Category Archives: generally

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A Milestone and a Concert (10/7/24)

This entry hits a milestone.  Hitting a milestone is better than hitting a pothole, which I did a few weeks before trading my car for a new one.  That pothole on the eastbound shoulder of I-70 just after Kingdom City was the Grand Canyon of potholes and caused almost $5,000 in damage to the right front tire and the suspension on that corner.

So a milestone is much better.  The phrase “than hitting” contains the one-millionth word written for this series of commentaries that have kept me from finding more interesting hobbies.  It’s one small bleat in the cacophony of voices social media has allowed to flood our Holocene.

Now, to start the next million—-

A Concert of Missouri Music

Suppose we were to have a band or orchestra concert (with special performers) that featured only Missouri music.  What would you include?  Here are some suggestions. We’ve scouted out a few on Youtube.  Perhaps you can add to the list. And then, where and when should the concert or concerts be held?

Some of the artists listed have died.  But others have performed these songs.

One Warning:  Some of these things might force you to watch a fund-raising message from one or the other of our presidential candidates that you can’t get out of. OR a piece of trash about how wonderful sports betting will be for our schools.  Sorry to put you through those awful experiences.  But as British poet William Congreve wrote in 1697 about the calming effect music can have on an angry person:

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,

To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d,

And, as with living Souls, have been inform’d,

By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.

What then am I? Am I more senseless grown

Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe!

‘Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs.

Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night

The silent Tomb receiv’d the good Old King;

He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg’d

Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom.

Why am not I at Peace?

Now, a proposed concert:

The Missouri Waltz   (75) Johnny Cash – Missouri Waltz – YouTube

The St. Louis Blues   (75) W.C. Handy “St. Louis Blues” On The Ed Sullivan Show – YouTube

The St. Louis Blues March  (75) Glenn Miller Orchestra directed by Wil Salden – St. Louis Blues March – YouTube

A medley of the fight songs of our four-year state universities

From the movie Meet Me in St Louis: Meet Me in St. Louie, Louie; The Trolley Song; Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (also from soundtrack)

Themes from  movies: Bonnie and Clyde,  The Long Riders, Tom Sawyer (a 1973 Disney production filmed at Arrow Rock), and With a Song in My Heart (a biopic about Columbia singer Jane Froman)

Music from Big River (Roger Miller’s Broadway musical about Huck Finn)

Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City (from Oklahoma.)

Music from The Unsinkable Molly Brown Broadway musical

Going to Kansas City ((95) “Kansas City” by Wilbert Harrison – YouTube)_

Maple leaf Rag and other Scott Joplin tunes (perhaps as a medly)

Alfred E. Brumley medley: Turn Your Radio On; If We Never Meet Again (This Side of Heaven); I’ll Meet You in the Morning; He Set Me Free; I’ll Fly Away.

Bob Dyer Songs: River of the Big Canoes (Bing Videos), Ballad of the Boonslick ((75) Ballad of Boonslick – Bob Dyer (Songteller) – YouTube); The Jim Johnson ((77) The Jim Johnson – Bob Dyer (Songteller) – YouTube); After He Painted These Walls (about the Benton mural in the capitol) (Bing Videos); Bingham’s song (Bing Videos); Jim the Wonder Dog ((77) Cathy Barton & Dave Para – “Jim the Wonder Dog Song” – YouTube)

Frankie and Johnny ((95) Frankie and Johnny by Jimmie Rodgers (1929) – YouTube)

Jesse James ((95) The Ballad of Jesse James – YouTube)

Sweet Betsy from Pike ((95) Harry McClintock – Sweet Betsy From Pike [ORIGINAL] – [1928]. – YouTube)

Walking to Missouri (1952 song about Harry Truman returning home) ((95) Carter Sisters ~ Walking to Missouri – YouTube)

They Gotta Quit Kicking My Dog Around (Bing Videos

And for the conclusion: Missouri Anthem (Neal E. Boyd of America’s Got Talent did a great rendition of what should replace the Missouri Waltz as our state song, a song composed by Brandon Guttenfelder).  Neal E. Boyd and Brandon K. Guttenfelder – MISSOURI ANTHEM – YouTube

Or a beautiful orchestral version:

Neal E. Boyd – MISSOURI ANTHEM Orchestral 2013 – YouTube

Neal E. Boyd died more than five years ago and it’s a great shame that The Missouri Anthem that he performed so magnificently is not more widely honored.  He rose from a background of poverty in southeast Missouri to achieve brief national fame as the winner of the third year of the America’s Got Talent TV show.  He died at the age of 42 from various ailments.

The song should replace the dirge adopted in 1949 by the legislature (it once was known as the Graveyard Waltz) as our state song. The bicentennial of Missouri’s permanent state capital city would be an appropriate time to do that.

Your ideas?

Erifnus Caitnop

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I spent a few minutes with an old friend at another old friend’s funeral a few days ago and we wound up talking about his car that he affectionately calls Erifnus Caitnop.  John Drake Robinson has written some books about the adventures he and Erifnus have shared through the years.  Erifnus has 313 miles on the odometer and John told me his mechanic thinks the car can hit the half-million mile mark.

John doesn’t think he can last that long, though, but he agreed with me that Erifnus is a historical automobile that deserves to be in a museum.

John is a Jefferson City native.  He and his parents attended the same church we go to. His father, B. F. (“Buford,” John fondly calls him) Robinson was a fixture in the state education department for many years and was a beloved and friendly doorkeeper for the Senate for many ears in his retirement. So I have known the Robinsons, father and son, for more than fifty years.

I always feel strange saying something like that—knowing someone for fifty years.

Erifnus is historic because it is the only car that has traveled every mile of every highway in Missouri. 

At least, we think so.  We can’t imagine anyone else being that interested in doing something such as this.  Or maybe as crazy.

But we all have goals in our lives, some more expansive than others.  Driving on every mile of every highway in Missouri became John’s goal, especially while he was the State Tourism Director and had a reason to do all of that traveling.  I suppose he could have used a car from the state motor pool, but he chose Erifnus and, I have been told by one of those who worked with him, he did not always take the most direct route.

John is one of the most personable people you could ever hope to meet. And a lot of people had a chance to meet him in his odyssey.  His biography on Amazon notes:

He penetrated beyond the edges of civilization, peeked into the real American heartland, and lived to tell about it.

