annual Testicle Festival, which we understand has moved to another town.

So, we went to Iceland a couple of weeks ago. And we found it intriguing for several reasons. It’s about six hours from Chicago if you are so unfortunate as to want to leave from O’Hare International.

It was kind of an anniversary celebration for us. A week after Nancy and I got back and got the unpacking and the laundry mostly done, we celebrated our 52nd wedding anniversary.

Would we go back?  We have other places on our list but a maybe a summer visit when the whales and the Puffins are there…..

 

 

 

Our sub is back at sea

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The USS Jefferson City, a now-“improved” Los Angeles-class attack submarine, is back in action after five years in dry dock at Pearl Harbor for extensive repairs. The boat is coming up on thirty years of age (launched August 17, 1990).

More than five years ago it left its base in San Diego for a reported six-month deployment in the western Pacific but went to Guam for emergency repairs for what the Navy said was a small water leak from a valve in one of the reactor propulsion systems.

But the sub stayed at Guam longer than some folks, including crew members’ families, thought was necessary to fix a small water leak. The Navy said the leak was so small and so internal that it took some time to track it down. Some spouses in San Diego complained the Navy was giving them no indication when the Jefferson City might get back to San Diego.

At one time the Navy was not planning to pay the crew up to $495 a month in Hardship Duty Pay, a plan that was reversed after the Navy Times started asking questions.

Five months after reaching Guam it went under its own power to Pearl Harbor for a major overhaul, originally scheduled for twenty-two months. It went into dry dock on April 1, 2015 and didn’t get cleared for sea trials until November 12. And to make matters worse for crew families, the Navy decided in November, 2014 to switch the sub’s home port to Pearl Harbor. The Navy said at the time that the switch had been planned for 2015 anyway, when the sub was scheduled for the extended overhaul it has now received.

The crew remained with the sub and continued training even while the submarine was immobilized for repairs and updates.

Commander Steve Dawley, a Joplin native, sent a note yesterday to the local support group that the sub has been through “several weeks of final testing and certification” before the sea trials that ended Monday. “The crew did an amazing job operating the ship after a five-year availability and spirits are high onboard,” he said.

The Jefferson City will get a few more fixes before heading to sea again for training exercises ahead of the Christmas holidays.

180511-N-LY160-0016 PEARL HARBOR (May 11, 2018) – Cmdr. Steven Dawley is piped aboard during the Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS Jefferson City (SSN 759) change of command ceremony at the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, May 11. Dawley relieved Cmdr. Kevin Moller as the 14th commanding officer of Jefferson City. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Michael Lee/Released)

Dawley became the fourteenth commander of the Jefferson City in May, last year. He had not planned to be in the Navy but the terrorist attacks in 2011 changed his mind. He had planned to go to medical school after getting his degrees in math and chemistry at Missouri Southern State University but changed his mind after the attacks. He told the Carthage newspaper that Navy recruiters talked him out of his interest in being a pilot and, because of his college degrees, steered him into submarines.

Dawley’s wife is the executive officer on a guided missile destroyer.

From time to time the sub commander and some of the crew members visit Jefferson City. And from time to time some folks from Jefferson City get to visit the sub—an experience your observer was given several years ago.

A lot of folks don’t think they could serve on a submarine. And there are some drawbacks. But think of this: Most of us get up and have breakfast, go to work, some home, have dinner, watch a little TV or get on the computer, call it a night and go to bed. And then we get up and have breakfast—–

The biggest difference is that we get to go outside when we go to work, most of the time. But routine life in a submarine isn’t that much different from routine life on land.

But on a submarine, you can’t be sloppy. You can’t leave your shoes on the living room floor. Or magazines on the table next to the recliner chair.

But you do work with some extraordinary people. Really extraordinary.

It’s good to hear our sub is back to doing what it’s intended to do.

(Photo Credits: U. S. Navy)

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Who is insulted more? The animal or the person?

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For some, it’s an honor. To others, it’s an insult when an animal is named for them.

