Author Archives: bpriddy

What in the world ?

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Two people are standing at the railing of an ocean liner gazing at the miles of Pacific Ocean all around them.  Nothing is out there but water.  All the way to the horizon.  All the way around them.

“Sure is a lot of water,” one observes.

“Yeah,” says the other.  “And that’s just the top of it.”

This observer has been getting emails from friends as far away as Vancouver and Los Angeles who have been watching, hearing, and reading about things happening at the University of Missouri for the last several days.  In various ways they have asked, “What in the world is going on at the University of Missouri?”  What follows will be long and does not pretend to be an analysis that will preclude other thoughts or actions that disagree or contribute to consensus.

The reporting of the way events have spiraled and spread has been most comparable to that first observer on the ocean liner: “Sure is a lot of water.”   That is not a criticism of the reporting.  Those who have been on the ground as journalists in situations such as this and—more prominently, in Ferguson last year—know that when you are being swept along by the tide there isn’t much time to think about how the coral was formed ten feet below you.  The same often is true for those who are drawn into participation in those events.  Thinking about the deeper issues that are involved or the deeper consequences that might result becomes secondary.   Passing judgment on participants, whether demonstrators, administrators, reporters, observers—the list could be longer if we try to think of more categories—is easily done from a distance and the situation becomes more complicated when others with other agendas try to capitalize on it.

So, to answer the friends and neighbors who have asked, “What in the world is going on…?” we offer some observations.  They are made from a short geographical distance and they are made by someone who is no longer in the business of being in the middle of the events or in a newsroom.

VIOLENCE

This is an important thing to remember.  No buildings were set on fire.  No roving gangs of demonstrators were going up and down Ninth Street throwing bricks through windows and looting businesses.  As far as we know, guns were not part of the demonstration(s) and nobody was hurt.  Some headlines were generated when a reporter and a cameraman were pushed around in a regrettable incident but the students who advocated a non-violent protest achieved that goal.  While some of their actions might be properly questioned, let us not lose sight of the fact that this is one incident that did not turn violent.

But their activities have created image problems or feared image problems for the university, for some of its schools, and the athletic department.  Andrew Kloster, a legal fellow with the Heritage Foundation, has written of what he calls “mob rule…in higher education.”  He writes about recent disturbances at Yale and the disturbances in Columbia, “Both situations involve student activists disrupting education, allegedly on behalf of education…At Mizzou, activists claimed that failing to deal with ‘structural racism’ was harming their education.  Both groups listed not specific harms, but rather vague interest in feeling good at their university.”

That kind of reaction, nationally circulated, is not what the protestors want to hear or want to hear said about them.   What can it teach them?  What can be learned from these experiences?  Is the result as simple as Kloster suggests?

Nobody was hurt in these protests.  At least not physically.  That’s important to remember.

WHO IS AND WHO IS NOT GONE

University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe is gone.  Columbia Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin is gone.  This observer met both of them during a meeting a few months ago and found both of them personally likable.  Wolfe was candid in our discussions and represented the university well.  Perhaps ironically, one of the products of our meeting was a resolution of some communications problems between the group I was with and the university.  Loftin, I thought, was approachable and willing to discuss the issues we brought to the table.  That’s a personal impression drawn from a single hour-long meeting.  I was not left with any perspective on relations between the people in University Hall and the people who were on the campus.  But clearly, those who saw things on a daily basis had distinctly different impressions.

Who’s still there?  A guy in the pickup truck.  A drunk white guy who went where he wasn’t wanted at the Legion of Black Collegians meeting.  The person who scrawled the feces swastika in a bathroom.  A spirit of intolerance that bubbles under all of society, occasionally seeping to the surface.  And intolerance knows no sides.  They’re still there.

THE EVENTS

Critics on the campus felt the school administration was detached and unresponsive.  On Monday, the day Wolfe resigned and Loftin announced he would be stepping down, the deans of nine of the university’s colleges asked that the Board of Curators to fire Loftin.  They cited a “multitude of crises” on the Columbia campus.  They said they had met with Wolfe and Loftin as well as Provost Garnett Stokes twice in October but had seen the issues they talked about continue to deteriorate.

A day earlier the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures notified curators that 28 of the department’s thirty faculty members had expressed no confidence in Loftin. The other two faculty members abstained.  A few days earlier, the English Department faculty had voted 26-0 for a no-confidence motion targeting Loftin.  Two faculty members abstained.

Loftin also was the center of other controversies including the elimination of health insurance for graduate assistants who teach many of the school’s classes.  The insurance was later reinstated. He also was unpopular because of the dismissal of the Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences.

He also was in the middle of a partisan political criticism about a doctor with some privileges at University Hospital doing abortions at the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Columbia.  As usual lately, anything to do with Planned Parenthood became an issue of political capital that transcended rational discussion. The situation has reached the absurd stage that one state senator wanting to firm up pro-life support in a statewide candidacy has demanded the university tell a graduate student to stop studying whether a 72-hour waiting period for an abortion really accomplishes anything.

One side claims it was absolutely right and the university is absolutely wrong. And when the absolutely right side is the one that controls the university’s budget, academic freedom can become expendable—or at least a perception can arise that it is.  The university revoked the doctor’s privileges at the hospital.  Planned Parenthood and its supporters charged the university over-reacted.  As far as we know, the graduate student is still researching.

Student demonstrators aimed their biggest complaints at Wolfe.  An incident early in the school year in which someone in a pickup truck shouted “Nigger” at the student body president Payton Head appears to have begun the unrest. Several days later, a white man, described as drunk, interrupted a meeting of the Legion of Black Collegians and complained, “These niggers are getting aggressive with me” when the group showed him he was not welcome.

An incident during the homecoming parade last month, though, is what seems to have really gotten things rolling.   A group of black students stopped in front of the car carrying Wolfe and started talking about the school’s history of racial incidents since its founding in 1839.  Wolfe did not react and the driver of the car tried to move around the group and bumped a couple of the students.

About then, graduate student Jonathan Butler said he wouldn’t eat until Wolfe quit. Four days later, November 6, Wolfe issued a statement and an apology that seemed weak to the students in the homecoming parade event, and to the students whose resentment about administration detachment from campus concerns continued to simmer.  Wolfe admitted that the situation might not have deteriorated if he had gotten out of his car during the parade and talked with the students.

Or would such an action only have compounded the disturbance that day?  It’s easy to second-guess on that issue.  Many will argue the students were out of line by stopping Wolfe’s car at all, let alone for several minutes before the blockade was ended.

This writer recalls an incident in the Missouri Senate a couple of years ago when a group led by a number of ministers entered the gallery of the senate and stopped floor action with songs, prayers, and statements urging expansion of the Medicaid program.  Several were arrested and charged.  Their cases have yet to come to trial.  One of their arguments would be familiar to the students: they were frustrated by inaction on the part of those who could do something to deal with the problems they perceived.

And so a fair question has to be asked.  What is left when you think the powers-that-be are not responsive to perceived serous issues you have raised?

The organizers of the demonstrations, Concerned Student 1-9-5-0, (1950 was the year the university admitted its first black student) issued eight demands including an apology from Wolfe in which he would “acknowledge his white male privilege, recognize that systems of oppression exist, and provide a verbal commitment to fulfill (the organization’s) demands”.  The group demanded Wolfe’s removal and a presidential selection process involving faculty, staff, and students of diverse backgrounds.  The group wants a  mandatory “comprehensive racial awareness and inclusion curriculum in all departments,” increased percentages of black faculty and staff, more money for the university counseling center that will allow hiring of mental health professionals as well as increases in funding for social justice centers.

The demands and the rhetoric that appeared to some people as overcooked took the situation beyond discussion. By now, too, various political figures were weighing in with veiled suggestions that time was running out for Wolfe.

Then several members of the football team announced they supported the student group.

