Category Archives: food

The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear (of Ourselves)  

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It was a cool-ish morning, a few degrees above chilly and several degrees above cold, the early sun making the warmth inside my car welcoming a few hours after results of this week’s elections had been announced.

As I had fast-walked my mile around the track at the Knowles YMCA in Jefferson City a few minutes earlier, two moments in history came to me as I thought about the first elections since Donald Trump began his second term.  Two phrases from those events  seemed appropriate:

“The people are coming, armed with pitchforks”  and “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

And I thought the Tuesday results amounted to the people armed with political pitchforks, a story springing from the French Revolution of 1789. And my mind added a phrase: “and the grooves in the guillotine are being greased.”

It was October 5, 1789 when 7,000 angry women, armed not only with pitchforks but with pikes and muskets, marched six miles in the rain from Paris to the palace at Versailles to confront Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette about the people in Paris who were starving while the Royal First Family of France ate well in their palace. There had been significant events preceding the march including the famous Storming of the Bastille, the infamous Paris fortress and a prison for Parisians charged with various offenses against the crown, and the circulation of “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

Four days before the march, a banquet was thrown at the palace, welcoming the troops that had arrived to protect the royal family. There were toasts and expressions of loyalty to the throne, a lavish banquet that outraged the hungry people in Paris when the newspapers publicized it.

Now, on October 5, those 7,000 rain-dampened working women were at the palace chanting “Bread, Bread,” to the rhythm of a beating drum, a moment captured two centuries later in the Broadway musical Les Miserables:

When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

The twenty-thousand French National Guardsmen were unable to keep the women from breaching the gates and demanding Marie face them alone, which she did from a balcony. The mob by now recognized the strength of its position and demanded that she and the King accompany them back to Paris to witness the misery of the people from whom bread had been withheld.

They had no choice. The next day, they became prisoners of the revolution and two years later went to the guillotine.

The dropping of the blade on the neck of Louis XVI meant the future of France would involve no kings.

We will learn more a year from now how much the story of the No Kings movement in France almost 250 years ago will be played out in our streets against President Trump, who held a sumptuous Great Gatsby Party at Mar-a-Lago hours before the Food Stamp Program expired, leaving millions of his citizens wondering how they could afford bread and other necessities of life as he and his friends dined on fine food.

Tuesday’s election results from coast to coast showed an undeniable revolt against Donald Trump.  It is easy and perhaps simplistic to draw parallels with his party and the banquet at Versailles in 1789, when a ruler and his supporters ate very well at a time when many Americans wondered if they could afford bread—and other necessities.

Trump’s reaction to the results illustrates his tone-deaf self-centeredness, his attitude that he is above the mob: “Trump wasn’t on the ballot, and shutdown, were two reasons that Republicans lost elections tonight, according to pollsters,” he wrote in all capital letters on his social media page.  As usual, he did not cite any pollsters supporting his attitude.

The fact is, Trump WAS on the ballot Tuesday.  And his party loyalists who have tried to blame the shutdown entirely on minority Democrats clearly have not convinced a lot of voters they are speaking the truth.

Trump never campaigned for any of his party’s candidates in this election cycle. In the New York Mayor’s race, he didn’t even endorse his party’s candidate and his name-calling against the eventual winner failed bigly.

Our two political parties face important decisions in the aftermath..  Democrats need to keep the public pot boiling for 2026, perhaps not a huge problem as long as Donald Trump keeps doing and saying Donald Trump things.

Is it already too late for Republicans to keep control?  A year is a long time in politics. Candidates and parties historically have found ways to get off the mat.  The Democrats did it Tuesday. But Republicans surely must be questioning how much continued slavish loyalty to Donald Trump will be a major liability for them as individuals and as a party in 2026.

How relevant will Donald Trump be to what the party needs to do in the next year to avoid being irrelevant to voters?  The party surely must confront the reality of the danger Donald Trump embodies to its continued power.  How will the party move beyond him for its self-preservation?

Mayor-elect Zahron Mamdani of New York told well-wishers Tuesday night, “We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.  After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”

On March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt opened his first inaugural address this way:

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.

Republicans surely understand that they have been warned, that the No Kings rallies are now emboldened, the pitchforks are out, and the pikes are ready for Republican heads next year. The beating of the drum and the beating of the national heart will intensify.

After Tuesday’s elections, it appears the only thing the Republican Party has to fear is itself.

 

 We are Victims of Trump’s Absurd Tariffs

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—-and I am furious.

(My monthly guest column on the editorial page of the Jefferson City News-Tribune addressed this topic yesterday but of necessity it was much shorter and somewhat less candid, perhaps because I had lowered the steam pressure after starting on this version.)

There must be a reason why the highly-praised Wharton School that President Trump attended has never invited him back as a speaker. I wonder if anyone has investigated to find out who wrote his papers for him or even took tests for him.

His favorite course must have been Bankruptcy 101 and he must have slept through class every day the word “tariff” came up. The graduation program for his class does not list him for any honors and just has his name among all of the other graduates.

Stop me before I tell you what I really think.

Here is a story some nice people in a gentle English town. Stay with us. By the time we are finished the story will be about a person in a big American town who puts the “bully” into the ;political phrase “bully pulpit.”

(The phrase began with Theodore Roosevelt, one of the four faces on Mt. Rushmore, a monument he thinks he should—something even less possible than him winning the Nobel Price for Peace.)  TR used the word “bully” as an adjective for “wonderful” or “superb.”

Sorry about that. We have wandered off the path.

Grasmere, a village of about 4,500 people in England’s Lake District, has been known for decades as the home of numerous poets, writers, artists, philosophers and other notables.

Poets William and sister Dorothy Wordsworth described it as “the loveliest spot that man hath ever found.”

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) are considered the founders of English Literature’s “Romantic Age.” Coleridge is said to have “muttered stanzas” of the Rime” while walking about the countryside nearby. The Wordsworths lived for a few years in Dove Cottage, where Coleridge also lodged for a time.

