Sports—Baseball final tune-ups; A Pepto-Bismol NCAA Tournament; A hot hand for the Battlehawks QB; And a little racin’ at the end

(Royals)—Kansas City Royals starter Zack Greinke looked ready to go in his last Cactus League start before he becomes the oldest pitcher to make an opening-day start in Royals history.

He’ll be on the mound Thursday afternoon when the Royals open at home against the Twins.  Minnesota will go with Pablo Lopez who joined the Twins in the offseason from the Marlins.

Greinke needs two more wins to get to 225 and 118 strikeouts to become the 20th pitcher to throw 3,000.  Only Justin Verlander (3,198) and former Missouri Tiger Max Sherzer (3,193) are ahead of him as active pitchers.

It will be Greinke’s seventh opening day start.  The game will be the first opening day as manager for the Royals’ Matt Quataro.

The Royals finish spring training this afternoon before opening at home against the Twins on Thursday. Last night the two teams played to a 4-4 tie.  The Royals opened a 3-0 lead on a two-run homer in the fourth inning but Texas scored twice in each of the last two innings for the tie.

(Cardinals)—It’s the time when hopeful young guys get the word on whether they’ve made “the show” or whether they’re going to ride minor league buses again.

Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol called Jordan Walker into his office Saturday, gave him a candid evaluation of his spring training work and then told him, “You deserve every bit of being with us on opening day.”

He’s 20. He’s six feet-five, a third baseman becoming a left fielder, who played his way onto the opening day roster by hitting .284 in the Grapefruit League with three homes, nine RBIs, and 19 runs scored in 65 at-bats.  Last year at Springfield he hit .308 with 22 stolen bases to go with his 19 homers.

He will be the youngest Cardinals player to make his major league debut since 1999. That was Rick Ankiel’s year to get the great news.

Jack Flaherty, scheduled to pitch the second game of the regular season Saturday, had an ugly wrap-up in Florida, as the Cardinals lost to the Astros 24-1, getting outhit 20-9. Flaherty got just 11 outs, gave up six hearned runs on four hits and three walks. He struck out one batter and only 39 of his 69 pitches were strikes. He finishes spring training with an ERA of 6.41. Opposing batters hit .329 against him.

Miles Mikolas will be the opening day pitcher.

The Redbirds wrapped up their spring training schedule with an 8-2 win over the Orioles. Jordan Montgomery had a solid five innings with one run, three hits, four strikeouts and a walk on 72 pitches.

The Cardinals open against the Blue Jays, in St. Louis, Thursday.

 (BATTLEHAWKS)—Quarterback A. J. McCarron hit 19 passes in a row Saturday night against the Las Vegas Vipers. He finished 23 for 29, three touchdowns and 236 yards.  The Battlehawks are now 4-2, tied with the Seattle Sea Dragons for second place behind D. C. Defenders, who are undefeated.

The XFL season is starting to run down for the ‘Hawks. They’re on the road for the last time next Sunday against the Houston Roughnecks. They finish up with three straight home games against the Vipers, the Sea Dragons, and then play the Orlando Guardians.

(NCAA TOURNAMENT)—A historic final four has been set after a couple of weeks of bracket carnage.  For the first time since the NCAA started seeding teams in 1979, no number ones made it to the great eight.

The whole tournament has been one of great upset.  One-third of the games played to narrow the field to the Final Four have seen a lower ranked team prevail over a higher seed. That means no #1 will be in the final four for only the fourth time. It happed previously in 1980, when there were only 48 teams in the tournament, 2006 and 2011 after the expansion to 64 teams.

The final four features one team seeded as high as fourth—University of Connecticut.  Two number fives (San Diego State and Miami of Florida) and a sixth seed, Creighton.

Next weekend San Diego State (5) plays Creighton (6) and UConn (4) plays Miami of Florida (5) will decide who will play for the big trophy.

Now the racin’

(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick withstood three furious overtime restarts to win his first race of the year and post the first Toyota victory of 2023 at the Circuit of the Americas in Texas.  It’s his first win with his new team, 23XI racing.  He’s driving the car Kurt Busch would have been driving if he was healthy enough to be in a race car this year.

Instead, Busch was in the television broadcasting booth and admitted he was choked up as he watched “his” car win by 1.4 seconds over Kyle Busch, Alex Bowman, Ross Chastain, and pole-sitter William Byron.

Reddick and Byron had fought for the lead during most of the, eventually, 75-lap race. They led 69 of the laps, 41 by Reddick.

The race had an international flavor with four “ringers” who were brought in because of their road-racing experience.  Kimi Raikkonen, the 2007 Formula One champion, was as high as fourth before finishing 29th.  Jenson Button, the F1 champion in 2009, was 18th.  Jordan Taylor, the reigning champion in the IMSA Series, filled in for the injured Chase Elliott and came home 24th after reaching the top ten briefly.  INDYCAR driver Conor Daley was 36th, dropping out early with a bad transmission.

(INDYCAR)—The high banks of the Texas Motor Speedway will see INDYCAR’s second race of the season next weekend.

(F1)—Formula One is in Melbourne, Australia next weekend for the Australian Grand Prix.

Presidents Day

On this Presidents Day, we pause to think of Missouri’s Presidents.  There are two, only one of whom is a native. And there might be a third.

And then there are a lot of folks who once entertained thoughts of high political grandeur but who fell by the wayside.  We spent some time back in a Missourinet studio last week talking for today’s edition of “Showme Today” about our presidents and some of our presidential wannabes.