THE TEAM

The announced “strike” by several football players pushed the issue into national headlines.  International headlines in fact.  Suddenly the confrontation was on the BBC.  Suddenly it was on the national networks.   And it put the coaching staff in a difficult position in what already has been a difficult year.  They’ve already dealt with some unfortunate situations within the team this year apart from the win-loss record.  It was important that the team understand that it IS a team and this episode threatened to pit involved members against those who didn’t feel touched by the controversy.  Coach Gary Pinkel knew that however this event turned out, this incident had the potential to turn the locker room into at least two camps.  So the word went out that the whole team supported Jonathan Butler and was concerned about his health.  Pinkel has admitted, however, that some players were not enthusiastic about the “team” support of Butler.  And in a press conference after the resignations, he didn’t take a position on the departures of Wolfe and Loftin.

The upcoming game with Brigham Young was endangered.  The university could lose a million dollars and that was only a beginning.

There were doubtless some who immediately started thinking the football program was trying to run the university.  Some undoubtedly felt cancellation of the game, the season, the players’ scholarships would be appropriate because the players were getting outside their roles.   After all, the university is about education, not sports and—they might argue—the sports program was getting out of line.

Others could argue that athletes are also people and they do not give up being people just because they play sports.  In fact, some might argue on their behalf that the players’ actions were a recognition that some things are far more important than collegiate sports.   After all, these young men sit in classrooms with many of those who had pitched their tents on Carnahan Quadrangle.  They are not apart from them just because they play football.

The university basketball players also were talking about taking action, which coach Kim Anderson says he would have supported, when Wolfe resigned.

It is easy to dismiss the action of the football players and the backing they got from their coach and the school’s athletic director as the athletic department throwing its weight around.  But was it, really?  Or was it people who were students first creating by their actions a situation the athletic department had to deal with at a time when it had been only an observer that was focused on fulfilling its special role in the university?

Regardless, SEC coaches in their weekly teleconference praised Pinkel’s integrity in supporting his team.

The entrance of the football team into the picture made the news story, for whatever reason, one that could not be contained in Columbia. It went global. And nobody knew how much worse it could become if something didn’t happen at University Hall.

THE CHOICE

We don’t know and maybe will never know what kind of conversations were going on between the university administration and the curators.  We don’t know when or if somebody finally said, “Tim, the only way to end this situation is for you to leave.”   Or maybe he’s the one who told the curators that he realized there was no way the situation could be resolved as long as he stayed.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has reported the curators continued to support Wolfe, who left without any kind of a severance package.  The newspaper says that’s an indication he was not forced out.  But Loftin was a different case. The curators voted to assign him to a new job.  The newspaper says Loftin “made enemies out of deans, faculty and graduate students” and “frequently blindsided the curators with his decision making, stirring up controversies, then having to backtrack.”

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/missteps-not-student-revolt-led-to-mizzou-chancellor-s-demise/article_f955e9cf-6fc8-5fb0-b2cc-1b798d53fccc.html

The student group wasted no time issuing new demands for an “immediate” meeting with the university system faculty council, curators, and with Governor Nixon “to discuss shared governance and create a system of holistic inclusion for all constituents,” as one of the group members, Marshall Allen, put it, saying the demands have to me met “in totality.”

The resignations create some breathing space.  There comes a time when heated rhetoric (“in totality,” for example) needs to be tempered so productive steps can be taken to produce change.   Shared governance?  That term as well as “a system of holistic inclusion” is good for pumping up a crowd.  Creating realistic definitions is harder.  The students are not going to run the University of Missouri.  Or the faculty.  But the point has to be acknowledged that the administration cannot be apart from the campus and the issues that personally touch those on it.

THE PROFS AND THE GREEK LADY

The Dean of the School of Journalism, David Kurpius, quickly put out a statement when a video went viral showing Professor Melissa Click helped block reporters from covering the post-resignation reactions of students in their encampment on the Carnahan Quadrangle.  The video showed Click calling for some “muscle” to help remove student Mark Schierbecker who was shooting video of a confrontation between freelance photographer Tim Tai and Janna Basler, the assistant director of Greek Life and Leadership.  Tai was shooting for ESPN News.

The video shows Basler telling Tai, “You need to back off.  Back off, go!”  When he asks her if she is with the Office of Greek Life, she responds, “No, my name is Concerned Student 1-9-5-0.”

Tai is heard saying that his First Amendment rights to be there are equal with the First Amendment rights of the students who have been demonstrating.

And a third person, identified as Professor Richard Callahan, the Chairman of Religious Studies, is shown with the protestors throwing up his hands to block the view Tai could get with his camera.

The J-School dean wanted to make it clear that Click is a member of the Department of Communications, which is part of the School of Arts and Sciences, not a member of the School of Journalism faculty.  The J-School also released a statement discussing how it had used the events of the last several days as teaching opportunities for future journalists.

The national reaction on social media and in mainline media to the actions of those faculty members has been generally severe.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says Click locked herself in the office all day Tuesday and at times could be heard sobbing.  At the end of the day she issued written apology for her actions, and said she had personally apologized to the journalists involved.  She resigned her tenuous tie to the Journalism School.  She had a “courtesy title” that let her serve on a graduate committee.  Although Tai says he has accepted Click’s apology, Schierbecker has told the Washington Post he has not.  “She made no acknowledgement that what she did was assault,” he told the newspaper.

Callahan is Click’s husband.  Thai has told the Post that he also has apologized “for getting in my face and yelling about it.” We’ve heard no word about whether his behavior also is being scrutinized.

Basler has been put on administrative leave and relieved of her duties as the Director of Greek Life while the investigation of her activities continues.  Tai says he’s had a personal meeting with Basler and has accepted her apologies.

There have been calls for the three to be fired.  Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple, for example, has written “These three university employees had a chance to stick up for free expression on Monday. Instead they stood up for coercion and darkness.”

Who’s right and who’s wrong in all of this?  From this reporter’s perspective (once a journalist, always a journalist), the students and the teachers were wrong.  The young journalists were legitimately trying to cover a story, to help listeners, viewers, and readers gain some kind of insight into the situation.  But this incident, as is the case with the larger activities, is not so black and white.   KBIA, the University’s public radio station that relies heavily on journalism students in its newsroom—and has done outstanding work in covering these events—published this story on its webpage:

http://kbia.org/post/rights-activists-and-media-no-clear-answer

And KBIA News Director Ryan Famuliner, a former Missourinet reporter, added some context to help people see “below the surface of it.”

http://kbia.org/post/4-things-you-might-have-wrong-about-mizzou-story

Tuesday, the day after the confrontations, protestors decided reporters were welcome at their encampment.  They took down signs telling the media to stay out and they passed out pages urging protestors to cooperate with the media.  The headline on the flyers said “Teachable Moment.”

OKAY, SO—–

We talked to a distressed former member of the Board of Curators the other day who fears these events have set a “horrible precedent.”   Some of those we have talked to who also have watched things from a distance suggest the university is in for an extremely difficult time finding someone to step into the president’s job.  “Who in his right mind would want it?” one person asked.

What has been accomplished by all of this shouting and pushing and demanding is that impediments the protesting students, graduate students, and faculty members saw to communications between the folks on campus and the folks in University Hall have been removed.  They’ve gotten the university’s attention.

Now, it appears, talking instead of shouting, discussing instead of demanding can start.

THE TEAM 2.0

No, the athletic department does not run the university.  It is, however, the most publicly prominent entity that represents it.  It would be nice if the public found the teaching of English, Journalism, Agriculture, Physics, Chemistry, Economics, and so forth to be something it would buy tickets to watch.  But the fact is the public is more likely to cheer for an All-American football or basketball player than it is to cheer for a Nobel Prize winner.  Another fact is that the university would continue to do its work educating students even if another fan never walks into Memorial Stadium.

However, the virtues of “the team” or as some of the players said, “the family,” should not dissipate as time passes and, in fact, might be good to keep in mind as the university re-shapes its administration.   Teams work when they share a common goal.  They fail when they break into factions.  Factionalism breeds resentment.  Resentment brings conflict.  And conflict destroys the family, the team.

Take a look at this effort to help us see below “the top of it.”

http://kbia.org/post/mizzou-football-sets-precedent-student-athlete-activism

One of the jobs of a coach is to hold the team together.  It would be fair to include questions to presidential candidates about how good a coach a new president and chancellor might need to be.