For Prince Charles, the word that a tree frog had been named for him (Hyloscirtus princecharlesi) was an honor (or as he might say “honour.”). He has worked to protect tropical rainforest habitat.

As far as we know, President Trump has not found it tweet-worthy since his name was attached to a creature by a British company interested in environmental issues. The company paid $25,000 in an auction for the rights to name a legless, blind, tiny burrowing amphibian from Panama “Dermohis donaldtrump.”

If you think we are going to offer some clever comment about that, think again.

But apart from scientific names involving famous people, we don’t often hear of regular animals being named for people in the news or historical characters very much. At one time it was a pretty proper thing to do. In fact, Lucy Wales, who ran Columbia’s first school for women, used to take her students to the county fair and have them discuss the famous people whose names were carried by the livestock on display.

A fellow named Ed. H. Smith, the former publisher of a newspaper in the small Livingston County town of Chula, once suggested that Missouri needed a law restricting the right of Missourians to name animals for prominent people. He wrote to the Chillicothe Tribune in 1909:

 I don’t know how to frame a bill, but I am going to try to tell you in my weak way what I want and give you a few reasons why a law of this kind ought to be passed. Now, you will notice at this time of the year the papers in small towns and even in cities like Chillicothe are full of advertisements of breeding stock. Fine horses—Belgians and Percherons—and big mealy-nosed jacks, Herefords, etc. These are all noble animal, and I know full well what these splendid new breeds are doing for old Missouri. That’s all right. What I object to is the names they give these animals. It don’t look quite right to name a jack after a senator without his consent. At any rate it don’t hurt the jack or the senator, but there is something unpretty about it.

 Suppose now, I was sent to the legislature and Jim Raney would name his bull calf Ed H. Smith and print a lot of bills with a picture of the calf and say (our) names under it. How would I like it? I tell you, Mr. Editor, about half the fine breeding animals in the country are named after celebrated people. There was a rooster at our poultry show named Herbert S. Hadley. A man up by Chula has a pig named Carrie Nation. I tell you where the greatest objection to this rural nomenclature comes in. And when I am done you will be of my opinion about this matter.

 Comes now a man to your print shop and wants a horse bill printed on manila cardboard. This bill contains a description of the splendid horse and his pedigree, which reads as follows: Jos. Cannon was sired by Grover Cleveland, dam Ida Tarbell, she by Hod Scruby, dam Mrs. Langtry.

Now, you print them bills with good job ink and this man tacks one on a telephone pole in front of Swetland’s drug store. Suppose now, the next day there is an eruption of Shalehill at Utica, and Chillicothe is buried five hundred feet deep with ashes and limestone and shale and lava, and sandstone and hell fire and brimstone. Two thousand years from now comes a band of geologists from some big university and they did down to find old Chillicothe. They strike the top of a telephone pole and follow it down. They find this bill tacked to it and quit work at once. You get. They have made a find. They have founds something that upsets all ancient history they have ever learned. All over the land the school children have been taught that the Scrubys were a fine old English family in no way related to Grover Cleveland and Ida Tarbell’s name in all histories is written Miss. School marms all over the country will say, “my goodness gracious,” or words to that effect. Millions of schoolbooks will have to be destroyed and new ones printed. family histories and biographies will be knocked galled west. You know it. So there you are. You see what I want. I can’t frame the bill but don’t you think Fred Hudson and Hod Scruby ought to take it up. They are more interested than I am.

I don’t think anyone will ever name a clay pigeon after me. It is altogether an unselfish motive which prompts me in this matter, and a bill like this preventing any one from naming their breeding animals after our great men, ought to pass with a whoop. I rest my case.

Joseph Cannon was an Illinois congressman who was the Speaker from 1903 until 1911, the longest-serving speaker until another Illinois congressman, Dennis Hastert, eclipsed him. Grover Cleveland is the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms. Ida Tarbell was one of the biggest names among muckraking journalists of that era. “Hod” Scruby was Horace P. Scruby, the state representative from Livingston County at the time. Mrs. Langtry was the famous actress Lilly Langtry. Fred Hudson was the state senator representing the county.

