Category Archives: events

Crisis Buffet

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We are trying to think of a time when a Missouri governor has had as many major issues to deal with at one time as Governor Parson has on his plate now.

We can’t think of one.

In addition to the normal burden of duties governors have, there has been added to this one’s plate the state’s response to a worldwide pandemic, the related collapse of the state’s economy and its hundreds of large and small widespread ripples to which state government is either a party or to which it must respond, civil unrest that must be dealt with on a daily—or nightly—basis at a time when the responsibility of government to restore or maintain order is under intense scrutiny, and questions about the role of government in correcting the social and political ills that are behind the disorder. So far the governor has not had to deal with major natural disasters—a devastating tornado or a historic flood for examples.

Plus—it’s a campaign year. Additionally, the instability of national leadership, legislative action to overturn the will of the people on the so-called “Clean Missouri” initiate of 2016, and the August ballot issue to expand Medicaid and the state funding responsibilities that will go with it constitute a salad bar of issues to go with the buffet of crises facing a governor who has been given an average-sized plate.

Governor Henry Caulfield in late 1931 once ordered an immediate 26% cut in the state budget to deal with the depression’s major impact on state finances when retail sales were down by half and unemployment was rising toward a 1932 level of thirty-eight percent. His successor, Guy B. Park in 1933 faced a state treasury holding only $15,000 with a $300,000 payroll to meet. Central Missouri Trust Company loaned the state enough money to pay its bills and to match available federal funds for depression relief until a special legislative session could enact new revenue measures—a gross receipts tax that was later replaced with the state’s first sales tax.

A plethora of problems faced Republican Governor Forrest Donnell in 1941, the first being the refusal of the Democrat-dominated legislature to certify his election at the start of the year and, as the year wound down, putting Missouri on a war footing.

Governor Warren Hearnes faced civil unrest during the Civil Rights era and in the wake of the murder of Martin Luther King, calling out the National Guard at times to maintain order.

Other governors have dealt with killer heat waves or 500-year floods. But the Parson administration will be remembered for 2020, a year in which crisis after crisis came to Missouri.

We have watched his almost-daily briefings and have watched as he and administration members and private organizations have scrambled and worked to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and its myriad effects. The civil unrest in the streets will remain as extreme civil discomfort long after the streets are clear and a record is yet to be written on whether Missouri—and the nation—at last really will do something about that discomfort after decades of talk but insufficient progress being made to limit chances for the streets to blaze again.

The economy will come back although it might take years. Missouri and the country had finally put the 2008 recession far back in its rear view mirror when all of this hit but that experience should remind us that a quick fix to today’s economic ills can best be hoped for but not counted on.

A couple of times we have seen Governor Parson show some irritation with a reporter or a published story during his briefing, a circumstance that might best have been handled with a phone call rather than a public criticism. But we’re willing to cut him a little slack, given the pressures he feels, the burden he carries, and the daily stress of a job that has become far more than any governor we know about. The passage of time will evaluate whether his leadership in this unprecedented time is, or was, effective and long-lasting.

Missouri has seldom needed as steady a hand on the tiller as we need one now. Missourians viewing today’s challenges and responses through their personal partisan lenses might differ on how this governor is doing in the moment. But he is Theodore Roosevelt’s man in the arena.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Who among us would want to be carrying the burden of office that this governor is carrying? Who among us would want to be in the arena he is in?

Frankly, we think he is fighting the good fight. And we look forward to the day—as he undoubtedly does—when we can again live off a menu rather than deal with a crisis buffet.

Us vs. Us

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A fearful old man sat down at my computer yesterday and began to type.

The son of Kansas Baptist/Methodist Republicans—Landon, anybody-but-Roosevelt, Dewey, Eisenhower, Nixon Republicans—earlier in the year fearful of a spreading plague but now fearful of something more dangerous.

Fearful that he might soon see an American Tiananmen Square, the violent and deadly pro-democracy protests that are remembered because of the image of one man blocking a military tank on its way to put down the demonstrations.