His books are “on the road” adventures blending local characters and mom-and-pop food into an archipelago of tasty stories. He dives deep into the wilderness, where the nearest neighbors are coyotes, and the bullfrogs sound like banjo strings.

When an interviewer asked if he ever “heard banjo music,” John replied, “Sure, all the time. And when I do, I grab a big bass fiddle and join in.”

Through all his travels, John shows a deep respect for history, and for the environment. As a former state director of tourism, he heard the question a lot: How can we balance tourism and the environment? His answer: “If we don’t preserve our natural heritage, and put back what we take out, these attractions won’t be worth visiting.”

Called the “King of the Road” by Missouri Life Magazine, John Robinson lives in Columbia, Missouri when he isn’t sleeping in his car. His articles and columns are regularly featured in a half dozen magazines.

This is Erifnus:

It’s a Pontiac Sunfire.  Spell it backwards.

I have been thinking a museum in Jefferson City would be a great place for Erifnus to continue telling its story, and John’s.  Unfortunately, there is no such museum.  We have two historical organizations in Jefferson City but neither has a museum that can accommodate Erifnus—or other historical city and county artifacts for that matter.  I think it’s time we have such a mseum, but that’s a separate discussion.

I’ve contacted a friend at the National Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood to see if Erifnus might find a place in its collection of automobiles, trains, and airplanes.  Jefferson City’s loss could be Kirkwood’s gain.

There’s another historic vehicle in central Missouri that HAS been saved although it’s not on display.  That’s William Least Heat Moon’s Ghost Dancing, the 1975 Ford Econoline van he used in compiling the stories in his famous Blue Highways. It’s in the storage area of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Missouri’s Academic Support Center.

Both vehicles need to be displayed where people can appreciate them, the men who drove them, and the stories they have told that enrich us all.

John lives in Columbia so maybe Erifnus could find a home there, too.  But as a Jefferson City resident, I wish we had a place for it here because this is where John grew up and where his service as Director of the Division of Tourism did so much to create the tales of Erifnus and the stories its driver has written.

The promise 

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In this campaign year and its awful portents of the future, we are hearing voices, many voices, angry voices, boasting voices, threatening voices, halting voices, frightened voices, quiet hopeful voices almost afraid in today’s climate to speak of hope loudly enough to be heard through the blizzard of accusations and lies and over-emphasized blunders.

Do we believe anymore that this is really a land of promise?  Or is it just a land awash in its own ugliness, self-pity, self-service, and self-defense so deep that the light of optimism cannot  penetrate?

We cannot allow that mood or those who promote it to drag us down.

We must be, as Thomas Wolfe wrote in his 1934 masterpiece You Can’t Go Home Again, “burning in the night.”

We do not know if school children still memorize one paragraph from one chapter in Wolf’s book. It concludes Chapter 31, which begins cynically but tells us we cannot let cynicism corrupt our hope.  Here is an excerpt lightly edited for shortness but still long:

The desire for fame is rooted in the hearts of men. It is one of the most powerful of all human desires, and perhaps for that very reason, and because it is so deep and secret, it is the desire that men are most unwilling to admit, particularly those who feel most sharply its keen and piercing spur.

The politician, for example, would never have us think that it is love of office, the desire for the notorious elevation of public place, that drives him on. No, the thing that governs him is his pure devotion to the common weal, his selfless and high-minded statesmanship, his love of his fellow man, and his burning idealism to turn out the rascal who usurps the office and betrays the public trust which he himself, as he assures us, would so gloriously and devotedly maintain…

So, too, the soldier. It is never love of glory that inspires him to his profession. It is never love of battle, love of war, love of all the resounding titles and the proud emoluments of the heroic conqueror. Oh, no. It is devotion to duty that makes him a soldier. There is no personal motive in it. He is inspired simply by the selfless ardor of his patriotic abnegation. He regrets that he has but one life to give for his country.

So it goes through every walk of life…

All these people lie, of course. They know they lie, and everyone who hears them also knows they lie. The lie, however, has become a part of the convention of American life…  Is it not strange that, feeling only an amused and pitying contempt for those who are still naïve enough to long for glory, we should yet lacerate our souls, poison our minds and hearts, and crucify our spirits with bitter and rancorous hatred against those who are fortunate enough to achieve fame?

…And we? Made of our father’s earth, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh—born like our father here to live and strive, here to win through or be defeated—here, like all the other men who went before us, not too nice or dainty for the uses of this earth—here to live, to suffer, and to die—O brothers, like our fathers in their time, we are burning, burning, burning in the night.

Go, seeker, if you will, throughout the land and you will find us burning in the night.

There where the hackles of the Rocky Mountains blaze in the blank and naked radiance of the moon, go make your resting stool upon the highest peak. Can you not see us now? The continental wall juts sheer and flat, its huge black shadow on the plain, and the plain sweeps out against the East, two thousand miles away. The great snake that you see there is the Mississippi River.

Behold the gem-strung towns and cities of the good, green East, flung like star-dust through the field of night. That spreading constellation to the north is called Chicago… Beyond, close-set and dense as a clenched fist, are all the jeweled cities of the eastern seaboard. There’s Boston, ringed with the bracelet of its shining little towns, and all the lights that sparkle on the rocky indentations of New England. Here, southward and a little to the west, and yet still coasted to the sea, is our intensest ray, the splintered firmament of the towered island of Manhattan. Round about her, sown thick as grain, is the glitter of a hundred towns and cities. The long chain of lights there is the necklace of Long Island and the Jersey shore. Southward and inland, by a foot or two, behold the duller glare of Philadelphia. Southward further still, the twin constellations—Baltimore and Washington. Westward, but still within the borders of the good, green East, that nighttime glow and smolder of hell-fire is Pittsburgh. Here, St. Louis, hot and humid in the cornfield belly of the land, and bedded on the mid-length coil and fringes of the snake. There at the snake’s mouth, southward six hundred miles or so, you see the jeweled crescent of old New Orleans. Here, west and south again, you see the gemmy glitter of the cities on the Texas border.