THE TEACHABLE MOMENT

One reason Click, Callahan, and Basler are in trouble is because they forgot that teachers remain teachers outside as well as inside the classroom. Whether the teachable moments represented by their apologies reverse the negative teachable moments of the confrontation with Tai and with Schierbecker is hard to determine.  Perhaps the changed attitude of the protestors the next day, when they removed the signs and welcomed reporters, indicates some learning has taken place.

Did the change of attitude represent a learning moment resulting from the teachable moment?  One would hope so, for students and teachers alike.

The events have created numerous teachable moments and they have provided learning moments as well.  And those moments go beyond the teaching and learning that might happen in the new diversity and social respect programs the university is moving toward.

POLITICS

Events such as these are potential minefields for politicians—witness the no-win situations Governor Nixon found himself in, or put himself in, last year in Ferguson.  These events also can be opportunities to say and advocate things that appeal to the public gut and gain some points for candidates and office-holders.  Before Wolfe’s resignation, various office-holders put out fence-riding statements that tried to sound, well for lack of a better word, leaderly without running the risk of antagonizing potential voters, protestors, and those who thought Wolfe and Loftin were just fine. “This is serious stuff,” the statements generally said, “and I am sure the right things will be done.”   Afterwards the same people who had not publicly come out specifically in favor of Wolfe’s departure courageously said he had done the right thing and they were glad he did.

But there’s another political matter that is hinted at in a part of the scenario that has been overshadowed by the events on the Carnahan Quadrangle.  One of the graduate students who sent a letter “For my dear friends outside of Missouri campus” alluded to it when she wrote, “for many of us, it was clear we were just expected to pay ever-increasing fees (mine are currently about $1000 per semester above and beyond tuition), ½ tuition waivers for some grad students (where prior had been full waivers, which drastically impacts recruiting and retention efforts), an insurance debacle…and ongoing racial discrimination.”

Students are going deeper in debt.  Some graduate students are paying increased fees.  Insurance coverage for them was dropped, then restored when they made enough noise.   And state support for higher education in Missouri is a fraction of what it was a decade ago.  Data compiled earlier this year by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association says funding per full-time student has dropped almost 28 percent in the last five years while college enrollment has increased by twenty percent.

Your reporter was in a meeting yesterday with a former legislator who recalled that when he started in the General Assembly a few decades ago, state funding for higher education paid about half the costs of educating a student. Now, he said, it’s only about ten percent.  There might be more accurate figures but the trend is accurate.

A seminar at Truman State University last March was called “Crisis in Missouri: The decline of state funding for higher education.”   The announcement of the meeting that listed discussion points said, “For decades, public support for higher education in the state of Missouri has declined precipitously.  The impact of this underfunding has been widespread and deeply felt: An increased financial burden on Missouri’s student population; An inability to recruit top teachers and scholars; a deterioration of the quality of education at our state institutions; A weakening of morale for the vast majority of those who work at those institutions; A culture on our campuses of frustration with the present and fear for the future instead of a culture of innovation.”

Fear.  Frustration.  It’s top to bottom in Missouri’s higher education system.  The definitions of those words differ according to position within that system but all strata have them.  Not to give the university administration a pass, but funding issues are a huge issue and at the highest levels are one of the primary ones.  The President of the University of Missouri is seen by many as a manager and a fund-raiser.  The chancellors are the on-campus managers.

But the buck has to stop somewhere.  And ultimately, Wolfe felt the whole package of bucks rose to his level and the best alternative was to leave so that healing could begin on a campus he loved.

But don’t expect the people in Jefferson City to do anything financially that would ease the concerns that dog all of our campuses.  Advocates of smaller government are more concerned with shrinking the state’s capability to pay its bills and obligations than they are in easing financial pressures on higher education and those it serves.   Or other services to the general public.

“You can’t cure a problem by throwing money at it,” some like to say.  That might be true.  But you certainly can’t solve many problems by financially starving them.  In 2013, then-auditor Tom Schweich released a study showing Missouri tax collections are about four-BILLION dollars below the amount allowed by the Hancock Amendment adopted in 1980 as a way to control over-taxation and over-spending.   But the legislature only wants to widen that gap.  So the concerns and frustrations of some of those who called for the departures of Wolfe and Loftin will go unanswered.

WINNERS?

It’s easy to pronounce winners and losers in these situations.  But that’s a mistake because many participants are both. Victory has a cost.  Loss has an opportunity.

Well, Wolfe is gone and so is Loftin.  An African-American temporary president who was the first black graduate of the law school has been installed.  An African-American law professor and associate dean has become an interim vice-chancellor for inclusion, diversity and equality. Curators have promised to restore “a culture of respect,” to hire more minorities, step up recruitment, and offer support to students who feel aggrieved.

Beyond that——-

Three people have been arrested for turning social media into anti-social media by making threats on the internet.  The threats, especially in a time when mass shootings are not so uncommon anymore, honestly frightened some people on the campus.

Someone painted out the word “Black” on the sign in front of the University’s Black Cultural Center; the paint has since been removed.  (Someday, maybe, there will be some discussions about whether cultural centers for various ethnic groups are long-term counter-productive to advancement toward a color-blind multicultural society many of these groups seek.  Someday. Perhaps not this day, though, when emotions that would detract from the kind of discussion that needs to be held are likely to rise.)

The person or persons so consumed by—whatever—that he or she put a piece of human excrement into their hand and drew a swastika on the wall of a co-ed dormitory bathroom and left feces on the floor is still unknown.  The student protests about racism overshadowed concerns by those to whom a swastika has a special significance.

Hate, ignorance, and downright idiocy are inescapable parts of our existence, whether on our campuses or elsewhere in our world.  The events in Columbia have a double edge—protests against wrongs perceived by one segment of society while a hate message that hurts another segment of society stays in the background.

Those of us who were in college in the days when one of the popular songs was “All we are saying is give peace a chance,” a time when demonstrators thought they could help stop wars by putting flowers down the barrels of the guns held by National Guardsmen trying to control demonstrations, still hope for peace and love and harmony.

Each generation has to confront that issue and each generation learns that there are those who think the flower children and their idealistic descendants (and forebears) are fools and troublemakers.  But a generation without ideals offers little to the future.

Comedian Pat Paulsen, whose satiric presidential candidacy in the days of the flower generation, put together a campaign book in 1968.  He wrote, “This book is dedicated to the time when all of us spicks, niggers, white trash, hunkies, wops, kikes, mackerel snappers, micks, gooks, chinks, red necks, beans and hippies get together as Americans.”

Columbia in the past week reminded us we still have a ways to go.

Perhaps this long, long reflection helps answer the questions from friends in Vancouver and in Los Angeles and gives some insight into the coral beneath the surface.

Three things

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On this third day after the saddest day of the year, the end of the baseball season, it is time to consider three days that always bring a special light to our existence.

On this third day of pondering the rapidly-approaching time when NASCAR quits racing and the football season ends (unless a favored team is in a bowl or the NFL playoffs) and Sunday afternoons truly become nap times because all that’s left on the telly is the NBA, hockey, poker tournaments, and ultimate fighting, it is comforting to know that there will be time to ponder the beauty, inspiration, and self-reflection that comes from those three days.

They don’t seem to have gotten the publicity in 2015 that they have gotten in previous years although it’s possible it was missed. But in a world where the news is normally all about this candidate, that politico, or another faction or nation shouting with all seriousness, “It’s all about me,’ these three events remind us that life need not be so self-serious, not so demanding, and not so somber.

The three days each year are these:

  1.  The day Beloit College in Wisconsin tells us what the year’s incoming freshman class knows and doesn’t know.
  2. The day Lake Superior State College in Michigan tells us what buzz words from the previous twelve months deserve to be stricken from the English language.
  3. The day San Jose State University announces the winners of its Bulwer-Lytton fiction writing contest.

Beloit College’s list is good because it reminds us that our world changes so quickly that our children (and grandchildren) have no idea what we’re talking about.  More seriously, it seems to this recorder of the passing scene, it is a reminder that the teaching of history cannot be allowed to be pushed aside by the rush to make sure our children and grandchildren emerge from high school knowing about the STEM subjects.  STEM without social context  plants the seeds of an ignorant and therefore shallow society that will be short on humanity.