Fearful that a desperate effort to project and protect personal power without limits, unchallenged by timid participants from his own party intimidated by his presence and his loud loyalist legion will leave a legacy of distrust in a system of government created long ago by men whose ideals ultimately far overshadowed their ideology.

Fearful of a force that sees a crisis as a political opportunity rather than as a cause demanding responsibility and as an opportunity for creating a united spirit to reach an inclusive goal.

Fearful of a climate being expanded that encourages citizens to feel they are victims of government rather than responsible participants in it.

The old man at the keyboard remembers other bad times and other missed opportunities to heal the national spirit, other days of burnings and of lootings, other days when the peaceful expression of grief and of hope growing from it was overshadowed by uncaring opportunistic violence that diverted actions and intentions to create a better community and a better nation to overshadowing relief that the burnings and lootings finally were over.

The old man, having seen many things in a long life, is fearful, fearful that the democratic republic that he and his Kansas Republican parents have loved and believed in has been pushed to the edge of its existence by repeated missed opportunities and now by leadership that cares about plagues and public tragedy and disruption only to the degree that it can turn them to perceived personal advantage.

The old man is fearful when those within a leader’s orbit lack the bravery to advocate compassion that transcends perpetuating personal political power and the will to work for reason in unreasonable times. He worries at the loss of common integrity and the lack of diverse voices demanding it from those in the most powerful positions, and the refusal of those in those positions to display it.

His mind is often drawn to a poem called “Talk” by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko from many years ago that ends:

How sharply our children will be ashamed

Taking at last their vengeance for these horrors

Remembering how in so strange a time

common integrity could look like courage.

Integrity. Courage. The old man seeks them from those reluctant or afraid to display them. And in times like these when integrity and courage are most needed, he is fearful.

Dr. Crane on Chaos and Confusion

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(After an awful weekend of disorder and disaster in a tragic time of worldwide sickness and death, we are absorbed in our own uncertainties. What can go wrong next? Where are we headed, personally, politiclaly, and nationally? Some of us watched Saturday for a few brief minutes a small rising symbol of hope and future adventure with the launch of the Dragon space capsule. But with night came more consuming gloom and despair that continued yesterday. The Young Men’s Christian Association national magazine, Association Men, in its October, 1923 issue published Dr. Frank Crane’s reflection on rising above despair, reflecting on a post-World War I world with words that fit our times.

He advised us to—-)

CAST YOUR ANCHOR and WAIT for DAYLIGHT

AFTER some fourteen days of violent driving to and fro before the wind, the ship upon which St. Paul was a passenger was found, by soundings, to be approaching an unknown shore. Then upon the advice of Paul the sailors cast anchor and waited for day.

The world today seems to be in a confusion resembling the case of the ship which held the apostle. Conditions are swirling. There is chaos in politics and confusion in men’s minds. Nature adds its touch of tragedy in the Japanese earthquake, one of the greatest natural disasters in history.

During the war America and the World in spite of the horrors of the time were elevated by a great moral purpose. The very seriousness of the threatened disaster aroused the idealism of the people. When the war was over America and the world had a great slump. Since then we have been wallowing in pessimism and petulance. The effort to make rational arrangement which would avert another such cataclysm by means of the League of Nations was defeated by partisanship. Since that time the forces of reaction have been strong and continuous.

France in the Ruhr and Italy with Greece look very much as though they were adopting the tactics of old Germany.

Rather universally the song of the birds has been succeeded by the croaking of frogs. The only way to get and maintain our poise is by grasping clearly the fundamentals of religious faith.

The very purpose of religion is to steady and sustain life. What the world needs is an intelligent faith. Let us think a bit about what this implies.