Turn now, seeker, on your resting stool atop the Rocky Mountains, and look another thousand miles or so across moon-blazing fiend-worlds of the Painted Desert and beyond Sierras’ ridge. That magic congeries of lights there to the west, ringed like a studded belt around the magic setting of its lovely harbor, is the fabled town of San Francisco. Below it, Los Angeles and all the cities of the California shore. A thousand miles to north and west, the sparkling towns of Oregon and Washington.

Observe the whole of it, survey it as you might survey a field. Make it your garden, seeker, or your backyard patch. Be at ease in it. It’s your oyster—yours to open if you will. Don’t be frightened, it’s not so big now, when your footstool is the Rocky Mountains. Reach out and dip a hatful of cold water from Lake Michigan. Drink it—we’ve tried it—you’ll not find it bad. Take your shoes off and work your toes down in the river oozes of the Mississippi bottom—it’s very refreshing on a hot night in the summertime. Help yourself to a bunch of Concord grapes up there in northern New York State—they’re getting good now. Or raid that watermelon patch down there in Georgia. Or, if you like, you can try the Rockyfords here at your elbow, in Colorado. Just make yourself at home, refresh yourself, get the feel of things, adjust your sights, and get the scale. It’s your pasture now, and it’s not so big—only three thousand miles from east to west, only two thousand miles from north to south—but all between, where ten thousand points of light prick out the cities, towns, and villages, there, seeker, you will find us burning in the night.

Here, as you pass through the brutal sprawl, the twenty miles of rails and rickets, of the South Chicago slums—here, in an unpainted shack, is a Negro boy, and, seeker, he is burning in the night. Behind him is a memory of the cotton fields, the flat and mournful pineland barrens of the lost and buried South, and at the fringes of the pine another nigger shack, with mammy and eleven little niggers. Farther still behind, the slave-driver’s whip, the slave ship, and, far off, the jungle dirge of Africa. And before him, what? A roped-in ring, a blaze of lights, across from him a white champion; the bell, the opening, and all around the vast sea-roaring of the crowd. Then the lightning feint and stroke, the black panther’s paw—the hot, rotating presses, and the rivers of sheeted print! O seeker, where is the slave ship now?

Or there, in the clay-baked piedmont of the South, that lean and tan-faced boy who sprawls there in the creaking chair among admiring cronies before the open doorways of the fire department, and tells them how he pitched the team to shut-out victory today. What visions burn, what dreams possess him, seeker of the night? The packed stands of the stadium, the bleachers sweltering with their unshaded hordes, the faultless velvet of the diamond, unlike the clay-baked outfields down in Georgia. The mounting roar of eighty thousand voices and Gehrig coming up to bat, the boy himself upon the pitching mound, the lean face steady as a hound’s; then the nod, the signal, and the wind-up, the rawhide arm that snaps and crackles like a whip, the small white bullet of the blazing ball, its loud report in the oiled pocket of the catcher’s mitt, the umpire’s thumb jerked upward, the clean strike.

Or there again, in the East-Side Ghetto of Manhattan, two blocks away from the East River, a block away from the gas-house district and its thuggery, there in the swarming tenement, shut in his sweltering cell, breathing the sun-baked air through opened window at the fire escape, celled there away into a little semblance of privacy and solitude from all the brawling and vociferous life and argument of his family and the seething hive around him, the Jew boy sits and pores upon his book. In shirt-sleeves, bent above his table to meet the hard glare of a naked bulb, he sits with gaunt, starved face converging to his huge beaked nose, the weak eyes squinting painfully through his thick-lens glasses, his greasy hair roached back in oily scrolls above the slanting cage of his painful and constricted brow. And for what? For what this agony of concentration? For what this hell of effort? For what this intense withdrawal from the poverty and squalor of dirty brick and rusty fire escapes, from the raucous cries and violence and never-ending noise? For what?

Because, brother, he is burning in the night. He sees the class, the lecture room, the shining apparatus of gigantic laboratories, the open field of scholarship and pure research, certain knowledge, and the world distinction of an Einstein name.

So, then, to every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity—to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him—this, seeker, is the promise of America.

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We had to memorize that. I think it was in the fifth or sixth grade.  The masculine and some cultural references in it have become antiquated, but the ideal it expresses remains vital and probably is one of the reasons we refuse to be defeated by our present national darkness—because we remember the light of an earlier generation that called for us to be better, to reach higher, to see each other as equals, and to live the promise of America.

We must burn in the night.

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Notes From a Quiet (and Boring) Road

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Just got back yesterday afternoon from visits to relatives in New Mexico and Colorado, where the dry heat was wonderful and where you could almost hear your flesh sizzle if you stood out in that dry heat too long.

It was so wonderful to drive a couple thousand miles and see few billboards. If other states operated as Missouri does, the majestic windmills of Kansas and Colorado would have been obscured by junk roadside art and I use the word “art” advisedly.

Nancy has a new car. It has adaptive cruise control that keeps you a safe distance behind a car or truck in front of you. I thought I wouldn’t like it. I do.  I set the speed at 85 and let the control run the car with the traffic while it maintained appropriate intervals between our vehicle and the ones in front. It even threw on the brakes if somebody swerved into our lane.  An interesting experience.

I did turn off the feature than keeps the car between the lines. I don’t weave but it was still irritating.  We did not try to find out how many miles we could go on the interstate without touching the steering wheel.  Cars are close to that, but we don’t trust the system yet—plus this car demands you put hands back on the wheel in a short time.  It also keeps track of what you are looking at and if you aren’t eyes-forward, you get dinged.

Ding.  And there’s a message between the speedometer and the tachometer telling you to keep your eyes on the road.  And open.  No sleeping while driving this car.

Got home and found a message in my email (hadn’t checked it today) from Amazon wanting my opinion on something I had bought before the trip—a new lens for my camera.  Both of us find these messages irritating.  Everybody wants to know if we are joyful about our purchase. I’ve ignored many such solicitations, but Amazon was persistent wanting to know how I used the item and was I happy. So yesterday I told Amazon:

I used this lens to take pictures. 

I also am tired of every Tom, Dick, and Harry company I do business with asking if I’m a happy customer.  If I am, I will express it by buying something else later.  If not, my silence will be sufficient.  Quit wasting my time by begging for a compliment.  It’s as irritating as the restaurant bill that gives me choices for tips.