In the old railroad depot in Atchison, Kansas is the smallest presidential library in the country. It’s considered an unofficial one because of the peculiar circumstances of David Rice Atchison’s perhaps-presidency.  His grave stone in Plattsburg tells a story:

Missouri’s northwesternmost county is named for him, way up in the corner. For years, Missouri and Nebraska feuded over 5,000 acres known as McKissick’s Island that was left on the Missouri side of the river after a flood in 1867 changed the river channel. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1904 that McKissick Island was still Nebraska territory. It took 95 more years for the two states to agree on an interstate compact approved by Congress that created the legal boundary. But the only way Nebraskans can get to it is by driving through part of Iowa and into Atchison County, Missouri.

Atchison, Kansas is 24 miles southwest of St. Joseph. David Rice Atchison was from Liberty but in the days of “Bleeding Kansas” when the state was deciding if it would be slave or free, Atchison led one of the groups of “border ruffians” who went to Kansas and voted to elect a pro-slavery legislature.

He served two terms in the U. S. Senate. He was so popular that he was elected president pro tempore thirteen times. In those days, the vice-president presided over the Senate and the pro tem was elected and presided only on those rare times when the vice-president wasn’t there.

Vice-President George M. Dallas left the Senate for the rest of the session on March 2, 1849 and the senate picked Atchison to preside in his place.

Presidents were inaugurated later back there—March 4th (the 25th Amendment adopted in 1933 moved the date to January).  The date fell on a Sunday in 1849. Pesident James Polk signed his last bill early in the moring of March 4 because the Senate had been in session all night. In fact, it didn’t adjourn until 7 a.m.

Incoming President Zachary Taylor did not want to be sworn in on the Sabbath and did not take the oath of office until noon, Monday, March 8.

Some argue that Atchison, as president pro tem, was in line to be president of the country under the succession act of 1792.  But Congress had adjourned its session that Sunday morning, meaning Atchison no longer held a Congressional office and therefore there was no line of succession.

He never claimed he was president, “never for a moment” as he wrote in 1880. The truth seems to be that there was no president and no congress for almost a day. In those days of slow national and international communication, there was no crisis.

That’s why the Atchison presidential library, those two display cases in the railroad depot, is “unofficial.”

Incidentally—there was a corresponding controversy in 1877 when Rutheford B. Hays, apparently seeking to avoid another Atchison affair, took took the oath of office in a private ceremony on Saturday, March 3.  But President Grant’s term did not end officially until March 4th. Some think that meant we had TWO presidents for a day.

Speaking of Grant—

Missouri claims him although he was not a native.  He married Julia Dent, the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis County farmer and took up farming in the area.  Grant was Ohio-born and his real name Hiram Ulysses Grant.  He didn’t like his first name and preferred to be known byhis mddleone. He became known as Ulysses S. Grant because Congressman Thomas Hamer nominated him for appointment to West Point apparently not realizing his first name was Hiram and addig a “S” as a middle initial—Grant’s mother’s maiden name was Simpson.

There is at least one letter from Grant during his West Point years in which he signed, “U. H. Grant.”  In time he came to accept the Ulysses S(for Simpson) Grant.  His tactics during the Civil War led to his nickname of “Unconditional Surrender.

Grant’s father-in-law gave the young couple some of his land for their own farm. But the venture was unsuccessful. He also was unsuccessful in other business ventures.

He rejoined the Army at the start of the war and was a Colonel based in Mexico Missouri when he read in a newspaper that he had been appointe Brigadier General.  He commended the unit at Jefferson City for a few days before being dispatched to southeast Missouri where he began building his fame.

Missourian Mark Twain became his close frend in his last days when the family was living in very poor conditions—there was no presidential pension then—and Grant was slowly dying of throat cancer.  Twain arranged to have Grant’s two-volume autobiography published after his death. Sales gave the family some financial security.

In 1903 the Busch family bought the land, now known as Grant’s Farm. Today his farm, his cabin, and the mansion of the Dent Family are part of the Busch family estate.

And that brings us to our native-borne president, Harry Truman, who also has an “S” that means nothing. He was born in Lamar, in southwest Missouri, a town where famous Wyatt Earp had his first law enforcement job.  He also has an S between his first and last names but, unlike Grant, it’s not a mistake.  Formally, there’s no period after the letter because it doesn’t stand for any specific name although he often put a period there.  The “S” honors his two grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

His extensive story is a familiar one to Missourians but there’s a special angle that links Jefferson City to the Man from Independence.   In the 1930s while he was the Presiding Judge of the Jackson County administratie court, President Roosevelt appointed him to head the administrations jobs program.  Three days a week, he drove to Jefferson City where he did business out of a fourth-floor room at the Capitol.  It was during that time that the Pendergast political machine in Kansas City called him to a meeting in Sedalia to tell him he was going to challenge incumbent U.S. Senator Roscoe Patterson in the 1934 election.  There are those who think the Pendergasts wanted him to lose so they could put their own man in the presiding judge’s chair and get Truman out of Jackson County politics. Truman, however, beat Patterson, beginning a career in Washington that led him in 1944 to the vice-presidential nomination and ultimately his historic years in the White House.

We’ve had some others who sought the presidency or thought they might seek it.

Governor Benjamin Gratz Brownan Unconditional Unionist in the Civil War and a founder of he Republican Party in Missouri.  He tried to get Abraham Lincoln replaced as the Republican nominee in 1864, strongly opposed President Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, was defeated in the 1872 convention by New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley—and they ultimately were crushed by former Missouri failed farmer U.S. Grant.