An intelligent faith is not a silly optimism. It does not consist of absurd denial of evil and pain. Any faith which ignores facts can hardly be called intelligent. An optimism that says all is good is false. The only true optimism is that which recognizes evil and at same time recognizes the responsibility for correcting evil. The right kind of optimist is one who tries to find the will of God and cooperate with it and who believes that that will is pure and perfect. And the law of God is growth. And there can be no growth that does not pass through imperfection to perfection. We are yet in the transition stage. We are co-workers with God with the great task before us of bringing order out of chaos. Optimism consists in believing we shall succeed and not in deluding ourselves that we have succeeded.

An intelligent faith faces the deeper facts. Pessimism sees only the superficial facts. There are many who say that faith is a delusion because they see evil rampant, but the man of faith looks deeper than this, knowing that the great facts of life and destiny are not upon the surface but hidden. That is why those who merely see the apparent facts are often discouraged and swept away into despair. But the mind of him who has faith in God is like the still deeps of the ocean, while the mind of the godless is like its storm-tossed surface.

Intelligent faith rests upon the great cosmic laws. These are the laws of righteousness and justice and of the fixed benevolent will of God. These are eternal. Vice, and violence, evil and despair flourish for a time but they are as the falling leaves. Goodness is the tree trunk that time nor seasons nor the defections of men cause to decay.

An intelligent faith is no blind belief in totems. It is not superstition. It has nothing to do with mysterious hocus pocus of any sort. It is based upon a knowledge of history, a knowledge of the human heart, and a knowledge of the great unfolding law of evolution in the world.

An intelligent faith is not a seed of fanaticism. It is courage. It makes a man keep on fighting when the battle goes against him. It is the strong conviction that no matter how dark the night the sun will rise in due season. It is the implicit belief in the truth that it always stops raining. It lends to a man something of the fixity of Nature herself because it is a belief in Nature’s law and in Nature’s god.

An intelligent faith does the constructive work of the world. It builds, it plants, it creates. It is the source of the best functions of human energy. It is the backbone of the mind. It not only keeps the mind strong but it keeps the body healthy, the eye clear and the soul undisturbed.

An intelligent faith begins with faith in oneself. That he is a child of God, that he has been put into this world for a purpose and cannot be removed from it until that purpose is fulfilled. It is a faith in one’s potential goodness because it is a faith in one’s sonship toward the Eternal.

An intelligent faith is a belief in men, in one’s neighbors in the world. Almost all the troubles that have arisen from human contact have been caused by the failure of faith. If men would only believe in each other, that all men are fair and all women good, the world might lift itself into the millennium. This would be no lifting of oneself by the boot straps, it would rather be lifting of oneself by allowing the greatest force in the universe to operate through him.

An intelligent faith is also one of the instincts. It is from the instincts a human being derives all his force. Faith is one of the latest products of evolution, an instinct developed by the long struggles of the race, the finest flower in God’s garden of Souls.

An intelligent faith is faith in God. That does not mean in some mysterious charm to avoid disaster, nor in some medieval monarch sitting on the throne of heaven, nor in some fantastic heathenish deity to be propitiated by sacrifice and incense, but it means faith in the Mighty Father who broods ever upon his world of men, bringing order out of confusion, goodness out of evil, and love and holiness out of mankind, even as He brings the white lily out of the muck, even as he conducts His own universe upon the vast dim voyage from chaos to the stars.

Let us cast our anchor of an intelligent faith in God and wait for day.

Us vs. It—part IX, prayer and politics.

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Last Sunday was Ascension Sunday in our faith tradition. Our minister remarked that he had seen a joke circulating on Facebook that when Jesus ascended into Heaven, he became the first person to work from home.

President Trump, just before the holiday weekend, ordered churches to open “right now” for face-to-face worship. As he has done in the past, he claimed exclusive power to override local and state orders for worship-in-place limits. The president who has proclaimed that it’s up to states and their governors to fight the Coronavirus, with his administration only as a backup, seemed to think on the issue of opening churches that governors and states (and mayors and cities) have no business standing in his way when it comes to letting congregations, uh, congregate.

As is often the case with this president, he was claiming a power he does not have and the motive behind a statement, a bluster, a tweet, a fabrication, a rant—whatever—is a matter of what benefits him.