After all—what the heck does one do with a camera lens?  Swat flies?  Roll out a pie crust?  Punch cookies out of the cookie dough?  Make biscuits?  It might make an ashtray with the lens hood screwed on.

Okay, I was a little cranky.  We had driven through rain from Salina to past Kansas City after a long previous day of watching I-70 disappear under the hood of our car from the Denver area to Salina.

People think Kansas is boring.  We, from two families with Kansas roots, respectfully disagree.  INTERSTATE SEVENTY is boring.  But Kansas is a pretty interesting place—as are all places if we give ourselves the chance to travel some smaller roads.

Anyway, we finished the rest of our trip from Kansas City to Jefferson City on highways—particularly I-70—that are uglified by billboards.

Now, if billboards obscured views of the advertised adult entertainment stores that also highlight our Missouri roadways, we might soften our opinion of them.

The great American poet Ogden Nash once channeled Joyce Kilmer (who was a man, in case your schooling never mentioned that) when he wrote:

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree

Perhaps unless the billboards fall

I’ll never see a tree at all*

It has taken more time than usual to prepare this meditation.  Minnie the cat has been extremely glad to welcome us home and has insisted on several re-acquaintance lap times. Brother Max, the mellow one of the pair, is happy to sit in a box on the table next to the desk and be quietly close.

Pets make coming home even better.

*Another of Nash’s non-Nobel Prize works of literature is:

The only thing wrong with a kitten

Is that

Eventually,

It becomes a cat. 

(we do not share that opinion. Most of the time)

 

The Young and the Old 

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Tomorrow is—–well, you know.

(I thought that we deserve some nicer things in this space today than the intense reviews of the campaigns and campaigners that we have been posting.  I’ve been saving this one for just such a day and suddenly in this year in which age has become such a headline, this seems kind of appropriate.)

One of my former reporters, Drew Vogel, who was on the Missourinet staff in the 1970s, has gone on to a thirty-year-plus career as a well-respected Ohio nursing home administrator. He wrote this in his blog on July 6, 2019:

Ramblin’ on a Saturday morning –Youngest and Oldest of us

I recently read a story out of Kansas City about a seven-year-old who dresses up like a policeman and visits nursing homes.  He cheers up residents by giving hugs and writing them tickets for being “too cute.”

There’s an eleven-year-old girl in Arkansas who is CEO of an organization that raises money to grant simple wishes to nursing home residents – things like a Happy Meal or a pair of slippers.  She’s raised over a quarter of a million dollars.

Too often the most significant thing missing from an older person’s life is not a spouse or friends who have passed away, not lack of money or even reduced creative or intellectual stimulation.

No, it’s the disappearance of children from their lives.

I witnessed it myself.

When we moved to Florida in 1980, my son Bobby was seven or eight years old.  We didn’t have a boat, but we went fishing a lot.  Pier fishing.

In those days you didn’t even need a license to fish off the pier.   After I left Florida 30 years ago the state changed that.  For the greater good, you now have to buy a salt water fishing license to pier-fish.

Fish tend to bite when the tides are running. Coming in or going out.  Doesn’t seem to matter.

Between the tides – it’s called a slack tide – the fish take a siesta.

We were fishing from the pier at Ft. Desoto State Park near St. Petersburg.  Bobby was the only youngster on the pier.  I was the only working-age adult.  There were maybe eight retired gentlemen.

When the tide stopped, Bobby noticed several of the men were still catching fish.  He went to see how they were doing it.

“Dad,” he said running back to me a few minutes later, “give me some money.”  He needed to buy squid for bait and a few little tiny hooks.

The grandpas on the pier had showed him how to catch the angel fish that nibbled on the barnacles attached to the pilings.

Bobby caught a few, but every time one of the retired gentlemen snagged one they would yell for Bobby and put the fish in his bucket.

At one point I told Bobby to quit bothering people.  One of the guys said, “He’s not bothering anyone.  All our grandkids are up North.  We love having little boys out here on the pier.”

I never mentioned it again.

We took about two dozen fish home that day – all angel fish.  Bobby and I fileted them, put them in a pan with some butter and lemon and stuck it in the oven.

Dinner was on Bobby that night.  Boy, was he proud.  And it was all because of a connection between kids and seniors.

I was administrator of the Ohio Veterans Home in Georgetown, Ohio the year the H1N1 virus was going around – the Swine Flu.

I cancelled trick-or-treat in the facility that year because there was so much of the influenza in the county.

I nearly got lynched.

The residents, many of whom were big tough, old war veterans – guys who had fought in combat – cried foul.  They confronted me at a Resident Council meeting.

“We love it when the kids visit us,’ was the general context of their complaint.

“And I like it when you guys are breathing,” I said.

I won.  They begrudgingly admitted I was right.

I did dress up like the Swine Flu, complete with a pig head, at Halloween that year!

At another facility, the Activities Director had a baby.  Her husband worked out of town and was away four nights a week.  I allowed her to bring the baby to work while she was arraigning daycare.

That little girl had about ten doting babysitters anytime she was in the building.

The point is that there is a special bond between kids and our “seasoned citizens.”

I’m convinced it goes beyond grandparents getting a chance to “do it right this time around.”

It’s much deeper than that.  There’s a camaraderie between the newest and the oldest of our society – and I suspect of any society, anywhere in the world, anytime in history.

I’ve have always considered life to be a bell curve.  When a person is born we feed them, change their diapers and generally take care of them.

At the end of life ….. well, you see the similarity.

Shel Silverstein illustrated it best.  He’s the guy who wrote Johnny Cash’s big hit “A Boy Named Sue.”

But, Shel Silverstein was much more than the writer of novelty songs.
One of my favorites, Silverstein was an author, poet, cartoonist, songwriter and playwright – and a member of the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

One of his most poignant poems dealt with the relationship between kids and senior citizens.

The Little Boy and The Old Man – by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, ‘Sometimes I drop my spoon.’
Said the old man, ‘I do that too.’
The little boy whispered, ‘I wet my pants.’
‘I do that too,’ laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, ‘I often cry.’
The old man nodded, ‘So do I.’
‘But worst of all,’ said the boy, ‘it seems
Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.’
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
‘I know what you mean,’ said the little old man.

Thanks, Drew.