The Dove Cottage is still there as is The Swan, an inn where William sometimes dined with the famous poet Walter Scott.

More recently, Gordon Matthews Thomas Sumner had a home there. The world knows him better as the musical artist, Sting.

Perhaps better known than the poets, philosophers, and other notables who have lived there is Beatrix Potter, who gave the world Peter Rabbit and his friends. She also lived in the Lake District.

It was a coolish, dampish English day when we were there and we didn’t get to spend as much time as we wished, but that’s a penalty we paid for trying to hit some of the highlights of three countries—England, Wales, and Scotland in two weeks.

We had our lunch at the Grasmere Tea Room, ate outside on that pleasantly cool afternoon. I think we had Paninis, having a desire to break from fish and chips (we call them French Fries here). But we had been warned of interlopers that we were told were particularly aggressive that day—Jackdaws, a relative of crows and ravens. They liked to snatch food from tables.

Grasmere is, as is the case with many European communities, an old place, one where a 200-year old building is still relatively new.  We have avoided describing it as “picturesque” because we imagine the locals have heard their town referred to that way and it has become cloying to them.

And “quaint” is a condescending word, too, so we didn’t use it.  We liked Grasmere. It’s one of several small places we visited that we’d like to return to, despite the Jackdaws.

To the ancient Celts, Jackdaws were sacred birds that nested in church steeples, symbolic church guards. Like their Crow and Raven relatives, they are considered quite intelligent. We kind of thought the one perched on the back of a chair about twenty feet from our table was scheming to poach some of our lunch. But we kept a sharp eye on it and never let it have a chance.

What has all of this to do with Trump’s politically silly and nationally-damaging tariffs? We have vented about this in earlier posts but this time it’s personal.

Our excellent tour guide, Charlie Reader, gave us something else for which Grasmere is widely known.

We each got a couple of hand-wrapped gingerbreads. And we loved them.

More than 170 years ago, Victorian Cook Sarah Nelson began making gingerbreads in her 17th century home, using her “secret recipe” (that is still secret).  Grasmere Gingerbreads are a cross between a cake and what the English call a biscuit—a cracker to us.

Sarah’s secret recipe now is guarded by Joanne and Andrew Hunter, third generation owners of the business which still operates from Sarah’s house. I wish we had known of the gingerbread house before we left the town—and had the time to visit it.  But bus tours being bus tours, we had to be on our way after lunch.

The BBC has provided some looks at Sarah’s story and the wonderful products she created.

Bing Videos

Bing Videos

When we got home, I decided to secretly order a dozen of these gingerbreads to be delivered to our home each month. It was going to be a surprise Christmas present for Nancy but the surprise fell though when Diane Gallagher (probably) called from Grasmere and Nancy answered the phone. “There’s a lady from Grasmere on the phone asking for you,” she announced before listening to the conversation. Diane was calling to confirm the order.  The first order came in the tin you see here. Subsequent orders have come in hand-wrapped paper packaging and are refills for the tin.

Each month we have looked forward to finding our little package by our front door about the 10th of each month.  But on September 5, we received a note from Diane announcing the package had been shipped three days earlier but she understood “there have been delays at Customs and your parcel is due for delivery today.”

Then she wrote:

We believe the delays are because the US Government has now abolished the exemption for any parcel under a value of $800 from import duties.  This may mean that you will be liable for import duties on delivery of the parcel.  We are still trying to find out exactly what this will mean in monetary terms, but have reason to believe that for the next six months there will be a flat fee of $80 per parcel being sent from the UK. 

Eighty dollars on a $30 package!!!

This is the results of Donald Trump’s ill-advised removal of the “de minimis” exemption for small packages from foreign countries. Packages worth less than $800 were exempt from tariffs until August 29 when he decided even the smallest item would cost a lot more.

The Universal Postal Union says postal deliveries from around the world to the United States dropped by EIGHTY PERCENT within two weeks after our economic genius President scribbled his name on the bottom of his executive order.

We were supposed to take delivery on Wednesday, September 10. Instead we got a “reschedule” notice from UPS telling us, “UPS is preparing your package for clearance. We will notify you if additional information is needed.”

Diane told us it would be okay to refuse to pay the duties. Afterward the company could tell the UPS to destroy the parcel and the amount remaining on our order would be refunded.

The order from Grasmere was held up for the better part of a week before it cleared customs in Louisville, Kentucky (why Louisville, we don’t know), and was to arrive at our house on Wednesday, September 10.

We decided to pay the duty because the folks in Grasmere had produced the gingerbreads and had shipped them to us in good faith but we decided to have them hold onto the rest of our funds until our country regained this small part of its sanity and allows something so benign as Grasmere Gingerbread to be shipped to Missouri without a duty or a tariff that our President is unable to admit punishes his own citizens.

Trump says his tariffs will force foreign manufacturers to build factories in this country. I am quite sure that Joann and Andrew Hunter are not going to establish a gingerbread manufacturing plant in this country because of this petty policy.

But if you are accumulating evidence of how idiotic Trump’s tariff policy is working, we offer this observation as a good example.

We are puzzled by the whole tariff/duty business even more because while we were waiting for our gingerbreads to trickle through the customs bureaucracy, we found a book on our doorstep that we had ordered from a company in Delhi, India.  It took only ten days from the day I ordered it for it to arrive. I ordered the book on September 5. The company in Delhi gave it to FedEx on the tenth and five days later it was on my doorstep. Clearly, somebody in the customs office was asleep at the switch.

The gingerbreads?  They were mailed on September 2, three days before the book was ordered and eight days before the book was shipped.

On Friday, September 25, we got a notice from UPS:

The status of your package has changed.

Exception Reason: The customs clearance has failed and the shipment is abandoned

UPS told us on September 10 that the package was being prepared for clearance. We were to be notified if more information was needed.  We were not notified of anything until the message that Grasmere Gingerbread package apparently is such a threat to our national security that it would be dangerous for it to be shipped from Louisville, Kentucky where it has been losing its freshness for three weeks.