It isn’t all that hard to see who President Trump really tried to please with his sudden “order.” Politico reported his bolt-from-the-blue announcement Friday was the result of “a sudden shift in support…among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his reelection campaign.” A couple of reputable religious polling organizations show a “staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics.” Both groups strongly supported Trump in 2016. The Public Religion Research Institute last month showed double-digit drops in favorability among mainline Protestants (down 18%), white Catholics (down 12%) and white evangelicals (down 11%).

Once again, it appears the president responded to his advisors who said, “You’ve got to do something!”

The PRRI cited above is run by Dr. Robert P. Jones, who has Baptist roots, a Master of Divinity degree from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar and who once was an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University in Springfield. His 2016 book, The End of White Christian America is a thoughtful study of cultural changes underway in our country, the fears of some that are motivating some political considerations and actions, and an analysis of how the white Christian culture that has dominated the course of this nation can maintain significance in the face of ongoing and inevitable cultural change.

The President last Friday didn’t answer any questions that inevitably would have been asked about his ongoing claim that he has absolute power over such things as this.

One indisputable thing he did say in his Friday announcement is, “In America, we need more prayer, not less.” He’s correct, of course, although he might not like many of the prayers that are being offered. Plus, prayers don’t have to be said inside a religious building to be heard. This observer has heard prayers on street corners. In fact, he and his wife were once stopped on a street in Philadelphia—near the cemetery where Benjamin Franklin is buried—but a great big fella who grabbed my right hand and her left and offered up a mighty prayer for our well-being. Scared the living bejeezus out of us for a second or two. But on reflection, it was kind of nice.

We know the President will be deeply disappointed and maybe angry that our church is ignoring his pronouncement. We don’t plan to gather in our sanctuary at First Christian in Jefferson City until June 7. We hope he doesn’t become upset that Governor Parson did not force us to gather there last Sunday.

It often has been observed that a church is not a building. When a pastor says, “Good morning, church,” the pastor is not talking to a structure but to a flock.

Someone, we tuned in too late to hear who it was on the radio Sunday morning, suggested the President probably hasn’t read the Bible very much, particularly the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus suggests (as we in these times might interpret it) that it is not necessary to gather in groups under a roof to pray. In fact, it seemed to suggest just the opposite:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you..

Baptist minister Rod Kennedy, who is doing an interim ministry at the First Baptist Church in Ottawa, Kansas, responded to the President’s demand that churches open “right now” on his Facebook page:

President Trump,

On behalf of my Baptist congregation, I want to thank you for your concern for houses of worship. We respectfully decline your suggestion that we reopen. The Frist Amendment, religious freedom, separation of church and state,—all that constitutes our right to ignore you.

I’m not drinking bleach, taking suspected drugs, or buying your demagoguery. We will let you know when our church decides to reopen. After all, we are a free, independent Baptist congregation and government interference iirritates our Baptist gumption.

When churches do re-open we would be happy to see you in church every Sunday. It might help you find some divine wisdom.

If you want to help, wear a mask, stop being divisive, make sure voting will be easy in November, and stop mocking, threatening, and demeaning others. It’s not a religious practice.

Kennedy, who describes himself as a “Catholic Baptist,” retired after twelve years at the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio. He has no trouble pointing out the differences he has with the more fundamentalist members of the diverse denomination. He posted a couple of longer additional messages to the President and the responses illustrate the wide differences among Baptists—and among those of other denominations who call themselves Christian. See https://baptistnews.com/article/self-described-catholic-baptist-leaves-ohio-church-embarks-on-writing-career/#.Xsrq8mhKiUk if you want to know more about him and if you’re a Facebooker, you can go to his page or if you want to hear what he sounds like in the pulpit, go to the First Baptist Church webpage in Ottawa, Kansas.

Last Sunday morning, we went to the presidential webpage to check on President Trump’s schedule for Sunday, May 24:

President Donald Trump has no public events on his schedule today and is expected to remain in the White House with the first family. With the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts, the president is likely to meet with national leaders and public officials regarding the needs of the coming week.