The issue Ed Smith raised so long ago isn’t something we confront much today. But animals often show up in our editorial cartoons, sometimes bearing names of our leaders, sometimes representing broader themes.

Wonder when President Trump will comment on the Panamanian amphibian.

 

Unity

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We offer today a vision of a different world, a plea to recognize that good things come from working together in common cause. In this time of division and derision, perhaps we can find some comfort in these long-ago words that sought to bring us together for our mutual benefit.

We found this poem in an 1894 newspaper published in the small town of Higbee and in several other communities in Missouri.

All Men Are Brothers

We are all a band of brothers, And should have regard for others, And with sisters, fathers, mothers, We should work for all alike.

Yes, we’ll work for all together, Both in clear and stormy weather, And our labor without measure Shall supply the wants of all.

For there’s room enough for all, And there’s plenty at our call;  No misfortunes will befall While in friendship we unite.

So we’re brothers all united, And our wrongs shall be righted, For our word we all have plighted, That our union shall endure.

Nature treats all men as brothers, Does the same for us and others, So, with sisters, fathers, mothers, Let us live in unity.

Am I the only person who hears these words as a potential hymn? Perhaps they are a song heard and forgotten, we don’t know. The sentiment might be unrealistic in these times of political crudeness and rudeness. But there seems to be a longing in many people’s hearts for this poem to prevail in our discourse.

But here comes what will be the bucket of cold water for some who have read these words and found them wistfully welcome.

This poem was published in the Higbee Altruist. The newspaper also was published as the Sulphur Springs Altruist, and the St. Louis Altruist. There might have been other communities that published it as an addition to local reading material in the days when reading prevailed, before radio, television, the internet, and hand-held devices intruded into thoughtful sentiments.

Alcander Longley published the newspaper from 1885-1917, the year before his death, and a predecessor with a different name from 1868 until changing the title to Altruist. He’s not widely recalled in Missouri newspaper publishing history despite that half-century career.

Longley’s newspapers were aptly named because he really did believe in the words of that poem. And he did more than just write about it. He founded communities based on the philosophy at the end, “Let us live in unity.”

Longley was living in a rapidly-changing post-Civil War Missouri. The growth of industry was changing the economic climate; the healing of war wounds was altering politics; and the movement of people from rural to urban areas was among the economic, social and political alterations to the Missouri in which Longley had grown up (he was almost thirty when the war began).

Robert Jeffrey David Wells wrote his master’s thesis at Missouri State University in 2008 about Longley and his newspapers. He recorded that Longley founded the secular utopian community of Reunion in southwest Missouri’s Jasper county in 1868. It winked out three years later. He created the Friendship Community in Dallas County a year later. It failed in 1877. His next attempt was the Friendship Community of Bollinger County, in 1879, the Principia Community in Polk County in ’81, The Mutual Aid Community in Jefferson County, which lasted from 1884 to ’85, followed by the Altruistic Society of 1886 there. In 1889 he formed the Mutual Aid Community of St. Louis before forming The Altruist Community in several locations between ’89 and ‘91. He established the Altruist Community in Randolph County in 1895 and Altro 1898, which lasted until 1900.

Missouri has had s number of communistic societies. Travelers driving through the few that survive, Longley’s or anyone else’s, might never know the unusual ideals behind their foundings unless there are signs.

The St. Louis Communist was his first newspaper, before the Altruist that contained the poem. Longley died in 1917, the year of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution that re-defined “communism” in dark, repressive terms. Perhaps it is best that someone who believed life is better if everyone contributes to the mutual benefit of all did not live to see Lenin’s longer-lasting definition become reality.

Today the words “communism” and “socialism” are political swear words. But once upon a time, they were sincere ideals. And, after all, what’s wrong with a poem that sounds like a lot of the songs in church hymn books today?

Nature treats all men as brothers, Does the same for us and others, So, sisters, fathers, mothers, Let us live in unity.

Lynching

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The circulation of the word “lynching” in high political circles is an insult to one of the most despicable words in our language.