We got a new note from from Diane;

On 18th September we asked UPS to destroy the parcels that had not cleared Customs, but it appears that this has not yet happened for all parcels.  As well as the severe delays through Customs, it appears that parcels valued at less than £20 are incurring import duties of just under $70, which is just not viable.  For these reasons, our directors have taken the decision to suspend shipping to the US and Canada temporarily. 

I am very sorry about this. 

UPS told us:

Exception Reason: Package cannot clear due to customs delay or missing info. Attempt to contact sender made. Package has been disposed of.

Amazing. After all these months, UPS told us the reason UPS apparently could not get a straight answer from the customs people about the reason—it’s either “customs delay” or it’s “missing info.”  What missing info?   We are unlikely to ever learn why there was a delay and what information was missing in this shipment that wasn’t a problem earlier.

It’s a little package of a dozen Gingerbreads, for God’s sake!!!

It’s disgusting. But our president has taken “disgusting” to unprecedented levels in so many things.

I have notified Diane of our sincere apologies for the embarrassment this administration is. I wish we could go back to that beautiful part of our world to do it in person—-

—because he is creating so many things to apologize to the world for.

Is it too late for Wharton to ask for its diploma back?

(photos by BP. Gingerbread by the Grasmere Gingerbread Co., videos from the BBC)

Let the Ethnic  Cleansing Begin—Part One 

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Our retread President has promised that deportation of 11-millon undocumented aliens will be started on his first day in office. A number of economists or economy-watchers say the consequences could be severe. But that is immaterial to the incoming Commander/Demander in Chief of our country.  Others have raised serious humanitarian questions about the policy. But nobody has ever accused our incoming President of having any humanitarian interests except for his own, which are closely tied to his personal wealth.

Today we are going to start describing a plan that will mitigate any economic or diplomatic damage resulting from this deportation efforts. We expect no recognition from the incoming administration for these helpful ideas. However, if an invitation were extended to attend the State of the Union speech during which it would be announced that our necks soon will be decorated with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, we would not object.  Much. We are offering this advice at no cost, something that will please Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world who seems to have a plan to reduce government spending no matter what the cost.

Some might find this plan slightly off-the-wall. Or entirely so. But somebody has to provide some insight into how to deal with this issue and your faithful scribe will jump into the breach.

Mother Jones magazine, which some people dismiss as a liberal rag, took a hard look at Trump’s proposal a few months ago.  The incoming president has blamed foreign drug cartels and gangs have “invaded” the United States and have established a foothold at an apartment complex in Colorado, a claim contested and/or debunked by the town mayor and residents of the apartment complex in much the same way that leaders of a town in Ohio deny there’s any cat-eating going on there. Regardless, the “invasion” deserves a forceful response from this country.

The incoming President also has asserted that brown people from Venezuela and other countries that have emptied their prisons and lunatic asylums are killers, rapists, fentanyl importers, and probably don’t wear clean underwear every day.

Mother Jones describes a lot of problems with 47’s plan (actually he’s the 45th person to be President. He’s the second one to have two different administrations):

The magazine  says it’s going to take 95,994 chartered flights to get the 11-million people out of the country and going to wherever they will be  unloaded.  Projected costs, spread through 20 years because you can’t do this in two weeks would be $300-Billion.

Who would profit?  Private prison companies such as CoreCivic and the GEO Group were paid $1.5 billion by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to run immigration detention centers in 2022. They’ll improve our economy by building new facilities and hiring a lot of people to guard the women and children—and men—at new lockups.  A GEO Group subsidiary, BI Incorporated, got a five-year deal to produce ankle monitors and phone tracking apps worth $2.2 billion to ICE and will do quite well making 11-million more of these shackles. CSI Aviation has a $128.3 million contract for daily transport flights that they’ll have to increase, again pumping more money back into economy.

And this business expansion will offset the loss of jobs elsewhere in our economy.

There probably will be inconsiderate and ungrateful lawyers who will sue the government if the 1798 Alien Enemies Act is used to justify the deportations.

This might be the time to invest in a critical industry: hardware and home improvement companies. All of those detention camps will require a lot of posts and poles and wire and plywood buildings for the large facilities for undesirable Canadians, Mexicans, etc. A spokesman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association likens such camps to Soviet Gulags.

If there aren’t enough people in our regular military services who are guarding Taiwan, and South Korea and other pressure points in the globe and a decision is made not to lessen those protections, then nationalizing the National Guard is a possibility, he says. Fine and dandy but the Posse Comitatus Law forbids the National Guard from doing civilian law enforcement jobs.

Let’s face it, establishing military guard posts at every road in and out of all of our states is going to take a lot of people making sure no undocumented aliens can seek safety in a different state from their illegal homes here.

The article suggested we brace ourselves for big increases in food costs, decreases in important segments of the workforce, cuts in housing development, and cuts in some health programs.

The magazine quotes an agriculture and economics professor at the University of California-Davis who estimates food prices for hand-picked products will go up 21% because the deportations will eliminate half of the hands doing the picking. The survey also estimates 25% of the people who process our chicken, turkeys, pork, and fish are undocumented aliens. And it says we can look for a doubling of the price of milk if the people doing the milking are shipped out.

Illegal migrants are not eligible to collect Social Security. But they pay about $13-Billion a year into it. Undocumented immigrant households paid $35.1 Billion in state and federal taxes in 2022. That’s a pretty big economic hole. We’re waiting to see the plan for dealing with that.

It’s estimated about 350,000 undocumented immigrants work in health care, two-thirds of them in providers or in supporting positions. Rebecca Shi, who heads the American Business Immigration Coalition says, “They are the people that pick our crops, prepare our foods, clean our hotel rooms and empty our bedpans.”

This roundup also could affect the roofs over our heads. A study indicates one third of the crews that are whizzes at installing new roofs on our homes and businesses are potential deportees.  The construction industry already is short an estimated half-million workers.