Mmmmm-hmm. Churches are essential but not so essential that he would do what he urged millions of Americans, particularly his faithful followers (read that any way you would prefer) to do—go to church even “with the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts.” Wonder why he didn’t tell Melania and Baron Sunday morning, “We’re going to church—right now!”  Instead he went out and he worshipped the putter and the driver.

Sometime when the man gets all worked up like this, we wish somebody would say, “Oh, go take a pill!” But—– hasn’t he already been doing that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Us vs It—Part VI, This better work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This reopening better work.

 

Dr. Crane on: The impossible

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

IT CAN’T BE DONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conscience always points to what is beyond our capacity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Us vs. It—part V, Remembering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Crane on hate and science

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

HALF SCIENCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Us vs. It—part II, Waist deep

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At the height of the Vietnam War one of the nation’s greatest folk singers began performing an allegorical song called “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.”

When Pete Seeger performed it on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour more than fifty years ago, the song became part of a national controversy because many people, apparently including the CBS censors, thought that the next-to-last verse criticized President Johnson’s increasing investment of American lives in what some already thought was an unwinnable war.

It didn’t help that Seeger was among those blacklisted during the McCarthy Era (he was part of The Weavers, the group that brought folk singing to early popularity. But the group was too liberal for McCarthyites) and he was still considered somewhat “leftist,” therefore, “subversive.”

The CBS censors cut the song out of the show but when Seeger performed it on a later program—one of the last in the show’s brief run—it was allowed to stay in, perhaps because of the public reaction to its deletion the first time.

We keep hearing President Trump talk about the need to re-open the country or to get big-time sports going again even as he also says we’re headed for the deadliest part of the Coronavirus assault. The shutdown of a part of the economy—the hospitality industry—is a big blow to his personal interests and reopening the country, as he likes to put it, would certainly be to his benefit. We make the observation without implying that he is driven only by his personal economic concerns but his insistence that reopening business in the wake of the ongoing pandemic brings Pete Seeger’s song from another era to mind. It was the next-to-last verse that got Seeger and the Smothers Brothers in trouble then and it might get this observer in trouble today, at least with some people. Have at it in the comment area at the end if you wish—either way. Just remember our civility guidelines.

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Louisiana,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That’s how it all begun.
We were — knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.

 

The Sergeant said, “Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?”
“Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
‘Bout a mile above this place.
It’ll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We’ll soon be on dry ground.”
We were, waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

 

The Sergeant said, “Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim.”
“Sergeant, don’t be a Nervous Nellie, ”
The Captain said to him.
“All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I’ll lead on.”
We were, neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

 

All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain’s helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, “Turn around men!
I’m in charge from now on.”
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

 

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn’t know that the water was deeper
Than the place he’d once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
‘Bout a half mile from where we’d gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

 

Well, I’m not going to point any moral,
I’ll leave that for yourself
Maybe you’re still walking, you’re still talking
You’d like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;

We’re, waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.


Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man’ll be over his head, we’re
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnJVkEX8O4

We are not implying in this entry that President Trump is “the big fool” of today’s “war.” That would be name-calling and we do not believe name-calling either solves problems or ennobles the person who has nothing of intrinsic value to otherwise add to a conversation.

A blogger, Chimesfreedom*, has a nice piece about Seeger’s performance of the song on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Tom and Dick Smothers were constantly at war with the CBS censors and Seeger’s performance of the song on their season-opening show in 1967 led to a loud public fight about censorship.

http://www.chimesfreedom.com/2014/01/28/the-censored-pete-seeger-performance-on-the-smothers-brothers-comedy-hour/

The brothers’ constant fight with CBS about the content of their show led the network to abruptly cancel it, despite good ratings, after just two years. It was replaced by Hee-Haw.

Chimesfreedom is a blog with an unnamed “editor-in-chief” who describes himself as “a writer and professor in New York.”