Missouri knows about lynching. A study by the Equal Justice Institute two years ago documented 4,084 lynchings in the South between 1877 and 1950. It also found sixty lynchings in Missouri during that time, the second most of any state just outside the south. Oklahoma had 76 of the 341 events labeled by the institute as “racial terror lynchings.”

In April, 1906, Horace Duncan and Fred Coker, accused of rape in Springfield, were taken from the jail and hanged from a tower on the town square. Five-thousand white people—men, women, AND children—watched the hangings and then the burning and shooting of the bodies.

The men had alibis, confirmed by their employers. But the mob never let them have their day in court, never let them present evidence of their innocence. Newspaper reports after the fact said the men were innocent.

A third man, Will Allen, accused of murder without any evidence, was chase down and strung up on the same tower.

That was lynching.

1931. Raymond Gunn confesses to killing a woman at a rural school near Maryville. While Gunn was being taken in the sheriff’s car to a court hearing, a mob stopped the car, dragged Gunn out and took him to the school. He was tied to a roof ridge pole. He and the building were doused with gasoline and the building was set afire. About fifteen minutes later the building collapsed. When the fire burned down enough, spectators took burned fragments of the building as souvenirs.

That was lynching.

In 1919, Jay Lynch was convicted in Lamar of murdering the sheriff and the sheriff’s son during a jail break. Missouri had taken a brief break from having the death penalty so he was sentenced to life in prison. While Lynch was in the judge’s office saying goodbye to his family, two dozen people burst in, put a rope around his neck and dragged him to a nearby tree. When the first branch broke, the rope was thrown over a stronger one and Lynch was hauled up to die. A large crowd cheered. Lynch was one of four white men lynched that year, four out of 83 people lynched that year nationwide.

That was lynching.

1893, Audrain County. Emmett Divers, charged with murdering a white woman, was taken by an estimated crowd of 500 people to and bridge and hanged. After Divers died, his body was taken to the fairground and hung from a pole and later burned.

That was lynching.

1942, Scott County. Cleo Wright, accused of murdering a woman and shot eight times resisting arrest, was grabbed by a mob who poured gasoline on him and burned him in front of a Sikeston church. The incident led Governor Forrest Donnell to order the Highway Patrol and the local sheriff to put more officers on the scene.   But about 100 black residents who fled never went back. Some black residents who stayed armed themselves and patrolled their part of town.

That was lynching.

1923, Columbia. James T. Scott, a University of Missouri janitor, a World War I veteran, the grandson of a slave, was identified by a 14-year old girl as her attacker. A mob using sledge hammers broke into his jail cell, took him out and hanged him from the Stewart Road bridge over the MK&T Railroad tracks.. A University professor who tried to stop the mob was told to get out of the way or he’d be lynched, too. St. Louis newspapers reported the girl identified another man, who had shared the cell with Scott. Reports say Scott told the mob that took him from the jail that the other man, Ollie Watson, had told him that Watson was the attacker.

That was lynching.

Three years ago, the Association for Black Graduate and Professional Students at the university dedicated a historic marker alongside the KATY Trail near the spot where the Stewart Street Bridge, from which James T. Scott was hanged, once stood. “Lest We Forget,” it says at the top.

1882. Kansas City. Moments after a white policeman was shot, Levi Harrington was stopped by officers and arrested although there was no evidence to implicate him in the crime. A crowd forcefully seized Harrington and hanged him from a nearby bridge and shot him.

That was lynching.

In 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative unveiled a plaque not far from the bridge site, commemorating the lynching.

A century earlier, in 1918, Missouri Congressman Leonidas Dyer introduced a bill in the House of Representatives making lynching a federal crime. The Senate approved the bill last year. The House has yet to act. There remains no federal anti-lynching law.

Missouri has no anti-lynching law.  Participants can be charged under murder statutes.

Let us be clear. What is happening in Washington is not a lynching. Saying it is insults our language, cheapens the shameful actions of some of our ancestors, and dismisses the agony of those who fell victim to public savagery.