Let’s step off that soapbox, though, and consider some of the things Beloit College says about this year’s new college students (the class of 2019, their parents hope).  The study says the students born in 1997 never knew Princess Diana, Notorious B.I.G, Jacques Cousteau, and Mother Teresa as living people but Harry Potter, Ron, and Hermione have always been part of their lives. Hybrid cars have always been in mass production; Google has always existed; postage stamps have always been peel-and-stick (no licking), “four foul-mouthed kids have always been playing in South Park; it is not important to them (but it might still be to their parents) that someone is the “first woman” to do something; television has always been hi-def; and “Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith have always been Men in Black, not their next-door neighbors.”

The entire list is at https://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2019/.

Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan releases its List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness in January each year.  One of the top words (phrases also are allowed) this year came from this observer of the verbal scene—Polar Vortex.  The list cited two of us:

Kenneth Ross of Glastonbury, Conn., and Bob Priddy of Jefferson City, Mo., were among many who saw this storming in last January. “Less than a week into the new year and it’s the most overused, meaningless word in the media,” said Ross. Priddy noted that it quickly jumped from the weather forecast to other areas, as he said he knew it would:  “Today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorializes about a ‘political vortex.'”

Others that the school says must be banished from popular speech include BAE (for “before anyone else” or “before anything else”) whether referring to a favorite friend or a favorite food for example; “hack” (instead of saying “tip” or “advice”) such as, as one commentator noted, “life hacks, home improvement hacks, car hacks, furniture hacks, painting hacks, work hacks and pretty much any other hack you can think of;” skill set (a phrase that was just a word—skills—until some bureaucrat got hold of it); foodie (one observer called it a ridiculous word. “Do we call people who like wine ‘winies’ or beer lovers ‘beeries’?”

There are several other words on the 2015 list. It’s always fun to check the list each year at http://www.lssu.edu/banished/.  And a review of the lists from previous years is an interesting exploration of how slang sometimes becomes common language although it irritates the devil out of people when it is first used.  It’s also an interesting commentary on the times.

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction writing contest is named in honor of English author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose nineteenth-century novels gave us such commonly-used phrases as “the mighty dollar,” and “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and “the great unwashed.”  What made EGB-W special in literary history, however, is the opening sentence of his 1830 novel, Paul Clifford:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents–except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Should you wish to read the rest of the volume, you can go to http://www.readbookonline.net/read/20417/57414.

This winner of this year’s 33rd Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Award, chosen by English professor Scott Rice and a panel of “distinguished judges” that sometimes includes past winners is Joel Phillips, a New Jersey music teacher.  We missed the news coverage in August that Phillips was recognized for writing something 180 degrees from anything that won a Pulitzer Prize this year:

Seeing how the victim’s body, or what remained of it, was wedged between the grill of the Peterbilt 389 and the bumper of the 2008 Cadillac Escalade EXT, officer ‘Dirk’ Dirksen wondered why reporters always used the phrase ‘sandwiched’ to describe such a scene since there was nothing appetizing about it, but still, he thought, they might have a point because some of this would probably end up on the front of his shirt.

 If you’d like to see the runners-up, dishonorable mentions, and other examples of the best of bad writing in this contest, check http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/.  And in these dark and stormy days ahead before baseball season resumes, perhaps you will find a creative spark that could propel you to national notoriety as a Bulwer-Lytton winner.

 

The day the blind senator cried

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The word that former Senator Harold Caskey, who sat  less than fifteen feet away from my chair at the Senate press table for many years, had died didn’t reach this scribe until a couple of days later.  I think I was on the Inca Trail above Machu Picchu that day and in a situation where checking e-mail was not a daily thing.

Those of us who covered much of his 28-year career in the Senate have been left with memories of a unique character in Missouri politics.  Hard as nails sometimes—there were some lawmakers who had reason to consider him “mean” sometimes—bitingly funny at times (he once said the most dangerous place to be in the world was between a school superintendent and a dollar bill), and passionate about his bills and about being a Senator.

One night, during debate on the bill lowering the drunk driving blood-alcohol content threshold to .08, he claimed that he was the only member of the Senate with a perfect driving record, a claim that brought laughter to the chamber in a time when some of his colleagues were arguing that Missouri government should not join the national movement to reduce the BAC for drunk driving–because Caskey was legally blind and didn’t drive at all.

There are many memories of Caskey and we’ll recall some of them in what might be a long entry.  But for some reason, the first memory that came to me when I got the news he had died was the day he was reduced to tears.

Because Caskey was legally blind, he always had an aide in the Senate with him who would read him the amendments offered during debate on the bills.  For his last several years, he had permission to have a chair beside his desk for aide Kim Green.   Kim, and Marie Gladbach before him, had filled an important role in Caskey’s work away from the floor as well.  Caskey was one of those few lawmakers who actually knew what was in each bill.  Staff members such as Kim and Marie would read the bills to him in his office and his incredible recall capabilities made him more ready to discuss the issues on the floor than many of the sponsors of legislation.  Caskey could be an intimidating figure because he knew the rules and he knew the legislation so well.

When Peter Kinder became the President pro Tem of the Senate, he dramatically announced that he was going to slash the chamber’s operating expenses.  That meant getting rid of several staff members.  One of those he planned to axe was Kim, Caskey’s aide.  I think my story about that event referred to “taking away a blind senator’s eyes.”

The perceived callousness of that announcement by Democrats (and some of Kinder’s fellow Republicans) provoked instant reactions. Nobody, of course, felt the pain more than Caskey.  His anger, his hurt, his surprise that such a thing would be proposed left him in tears as I interviewed him.  It was a short interview that is still somewhere in the Missourinet archives because Caskey struggled through his emotions to find a few words to respond to Kinder’s plan.

The reaction within the membership of the Senate was so strong that Kinder backtracked on his proposal to let Kim go.

There are other memories that are more pleasant.   One year, a proposal was introduced the let the pizza chain Chuck E. Cheese let children playing the games that were (maybe still are) part of the chain’s attractions for customers win tokens that could be traded for prizes.  Caskey immediately branded the chain “Chuck E. Sleaze,” and accused supporters of the bill of trying to create a “kiddie casino.”

Many of his colleagues recall that Caskey was critical of bureaucrats who sought more state funding, sometimes likening them to the large dinosaurs that were so large they had two brains, a small one in the head and a second one near the tail.  Caskey would note that the tail brain was so far from the dinosaur’s mouth that it would demand more food, and the little brain in the head would respond by eating more.  “The tail would demand more green,” he would say, so the head brain would respond by going “chomp, chomp, chomp” and consuming more green.  Caskey would make hand gestures to dramatize the dinosaur eating, the dinosaur symbolizing a state agency that wanted bigger bites of the state budget.

Caskey did not hesitate to use his position as a committee chairman or his position as a hard-nosed Senator to kill legislation.  It would be a mistake to say he was universally popular, it being more likely to say he was widely respected during his seven terms in the Senate—an indication of the hypocrisy of term limits that forced him out.  Although voters had approved limiting senators to two terms, the voters in his district sent Caskey back to Jefferson City twice after term limits went into effect.

The State  Historical Society has had an oral history project for several years.  Several of those interviews include memories of Caskey’s legislative contemporaries.  Kaye Steinmetz, who served in the House from 1977-1995 said that a lot of people were surprised at how well she and Senator Caskey worked together.  Governor Bond once referred to them as the “dynamic duo” after signing six bills in one day that Steinmetz and Caskey had handled in their respective chambers.  “I guess Harold was Batman and I was Robin,” Steinmetz said.

“He goes about the law making process as if it’s a game,” she told the society interviewer. “He likes the challenge of a fight. He likes to hold a bill up in committee until he gets one out of the committee in the House, just for the sake of fighting. His approach is just different. Lots of times folks would say to me; other legislators would say to me, ‘Why are you having Caskey handle your bill?’ Or, ‘Why are you doing Caskey’s bill?’ But we got along great. Harold and I got along great. Sometimes we’d work together late in his office at night…He was the most amazing man. He‟d take a legal pad in, and I’d go to the Senate when he was debating my bills and watch him. And he’d have in great big letters the bill number. That’s all he’d have. Now he had to have staff people read him the bill. And of course he picked my brain about the legislation, but he did a great job of knowing what that legislation was all about and defeating back the bad amendments. We’d get into it once in a while and go into conference committee and have to have a knock-down, drag-out to get it ironed out the right way. I’d give a little and he’d give a little. But I enjoyed working with Harold Caskey. I have great respect for him.”

