Category Archives: events

Three things

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

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

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

The three days each year are these:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

What were they thinking?

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

Sometimes you just can’t find the words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My shoes smelled

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But  the smell got better

It was a musty, earthy smell of long-damp ground that had not seen daylight for a century, ground that was wet enough to stick in the treads of my shoes but was not yet wet enough to be mud.  It was dry enough that I tracked it from place to place.

I checked those shoes later. The soil was gone, wiped off in the grass or the snow or maybe it had just dried and fallen out as I walked down the street.  Maybe the shoes didn’t really smell anymore.  Maybe it was just olfactory memory insinuating itself.  I didn’t want to wear those shoes to other places for a while.  Would other people smell that smell?

Maybe they’d have been bold enough to ask, “What is that smell?  Where have you been?   What did youstep in that you are tracking in here?”   They probably wouldn’t have said those things because it would not have been the courteous thing to do.  Besides, it’s not as if I had stepped in something some irresponsible dog owner left behind.  Or worse, a cat.

I was not alone with this problem.  Several other people were on the same little trip that day into the seldom-visited recesses of the Capitol basement. There was something incongruous about those in our group who were in suits and ties, especially the big guy who was the center of attention.  Governor Nixon had agreed to take the brief photo-op tour with some members of the legislature and the media before announcing he would support some responsible bond-issue spending to make some repairs to endangered parts of the Capitol.

The Governor gets beaten up a lot for his travels hither and yon to talk about jobs and schools and other momentarily hot topics.  But those trips aren’t a whole lot different from his look at what is underneath the great stairway on the south front of the Capitol, or his look from below at the unsafe condition of the closed-to-vehicles roadway that goes through the tunnel under those stairs.  There is value in going to communities to make people feel good about good things happening there or rallying local support against something he thinks is bad for that community and for the state as a whole.

Yeah, sure, politics are involved in a lot of these visits and Jay Nixon is nothing if not a political animal.  But visits by Governors mean something to those who do not deal with him every day—including legislators and reporters.  It’s special when the Governor pays attention to something locally.  The presence of the Governor is important.

His visit was important in that moldy, damp, musty-soil area in the basement of the Capitol.  For those of us who love that building and all that it should represent, that little visit meant the big guy cares.  It’s not important now that many of us have been talking and writing about the Capitol’s serious need of repair and restoration for years.  What’s was important was that the Governor was there signaling that he is significantly engaged now in ending decades of neglect of our greatest state symbol.

He wasn’t talking about ADA accessibility or restoring the paintings and sculpture or recovering the original decorations that have been lost under layer after layer of bland institutional paint.  Right then he was talking about supporting repairs that will stop deterioration of the structure itself.  First things first.

Your scribe had told some members of the legislature that the manuscript for the next Capitol book, the one about the construction of the building, was sitting in a computer in his house on the quiet street of retirement. It’s been in that computer for several years waiting for the final chapter to be written.  What happened during the legislative session determined whether the book has a positive ending that says the building is moving through its centennial era with efforts to repair it and restore it as the great temple of democracy that its builders hoped it would be or whether it is moving through its centennial era as a symbol of statewide responsibilities that are unmet, statewide obligations that are ignored, and a continued willingness to cover over problems and ignore them.

The Governor and the lawmakers on the tour took a step toward the positive the other day. And by the end of the legislative session, $40 million had been approved for repairs to that area.  And at the cornerstone centennial celebration July 3rd, he told the audience the investment is “a great beginning.”   The he continued, “I challenge not only our current government leaders—including me—to build on this commitment and initial investment, but also challenge those who will be in the Governor’s office and the General Assembly in the years to come to carry forward this gret edifice to our state and our way of life.”

In a few minutes after posting this entry, work will continue on writing the final chapter in the next Capitol book.  They will be, at the least, positive hopeful words—although not conclusively positive because there is so much to be done yet.

So it’s okay if my shoes smelled a little.  It turned out to be a good smell because it represented some good steps.  But there is still a lot of walking to do in our Capitol.

 

 

 

It is NOT the Fourth of July

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A lot of folks traveled during the holiday weekend and many found themselves in communities that held special festivals to observe the holiday.  We attended one of those events.

The banner on the downtown stage read, “Salute to America.”  But the master of ceremonies corrected that impression almost immediately by announcing the event was a salute to veterans, especially Vietnam veterans.  And through various pieces of music and introductions, veterans stood up and sat down more times than in a church praise service.

No such ceremony is complete without an inspirational speaker, of course, and the speaker in this event was a veteran who tried to touch on every patriotic cliché he could in a 15-minute jumbled speech that I hope he wasn’t paid for: Mom (applause), apple pie (applause), hot dogs (applause), home (applause).   The event was partly sponsored by a Chevrolet dealer but he didn’t mention it so there was no applause for that one. There was a brief mention of the Declaration and five seconds later he was talking about the Constitution and he finished by reciting the Preamble to the Constitution to emphasize that government could only do so much.