But don’t worry.  The incoming President knows who will replace all of these workers.  If he doesn’t, we’re going to tell him in our next installment.

It might seem bizarre and crazy.  It isn’t.  It’s just the new normal.

JUST DESSERTS

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When I’m in Indianapolis, I stay with my friends, Rick and Karen, who have a condo downtown, a few blocks from Monument Circle.  They know all of the fine downtown restaurants—I think, in fact, that Rick has a couple of places that have tables for him whenever he goes in—and, worse, they know all of the dessert places.

The most recent visit involved three excellent dinners and three visits to dessert places none of us had any business going into.  The last night we went to something called The Sugar Factory.

I should have turned and run as fast as I could the other way.

Of all the items on the menu, I thought the Strawberry Cheesecake Milk Shake sounded the most tasty and probably the simplest of the desserts.  Boy, was I ever wrong.

There was the milk shake in a sugar-topped glass and a straw.  But the straw was there mainly to hold the other elements together. Whipped cream and candy strawberries topped the shake itself, topped by the cheesecake and more whipped cream, a real strawberry, and then a strawberry/chocolate cupcake topped by more whipped cream.

God help me!  I ate and drank it all.  The cupcake was nothing to write a blog about but the cheesecake was pretty good and the strawberry milkshake was just the right thickness and flavor.

The eight-block walk back to the condo was done at a fairly leisurely pace.

I had planned to spend a fourth night, after the race, but I decided to stick around only long enough to take the pictures I wanted and then head home early, listening to the rest of the race on the radio (it is, after all, about a 400-mile drive).  I told Rick I was leaving early because I didn’t think I could survive another dessert.

If my doctors were to look closely at my blood samples, I am sure they would find I don’t have white blood cells.  I have vanilla blood cells.

Once a week Nancy and I get together with a couple friends for game night—dominoes, Rummikub, Five Crown, Swoop, stuff like that.  Halfway through the evening, or when we change games, is dessert time.  No matter what the basic treat is—brownies, cobblers, cake, whatever—ice cream is the vital ingredient.  Always too much ice cream.

On our refrigerator, amidst the numerous pictures of grandchildren, cartoons, the next shopping list and assorted refrigerator magnets, is an advertisement I found in a 1916 Jefferson City newspaper. I look at it the way some people consider their bumper stickers, “He said it. I believe it. So it’s true.”

In 1916 the ad assured buyers that Weber’s ice cream was safe to eat, produced in sanitary surroundings, and was not the impure foods of the time found in grocery stores, themeat sometimes hanging openly in the windows.   Eat our ice cream and you’ll be alive tomorrow to eat more.  That kind of message.

But in today’s FDA-regulated food environment, I am comfortable reading it another way—that ice cream is an essential food group.

I think it is a genetic flaw.

While doing some family research a few years ago, looking for references to my great-grandfather, a Union (with Sherman) Civil War veteran, I uncovered a family secret

A longer article in the Decatur (Ill.) Evening Bulletin from July 6,1896 telling me that Robert Thomas Priddy and his partner, A. A. Cooper, both experienced dairymen, had bought “the milk depot and ice cream business “in the basement of Fay’s meat market on the west side of Lincoln Square.”

A year later:

I inherited my addiction to ice cream from an ancestor who was with Sherman at Vicksburg and later helped capture Little Rock.

He died in 1925.

In the old family photographs, he’s thin. It’s clear he didn’t dip into the inventory as often as he could have.

I wonder what he would have thought of that Strawberry Cheesecake Milkshake at The Sugar Factory.

 

 

 

Notes From a Quiet Street

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(being miscellaneous unconnected topics flitting through an aging mind)

This was The Quiet Street a couple of weeks ago. . Soon it will be a quiet ugly WINTER street. Just skeletal trees—the walnut tree on the right already had denuded itself. Snow now and then that turns to dirty slush. We are nearing the time of discontent.  The inner curmudgeon, who hides when it is warm and the trees and yards are lush and green, is beginning to emerge.

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Went to the drive-through line at a fast food restaurant the other day to pick up a large Coke and the lady at the window called me “sweetheart” twice within five seconds when she handed it to me.

Please, if you are an employee of a retail establishment, don’t call your customers “sweetheart,” or “dear,” or “honey” or any other such enderments. Especially if your customer is a curmudgeon who also doesn’t like people to wish him a good day. Be aware your customer, curmudgeon or not, is probably gritting his or her teeth as they walk or drive away.

Every now and then when somebody says, “Have a good one,” I respond, “I do.”  Not that they listen. Sometimes they personalize it: “You have a good one.” I am sometimes tempted to ask, “How do you know?” Maybe one of these days one of them will wonder what I meant.

Serves them right.

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A friend was talking about setting his clock radio on a country-western station that played such awful music that he was instantly awake and motivated into instant action—to turn off the radio.  It reminded me of hearing, during a Sons of the Pioneers Concert (with Roy Rogers Jr.) in Jefferson City a couple of years ago, one of the guys defining the difference between western music, which the Sons do, and country music. It went something like:

“Western music is about the outdoors—the trails, the mountains, the open plains, the sky, the cattle.  Country music is about the indoors—cheatin’ and lyin’ and  cryin’ and diein’.”

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We watched the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Washington Football Team a few days ago.  They used to be the Washington Redskins but finally decided to abandon the name after years of hearing Native Americans and others complain that the team name was a racial slur.  This is the second year the team hasn’t had a name and didn’t even have a “W” on the helmets in the game against the Chiefs.

We’ve decided the owners need some help in picking a new name.  Perhaps you have some suggestions you could offer in our response box below:

–Washington Anonymous Sources (The Washington Anons for short)

–Washington Leakers

—Washington Insurrectionists

—Washington Peaceful Tourists

—Washington Bureacrats (likely to be considered a slur, too)

—Washington Statesmen (well, somebody needs to be statesmen in that town)

—Washington Monuments

—Washington Lobbyists

—Washington Campaigners

—Washington Partisans

—Washington Deficits

—Washington Malls

What’s in YOUR head? No profanities allowed and remember children watch these teams play.