Representative Annette Morgan, who served 1981-1997, recalled that she and Caskey started out “like oil and water.”  She said, “It just took us forever to learn to get along with each other. But we did, and became really good friends now, and it was over the (school) finance formula. We sat down and we pretty much talked through our differences, or somehow at least got to know each other well enough to quit fighting, or quit reacting to the other person. Then the battle became so tough to get that through even with Mel Carnahan and a great Speaker, Bob Griffin and his experience, and Jim Mathewson — I mean, we had the cumulative experience of probably over a hundred years of legislative power right there, and couldn’t have done it without that. But we were so embattled getting it through, by the time it was finished that all of us who were on the same side felt a real close bond to each other.”  She was referring to the bill changing the way state money was distributed to public schools, a major proposal in Governor Carnahan’s first year.

Senator Frank Bild, a Republican who was in the House and Senate 1973-1991, called Caskey a “phenomenon.”  He told the society interviewer Caskey had “a brilliant mind, but you got to watch him” because Casekey would begin “consolidating various bills, so that before you know it, you’d have a bill a hundred pages long” that sometimes had extraneous matter included.  Bild recalled, “He had one bill there, and I had an amendment to delete a section of his bill, and he thought that I was taking advantage of him, so I told him, I said, ‘Fine, you go ahead and pass the bill with that particular provision in it, and I think you’ve got two subject matters, and I thought I was doing you a favor. If you don’t want the favor, forget about it.’ So I withdrew my objection. So after consulting — he always had somebody on the side to keep him abreast of what’s going on — came over finally, ‘Frank, I think you’re right. Why don’t you introduce your amendment again?’ And I said, ‘No, I think you ought to introduce it and take it out yourself.’ Which he did do. He’s a very brilliant person.”

When legislation was introduced in 1995 to change the name of Northeast Missouri State University to Truman State University, Caskey opposed it, saying that he felt the name change would hurt a few of his constituents who were proud to have diplomas from Northeast Missouri State University. “To change the name makes them lose their university,” he argued.  He didn’t mention, although most us knew, that one of those constituents was his wife, Kay, an NMSU graduate.  Plus, he and other critics pointed out, the school is in Adair County, a place Truman had visited only once and a county he never carried in any election.  When the name change was approved, Caskey supported a bill letting graduates trade their NMSU diplomas for new ones reading Truman State university.

When Caskey was a new Senator and was renovating his office, workers found a picket door that separated the two rooms.  The door had been opened and then sealed within its pocket at some distant time.  So Caskey had the office remodeled to make that door operable again.  Abut that same time, the W. F. Norman Company of Nevada, which had been a national leader in the manufacture of tin ceilings until the 1930s when they went out of style, gained new owners who discovered the original stamping dies still in the building and decided to start making tin ceiling panels again.  One of the first places they installed their new tin ceiling was in Caskey’s office.

When the Senate considered replacing the historic 1917 desks, it had a couple of samples made of new style desks.  Thankfully, the Senate decided not to make a change.  One of those proposed new desks was in Caskey’s office throughout his career.  The desks now are in Senate staff offices.

Another lasting legacy of Harold and Kay Caskey is “pie day.”  For several years, the Caskeys would bring dozens of pies to the Capitol a few days before legislative adjournment and during one of the lunch breaks, long lines would snake through the Senate hallways of people waiting to get a piece of pie.  Other Senators have continued the tradition.

This has been a long entry because Harold Caskey was such a memorable figure in the Senate and because, to be brutal, there are no Senators in this generation of lawmakers who come close to matching him.  And when we left the Senate press table for the last time, we had the impression that few of today’s lawmakers had aspirations to do so.  But we also understand that nostalgia sometimes clouds contemporary assessments.   It does seem, however, to be a rather widely-held feeling among the diminishing number of people at the capitol who recall him and his generation.

Two of Caskey’s Senate colleagues jointly issued a remembrance a few days after his death.  Roger Wilson was a Senator from Columbia before he became Lieutenant Governor (the President of the Senate) and then Governor on Mel Carnahan’s death.  Jim Mathewson was a Senator from Sedalia and served 28 years in the House and Senate, eight of those years as President pro Tem.  We’ll close with their thoughts:

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As former elected officials now long retired from politics and policymaking, we have no delusions of being remembered forever. The Capitol corridors are full of portraits of men and women who served their terms, made marks of varying distinctions, and departed the building and ultimately, this Earth.   But Missouri State Senator Harold Caskey, who died October 1, deserves more recognition than most because he did more to impact laws and the lives of the people of Missouri. Harold did more by confronting and conquering the major life challenge of being legally blind since childhood due to a genetic condition.   Although he lacked sight, Harold never lacked a personal vision for the potential of Missouri. Blindness instilled in Harold a tenacity which could at times be called stubbornness. This was especially true when it came to educating our children. No legislator better understood the mechanics and complexities of school finance. No legislator was a stronger advocate for rural schools since Harold recognized they are the lifeblood of rural communities.   Harold was a lead sponsor of the Excellence In Education Act, which led to smaller class sizes and set minimum pay for teachers to keep smaller schools competitive in hiring and retaining great educators. He also was a strong backer of Senate Bill 380, which provided the largest infusion of funding for public schools in generations while setting high standards.   Harold’s mind and its workings could be a beautiful process or a fearsome experience. That is because Harold never stood up on the Senate floor with less than total preparedness. He accomplished this with loyal and dedicated staff members who read the text of bills into tape recorders, texts which Harold then memorized late into the night. Senators lived in apprehension of being publicly corrected by Harold, sometimes in regard to their own bills.   Harold was what we call an old-school Missouri Democrat – pro-life, pro-gun, pro-public education and especially pro-people when it came to taking care of constituents. We may not have agreed on all issues, but we would rather have Harold for us than against us. Many times Harold was preceded into the president pro tem’s office by the sound of his heavy cowboy boots stomping on the marble. He would arrive lecturing in the most colorful terms, to which the president pro tem would repeatedly reply, “Harold, I love you!” Eventually Harold would turn back to his office, still lecturing.   He wasn’t all hard-charging negotiator. For example, Harold would ply senators with a vast array of homemade pies from bakeries in his district. He had a quiet personal manner, and as U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill eulogized, he was “secretly a sweet softie.” Nowhere was this quality proven as much as when Harold welcomed to his office and advocated for the blind and people with disabilities.   As Harold would tell you, his secret to success was his adored wife Kay, who gave the taxpayers free service by tirelessly taking care of constituents back home. She was Harold’s eyes and his ears in the district. Our prayers for comfort go out to Kay, Kyle and the family.   Term limits took Harold out of the Senate after 28 years. But the proportional loss of wisdom with his Jefferson City exit was far greater than can be measured by a calendar.   This is our personal remembrance of a colleague from our shared Missouri Senate service, which, for the three of us, totaled some 65 years in the chamber. We mourn the passing of a great man, and a great friend. But Harold Caskey’s life will be remembered as one of service and positive inspiration that will stand for years to come.

 

 

 

It’s always a surprise

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—to return from a trip that is incredibly stirring to find that nothing has changed when you get home.   When we rolled into Jefferson City about 1:30 a.m. today (Saturday, October 9), the businesses we drove past were the same as they had been two weeks earlier. The Jefferson City Oil Cartel was still charging twenty cents more a gallon for gasoline than the people in Fulton were paying. McDonald’s drive-through window was still open, serving the McMuffin that was a welcome bit to eat for travelers who hadn’t had anything since lunch at the Miami airport after our flight from Guayaquil, Ecuador that morning. American Airlines didn’t even drop its usual paltry package of pretzels on our drop-down tray tables on the flight from Miami to St. Louis. And if you expect to find any place to grab a quick bite at Lambert-St. Louis airport when your flight arrives sometime after 10 p.m., forget it. Lambert is a ghost town after 6.