Congressman Richard Parks Bland was the leader going into the 1896 Democratic National Convention.  But his marriage to a Catholic woman generated opposition within the party and he lost to William Jennings Bryan on the fifth ballot.

Champ Clark, the only Missourian to serve as Speaker of the House, was the leading candidate at the 1912 Democratic Convention. Although he was favored by a majority of delegates he never could get to the required two-thirds.  It took 46 ballots for the convention to choose Woodrow Wilson over him.

Young Christopher Bond was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party when the convention met in 1976 in Kansas City and was on a short-list of potential running mades for Gerald Ford. His 12,000 vote upset loss to Joseph Teasdale in November crashed dreams of the White House. But he beat Teasdale in a 1980 rematch and went on to a distinguished career as a United States Senator.

Thomas Eagleton sought the vice-presidency under George McGovern’s campaign. But reports that he had undergone some electro-shock treatments for depression ended is VP run a few weeks after the convention.

Congressman Jerry Litton was a charismatic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1976 who died with his wife and two children and two other people when their airplane crashed on takeoff from the Chillicothe Airport on their way to a victory party in Kansas City.  Litton was known to think he was presidential material. Jimmy Carter, who was elected President that day, thought that Litton would be President some day.  The Senatorship went to John Danforth.  His top aide told me sometime afterwards that Danforth wasn’t sure he could have beaten Litton.  The what-if game can ponder whether we might have seen a Reagan-Litton contest or a Litton-Bush 41.

We haven’t had a serious contestant since, although there are rumors that Josh Hawley would like to be the running mate of Donald Trump in 2024.

Some presidents bring honor to the office. Others bring dishonor and all of them fall somewhere in between.  Today we honor those who served and the office they held.

It is one of the Monday holidays decreed by Congress in 1968. Although we call it Presidents Day, Congress has never changed its original designation:  Washington’s birthday.

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Notes from a Quiet Street (post-January celebration)

We saw something a few days ago at the Capitol that I don’t think we’ve ever seen—generally bipartisan reaction to a governor’s State of the State message. Applause from both sides of the aisle and complimentary assessments from the minority party that exceeded such positive comments we’ve seen in the past regardless of who the governor has been.

We’ll watch in the next four months to see if the good feelings last.

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Our State Representative has filed a sports wagering bill that gives the legislature a choice for the first time in the five years the gambling industry has tried to push the legislature into passing what the industry is demanding.  The new bill also allows sports wagering, but says it will be done on the state’s terms, not the indutry’s terms.  Our lawmakers now have a choice of whether the people are at home are more important than the people in the hallways of the Capitol.

We’ll probably revisit that topic later.

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Both political parties are looking for viable national candidates or tickets for 2024.  We have one for the GOP that will be hard to beat.

Kinsinger and Cheney.

Or

Cheney and Kinsinger

The party is unlikely to nominate either one, let alone both.  But it would seem that both would be attractive to non-Trumpist GOPers and to independents alike and likely would even draw some interest from Democrats, especially if the Democrats nominate a ticket that has weaknesses—and as we write this, there are plenty of questions within the Democratic Party about whether a renomination of Joseph Biden would be the most solid choice, particularly if somebody not named Trump runs on the other side.

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The Hill recently published a list of eight Republicans who could challenge Donald Trump in 2024.  You know Yogi’s old saying about deju vu.  One of the ways The Donald got the nomination in 2016 was because several candidates split the 65% of the primary vote he didn’t get primary after primary, enabling him to get all of the delegates at one-third the price.

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Some think he won’t be a factor by then—that his concern about a new four-year term should be replaced by concern about a 10-15 year term.

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Joe Biden will turn 82 a few weeks after the 2024 election.  Donald Trump will be that old when he finishes a second term, if——

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We are only about 17 or 18 months away from national conventions, a year away from the first primaries.  That’s a long time in politics.  Plenty of time for something good to happen.

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And Lord knows we need something good to happen in our politics.

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We are grateful it is February.  We have weathered the worst month of the year. Cold and snow do not seem so permanent after we have left January.  February is a short month and by the end of it men are playing baseball again and racing engines are running hot. And it stays daylight longer.  And soon there will be a little green haze in the trees.

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Update:  As of this writing, the Mediacom cable that the company laid across our street instead of re-burying it at the end of last September has been ripped out only twice by the snowplow. It quit working a third time, perhaps because regular traffic dislodged it from its attachment post in our neighbor’s yard. But a technician hustled right out and got it hooked back up.

But it’s only February. Plenty of time for snowplows to roam the streets again.

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Super Bowl is next weekend.  That will end the NFL Season and set the stage for the new XFL season that will carry us until the Canadian Football League starts, filling the gap until the next NFL season.

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And speaking of the NFL—It has found a way to make an irrelevant football game even more irrelevant.  The All-Star game was flag football. Made-for-TV entertainment.

Watch next year for one-hand below the waist games.

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An article in the local paper about this year’s efforts to get sports wagering approved mentioned Rep. Dave Griffith’s bill but missed an important point.  It’s the first time the legislature has been given a clear altenrative to the casino industry’s demands.  This is the first time the lawmakers will have a chance to decide if sports wagering should be done on the casino industry’s terms….or in the best interests of the people who sent those lawmakers here.

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The Ring-Tailed Painter Puts a Governor in his Place 

One of the great untapped resources for great stories from Missouri’s earliest days is the county histories that were compiled in the 1870s and ‘80s.