The Cleveland baseball team will be the Cleveland Guardians next year. Chief Wahoo bit the dust a couple of years ago and the team removed the “Indians” sign from the stadium a few days ago.

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A lot of today’s young people are not attracted to church because the music isn’t their kind of music.  Old Rugged Cross and Onward Christian Soldiers don’t resonate with them. The other day our pastor read the lyrics to an old favorite hymn—-and reading hymn lyrics can sometimes change our understanding of what the song (or the original poem) was all about.  I, for one, like to read hymns.

The Broadway Musical Hamilton is interesting to your vigilant observer because it displays a previously-unrealized musicality that can exist within Rap. When do you suppose church hymns carrying that Rap musicality will catch on—and whether that new kind of music will make church more meaningful to the “Nones” and the “Dones.”

Wonder what Organ Rap would sound like.

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And finally, this headline we could not resist from a few days ago:

COLLEGE COACHING VETERAN JOE LEE DUNN HAS PASSED

Passed what?   A kidney stone?  A nickel he swallowed?

Have his teams always just run with the ball?  Was it a completion?  Did get get a touchdown?  First down?

Ohhhhhhh.  It means he died. We trust that the headline was intentional because it was fitting. However…..

I have a long collection of obituary first paragraphs containing dozens of phrases that people use to avoid saying “died.”

One of my journalism professors told the class one day that “passing away” is a quarterback who hurls the ball downfield. It sails over the hands of he receiver, clears the goalposts and is last seen disappearing over the top of the stadium.

“THAT,” he said, “is passing away.”

People die.

The Dark History of Missouri’s first Thanksgiving

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Today’s the day.

Your obedient servant hates to be at home for much of Thanksgiving Day. Working in the newsroom on Thanksgiving morning was a refuge.  The Missourinet always worked holidays because news happens on holidays, too (a major oil spill at Christmas during the Ashcroft administration, for example), so the news staff split the day with one person on duty in the morning and a second one working the afternoon.

The reason for seeking refuge in the newsroom?   To avoid the hours of agony of smelling the turkey being cooked.  Better to get home about 1 p.m. so the torture would last only a short time.  Giving thanks on Thanksgiving Day for the opportunity for newsroom refuge all morning was never publicly expressed but was an unspoken message from your servant to his ultimate master.

Missouri did not formally celebrate Thanksgiving until 1844.  And there is a tragic part of that story.

Governor Thomas Reynolds, a Kentucky native who had been the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois and after that, served three terms in the Illinois House.  He moved to Fayette, Missouri and quickly was elected to the Missouri House where he immediately became the Speaker.  After a few years as a circuit judge, he became our seventh governor in 1840. His greatest achievement as governor was eliminating imprisonment for debt.  And on October 16, 1843 he proclaimed the official celebration of Thanksgiving in Missouri:

WHEREAS, it is considered right and proper that we should gratefully acknowledge the goodness of God, displayed in the preservation of our lives, our civil and religious liberties, and our republican institutions, and for every blessing, temporal and spiritual, which we enjoy, and

WHEREAS, the protection of the State from invasion, insurrection and intestine commotion, and the citizens from pestilence and plague, equally demands a return of thanks to Him whose arm has brought this protection;

Now, THEREFORE, under a full sense of obligation and duty, and in accordance with the request of various religious denominations, I, Thomas Reynolds, Governor of the State of Missouri do by this public proclamation recommend to the people of the State, that, without any distinction of sect, denomination or creed, they observe Thursday, the thirtieth day of November, next, as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God, for his favor extended to us nationally and individually. “Duly signed and sealed under date October 16 1843.

What was the first Thanksgiving like in Missouri?  Amitai Etzioni and Jared Bloom, in their 2004 book, We Are What We Celebrate: Understanding Holidays and Rituals, offer William J. Hammond’s account in the Missouri Republican:

It was the first Thanksgiving Day observed in this state…and you may suppose the most was made of it…There was all sorts of frolicking…

In the morning the…Churches were thrown open for religious exercises and all were crowded to overflowing. The afternoon was observed by the gathering together of all the members of families…as I had no fireside to go to…nor no relation to talk with…the afternoon was spent with me walking like a lost sheep waiting to be gathered into the fold. But the afternoon would not last always, and night came, and with it, my time for fun. There were Methodist Sewing Societies, Presbyterian Tea Parties, and Balls in abundance and it was some time before I could make up my mind which to attend. I finally decided to stick to first principles and go to a Methodist Sewing Society.

The one which I attended was held at Mrs. McKee’s…At an early hour quite a company was assembled…All passed very pleasantly until about 8 o’clock, when Miss Mary took a particular spite against the Piano and commenced hammering it, with vocal accompaniment, which frightened me considerably and I sloped. The evening not being far advanced, I…[gave] the Presbyterians a pop by going to their Tea Party; they had a splendid supper, good speeches were made by several gentlemen, and I regretted that I did not go there first as I never spent my time more agreeably.

Governor Reynolds did not live to celebrate the first official Missouri Thanksgiving that he had proclaimed. On the morning of February 9, 1844, after breakfast and a prayer, Reynolds retired to his office at the first Executive Mansion.  He put a rifle to his forehead and pulled the trigger. He left behind a note: “In every situation in which I have  been placed, I have labored to discharge my duty faithfully to the public; but this has not protected me for the last twelve months from the slanders and abuse of my enemies, which has rendered my life a burden to me. I pray God to forgive them, and teach them more charity…Farewell.”

Walter V. N. Bay, who wrote a history of Missouri’s early judges and lawyers, said, “At the time of his death his prospects for distinction were greater than those of any man in the state, for his finial habits, pleasant demeanor, and unquestioned integrity had made him exceedingly popular, and it was a mere question of time as to his elevation to the Federal Senate.”