Our day that started in Guayaquil ended in our own bed in Jefferson City about 2:30 this morning. We don’t know if today’s younger generation finds nothing remarkable about that. But our generation, or many in our generation, still have a “Gee Whiz”–a phrase of our generation–feeling about this sort of thing. We started our day on the south side of the equator trying to sort out what the Spanish-speaking airport attendant was saying over the loudspeaker in our gate area (among other things, I was summoned to the TSA security office downstairs because my checked bag had been randomly selected for a search—I have great sympathy for those people who have to search through bags of rank clothing that had clothed travelers for two weeks.). We finished it in our home in Jefferson City.

We might post some pictures from these two weeks some time later. Nancy already has been sharing some things on her Facebook page. But your correspondent doesn’t do Facebook or LinkedIn, or other internet stuff like that. Too much going on in the real world. And the “what I did on my autumn vacation” slide show isn’t what this series of observations is for.

The big bags have been unpacked. The two remaining clean shirts and one pair of clean socks are back in the drawers. The new washing machine will be getting a big workout this weekend. Sometime in the next few days, Nancy and I will go through the hundreds of pictures we took, considering how we have been changed by these last two weeks.

We met someone whose parents likely were alive during the French and Indian War. I hiked an ancient trail 9,000 feet up in the Andes Mountains to look down on a mysterious village. Nancy stood with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern. We both explored a unique ecosystem populated by hundreds of species found nowhere else in the world, a place where studies done almost two centuries ago continue to produce massive angst among those who believe understanding of our world should be limited to the words written by the author of Genesis.

We were among our fellow creatures of brown skin, yellow skin, white skin, red feet, yellow feet, blue feet, claws, and scales. We walked among the living and the dead. We heard the music of man and the music of nature. We walked on modern and ancient paths. We spent two weeks eating only things that had been cooked or peeled, washing our teeth with bottled water, and throwing toilet tissue in wastebaskets because leaving it in the toilet would damage the sewage system. We rode planes, trains, boats, and buses. And we drove a car to start the whole thing. We wandered in societies that seek God through the sun, the puma, the crucifix, and through being one with nature’s god. We lived with a country that uses currency requiring calculation of value with purchases that often involve bargaining and in a country that imports United States currency to use as its own money and gives back coins in change that are a mix of United States coins and the local country’s coins. We stayed in rooms that were unlocked with cards that fit into slots, or unlocked doors with a wave of the card, or with great big skeleton keys. Some restaurant menus listed various forms of beef, pork, chicken, or guinea pig. Some of our group sampled dozens of beers you won’t find in the liquor section of the grocery store. I was in a place that didn’t have any Coke or Pepsi products, so I had had a bottle of Inka Cola which was kind of a light cream soda.

Peru and Ecuador. Machu Picchu and the Galapagos. And other places.

We didn’t talk to a single person in any of those places who gave a tinker’s dam about Donald Trump or John Boehner, Obamacare, Governor Nixon’s veto of a right to work bill, and the insane pursuit of millionaire campaign donors by people thirsting for power.

And then we came home, changed people returning to a seemingly unchanged community where “Gee Whiz” experiences are unlikely. Travel once again has made us realize that the comfort of sleeping in one’s own bed has its value. But travel makes sure that sleeping in one’s own bed does not turn into living in a rut.

The villain’s censure is extorted praise

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We’ve read a lot of histories that include biographies of families and founders and most of them are pretty, well truthfully, either dull or so full of platitudes that we don’t stay with them very long.  But one we have enjoyed for many years was published in 1878 by W. V. N. Bay (William Van Ness Bay), a tome that needed 611 pages to live up to its title:

Reminiscences of the Bench and Bar of Missouri: With an Appendix, Containing Biographical Sketches of Nearly All of the Judges and Lawyers who Have Passed Away, Together with Many Interesting and Valuable Letters Never Before Published of Washington, Jefferson, Burr, Granger, Clinton, and Others, Some of which Throw Additional Light Upon the Famous Burr Conspiracy.

Bay’s writing style is graceful, respectful, and honest.  While most books of the era were often written in a stilted or flowery language, his was conversational and genteel.

Here’s an example from Bay’s book.  As I read it, I was reminded of a recent conversation with an acquaintance who is considering whether to get into politics but has had trouble dealing with some of the things said about him in his business.  I’ve suggested that thinking of entering the political realm will expose him to much worse. Bay’s story addresses that and also has a certain resonance with contemporary events.  Bay has a couple of quotes, too, that respond to a part of the world of politics that never seems to get better.  Here’s Bay:

Thomas Reynolds.

Many of our readers will recollect the deep sensation produced upon the public mind by the announcement of the tragic death of this gentleman, who took his own life while governor of the state. He was not only one of the profoundest jurists of the West, but possessed a versatility of talent that would enable him to adorn any position to which he might be called.

Governor Reynolds was born March 12, 1796, in Bracken County, Kentucky. But very little is known respecting his early education, but it was, no doubt, as good as could be obtained in the schools where he resided. He certainly was not a classical scholar, though he had some knowledge of Latin. He was admitted to the bar in Kentucky, about the time he became of age, but in early life he removed to Illinois, where he filled the several offices of clerk of the House of Representatives, speaker of the House, attorney-general, and chief justice of the Supreme Court.

In 1829 he moved to Missouri, and located at Fayette, Howard County. He brought with him a high reputation as a jurist, and soon secured a good practice. It was not long before he was chosen to represent Howard County in the Legislature, and became speaker of the House. After leaving the Legislature he was appointed judge of the judicial circuit comprising the counties of Howard, Boone, Callaway, et al.

In 1840 the Democratic party met in convention at Jefferson City, to nominate a ticket for state officers, and Judge Reynolds was nominated for governor almost by acclamation.

It was at this time we made his acquaintance, and formed a very high estimate of him as not only a man of ability, but of undoubted integrity and honesty of purpose. As a delegate in the Convention we gave him our support, and had occasion frequently afterwards to meet and transact business with him, as we were in the Legislature during most of the time he was governor. He was elected over J. B. Clark by a handsome majority.

No very important event transpired during his administration. He was the first governor who strongly urged the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and probably to him more than any other person are we indebted for this humane enactment.

Governor Reynolds had few superiors as a jurist, and hence it is that most of his life was spent on the bench. There was nothing superficial in his law learning. He drank from the lowest depths of the legal well, and there secured the gems which can be nowhere else found.

“Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below.”

He studied the law as a science, and we have heard him say on several occasions that he had read Coke, Bacon, and Blackstone a dozen times. His mind was as clear as a bell, and his power of analysis very great. As a forensic speaker few excelled him, and in canvassing the state for governor but few were willing to encounter him.

At the time of his death his prospects for distinction were greater than those of any man in the state, for his genial habits, pleasant demeanor, and unquestioned integrity had made him exceedingly popular, and it was a mere question of time as to his elevation to the Federal Senate. He had a dread of being thought disloyal to his party, which often induced him to appoint men to office unfit for the position. A noted instance of this will be found in our memoir of James Evans.

Shortly after breakfast, on February 9, 1844, the report of a gun was heard from the executive mansion in Jefferson City, and some persons passing by at the time went into the governor’s office to ascertain the cause of it, and there found the governor weltering in his blood, with the top of his head blown entirely off, and of course dead. He had just before sent for a rifle, the muzzle of which he placed against his forehead, and by the aid of a strong twine tied to the trigger, with one end wrapped around his thumb, he discharged it. On the table near where he fell was found a letter addressed to his most intimate friend, Colonel William G. Minor, in the following words:

“In every situation in which I have been placed, I have labored to discharge my duty faithfully to the public; but this has not protected me for the last twelve months from the slanders and abuse of my enemies, which has rendered my life a burden to me. I pray God to forgive them, and teach them more charity. My will is in the hands of James L. Minor, Esq. Farewell.

“TH. Reynolds.

“Col. W. G. Minor.”

Here we might stop, and throw a mantle over this mysterious and tragic event, but truth and candor force us to state that many of Governor Reynolds’ friends attributed the suicide to a very different cause from that designated in his letter to Colonel Minor. To be more explicit, they believed it grew out of his domestic troubles. It is certainly a very great draft upon our credulity to suppose that a man who had been a quarter of a century in public life, and who was an old and experienced politician, would take his own life because of the ill-natured squibs of the opposition press, which every public man has to encounter. No greater truism was ever uttered by man, than was uttered by Dean Swift when he said, “Censure is the tax a man pays for being eminent.”