A few days ago, our indefatigable researcher was prowling through one of those old histories to make sure a footnote in the next Capitol book is correct and I came across the story of how Wakenda County became Carroll County.  That led to digging out the 1881 history of Carroll County where I met a fascinating character.  The account concluded with his departure for Texas and that led to an exploration of the early history of Texas. And there was the same guy, with a different name, who was part of the discontented Missourians that lit the fuse for the Texas Revolution.

I’ve written him up for an episode of Across Our Wide Missouri that I’ll record some day for The Missourinet.  The story will be shortened for time constraints.  But I want you to meet one of the many fascinating people whose often-colorful ghosts live in those old books.

The first settler of Carroll County “combined the characters of trapper, Indian skirmisher, and politician….a singular man, eccentric in his habits, and fond of secluding himself in the wilderness beyond the haunts of civilization. He was rough in his manners, but brave, hospitable and daring…He was uneducated, unpolished, profane and pugilistic.”  An 1881 county history says Martin Palmer, at social gatherings “would invariably get half drunk and invariably have a rough and tumble fight.”

He called himself the Ring-Tailed Panther, or as he pronounced it, “the Ring-Tailed Painter” and said he fed his children “on rattlesnake hearts fried in painter’s grease.”  A county in Texas is named for this “half horse and half alligator” of a man.

Martin Palmer was the first state representative from Carroll County in a state legislature that was a mixture of the genteel gentlemen from the city and rough-cut members of the outstate settlements.  During the first legislative session, held in St. Charles, some of the members got into a free-for-all and when Governor Alexander McNair tried to break up what Palmer called “the prettiest kind of fight,” Palmer landed a punch that knocked our first governor to the ground.   He told McNair, as he put it, “upon this principle of democratic liberty and equality,” that “A governor is no more in a fight than any other man.”

Wetmore’s Gazette, published in 1837, recorded that Palmer and his son loaded a small keel boat with salt as they headed for the second legislative session in St. Charles, planning to sell the much-valued mineral when they got there.  But the boat capsized in the dangerous Missouri River. The salt was lost and Palmer and his son survived by climbing on the upside-down boat and riding it until they landed at the now-gone town of Franklin. He remarked, “The river…is no respecter of persons; for, notwithstanding I am the people’s representative, I was cast away with as little ceremony as a stray dog would be turned out of a city church. “

He became a state senator in the third legislative session but left for Texas shortly after, in 1825, as one of the early Missouri residents to move to then-Mexican Texas.

A short time later he was accused of killing a man in an argument. He went to Louisiana and raised a force of men, returned and arrested all of the local Mexican government officials and took control of the area around Nacogdoches. He pronounced himself commander-in-chief of the local government in what became known as the Fredonian Rebellion and ordered all Americans to bear arms. He held “courts martial” for the local officials, convicted them, and sentenced them to death, then commuted the sentences on condition they leave Texas and never return.

Fellow Missourian Stephen F. Austin opposed the rebellion and wrote it was being led by “infatuated madmen.” It ended a month later when the Mexican Army arrived and Palmer went back to Louisiana. But some historians believe it became seed of the later Texas War for Independence.  Palmer later returned to become a key figure in the Texas Revolution.

He was elected a delegate to a convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos. When Sam Houston moved for adoption of the Texas Declaration of Independence, Palmer seconded the motion. He chaired the committee that wrote the Texas Constitution. But he knew it meant war with Mexico. He wrote his wife, “The declaration of our freedom, unless it is sealed with blood, is of no force.”

By now he had changed his last name from Palmer to Parmer. One contemporary observed, “He had a stubborn and determined will and showed impatience of delays…Hewas a unique character but with all he was a man with the best of impulses—honest, brave and heroic.” A fellow delegate called him “a wonderfully fascinating talker…a man absolutely without fear (who) held the Mexicans in contempt.”

After independence was won, Parmer served in the Texas congress and later was appointed Chief Justice of Jasper County, Texas.  He died there at the age of 71. He is buried thirty feet from the grave of Stephen F. Austin, “The Father of Texas,” in the Texas State Cemetery.

In 1876, the Texas Legislature honored a Parmer, “an eccentric Texan of the olden times,” by naming a panhandle county for him.

Missouri’s “Ring-tailed painter,” and fighting Texas pioneer Martin Parmer, born as Martin Palmer died, appropriately, on Texas Independence Day, March 2, 1850.

It’s Not the Silliest Thing I’ve Ever Heard 

But it’s among ’em.

I’m sure there must have been things that were sillier.  But the push by some members of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s caucus to expunge Donald Trump’s impeachments is moves the needle on our Outlandish Scale.

They want to say officially that the impeachments never happened.

The House and Senate never debated his impeachments—two of them—no matter what hundreds of pages of the Congressional Record show.  Or newspaper stories.  Or archived video and audio of hours of proceedings.  Or personal memories.

Major issues foreign and domestic loom over the Congress but there are people who think one of the most important things to do is say the House did not impeach Donald Trump.

If the House didn’t impeach him, what were those trials in the Senate all about then?

Here we fall back on some trite observations familiar to all of us:

You can’t un-ring a bell.

You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.

Other perceptions come to mind:

You can close the barn door, but the horse is already gone.

You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

What are they going to do if they pass their expungement resolution?  Come around to my door and tell me “Fuggedaboudit?”  What will they do if I don’t?

Donald Trump is the only president to be impeached twice. Period.

Whether he likes it or not, he’s past history. And the number of people who care what he likes is diminishing.

Don’t waste time on Trump when there’s Joe and Hunter Biden to maul.  Trump is outdated liverwurst. The Bidens are fresh meat.

And in your spare time, address the debt limit and the budget.  And clean up the daily accumulating mess represented by New York’s third district congresman.