Bay, however, suggests “truth and candor force us to state that many of [his] friends attributed the suicide to a very different cause…To be more specific, they believed it grew out of his domestic troubles.”

He is buried in the Woodland-Old City Cemetery in Jefferson City, not far from the grave of Governor John Sappington Marmaduke, whose father, M. M. Marduke, finished out Reynolds’ term.

While there was much “frolicking” in Missouri on that first state-declared Thanksgiving Day, there undoubtedly were several people who recalled the governor who had so little to be thankful for that life was no longer possible.

(Photo Credits:  Missouri Encyclopedia/State Historical Society of Missouri; Bill Walker (tombstone in Woodland Old City Cemetery, Jefferson City).

THANKS AND GIVING

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(Thousands of people will not gather around a sumptuous Thanksgiving table this week.  They will be serving a meal to many thousands more who cannot afford even a modest Thanksgiving table at home—or even afford a home.  Or a table. Perhaps, says Dr. Frank Crane in this column from the first year of the Woodrow Wilson administration, those who are serving and those who are being served understand the day the most)

LEARN THANKSGIVING FROM THE HAVE-NOTS

The President has proclaimed the annual day of Thanksgiving.  Probably that comes to you as a joke. ”What have I to be thankful for?” you ask and then begin to run over the list of your grievances.

But go and see the have-nots, and maybe you will learn something, if you are not a hopeless whiner.

Visit the have-not nations.  Live a while in Russia or Mexico, have your opinions suppressed, your property confiscated, your life threatened, all without justice; perhaps then you may get a few thrills when you look at the American flag.

Return in your mind to former ages. Feel how it seems to have the nobility despise, curse and rob you and treat you as a dog; to have a state church clap you in prison or roast you in the public square for daring to think; to have solemn magistrates condemn your mother to be hanged as a witch; to have your daughter outraged by the lord of the manor and your sons killed fighting his battles.

If your skin is black, go back…and live among the have-nots of Liberty, and be sold in the market place as chattel.

If you are well, turn to the have-nots of health to the hospitals where the crowded prisoners of  pain would give the world to walk and eat and work as you now do. Go to the dim chamber of the invalid and listen to the consumptive’s cough, the dyspeptic’s groan, the ravings of the fevered and the suffering and smitten. Then, if you are anything of a man, come out and hire someone to kick you for complaining, ever.

The have-nots of sound; observe the deaf and dumb not to gloat over your advantages, but to realize what music and the voices of people and the gift of speech mean to you.

Watch the pathetic faces of the have-nots of light; and, seeing the blind, learn to be humbling grateful toward the fate that grants you the light of heaven.

Do you know the have-nots of love? Consider them and if one heart ever so simple loves you, be thankful.  Mark the deserted wife, her dreams shattered, her heart broken, her children fatherless, and the burden of care upon her shoulders; and if you have a husband that’s half decent, be thankful.

Go to the wrong, betrayed husband; look upon him; and if  you have a faithful wife who believes in you and is glad because of you, be thankful.

Little girl, little boy, have you and mother that hugs you up and a daddy that’s proud of you? Think of the have-nots, the boys and girls whose mother is still and gone or whose father is no more, and be as thankful as you can.

Have you children?  Call to mind the have-nots, the mother whose loneliness is most bitter of all, the loneliness is that most bitter of all, the loneliness of empty arms, of a breast where once cuddled a curly head.

Then think of the worried, wretched, remorseful, perverted of those whose conscience stings them and if you have the comfortable self-respect of decency, be thankful.

Visit, in your mind, the wide realm of the dead. You have the unspeakable gift of life. You walk in the sun, and breathe the sweet air, and get the message of the trees, the mountains and oceans; for you the flowers blow, and the snow falls, and the hearth light burns, and children’s voices sound and the light of love kindles in someone’s eyes.

Be thankful for life.

Think of the have-nots and reflect. Who am I that I also should not also be among them?

 

Fat

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(Dr. Frank Crane wanted to help people be better through positive thinking and in his writings he took that responsibility seriously. But Dr. Crane was not a man without humor. Our Centers for Disease Control says we are a nation of fat, that the prevalence of obesity was 42.4% in 2017-2018, the most recent year the CDC has weighed the facts and the facts show we’re plumping up. The Centers say that in 1999-2000, only 30.5% of us were, shall we say, overly insulated against the cold. As we are now into the season of over-indulging, we call upon Dr. Crane to offer some light-hearted positive thinking about this heavy topic.)

THE FAT MAN

Every once in a while, said the fat man, somebody comes along with some medicine or treatment or system of exercise or plan of starvation to reduce my flesh.

What do I want to reduce it for?  It all feels good.  And every time I lose weight I get peevish.

What’s the matter with people, anyhow, that they can make fun of fat folks?

They are the salvation of the race. They keep humanity cheerful.

Optimism is mostly a matter of adipose tissue.

Fat people like to eat and drink. They don’t have food fads. They enjoy breakfast, dinner, and supper, and a bite between. And that’s the kind of people mother likes to cook for, and the rest of the family like to live with.

People with appetites are human.

Human folks are those who make joys of life’s necessities. Must we eat? They make eating a celebration.  Must we drink? They adorn with songs the inserting of liquid into one’s anatomy. Must we labor? It shall be to music. Must we exercise? It shall be a game.

It’s your fat men that keep humanity form dying of the dry rot. They make existence a poem. They see the jokes of destiny.

Fat men have the sources of humor in them. Some lean persons have been funny, but what would they have amounted to had there been no fat persons to laugh at them?

Your skinny ones take themselves too seriously. They are reformers, prohibitionists, revolutionists, suffragettes. Their gospel is: Whatever is, is wrong.

Why do men admire slender women? They nag.

Slim women are neat, orderly, everything-in-its-place. They are good housekeepers, meaning that they keep the house fit for everybody but the husband and children.

And why do women admire slim men, with no girth? Such men are fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. They beat their wives, if they are vulgar; and persecute them more subtly, if they are cultured.