That he may have been more than ordinarily sensitive in this respect is not improbable, but the comments of the press respecting his administration were no more uncharitable than those which had been aimed at the governor who preceded him. He should have found some consolation in the words of Pope:

“The villain’s censure is extorted praise.”

If the letter to Colonel Minor was worded with the view of drawing the attention of the public from the true cause of the suicide, he had a motive which others can conjecture as well as ourselves. We express no opinion in relation to it.

—In months to come, we shall wade thigh-deep through censure, “the tax a man pays for being eminent.”  It is most often the product of those with little to offer for themselves or those they support and is, when you think of it, a form of “extorted praise.”

February, 1844 and February 2015.  Tragedy comes when the “villain’s censure” seems to be the only part of the equation that is recognized and the tax paid for eminence becomes unbearable.

Let’s see in the election year of 2016 whether our lawmakers will do anything about cutting this tax.

It’s in the mail

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Suppose you sat down, say fifteen years ago, to write a letter and you didn’t mail it because stuff kept happening that you wanted to tell your friend about.   Suppose the letter got so big that you decided only half of it would fit in an envelope. So you sent that half but you kept getting the second half to the point where you could finally say, “Well, that’s enough for now” and you finally stuffed it into an envelope and dripped it in a street-side box late at night so it wouldn’t stick around and invite you to write more.

Except you will write some more because you know you left out some stuff that you want to put in and eventually you’ll mail the new version of the second half of this long letter.

A friend told me many years ago, “The trouble with historians is they never want to write. They just want to research.”   He had it right. But sooner or later historians have to put all of that research into some kind of narrative so it is meaningful to others. A historian who doesn’t share his story is not a storian. He or she is just a hiss.

Last Thursday night I emailed 703 pages of mostly accurate typing to the University of Missouri Press. It’s called (for now) Statehouse; the Biography of Missouri’s Capitol. It will be a while before anybody but the editors and I see it. It won’t be filled with a lot of color photographs as the Capitol Art book is. Some, but compared to the Capitol Art book, not many. Lots of black and white archival stuff, though.

One of the problems of writing history is that the story changes as you go along.   This book was supposed to be done well before now. But this summer I got to digging around and came up with about three bunches of stuff that completely changed the orientation of the first 175-or so pages.

Remember groaning in high school when we learned that our themes were increased from 100 words to 250?   The new stuff added about fifty pages to the manuscript. And it changed the beginning of the story from starting with the Capitol fire in 1911 to starting with the story of an Illiterate Frenchman living in Spanish southeast Missouri who got a land grant in 1802.

We won’t tell you more. Just start saving your money to buy the story of the capital and the capitol in a couple of years.

Is it a relief to finally send off a manuscript? No. It’s kind of like letting your kid cross the street for the first time. You’ve told the child to look both ways but you know as you watch your loin-fruit step off the curb that there are other things you want to say.

Well, isn’t it exciting when you have the final product in your hands? Yeah, kinda. But gestation periods are also likely to produce feelings of relief as much as anything.

So the offspring has left the nest. But not forever. For a while. And this loft/office won’t become an empty nest when the book is in the stores. There are a couple of other eggs already incubating.

 

What were they thinking? Part Two

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Some folks at the Capitol who have checked the Benton Mural say they can’t see any damaged caused by the thoughtless use of it for a couple of people to write information on the backs of some business cards a few days ago.   But those thoughtless actions appear likely to change some access to that room.

The House Lounge has become a popular place for groups to hold rallies or press conferences such as the rally to override the Right to Work bill veto last week where this incident took place.

But because of this, it appears likely the House will put some limits on activities in the Lounge and will require a House or Capitol staff member to be present for all of those events just to make sure that someone else doesn’t pull a stunt like that one.

That’s not bad.  The great fear after something like this is that over-reaction will severely limit public access to that incredible piece of art.  While the policy has not been fully implemented yet, it appears to be falling short of the more severe policies that could have been employed.

The lady in the picture has apologized.  The schnook with her who also was writing on a business card hasn’t had the guts to step forward and do the same.  He continues to display bad manners and lack of character, to say the least.

What were they thinking?

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The answer is: They weren’t.  And it leaves thousands of people wondering if there is any limit to stupidity.  Or ignorance.  Or bad manners.  Or lack of consideration.  Or…….

Sometimes you just can’t find the words.

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We’ve been contacted by a number of people during the last few days asking if we’ve seen this picture.  Yes, we have, several times now. Your faithful scribe does not do Facebook or Linked In and twitters, twits, tweets—whatever the heck it is—only for limited professional reasons because I have better things to do with my time.  I do not disparage those who do spend considerable time each day being involved with a large network of people they do and don’t know. Call me a curmudgeon.  I wear the hat proudly.

Anyway, yes, I’ve seen it.  Somebody asked for my reaction.  It was instant.

This is inexcusable behavior by someone I otherwise would have assumed to have a certain level of intelligence and common sense.  These people are displaying behavior that one might expect from an ignorant third-grader and are endangering one of the greatest works of one of America’s foremost 20th century artists and showing disrespect for the greatest work of art in our Capitol.  They might also be placing themselves in some legal jeopardy, depending on whether there is any damage to public property.  There are tables in the House Lounge where they could have done their writing. Thoughtlessness is not in itself a punishable offense.  But these two people should at the very least publicly apologize for their unthinking behavior. 

Bob Priddy, author of ONLY THREE RIVERS ARE PEACEFUL:THE MISSOURI MURAL OF THOMAS HART BENTON and THE ART OF THE MISSOURI CAPITOL: HISTORY IN BRONZE, CANVAS, AND STONE.

Dave Marner, the Owensville newspaper publisher who took the picture, called me during the weekend and we talked at some length about this incident.  His photograph has gone viral and has generated worldwide scorn.  We know who the woman is: Valinda Freed of Randolph County, the vice chairwoman of the Missouri Republican Party, who was in the House Lounge for a rally urging the legislature to overturn Governor Nixon’s Right to Work bill veto.  As another friend of mine has written, “I don’t know the jackass joining in alongside her.”

Another friend who has worked in and around the capitol for a long, long time, sent me a note that said, “It also made me think of the definition of a word you don’t hear much anymore, “philistine”

The incident and the photographic record of it have stirred up a fecal hurricane.  Ms. Freed, after a couple of days in the eye of the hurricane, issued an apology to the Kansas City Star.  “I offer my sincere apologies for my completely unplanned and thoughtless act.  The Thomas Hart Benton mural, and all the magnificent artwork in the Capitol are state and national treasures,” she wrote.  She didn’t elaborate and as far as we know hasn’t done any interviews.

The “jackass” next to her in the picture hasn’t revealed himself or issued any statement regretting his action.  In addition to being a “philistine,” he does not appear to be much of a gentleman because he continues to let Ms. Freed take the fall.

It is also worth noting that this incident is not nearly so sad as the ongoing neglect of the other “state and national treasures” in our capitol.  No other state capitol can match the quantity and the quality of art that we find in Missouri’s Capitol.  Decades of deterioration of the structure and its art are far more egregious than what Ms. Freed and her friend have done. The state is spending forty-million dollars to fix a major foundation leakage problem under the main stairway on the south front of the building, a project so big that it might have an impact on the staging of the inauguration of new state officials in January, 2017.  Those who love the Capitol hope governors-to be and legislatures yet to come will find as much enthusiasm about investing in the capitol as they seem to find in granting favors to interests of economic capital.

It is also fair to note that they were not writing on the painting. They were leaning against it, putting their hands on it, writing on business cards or something.  Their “thoughtless act” did have a positive element to it.

It triggered an outrage on behalf of art and culture.  We are living in a political time when there appears to be little room for appreciation of the arts and the values they bring to society.  The loud insistence from many that their definition of “family values” be the rigid foundation of society seems to leave little room for the liberal freedoms that the arts should communicate.

We do not think, as we view Ms. Freed’s actions, that they are symbolic of that attitude.  We do not believe that she intended her thoughtless action to be a commentary on the arts, certainly not Thomas Hart Benton’s use of the arts to celebrate the efforts of independent citizens to build a diverse, serious, sometimes corrupt but always dynamic state.