But as far as erasing impeachment? Move on. Get over it.

When the children’s poet roamed the Capitol

Of all of the reporters who have covered the State Capitol, only one rose to such significance that a portrait of him is part of the great art in the building. One of the four famous Missourians whose portraits decorate the governor’s office is Eugene Field.  A plaque on the side of a building about three blocks away marks the place where he had his office as a correspondent for the St. Louis Journal.

If you are not familiar with the name, you undoubtedly at some point in your childhood heard the poem beginning:

“Wynken, Blyken, and Nod one night                                                                                            Sailed off in a wooden shoe….”

Or maybe:

The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat…”

Or perhaps:

“I ain’t afraid uv snakes or toads, or bugs or worms or mice,                                                       An’ things ‘at girls are skeered uf I think are awful nice!”

One of these days we’ll go to the State Historical Society in Columbia and dig out the articles he wrote from Jefferson City but for now we’ll share with you a recollection by one of his contemporaries, Chicago newspaperman Slason Thompson, who write a book about Field in 1901:

Although Eugene Field made his first essay in journalism as a reporter, there is not the shadow of tradition that he made any more progress along the line of news-gathering and descriptive writing than he did as a student at Williams.  He had too many grotesque fancies dancing through his whimsical brain to make account or “copy” of the plain ordinary facts that for the most part make up the sum of the news of the average reporter’s day.  What he wrote for the St. Louis Journal or Times-Journal, therefore, had little relation to the happening he was sent out to report, but from the outset it possessed the quality that attracted readers.  The peculiarities and not the conventions of life appealed to him and he devoted himself to them with an assiduity that lasted while he lived.  Thus when he was sent by the Journal to Jefferson City to report the proceedings of the Missouri state Legislature, what his paper got was not an edifying summary of that unending grist of mostly irrelevant and immaterial legislation through the General Assembly hopper, but a running fire of pungent comment on the idiosyncrasies of its officers and members.  He would attach himself to the legislators whose personal qualities afforded most profitable ammunition for sport in print.  He shunned the sessions of Senate and House and held all night sessions of story and song with the choice spirits to be found on the floors and in the lobbies of every western legislature.  I wonder why I wrote “western” when the species is as ubiquitous in Maine as in Colorado?  From such sources Field gleaned the infinite fund of anecdote and of character-study which eventually made him the most sought-for boon companion that ever crossed the lobby of a legislature or of a state capital hotel in Missouri, Colorado, or Illinois. He was a looker-on in the legislative halls and right merrily he lampooned everything he saw. Nothing was too trivial for his notice, nothing so serious as to escape his ridicule or satire. 

Sounds as if Eugene Field would have loved some of the things we have today—blogs, Twitter, Facebook—-all of the social media stuff.  But Thompson says that at the time Field was part of the capitol press corps, “There was little about his work…that gave promise of anything beyond the spicy facility of a quick-witted, light-hearted western paragrapher.”

Thompson told of Field’s merry spirit when Fields was assigned the job of (as Thompson put it) “misreporting Carl Schurz when that peripatetic statesman stumped Missouri in 1874 as a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate.”

Field in later years paid unstinted tribute to the logic, eloquence, and patriotic force of Mr. Schurz’s futile appeals to rural voters of Missouri.  But during the trip his reports were in no wise conducive to the success of the Republican an Independent candidate.  Mr. Schurz’s only remonstrances were, “Field, why will you lie so outrageously?”  It was only by the exercise of careful watchfulness that Mr. Schurz’s party was saved from serious compromise through the practical jokes and snares which Field laid for the grave, but not revered Senator.  On one occasion when a party of German serenaders appeared at the hotel where the party was stopping, before Mr. Schurz had completed a necessary change of toilet. Field stepped out on the veranda, and waving the vociferous cornet and trombone to silence, proceeded to address the crowd in broken English.  As he went on the cheering soon subsided into amazed silence at the heterodox doctrines he uttered, until the bogus candidate was pushed unceremoniously aside by the real one.  Mr. Schurz had great difficulty in saving Field from the just wrath of the crowd, which had resented his broken English more than his political heresies.

On another occasion when there was a momentary delay on the part of the gentleman who was to introduce Mr. Schurz, Field stepped to the front and with a strong German accent addressed the gathering as follows:

“Ladies and Shentlemen:  I haf such a pad colt dot et vas not bossible for me to make you a speedg tonight, but I have die bleasure to introduce you to my prilliant chournalistic friend Euchene Fielt, who will spoke to you in my blace.” 

It was all done so quickly and so seriously that the joke was complete before Mr. Schurz could push himself into the centre of the stage. Annoyance and mirth mingled in the explanation that followed.  A love of music was the only thing that made Field tolerable to his serious-minded elder.

A July 3, 1924 story in the Jefferson City Daily Capital News gives us more stories about Fields’ days as a member of the Capitol press corps.  E. W. Stephens, the chairman of the State Capitol Commission that oversaw construction of the building, related:

“When Field was acting as a reporter in Jefferson City he sometimes tied his young son to a post while he went into the Capitol to get a story.  I remember that he organized a band of serenaders here that was known as the Van Amburgh Show. One man impersonated a monkey, one a lion, another a monkey, and so on.  It was a real circus especially when the lion roared.  Field took the men and drilled them and then serenaded the governor and other dignitaries. 

“Field was very fond of singing and one of his most popular songs was ‘I am captain of the Armyee.’  It goes like this:

I am Captain Jinks of the Horse marines,                                                                I feed my horse on corn and beans,                                                                        I court young ladies in their teen                                                                              I am a captain of the armyee.