Take it from me, girls. Pick out a nice, large, round, juicy man, that likes to feed, and whose conscience is not wormy, marry him and, as the Good Books says, “let your soul delight itself in fatness. “

It doesn’t follow that because a man’s fat he’s a slob. Napoleon was roundish. Samuel Johnson was obese, and so was Boswell, who write about him.

The world and an overcoat, it was said, could not contain the glory of Victor Hugo. And believe me, he was some eater. Here’s one of his meals: veal cutlets, lima beans, oil, roast beef and tomato sauce, omelets, milk and vinegar, mustard and cheese, all swallowed rapidly with great draughts of coffee.

They called Rossini “a hippopotamus in trousers,” and for six years before his death he couldn’t see his toes.

Alexander Dumas could eat three beefsteaks to any other man’s one; and Balzac looked more like a hogshead than a human being.

Besides, added the fat man, if everybody was fat, there would be no war.  It’s the lean men that fight.

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Dr. Crane appreciated being alive

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(In these times of sickness we might find ourselves dwelling on the things that we miss more than we spend time dwelling on the things we don’t realize we have. When conditions might prompt otherwise repressed thoughts of our mortality, it can be better for us to dwell on the day we are given.  To do so, Dr. Frank Crane suggests, makes us something we might prefer NOT to think we are—)

THE SENSUALIST

Do you know, said my old friend Miss Dean, professor of English literature in Blank College, and about the last person in the world you would accuse of being gross, she being a typical highbrow, blue-stocking, and all that sort of thing—Do you know, she said, that the older I grow the more I am getting to be a sensualist?

I am duly shocked, I replied, but suppose of course you intended to shock me so as to bring out some unusual truth. So go ahead.

What I mean is that I am more and more inclining to the belief that we do not emphasize enough the sheer delight of merely being alive. If we would oftener take stock of our little satisfactions, the unnoticed sensations of pleasure that we habitually slur over and take for granted, we would increase the average of our contentment.

I got to thinking this morning of how many things there are in my daily experiences that are agreeable.  I was amazed at how many ways there are in which Nature contrives to make me feel good.

For instance, to begin at the beginning of the day, I like to get up.  I dearly love the first minutes of being awake. To stretch my limbs and shake off sleep, to roll out of bed and put my nose out of the window and drink in the fresh early air, and see the young sunlight, not yet glaring and hot, but full of the promise of life, a sweet light and soft, and to see the trees seeming so glad and virile—oh! It’s great!

And then I like my bath. I like to get all my clothes off and enjoy the touch of the air on my skin as if I were an animal.  We are all animals, but it does us good to go back healthily to animality some time during the day—touch, like Atlas, our mother Earth and the elemental air and light from which come our tides of strength.

I love a good souse in the water. I love the feel of the towel when I rub dry. I like dressing. Putting on clothes with me is always an interesting ceremony.  From lacing my shoes to coming my hair, it is more than a routine—it is a ritual.

I love breakfast.  Thank goodness, I have an appetite. I don’t eat much, but I love to eat.  And when I think of all the living creatures upon the earth, oxen and sheep, birds and horses and fishes, that share with me this delight of taking food, I have a sense of intimate communion with the universe.

Why do some people speak contemptuously of eating?  To me it’s wonderful to think of the infinite ministries of matter to our spirits by way of the palate. Eggs and butter, fish, flesh and fowl, grains and fruits, honey, cream, and, best and most angelic of all—water!  What are those all but Nature’s children vying with each other to please their human guest?

Then there are a thousand other things I like. I like the sun, and to sit in the shade, to walk, and to rest afterward. I like colors, the reds, browns, and blacks of my books, the green of my blotter, the yellow of my pencil, the blue of my rug, and all the other numberless shades, with their blendings and contrasts, that make up the vast orchestra of color continually playing for my benefit.

I like breathing.  Did you ever stop to think how delicious air is?

I like the thousand and one things that we usually refer to as boresome. I like to have my hands manicured. I like to ride on the trolley-car. I like my favorite rocking chair. I like my pen and my pad of paper, and to see words grow under my hand. I like a good novel. I like a good road and a hedge and a clump of bushes. I like to ride in a taxicab through the crowded streets. I like to look at multitudes. And I like to be alone.

I like walls and pavements. I like new gloves and nice underwear. I like, oh! Passionately, a new hat and a gown fresh from the maker. I like for a man to talk to me as if I interested him. I like little children. I like old folks. I like big husky workmen lifting loads. I like people who get excited over purely intellectual problems. I like to make money and to spend it. I like to see young people in love. I like a church, and a theatre, and bridge, and a roomful of chat and laughter. I like jokes, and music, and soldiers marching.

I fear I am a hopeless sensualist. For Stevenson’s jingle grows on me:

“The world is so full of a number of things

I’m sure we should all be happy as kings.”

The history of Christmas yogurt

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The following is based on a true event. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and any resemblance of the names used in this account and the names of real people is entirely coincidental.

To: all staff   From: Gala Landowski, coordinator of interoffice activities

This Friday will be the Christmas Party potluck. There are signup sheets in each department area. Please try to have your food items picked out by the end of the day.

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To: Gala Landowski, CIA   From: Armand LeSoir, Accounting Department

The Accounting Department will be meeting tomorrow to determine what brand of unflavored yogurt to contribute.

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To: Armand LeSoir, AD   From: Gala Landowski, CIA

We are emphasizing the use of home-grown products from producers throughout the state.

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To: Gala, CIA From: Armand, AD

A very good idea, Gala. I have a good friend who has an organic yogurt farm outside of Clarence, Missouri. In fact, he says the recent harvest of yogurt berries was exceptional and produced some very high quality product this year. His is one of the few farms in Missouri to escape the serious outbreak of yogurt blight this year, or as some call it, Yogurt Rust. He grows his yogurt organically with no pesticides, insecticides, or artificial sweeteners. Each berry is carefully picked and processed by the highest-trained immigrant workers, some of whom have worked for him since they were thirteen years old. All of them carefully wash their hands after they use the bathroom.