And after the rifle salute by the American Legion and taps, the emcee closed things out by redundantly exulting, “God Bless the USA. God Bless America.”  And there was some applause and some people went home to a late dinner and others stuck around for a stage show.

As I folded my chair and wrestled it back in its zippered bag, I grumbled to myself and some nearby friends about (this will get me in trouble) how veterans had hijacked the event.

On further review, as they say in some sports these days, I realized that was a rash evaluation of something done with good intentions and for those whose neck instantly grew red in reading the preceding paragraph, I offer my apologies–although one of those friends suggested having veterans stand up at such events is a pretty shallow gesture, given the problems thousands of veterans continue to have getting help for the burdens they have brought back from the battlefield.

The problem with the event we witnessed is that the wrong veterans were honored.  And behind that problem is the matter that the event was a celebration of July 4th.

The holiday is not July 4th.  It’s Independence Day.

It’s the day our country was born–at great risk by men of incredible vision and courage.   We as a nation cannot forget what this holiday is really all about. But by holding a “July 4th celebration,” we do.

We would not think of calling Veterans Day by its calendar date, November 11th.  We wouldn’t think of calling Memorial Day by its calendar date, whatever Monday that might be year-to-year. Those are days honoring veterans and we refer to them by their currently correct names (although they were once known as Armistice Day and Decoration Day).

July 4th is Independence Day.   And if we are to honor veterans that day, let us honor veterans such as David Bedell, Thomas Kennedy, Christopher Casey, William Ramsey, James Parks, Thomas Wyatt, Samuel Steele, Stephen Hempstead, and Edward Robertson.

These men are among several dozen soldiers of the American Revolution who came to and died in Missouri.  Some are buried in our oldest cemeteries.  Some are buried in remote countryside burial grounds.  The grave of at least one has been plowed over.   These men fought in the war that gave us a nation free of foreign control and then moved west with the frontier to live out their dream of a free country.  Some became respected elders in their communities.  They were the original Sons of the American Revolution.

Independence Day is when the delegates to the Continental Congress approved a declaration declaring the thirteen colonies are “free and independent states…absolved from all allegiance to the British crown…and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.”  And furthermore, they were united in this position.

It was the first time that the thirteen independent colonies declared that they were the United States of America, not a series of colonies of the British crown.

It was not a document drafted on the spur of the moment.  Movements toward independence had been underway in several places before the declaration of separation, even before the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre.  But this document was when those colonies decided enough was enough, scattered protestations of oppression were not adequate.

The closing line of that declaration is an important one to ponder on Independence Day.  It is an unmistakable statement that these congressional delegates were prepared to risk everything to achieve the status of an independent nation to be respected by other nations, including England, as equals.  “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,” they said.   In the years to come before that independence was finally wrested from England, those words came starkly true for many of those who signed the document.

Those men knew exactly the risks they were taking.  On the day Congress declared independence, July 2, the British fleet and the British army arrived in New York, not that far away from Philadelphia even then.   That threatening presence did not keep the delegates from adopting the Declaration of Independence on the morning of July 4, when John Hancock signed it.  Later that day, printer John Dunlap printed the first copies of the document, of which two dozen are known to still exist.  The first newspaper publication of the Declaration of Independence was on July 6 in the Pennsylvania Evening Post and two days later, the document was read to a public audience for the first time, at a Philadelphia park. It didn’t take long for word to reach New York.

The delegates who had adopted the document on July 4 did not gather to sign it until August 2, the day a large force of British troops arrived as reinforcements in New York after colleagues of Bedell, Casey, Hempstead, Ramsey and the others had repelled them in Charleston, South Carolina.

If we only have a July 4th celebration, we lose the importance of Independence Day.  If July 4th becomes another day just to honor veterans, we lose sight of the courage and intelligence of those who knew they were risking everything to throw off oppression and declare their thirteen colonies to be worthy of respect as a nation by the other nations of the world and we slight those who rest in Missouri graves who came here to live the dream they fought to create.  If Independence Day is just July 4th, we fail to honor those who gave us a nation to celebrate.

It’s not too much to realize Independence Day deserves to stand on its own values.  It’s not July 4th.  It is so much more than that and we do a disservice to ourselves, our freedoms, our possibilities, and our country if we make it anything less.

And for the benefit of the speaker at the event I attended, the Constitution has its own day on September 17.  It is known as Constitution Day and is not widely celebrated with festivals and speeches, organized or jumbled.  And it is not celebrated as just September 17th.   Those who advocate for Constitution Day say it is intended to commemorate “the formation and the signing of the U.S. Constitution by thirty-nine brave men on September 17, 1787, recognizing all who, are by being born in the U.S. or by naturalization, have become citizens.” Some might argue that Constitution Day should have a broader meaning than that, but that argument is for another day and perhaps for another place.

Constitution Day deserves better than it gets.  And so, certainly, does Independence Day. It’s not just July 4th.