“Another song he was fond of singing was, ‘If I was as young as I used to be.’  I remember one evening when Field was attending a party at the home of Judge Warren Woodson.  The evening was warm, and couples strolled to a nearby well occasionally, after water.  Someone came in and reported that a certain young man had been seen at the well kissing a young woman.  Field immediately paraphrased a song which he was in the habit of singing and when the couple returned sang the following version of ‘The Old Man.’

When I was young and in my prime,                                                                      I was drinking cold water most of my time.                                                                If any girl here will go to the well with me,                                                                I’ll show her I’m as young as I used to be.”

We have come across a letter Field wrote from Jefferson City to his wife, Julia, whom he had married in October, 1873, about two months before her seventeenth birthday.  She had remained in St. Joseph.  Most of the letter is the kind of usual chit-chat but toward the end, we learn a little about how bored he was in Jefferson City.  It was sent on January 12, 1874.

My dear wife.  I was delayed somewhat in making up my report tonight and am therefore compelled to sit up and wait for the down train so as to mail my letter to the Journal.  I have been feeling much better today and am more in condition to work.  Edgar’s letter received this morning. You will be very much disappointed about the wedding, will you now, Julia?  I am indeed sorry that I am so situated as to be unable to go.  Mr. Selby wants me to ask you whether you think it safe to let me stay in Jefferson this winter, without your presence to keep me within the proper limits. I tell him that it is your choice to be in St. Joseph and I want you to stay there as long as you feel that you want to.  This has been a cold, raw day and yet I have been on the go most of the time.  The session has not got fairly to running.  When it does, I expect we shall have very lively times.  I went to call on Miss Ella Woodson night before last.  She is looking about as usual, perhaps not quite so delicate.  I will write often to you, darling. Don’t forget that I love you dearly.  I send many kisses. Yours ever, Field.  

Eugene Field must have been one of those people who left his more conventional colleagues in the capitol press corps with a combination of amusement and embarrassment and maybe a little envy. But most of his fellow reporters then as well as his reportorial descendants now could or can identify with an observation he wrote in the Journal on August 3, 1878:

“A great many newspaper men lie awake night after night mentally debating whether they will leave their property to some charitable institution or spend it the next day for something with a little lemon in it.”

We’ve Seen This Before 

It’s called the tyranny of the minority.

Watching Congressman Kevin McCarthy trying to appease an unwilling minority in his party so he could realize his dream of becoming Speaker of the House was agonizing last week.  But for those of us who follow Missouri politics it as not an unfamiliar experience.

Remember the 2021 legislative session when an ultra-conservative segment of Senate Republicans held the entire chamber hostage when they couldn’t get their way on a congressional redistricting map?  Day after day they refused to let any other business be done until they could get their way. On a few occasions the remaining Republicans got some support from minority Democrats to move something—a relationship that really steamed the tyrannical minority.

In Washington last week we watched Kevin McCarthy come about as close to making the Speakership a figurehead position in his effort to get enough of his hard right party members to let him have the job.

As the process wore on, we wondered if it occurred to McCarthy that he had to protect the Speakership, not just his own personal ambitions. Neutering the Speakership sews the seeds of anarchy in the House.

We saw in the Missouri Senate last year the dangers of deadlock caused by those who replaced public service with political power.  To see the same scenario played out on a national scale is disastrous for those who have some faith in our system.

McCarthy was finally picked on the 15th ballot when Congressman Matt Gaetz, who had proclaimed himself a never-Kevin vote switched to “present.”

So now the House of Representative can get down to business.  But the narrowness of the Republican majority and the divisions within the party are likely to prove hazardous to McCarthy’s House leadership.

And don’t forget that a favorite punching bag of the Republicans, President Biden, holds a veto pen and there appears to be zero chance that the House can get a two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto, assuming it can get its legislation through the Senate and to the president’s desk..

The spectacle has not ended with McCarthy’s selection as Speaker.

Politics is an imperfect science but we never have seen such a time as when good will seems so unachievable.  Did any of us elect any of them to think that there is nothing more important than who sits in what office in one building in Washington, D.C.?

Today we mourn the (temporary, we hope) passing of the ideal of majority rule. A tyrannical minority can be put in its place if the two major factions would recognize they must create the majority—and in the creation of a bipartisan majority, return sanity to our system.

We still have the hope that somebody will be unafraid to scale the wall separating the parties and produce enough unity to overcome the tail that thinks it can wag the congressional dog.

The Speakership is more important than any individual that aspires for it. If protecting the office and its responsibility and its power means reaching across the partisan wall, let the reaching begin.  We need to know that the tyrannical minority is not in charge.

But frankly, we’re not sure it won’t be.

Do you know how to tell—

—if a politician is lying?

His lips are moving.

This old and cynical joke that cavalierly diminishes all of those who seek to serve honorably has found new circulation thanks to a New York congressional candidate who told lie after lie during his campaign, got elected, has grudgingly admitted to some of his lies, but is unrepentant and as of the writing of this entry plans to take the oath of office.

George Santos is a Republican and (so far) the leadership of his party has been pretty silent about his admissions and the additional lies uncovered by reporters. About the only thing that seems to be true about him is that he’s a Republican. For now, anyway.  If his clay feet, which have crumbled at least ankle-high, continue to crumble, he might be most appropriationly listed as (P-NY), for “Pariah” from New York.

“I am not a criminal,” he told The New York Post. “This will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good.”

Whether he is not a criminal is open to some question. Did his claims constitute fraud?  Did he lie to obtain campaign donations, thus defrauding donors?  Did his lies result in financial gain?  Did he lie on his campaign financial disclosure forms, a potential criminal act? And those are starter questions..