Notes From a Quiet Street (Before We Forget Edition)

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We’ve been on the road quite a bit for the last month, the last couple of weeks in particular (as noted Monday).  We’re going back through some notes we jotted down during the regrettably unprogressive legislative secession that seems to have ended a long time ago (Thank God!), and entering them before they age out.

For much of the session, I did not wear a necktie.  The proper professional dress for male legislators and for those who tell them how to vote is business casual at the least.  But a January tumble that dislocated my left shoulder made it impossible to tie a necktie for a few weeks, very uncomfortable to struggle to tie one for a few more, and then a moderate struggle to do so as the end drew near..

I rather enjoyed having a good excuse for not wearing a tie, even if I had to have my left arm in a sling to be convincing.

I was comforted on Easter Sunday by a blog piece by Robert Reich, the diminutive (4-feet-11 inches) former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.

The Washington Post  reported two decades ago, when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, “His tie hangs an inch and a half beneath his belt buckle, or just above his knees.”

If you are a guy and you have ever wished for a tie-less society, you might find Reich’s ruminations on the issue valuable:

(4) The end of the necktie? – Robert Reich (substack.com)

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Saw a newspaper article a few weeks ago about the reopening of closed church in Chula, a town of about 200 folks, near Chillicothe.  The church closed five years ago.  Seems that the place had become a large bee hive since the last chord was played on the piano or organ.

The article in The Pathway, a Missouri Baptist Convention publication described how Amanda Hicks, her husband, and a friend went in to clean the place and make it presentable for worship again only to be attacked by “a huge swarm of bees” that stung all three people several times before they could get to safety.

The bees eventually were uprooted, unhived, smoked out—there must be an appropriate phrase for such things—and the cleaning went on.

Among things removed—77 pounds of honey.

The newspaper says 20-25 people worship there now.  Wonder if they ever sing a hymn that should be the church theme song:  Sweet Jesus.

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No other sport can match baseball for having statistics that go beyond being obscure.  Here’s one from the early games.

Pitcher Marcus Stroman of the New York Yankees has set a record for most strikeouts by a pitcher no more than five feet-seven inches tall.  The record was first written down in 1901.  He has now struck out 1,131 batters in his career, surpassing former Cincinnati pitcher Dolf Luque, a 21-year big leaguer.

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One reason the Missouri legislature has been so unproductive is that video lottery terminal operators, although insisting their machines are legal, want to pass a law legalizing them.  The casino industry complains that the “VLT” is just a pseudonym for “slot machine,” and casinos are the only ones who can have legal slot machines and they don’t want anybody horning in on their business, even if the VLTs are far, far away from any of our 13 designated casinos.

Neither side will compromise and the legislature seemingly lacks the intelligence or the courage to draft a compromise and pass it, pressure from the VLT and Casino lobbyists notwithstanding.

Three years ago, Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd became the only county prosecutor take serious action, getting a court to rule the machines illegal and crushing five of those machines in 2021.

Now there’s a second player—Springfield passed an ordinance in February declaring the machines illegal.

We’ve been kind of a vigilante on this issue.  We won’t do business with a convenience store that has the things.  At least, not locally.  Well, there is one—but it’s the only one I know of that pops popcorn every day.  I’ll spend a buck-50 maybe once a week there. But no gas.

Wonder if I can program my in-car GPS to show me stores without the machines?

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These machines bring to mind the tough old sergeant we had at the University of Missouri in the days when male students had to do two years of ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps to those too young to remember) who referred to Fort Leonard Wood as “the pimple on the butt of humanity.”  We consider VLTs to be pimples on the convenience store industry, bodily part not specified.

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We had another of life’s adventures a few weeks ago.  A sleep study.

From about 10:30 p.m. when we were ordered to bed and to go to sleep (I probably heard that order for the last time when I was about seven, if not earlier) until about 6 a.m., I tried to sleep in a strange bed with about two dozen wires attached from the top of my head down to my calves.

It did not go especially well but I was told afterwards that the machines had recorded “enough sleep” for a doctor to render an opinion about whether I was sleeping well, or well-sleeping.

The test recalls a joke Abraham Lincoln once told of a man who was being ridden out of town on a rail and when asked what he thought of the experience replied, “Well, if it wasn’t for the honor of the thing, I think I would rather walk.”

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The transfer portal is swinging both ways for colleges and universities these days. A lot of young men and women are moving from place to place almost yearly, looking for more money from the name-image-and-and likeness industry or more playing time to expose their talents to pro teams.

Wouldn’t you like to hear of one of these folks saying they’re transferring because the school of agriculture offers a better education?  Or the school of business?  Or the School of Education? Or Engineering?  Or the pre-med programs is better?

Collegiate sports is interesting but should fans be loyal to programs whose carpetbagging players have no loyalty in return?  I’ll watch the games on the teevee, and I often remember to do so, at least for football.  But I haven’t bought a ticket in years.

We think the NCAA needs a rule requiring schools to report the grade point averages of the carpetbagging players, some of whom already have their degrees. We’d like to know how many of these athletes even get a degree.

And that’s it for the sports curmudgeon today.

 

The Power Under Our Feet

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If you think fossil fuels are the only way to power our lives, you need to go to Iceland. If Iceland doesn’t tickle your fancy (and don’t underestimate Iceland on this score; it’s surprising.), go to Texas.

If you think windmills should be forbidden because they kill birds, that nuclear power should be abolished because it leaves behind tons of dangerous waste, that electric-powered vehicles are actually uneconomical because it costs a lot of gas, oil, and coal for power plants to generate full  battery charges, that the use of oil, gas, and coal shorten lives, that water cannot turn enough turbines to light our cities—-you need to go to Iceland.  Or Texas.

Iceland first. We learned about this on a trip there just before the pandemic set in. We were attracted by the opportunity to see the northern lights.

And we did on a really cold night (we went in November).  Our guide—we called him “Fred” because we would have dislocated our jaws trying to pronounce name—took this one.

A 2020 study, the latest study we have seen, shows at least 90% of all homes in Iceland are NOT heated by nuclear, wind, or fossil fuel-generated power.  That study shows, in fact, that 99.94% of electricity generated in Iceland was geothermal or hydro-generated. Underground hot water and the water that powers the great waterfalls, in fact, provided 99.94% of all electricity generated in Iceland that year. And more than 70% of the total energy used in that country came from geothermal sources. The country wants to be carbon neutral by 2040.