While her apology strikes some as inadequate, this viewer wonders what more she could say.  Clearly the photograph has been a gigantic embarrassment to her and for some time to come she will be known to some folks as “that woman who….”   So let’s let her statement stand.  She need not immolate herself on the town square to express her remorse. We do, however, wish that her friend showed at least some class and also apologized instead of letting her get the full load from the hurricane.

Those in Missouri as well as outside the state who have generated that hurricane would do well to retain their indignation and use it to evaluate people, parties, and causes to whom art and culture are on the periphery—at best—of their vision

We’ve heard this before. And before that

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Right to Work is a big issue in this year’s veto session that starts today at the Capitol. The legislature passed it last May and the governor vetoed it.  The arguments on both sides last May were soooo familiar.  And sooooo old.

How old?

We’ve been digging into the papers of Governor Herbert Hadley as we wrap up the first, rough, draft of a new book about the history of the Capitol.  We came across one from W. A. Layman (at least that’s what we think his signature says) who was a Vice President and General Management for Wagner Electric in St. Louis when the Board of Public Buildings announced in July, 1911 that the new Capitol would be built with union labor.  Within hours, the Citizens Industrial Association, in St. Louis, organized a letter-writing campaign against the announcement.  Many of the letters from St. Louis businesses—and a few from Kansas City—are in the Hadley papers at the State Historical Society in Columbia.

Here’s part of Layman’s letter:

“To apply the Closed Shop principle…is not only fundamentally wrong in principle, in our opinion, but it will be seriously harmful to all substantial business interests in the State and will have particularly the tendency to place all manufacturing institutions of the State at a great disadvantage in the competitive markets of the country as a whole.

“You are aware that certain leading cities of the country are to-day employing the “Open Shop” principle in all industrial and building operations and the result is not only a condition of social peace and harmony in the industrial life of the community, but in great industrial prosperity for the employer and the employee alike.”  

The phrase “paycheck protection” was about a century away from creation when he wrote his letter on July 6, 1911.  That’s the current buzz phrase to describe what for several decades has been called Right to Work.  But the arguments haven’t changed, have they?  Mandatory union membership hurts business and places manufacturers (and the State) in a competitive disadvantage.  Open Shop leads to economic prosperity and several other entities are flourishing because they’ve adopted the practice.

The Capitol was built with union labor.  It seems to have turned out okay.  That’s not to say it couldn’t have been built as well with an open shop.  It’s just that some of the stuff that goes on inside it never goes away.  And nobody seems to have found any fresh and creative arguments. It gets so tiresome but the issue will always be with us as long as there is labor and there is management and each seeks a politically-protected status.   But, gosh, folks, wouldn’t you think that after more than a century of these same arguments, somebody would be able to provide some conclusive evidence that one side or the other REALLY does create some kind of economic nirvana?

Morale of the story:  No issue is too old to flog. Especially if it plays to the advantage of one party or another and helps undermine the losing side.

I have a religious objection

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….to religious objections.

But I’m rooting for Kim Davis, the Rowan, Kentucky County Clerk who spent five days in jail for contempt of court for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses that the United States Supreme Court says are legal under the Constitution.  She’s out now and still has her job.  She remains “religiously opposed” to issuing same sex marriage licenses but is under a federal district judge’s order not to keep her employees from issuing the licenses she opposes.  If she does, she could be on the wrong side of the bars again.

Her lawyer says, “She loves God, she loves people, she loves her work, and she will not betray any of those three,” a statement that seems from this distance to advocate an interesting dance.

She does not want her name on any same-sex marriage license. Her attorneys say the licenses issued by her deputies while she’s been away are not valid because they don’t bear her signature.   However Kentucky law says any act she is entitled by law to do can be legally done by a “lawful deputy.”

Of course, some political candidates are quick to hitch their campaigns to Davis, who has become a symbol to an important voting segment of our population. Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee have gone to Kentucky to sand by Davis. Other Republican hopefuls are keeping some distance.  One of our Missouri Attorney General candidates already has claimed that, if elected, he will have the power to issue an opinion that will protect those who have sincerely held religious objections to state and federal laws.  Apparently this candidate for Attorney General does not realize that an attorney General’s opinion does not have any force of law and is, as a judge said many years ago, is just another lawyer’s opinion.   Interestingly, none of the other candidates for Missouri Attorney General have claimed they also could be a savior.

Kim Davis is the darling of the Religious Right today and, should she wish, could make a lot of money on the speaking circuit.   Her release was a disappointment to many people, not because they believe she is wrong in her position but because her case could set up a court test of the Religious freedom Restoration Act movement.   But she and her supporters are fighting the same-sex marriage issue on more than one front, so her case is likely to get to the United States Supreme Court one way or another.

Some see this case that was, to be blunt, inevitable when RFRA started gaining popularity in increasingly conservative legislatures.  It has been framed as a question of whether government can force someone to violate their personal religious beliefs. The mirror image of the question is whether one person can impose their religious freedom as a way to limit the religious freedom or the secular civil rights of fellow citizens in a nation that has a history of trying to keep church and state apart.

We saw a cartoon the other day portraying the chaos that can result if RFRA is fully sanctioned in society.  A person in a supermarket checkout lane wants to buy some condoms but the checkout clerk says she cannot ring up that sale because it would violate the clerk’s sincerely-held religious beliefs.  “You have to go to register ten,” the clerk says.   So the customer takes the groceries to register ten and has no problem buying the condoms but is told, “I can’t ring up that ham because my sincerely-held religious beliefs do not allow me to sell ham.   You’ll have to go to register eight.”

There is another story that might provide some guidance.  Might.

The ancient historian Josephus, a Pharisee, has written that followers of that movement were supported by the common Jewish people in the time of Jesus.  They claimed to be guided by the law of Moses in their interpretations of Jewish law.  If your correspondent’s understanding of Jewish history is correct, the Pharisees claim to be the founders of today’s Rabbinic Judaism.   Josephus contrasts them to the Sadducees, an upper class whose authority came from the high priest in the times of Solomon.  We fear we have over-simplified the difference, but over-simplification of religion and government is so common today that we hope our indiscretion has not been a serious one.

Three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, record the day that some Pharisees hoped to trip up a young rabbi with a challenging question.  Matthew and Mark say they were Pharisees.  Luke says they were “spies pretending to be sincere.”   Luke says they were trying to set up Jesus so he would say something that would make him vulnerable to prosecution by the Roman governor.

They first flattered him: “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.”  Then came the zinger: “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”  The Jews objected to paying those taxes, of course.   Matthew says they asked the question maliciously.  Mark says they asked it hypocritically.

Jesus, who was born at night but not last night, recognized immediately what was afoot.  And he got a little testy because, as Luke says, he saw through their craftiness.  “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites,” he said in Matthew’s version.

“Show me a coin,” he demanded.  And when they gave him a denarius, He asked them, “Whose face  and inscription are on this coin?”  The scriptures don’t say if there was any hemming and hawing although there might have been at least some of the Pharisees who might have immediately seen where their strategy was about to go out of the wagon tracks.   “Caesar’s,” they answered.

We wonder if Jesus paused for dramatic effect or if he flipped the denarius back to the person who gave it to him as he said, “Therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”   The Pharisees, the scriptures say, were stuck silent and after a while got up and walked away.   They still didn’t like this guy.  But they couldn’t argue with him that day.

The Pharisees, common people like Kim Davis today, had a strong religious objection to the edicts of their government.  And they didn’t want to obey that government.   And some perhaps curried favorable public opinion by opposing them.

We’re not scholars of the Bible in our house.  But we are unaware of any similar statement in the Old Testament, which was the foundation for the Pharisees’ positions in those times.

What Jesus did that day was define the line between church and state.

Many of those who side with Kim Davis argue that she should not be persecuted in this Christian Nation for standing up for her Christian beliefs.   Others say it might not hurt for the Christian Nation to remember the day Jesus Christ defined the line between church and state.   And perhaps the Kim Davis case, if it works its way through the legal system, might determine how much the definition in the First Century of the Common Era remains the same these twenty centuries later.