He claimed to be the grandchild of Ukrainian natives who escaped the holocaust by going to Belgium and then to Brazil. Investigators say he is not.  He’s a native Brazilian and there are shadows over his life there.

He claimed to be Jewish. He released a position paper during his campaign saying he was “a proud American Jew.”  That was then. Now he says he never claimed to be a Jew and that he’s Catholic who is “Jew-ish,” a comment that the word “outlandish” is inadequate to describe. He says his grandmother told him stories about being Jewish before she converted to Catholicism. His grandparents were born in Brazil.  The Democrat he beat in November says Santos’ lies about his Jewish background are more than offensive—“It’s sick and obscene,” he says.

In the campaign he claimed that he had been openly gay for more than a decade and is married to another man.  But another news organization has learned he was married to a woman that he divorced in 2019 and has found no record of his marriage to the man Santos says is his husband.

He claimed to have worked with two of the biggest names in the financial industry—Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, neither of which says his name ever appeared on their employee rolls. He says he probably could have used “a better choice of words” in making that claim.

He claimed to have attended New York University and to have graduated from Baruch College. Now he confesses, “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.” He says he is “embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume.” But he excused himself by commenting, “A lot of people overstate in their resumes or twist a little bit.”

Embellished his resume?  And it’s okay because “a lot of people” do it “a little bit?”

What he has done is more than “a little bit.”  He lied and now he’s lying about lying. In fact, he has created a waterfall of lies including how much property he does or does now own, and how many dogs his nonprofit dog rescue group rescued.

The silence of his party’s leadership, particularly his future colleagues in the United States House of Representatives is tragic in this time when distrust of those who seek public service or those who win positions of public service is so strong.  Santos tars all of them with his irresponsible campaign and his petulant responses to those who have exposed him for what he is—a man who was incapable of truth during his campaign and seems incapable of admitting the depth of his lies after his election.

Unfortunately, the public doesn’t see him as the exception to the rule. Unfortunately, the public has come to believe his kind IS the rule.

But I know from years of front-row coverage of politics and politicians that people of his kind are the rotten apple that spoils the barrel.

The Santoses of the political world damn the saints of the political world. It is up to those who will take office for the first time in 2023 to be the kind of people who eventually leave public life having uplifted public opinion about those who go from being “one of us” on election day to being “one of them.”  It will be a heavy lift.  Honor is a great weight.

Failure of his party, particularly those who will be leaders of his party colleagues in Washington, to censure—even expel—him will deepen mistrust in all of those in either party, further damaging our republic and furthering the aims of those who seek to capitalize on distrust in it to strengthen their hopes for control.

“Disgrace” is spelled S-A-N-T-O-S.

Notes from a quiet  street  (Happy New Year edition) 

For the rare and cherished few who expect to find something new on this site a couple of times a week, we must explain that it is not because we had run out of pithiness. It is because a company that calls us a “valued customer” apparently doesn’t value our customership very much at all.

On September 29, Mediacom laid a cable on top of our street to restore our internet service after the Socket folks ripped up the buried line while digging to install their fiber optic cable.  A couple of weeks later I suggested to the folks at the local Mediacom office that it would be good to bury that cable before the first big snow brought out a snowplow that would collect it—and who knows how many above-ground connector boxes and private mail boxes that the cable pulls down as the snowplow proceeds down the street.

That line was still lying on the street until the afternoon of December 22.  It snowed and as I had told the foretold in the Mediacom office and the first snowplow did yank out the.  I saw several feet of orange cable in the yard of a neighbor up the street. On the 20th, I had visited the local office for a second time and a friendly lady behind the desk said repairs are usually made within 24 hours. I told a nice Mediacom lady from Iowa who answered the company trouble line that I expected this problem to be solved regardless of the temperature (which was below zero, you might remember) within 24 hours. The company sent us a notice that it would be a week before anything was done, that repairs would be made on the 28th and required us to be at home between 10 a.m. and noon.

On the afternoon of the 27th, Mediacom—without ever calling us or ringing our doorbell—stretched a new line across the top of the street. The line was only partly covered so vehicles going over it did not damage it. The next day, the Mediacom tech person who was supposed to respond rang our door bell. We had a nice discussion in which he told me, among other things, that we would lose our internet service as many times as the snowplows came out this winter.  Too bad. But that’s Mediacom Life.

I sent a letter to the editor of the News-Tribune, who published it yesterday. Several folks at church or at the noontime restaurants we checked out told me they agreed with it. They’re apparently valued customers, too.

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I made a big mistake the week before Christmas.

I bought a new computer because my old hard drive was dying.

For the price I paid for the computer, I could have bought about eight of Donald Trump’s superhero cards.

Buyer’s remorse has not yet set in, though.

If you bought any of them, would you let me know if any of them show him as a Capitol policeman on January 6, 2021 or as a Ukrainian freedom fighter?

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There’s this old and somewhat indelicate saying, “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s too late to drain the swamp.”  The release of the January 6 Committee report has called that observation to mind in reference to someone who once promised to drain a certain swamp.

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One of the fun things about researching history is prowling through the millions of pages of old newspapers at the State Historical Society.  And reading the old advertisements is often fun.  I made a copy of a headline for one and it’s magneted to our refrigerator.

It says “Ice Cream is Real Food.”

Now that’s real truth in advertising.

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State Conservation Department Director Sara Pauley Parker wrote in her Missouri Conservationist  “Up Front” column in December of 2021 that she’s a dog person. She wrote, “I especially appreciate dogs that will look you in the eye, know their role in life, and want to serve honorably.”