Iceland has a lot of waterfalls—a lot!

Many of them are spectacular and they flow year-around. Why? Because glaciers melt from the bottom up in Iceland, even as winter puts down several feet of snow on top of them every year. The result is a lot of hydropower generation.

As far back as the Vikings, people have taken warm baths and washed their clothes in warm water even on the coldest days because of geothermal water-–water heated by the volcanic activity that created Iceland thousands of years ago and continues to alter its size today.

The number one use of geothermal heat in 2020 was space heating, then heating swimming pools, melting snow, fish farming, industry, and greenhouses (This is the Fridheimar     greenhouse that covers about 2.7 acres that uses pure  glacier water heated in a thermal pool to grow eighteen percent of the tomatoes used by the country—370 tons of them a year—on 20-foot high, or more, tomato vines throughout which about 1200 peaceful bumbleees maintain pollination, each of them capable of pollinating 2,000 flowers a day. The incredible tomato soup and bread for lunch are to die for.)

The Capital of Reykjavick, where about sixty percent of the country’s people live, has clear streets and sidewalks on snowy days because those streets and sidewalks are heated.  Water ranging from 100-300 degrees centigrade heats homes and is then diverted under the streets and sidewalks at 30 degrees centigrade (about 86 of our Fahrenheit degrees).

This issue has been highlighted by recent news coverage of some volcanoes that have become active in recent months. Some of the coverage has focused on the closure of the Blue Lagoon, the country’s most popular tourist attraction.  We were there.  And we floated in the geothermal waters.  The only way we could have drowned was by turning over and having somebody sit on us.

The lagoon’s water is a mixture of freshwater discharged from the Svartsengi Power Station and seawater.

Iceland didn’t officially recognize the power beneath national feet until about fifty years ago.  That’s when energy price inequities forced the national government to address the issue.   Orkustofnun, the National Energy Authority, recommended increased use of hydro and geothermal power to stabilize energy costs.  The Arab Oil Embargo that created an energy and economic crisis throughout the world led the Icelandic government to speed up its adoption of geothermal alternatives.

You might think that’s great for Iceland but the only significant place for geothermal activity here is Yellowstone National Park.  You are wrong. Take a look at this map of geothermal resources prepared by the Southern Methodist University  Geothermal Laboratory.

Texas might not look so hot in this map but it is a hotbed of geothermal energy development. The state well-known for its oil industry, says writer Saul Eblin for The Hill, is poised to dominate what boosters hope will be America’s next great energy boom: a push to tap the heat of the subterrnean earth for electricity and industry.”  He says Texas “is fueling a boom in startups that seek to take the issue nationally.

In March, he says, solar generation in Texas “eclipsed coal both in terms of power generation and market share.  Texas also has more utility-scale wind and solar capacity than any other state” although California still leads in rooftop solar power generation.

Last year, the Texas legislature passed four bills with only one “no” vote that will create new opportunities for geothermal drilling. Eblin says eleven of the nation’s 27 geothermal startups last year were in Texas and the momentum is building.

A few days ago, he reports, Bedrock Energy had a display at a commercial real estate company in Austin showing a new geothermal-powered heatng and cooling system. A few days earlier, Quaise, a drilling company, filed for a permit from state regulators to start field-testing drills that use high-powered radio waves to drill through dense rock. A company in Houston called Dervo, is building a 400-megawatt facility in Utah and the military is looking at geothermal source of electricity. Sage Geosystems soon will start using a fracked well to store renewable energy, a big step toward its goal of producing a reliable source of geothermal energy.

There are those who laugh at the electrification of America, particularly the growing emphasis on electric vehcles, claiming that the production fo electricity still requires fossil fuels and windmills and solar farms are nice but they limit use of land increasingly needed for food production.

But the heated water beneath our feet leapfrogs those arguments.  The SMU map indicates Missouri can produce 50-60 Milliwatts per square meter from underground water. One watt equals one millon milliwatts. Our calculation says Missouri has 180,540,000 square meters.  If we understand the math, that means 9,027,000,000-10,832,400,000 watts of geothermal power generation is beneath our feet.

If we do our math correctly, our largest utility, Ameren, generates 10,000 megawatts a year in Missouri, or about 10,000,000 watts per year.

Whether geothermal generation is an alternative for Ameren, we don’t know. But the company came under new federal pressure recently with the adoption of EPA new rules requiring coal-fired power plants to have new carbon pollution controls. The Post-Dispatch has reported more than half of Ameren’s power is generated by coal. Only Texas generates more power with coal. And Ameren’s Labadie plant in Franklin county is the number two power plant producer in the country.

So it appears we have enough thermal energy under our feet to generate as much as Ameren produces from all of its power plants, whether fossil or nuclear fueled in a year.  And Missouri isn’t even close to the geothermal potential other states who not only can serve their customers well but can export energy to other parts of the country, including to Missouri.

We have mentioned in earlier posts, one advantage to studying journalism in college was that no math courses were required.  If we have misunderstood these calculations, we welcome corrections.

Even if we are wrong, the experience of Iceland and elsewhere as well as the growing experience in Texas shows there is non-fossil energy enough beneath our feet to keep our lights on and to fuel our commerce indefinitely. But energy is politicized here. The fossil fuel industry slings a lot of money around in Washington and on campaign trails.  The Greenies, however, are making progress, incremental though it might be.

We might not be able to operate our cars on water but they can operate on the electricity generated by water, steaming hot water.  A 500-mile affordable electric car is growing closer.  But if we want to see the reality of a society powered by non-fossil fuels, Iceland is a flight of only five hours from Chicago O’Hare Airport. Take a coat, even in summer. It’s pretty far north.

Iceland as a country is one big ground source heat pump, north to south, east to west.

Super hot water beneath OUR feet is something to think about even here in relatively cool Missouri.

(Photo Credit: Bob Priddy)

 

Guillotines for Fun and Profit

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Alpha Media owns more than 200 radio stations across the country.  Its recruiting web page is loaded with corporate-speak buzzwords about “having a passion for great radio” and a “highly-functioning, best-of-class team on all levels” that goes about “building strong relationships in our local communities.”