The yogurt plants on his farm are nourished only by manure from organically-grown Angus cattle fed only organically-grown grass and high-quality organic grains. His plants have been carefully bred, using the highest quality yogurt berries from Bavaria and Latvia which are known for their hardiness, with berries from France which have a certain tartness balanced by berries from South Carolina that are known for southern sweetness. These in turn have been bred to the famous Missouri wild yogurt berry, which was a favorite of our pioneer settlers after being introduced to Missouri by the legendary Johnny Yogurtseed. The result of all of this careful work that has spanned generations of his family is an outstanding natural and well-balanced organic yogurt.

I shall make every effort to obtain some of my friend’s yogurt for the event Friday. However as many of you know, the Corps of Engineers is holding back billions of gallons of water in reservoirs in the Dakotas and Montana so people in those regions have lakes on which to go ice fishing and to experience other winter activities that we in the South would never understand. Because the Corps has taken that step, the navigation season on the Missouri has been shortened considerably because of lack of water in the channel which, in turn, has made it impossible for the yogurt barge companies to operate.

You might remember that last week the final yogurt barge of the season didn’t get downstream quickly enough and one of the tows struck a snag near Boonville and settled on the bottom of the river. Only the fact that the tow had a double hull has kept us from having a major environmental disaster. The interior hull protected against a major yogurt spill but the frigid weather and the cold water has caused the yogurt to congeal, making it impossible for salvage crews to pump it out into their smaller boats. They won’t be able to remove the yogurt until a few days before the spring navigation season.

By then the yogurt—because it is organic and therefore contains no preservatives—will have rotted and will be usable only as feed for captured feral hogs. I understand a University of Missouri study done by the College of Agriculture, Food, Natural Resources, Home-Produced Ethanol, and Quilt-Making has recently shown that rotted yogurt produces a chemical change within the brains of feral pigs that transforms them into pets suitable for children who sometimes come to regard them as large and hairy potbellied pigs.

Fortunately my friend had insurance that will cover his loss and he did hold back some of his crop in a yogurt storage bin so he might be able to provide us with enough yogurt for our part of the party. The situation has produced a significant supermarket price increase to excessive levels for organic yogurt this winter. If my friend cannot provide some yogurt from his storage bin we won’t be able to afford to buy some at the supermarket and will be forced to look for other items for the food crawl. Should you find something other than yogurt on Friday, please understand that we have been forced to provide it with the greatest reluctance.

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From: Darrell Upton, Coordinator of Pencils and Stationery   To: AS, AD

If my memory is correct, the “first” yogurt was created by a special kind of bacteria—most definitely ORGANIC in nature.

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From: AS, AD   To: DU, CPS

Your memory is accurate to a point, Darrell.   In fact, the first yogurt bacteria was carefully cultivated by Neanderthals who found them in a cave near what is now Lascaux, France. It was found growing mysteriously and voluntarily in the dark recesses of a large room in the cave. (Did you know, by the way, that an analysis of my saliva by National Geographic shows that I am 1.8 percent Neanderthal, which is above average?) The leader of the group that found it was known as a sage because of his great intellect and his willingness to experiment in a primitive scientific way. He rubbed his finger through the bacterial growth and tasted it. He survived the experiment and, in fact, thought it tasted rather good. After consulting with others in his clan, it was decided the bacteria should be grown as a food source, a delicacy. Through experiments and using various ground herbs mixed with virgin’s urine, it was determined the bacteria could be grown rapidly enough to supply a small amount of food for the group.

The testing process took a considerable length of time during which various members of this Neanderthal band stood watch inside the cave to protect the precious small growing area. Although Neanderthals were not as intelligent as we are today, they nonetheless were as easily bored as we can become, especially in the dark. They took to carrying small lamps fueled by the oil of the glands of certain goats indigenous to the area into the cave and also took some ground- up berries native to the area. While waiting for the bacteria to flourish, they used the juice from the berries to paint some figures on the walls of that cave.

In time, this clan was able to get the bacteria to reproduce in a peat bog in a shaded area outside the cave and as the bacteria evolved it became capable of growing in the daylight and if not harvested for a lengthy time, formed into berries with reproducing seeds. Thus were born the earliest yogurt berries, the progenitor of the berries raised by my friend near Clarence.

In the middle of the 19th Century, some explorers discovered the cave and were dazzled by the great cave paintings those early yogurt developers left behind those thousands of years ago. Little did they know the other historic activity that happened in that cave, an early experiment that led to one of society’s most useful foods. Few know the name of that early clan elder, the sage, but this story was told to me in my youth by my high school science teacher who claimed to be a direct descendant of that Neanderthal family.

The old sage/scientist’s name was Yog, and the product became known as Yog-urt, which is Neanderthal meaning “Food from the Finger of Yog.”

At some indefinite time, it appears the Neanderthals had enough berries that they traded with some ancient Greek traders who found the berries flourished on Mount Oikos,

And the rest is history.

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To: AS, AD   From: Barbara Singlemom, Human Resources

Wow!   I heard it was newborn baby poopoo (thus very organic and all naturelle). Your story is much more interesting.

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To: BS, HR   From: AS, AD

Barb, you’re partly correct. Modern scientists who have reverse-engineered the yogurt berry have determined that the original bacterium began in the feces of the Miniature Jurassic Tyrannobat that lived in the cave before the species became extinct.

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To: AS, AD   From: BS, HR

Well, we all have much to think about now each time we enjoy our cup of Yoplait.

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To: BS, HR   From: AS, AD

Yo-Plait, in fact, was the first virgin whose urine was used in those early experiments.

If we are not able to get enough yogurt from my friend near Clarence, our department will provide some sourdough biscuits for the crawl.

Did you know there is a “Sourdough Citizen Science Project” that has sequenced the DNA of sourdough starters from throughout the world to better understand the sourdough microbial biodiversity? You can Google it.

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