I’m hoping the Missouri House and the Missouri Senate will be kennels, starting Wednesday.

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It’s hard to beat honey by itself and honey-butter on a hot roll is an unacknowledged delicacy.  A old newspaper ad I came across recently urges people to “Get that quick relief that brings back the normal ‘pep’ and energy. Don’t suffer a minute longer than you actually have to.” The cure?  Dr. Bell’s Pine Tar Honey for Coughs and Colds.

If Dr. Bell’s cure isn’t tasty enough, you might try a spoonful of a variation made by the Certified Hospital Products Company: Pine Tar Honey and Eucalyptus (Mentholated).

Menthol.  That will do the trick.

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Retired Missouri football coach Gary Pinkel has been inducted into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame, something he could not have imagined after his teams had gone 10-14 in his first two years in Columbia.  In fact, he admits he started wondering if he’d made a mistake going to Missouri and if he would last much longer.

In his first four years the Tigers were 22-25.   But Missouri kept him.

The Tigers played their 34th bowl game a few days before Christmas. (Their 35th bowl game was Covided out a couple of years ago).  Their fourth bowl loss in a row left Eliah Drinkwitz’s record at 17-19.

The fourth year will be a critical one for him, as it was for his predecessor, Barry Odom.  Odom was sacked when his Tigers were 25-25.  But Gary Pinkel was only 22-25 after four years and Missouri kept him.

How have other Mizzou coaches done after four years? Larry Smith was 18-27.  Bob Stull was 12-31-1 before he left the field and became an athletic director at another school.  Woody Widenhofer was 12-31-1 and Al Onofrio was 22-24.

Incidentally, Don Faurot, whose name is on the field on which Drinkwitz’s players perform, was 0-4 in bowl games.

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Enheduanna’s descendants

About twenty descendants of Enheduanna met at the Missouri River Regional Library yesterday afternoon.  I might have been the only one, certainly one of the few, who knows about this relationship.

It was a gathering of mis-Missouri authors, all of whom had their books for sale.  I sold five in two and half hours but I had some lively conversations with with some of the other descendants.

Enhe—who?

I am a member of the Archaeological Institute of America and a former member of the National Geographic Society.  Do not be impressed.  That only means that I subscribe or subscribed to a magazine.

In my latest edition of the AIA’s Archaeology magazine is the story of Enheduanna, a poet and a composer of hymns to the temples of the Akkadian Empire.  She was a priestess and a princess, the daughter of Sargon the Great who founded the world’s first great empire by uniting northern and southern Mesopotamia,  and his spouse, Nanna.

Enheduanna, whose name translated means “Ornament of Heaven,” was the high priestess at the temple to Nana-Suen, the moon god, in the ancient city of Ur, once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates River on the Persian Gulf in what is now southern Iraq.  Time has caused the coastline to shift and the site of Ur is on the south bank of the river, about ten miles from Nasiriya, a city not far from the Gulf.

There is a portrait of her—sort of a portrait—found on a 4,000 year old disk excavated in 1927.

She is shown in the long dress, two male servants behind her and another in front of her, prayerfully working on one of her poems or hymns.  The disk dates from about 2250 BCE.*

She is important in today’s observation because she is the world’s first author.

Or at least the earliest person whose writings have survived with an author’s name attached.

Kate Ravilious, in her magazine article, quotes Assyriologist Anette Zgoll: “The rituals that Enheduanna performed were instrumental in creating the new power structure by reconciling the city states and the wider realm.”

One of her hymns is Temple Hymn 26: To the Zabalam Temple of Inanna:

O house wrapped in beams of light
wearing shining stone jewels wakening great awe
sanctuary of pure Inanna
(where) divine powers the true 
me spread wide
Zabalam
shrine of the shining mountain
shrine that welcomes the morning light
she makes resound with desire
the Holy Woman grounds your hallowed chamber
with desire
your queen Inanna of the sheepfold
that singular woman
the unique one
who speaks hateful words to the wicked
who moves among the bright shining things
who goes against rebel lands
and at twilight makes the firmament beautiful
all on her own
great daughter of Suen
pure Inanna
O house of Zabalam
has built this house on your radiant site
and placed her seat upon your dais

She wrote in cuneiform and her works are preserved in 4,000-year old clay tablets.

Perhaps you have been moved to write a poem (beyond your elementary school English classes where a teacher might have had you write one as an assignment), or a published or unpublished book.

Or maybe you blog.  Or perhaps your literary tastes are confined to Facebook or some other social media platform.

Those who write are literary descendants of a woman who lived for that four millennia ago and whose words are preserved on clay tablets.  Some of us also write on tablets but our works probably won’t be found by archaeologists thousands of years from now.

Enheduanna would be considered the patron saint of authors, probably, except she probably is considered a heathen by those who confer official sainthood.

A lot of people, perhaps most people, have an urge to write. Something.  Some make a living doing it. But only a minuscule percentage of writers are in that category.

I don’t think any of the people at the tables in that library room make a living from writing, but mot would agree that writing makes living better.

You can be the Enheduanna of your household.  Publication is secondary to the reward of just writing, whether is poetry, a memoir, a family history, or an attempt at the great American novel.

Don’t worry about where to begin. Just start.  The beginning point and the ending point will come later.  But write.

Enheduanna has had a lot of descendants.  Be one more.

*BCE is an archaeological term for “Before the Common Era,” which provides a process of dating that does not favor a particular religion.

(photo credit: wikicommons)