“If you are looking for an environment where management has a passion for our business; in working hard to provide the best possible live and local radio in the industry; and in having fun, then Alpha Media is for you,” it says.

You will excuse a lot of people in Moberly, Festus, Lebanon and the Farmington/Park Hills areas if they gag on those words. They’ve been stabbed in the back by the owner of their legacy radio stations.

Alpha Media assassinated local radio in those communities last week, laid off—with no notice—entire on-air staffs including some folks who had been everybody’s neighbors for decades.

In place of the voices who talked about local things including local sports, weather, and events, listeners of radio stations in those markets will be hearing syndicated programs from Alpha. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is not new.

Local radio has been dying by self-inflicted corporate wounds for a long time.

Your loyal observer, who believed throughout his professional career and continues to believe in the value of local radio, is astonished by the total hypocrisy of Alpha Media claiming it is “working hard to provide the best possible live and local radio in the industry and having fun.”

That’s precisely what these stations have been providing for decades.

Having fun?

If you think running a guillotine is lots of yucks, you’d probably be in total agreement with Alpha’s actions in these three communities. .

These radio stations were once owned by a man named Jerrell Shepherd, a small market radio entrepreneur who believed radio stations should not just be IN communities, they should be OF communities. The idea that grandpa or grandma might hear their grandchildren’s names mentioned during broadcasts of local high school sports events; the idea that the new president of the Lions Club would talk about an upcoming peanut sale fund-raising event; the county fair livestock auction; the hospital auxiliary ice cream social; Sunday morning church services; what the city council or school board did last night; that people might instantly go to their local radio station when bad weather approaches or has arrived—street closings, lunches at the schools or the senior center, obituaries—-are immaterial.  But those were and are part of being a locally responsible corporate citizen, especially in markets this size.

But that was then; this is now. The Hell with being a locally responsible corporate citizen.

The big-growth media companies, more interested in bottom lines than community responsibility and identity, only want to make money. And that’s why the familiar voices went to work one day last week and were told they would no longer have a job at the end of their shifts.

The “best possible live and local radio in the industry” became a lie that day in those towns.  And the definition of “having fun” became gallows humor.

Reporters from various central Missouri media who contacted Alpha to get an explanation have received nothing back.  A full-page ad in the local newspapers explaining, without the corporate doublespeak, why ditching true local radio is justified would be a courteous thing for Alpha to do. But don’t count on it.

There is no doubt that local newspapers and local radio stations have faced some struggles as more business is done through the internet.  And the issue with some businesses is not that they don’t make a profit—they just don’t make a big enough profit.

Employees reduce profits in all kinds of businesses which is why all kinds of businesses are finding ways to dump workers (Notice how few people at McDonald’s take orders at the cash registers lately?).  It would be nice if Alpha explained that to the people in these towns who no longer have a radio station they cared about because it cared about them.

Satellites and the internet allow for cutting the overhead of a radio station by allowing layoffs of as many of those dollar-consuming staff members as possible, replaced by voices of strangers from who-knows-where and who are unlikely to ever set foot in places like Moberly, Festus, Lebanon, or Farmington.

Broadcasting used to be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission which required broadcasters to operate “in the public interest, convenience, and necessity.”  But the industry back de-regulation in the Reagan years and got it.

I was part of a national professional organization that supported de-regulation because we thought some regulations stifled public discussion of important issues more than it promoted it.

We supported it because it required stations to meet certain standards of public service that really were hollow standards.  We believed that serving the public did not mean government dictating, in some instances, what had to be said before a counter argument could be aired.

We were wrong.

We never anticipated the homogenization of broadcasting that comes with owning hundreds of stations, with the death of local programming thanks to satellite-delivered syndicated shows—Rush Limbaugh being the first of the great influencers, a man who is considered the savior of AM Radio.

But now, we are faced with asking, “Saved from what?”

Radio began to lose its soul when communities became markets; when stations became properties, and when staffs became overhead expenses.

Part of the answer to “saved from what?” was delivered last week in Moberly, Farmington, Lebanon, and Festus.

Alpha Media is advertising for new employees at the Missouri stations it has hollowed out. The openings listed on the company web page say something about how it will provide “the best possible live and local radio in the industry.”  The company wants a business office part-timer and a part-time board operator/production assistant and a business office/sales assistance person. They want an Integrated Marketing Consultant (Sales) for their stations in Bethany and Moberly and on-air programmer/board operators in Farmington and Festus.

Local news people? Local sports people?  Local talk show hosts?  Those are the people who are “live and local.” The company isn’t looking for any of them.  Board operators are the ones who throw a switch in the studio to bring in a syndicated show off the satellite or internet.  Production assistant?  Well somebody has to record or produce commercials—if sponsors want to buy them now.

What has happened in these markets and is happening in broadcasting generally also is happening in the newspaper industry. We’ll look at that on Wednesday.

Doing Business, or being Done to by Business 

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A couple of merchandising practices have grabbed our attention lately and we imagine you might have had a passing thought or two about this kind of thing, too.

It’s another sign that our high school graduation speakers were correct: it’s a cruel world out there.

We have several in-store credit accounts that we always pay off each month when we use them.  We’d pay cash but the lure of “points” that we can use to save on something else cannot be ignored.

We used one of our in-store credit cards to buy $1,740 worth of things recently. Our credit card statement told us that our annual interest rate is a tick under thirty percent.

The minimum payment is $29.  The statement told us that if we made the minimum payment, our new appliance would be paid off in just FOURTEEN YEARS. And the total we would have paid for our $1,740 appliance would be a dollar short of $7,000.

However, if we paid $74 a month, the new appliance would be ours free and clear in just three years and we would have saved $4,300 dollars and change.  And the chances would be much better that the appliance would still be working in three, not fourteen years.

All of this assumes we didn’t buy anything else along the way with this store’s credit card.

At least they’re honest about all of this. But they are leaning pretty hard on people to pay off the credit card promptly.

Maybe we could go back to college, fold this expense into a student loan, and wait for the President to forgive it.

There’s a second merchandising practice that is less direct.

A certain kind of refund.

We just can’t accept the idea that a store that says you will get X% rebate on your purchases couldn’t be more fair to their customers.

To claim your rebate, you have to go to the time and effort to mail in your receipt and after a time you get back some kind of a certificate that is not a refund of X% of the purchase price you just paid; it’s a few dollars off of the price you are charged the next thing you buy at that store—if you remember to take your certificate to the store with you.

We wonder what percentage of these rebates are ever filed with the store and how much revenue the store keeps because nobody ever turns in their certificates.

Next:  Do the stores ever pay interest on the customers’ funds that they are holding onto until the certificate is redeemed?   If I inherited a certificate issued fifteen years ago, is it still only worth $1.50 or have I been getting, say, 30% interest each year for grandma’s rebate certificate?

Why not?

We have long thought that if the customer is given the impression that they can save X% on a purchase that the cash register price should be X% less than the shelf-posted price.  In our computerized business world it should not be difficult to hit a cash-register key to signify an item has been purchased at the discounted price so the store’s bookkeeping can keep track of such things.

It just seems more honest to have rebates made by the store at the point of purchase and not play games such as this with customers.

Maybe someday the legislature will pass a law saying all discounts and rebates will be recognized at the cash register at the time of purchase.  That’s a matter of basic honesty in our book.

Yes, yes, yes, we know rebates are not the same as discounts.  But, really, that’s just wordplay.  And rebates that apply only to future purchases aren’t really discounts.  Close.  Kind of like a deer is like a moose, perhaps. Both have horns and four legs.

Maybe we need a law (always the simplest solution) that says any rebates will be made at the cash register upon purchase of the item.  If the item is worth the money, the customer will return to do more business. Customers don’t need carrots on sticks if the product is good and the price is reasonable to begin with.

Capitalism.  Ain’t it Wonderful?

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One Man’s Vision—8   

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We’ve shared with you in the last four weeks one man’s vision for a greater Jefferson City (well, actually two men, as we wrote about Mayor C. W. Thomas—who inspired this series—in our first entry).  Our list is far from inclusive of all good ideas nor is having a vision my exclusive domain. You have been invited to share your visions and I hope you will do that now that we are wrapping up this series.

All of this ambitious talk about places to meet, places to visit, and places to live has overlooked a lot of our people who have few or none of the opportunities to participate.  If we are to be a great city, we cannot overlook them.

At the library, we sometimes hear about our “homeless problem” and there are those who tell us they won’t visit the library or bring their children there because of “them.”  Those patrons and other critics demand we “do something” about them.  “They” make people uncomfortable.

The library does not have a homeless problem. The CITY has a homeless problem and the public library is an uncomfortable participant in it—because we have to be.

We are a public institution and whether a person owns a mansion or sleeps in a box, that person is part of “the public.”  There is no place for them to go during the day after their overnight accommodations shut down.  We are their warm place on frigid days. We are their cool place on oppressively hot days.  We are their bathrooms.

I’m sorry that some people are offended because “they” don’t dress as well as most of us…or smell as good as most of us and they hang around our building.

We do not often have any problems with these folks although there have been times when we have called police and some have been banished from our premises.  We have signs throughout our building reminding our homeless visitors not to sleep there. Our staff can’t be a dozer police, though, because of their regular duties.

But most of them are okay. We do not judge them on various criteria any more than we judge any of you. You are the public, constituents using a public place in a personal way, too.

I have not had a chance to ask our critics what their solution is.  But ignoring the issue or saying it is someone else’s problem to solve is something for the Old Jefferson City—-at a time when a BOLD Jefferson City should be our goal.

Celebrations of things such as bicentennials of becoming the state capital can work in more ways than one. We should make sure our bicentennial observance doesn’t leave “them” out.  They are people, the public, fellow citizens.  And they deserve—by their presence among us—respect.

Great cities do not become great by only catering to people who smell good.

To do any of the things I have discussed in this series to move a good city toward greatness without facing the problems of those to whom greatness is just a word is irresponsible.  As citizens of this community we are responsible to and for one another. That’s what the word “community” implies.

I can’t tell you how to make these things discussed in these entries happen. Many of you have the expertise I lack.

Leonardo daVinci made drawings of flying machines. The Wright Brothers made the machine that flew.  Humphry Davy, Warren de la Rue, and Joseph Swan made electric lights but Thomas Edison created the incandescent bulb. Carl Benz created a gasoline-powered automobile but Henry Ford showed how to manufacture them.  John Fleming invented the vacuum tube but Guglielmo Marconi created radio.

Some have ideas. Others have the expertise to realize them.

So I’m going to leave you with three statements that have motivated me most of my life and I hope they encourage you to become active in this quest.

The English playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote a lengthy play called Back to Methuselah, retelling some of the earliest stories of the Bible. He creates a conversation in which the snake convinces Eve she should want to learn, that she should eat from the tree of knowledge instead of just living mindlessly in the Garden of Eden.  The snake appeals to her curiosity by saying, “You see things, and you say ‘Why?’   I dream dreams that never were, and I say, ‘Why not?’”

I am asking today, “Why not?”

The German philosopher Johan Wolfgang von Goethe continued that thought when he advised, “Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”

I am asking you to dream bigger dreams than we have dreamed, bigger even than a new convention center.

Goethe’s  tragic masterwork, Faust, includes this observation:

Lose this day loitering—’twill be the same story
To-morrow–and the next more dilatory;
Then indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting o’er lost days.
Are you in earnest? seize this very minute–
What you can do, or dream you can, begin it,
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it,
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated—
Begin it, and the work will be completed!

I am asking our city to be bold.

A bicentennial’s greatest value lies not in dwelling on the past, but in building a foundation for the TRIcentennial. It still will not be good enough to be the Capital City.  What more can we be….if we lay the foundation for it now?

I want our bicentennial to be characterized by a sense of boldness that turns a “good enough” city into a great one, that discovers the genius, power, and magic in boldness.

A century ago, a mayor who had seen this city become a modern city that in his lifetime fought off two efforts to take the seat of government elsewhere—Sedalia’s 1896 statewide vote on capital removal and efforts after the 1911 fire to build a new capitol somewhere else—and who modernized our town died dreaming of a convention center.

His spirit of progress is worth recalling and becoming a motivator for becoming a greater city.

You’ve read one man’s vision for accomplishing that.  What is yours?

How can we do it?