Category Archives: generally

The Light

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—is starting to grow larger at the end of the tunnel.

The last week and a half of the legislative session is here.  It’s time for legislators wanting another two or four years in Jefferson City to get the heck out of town and start telling the folks why they deserve another term, or a term of some other kind that lets them remain at the public trough.

The biggest budget in state history, bloated with federal pandemic relief funds, must be resolved by Friday—and it probably will be.  But the session is likely to be recalled for its divisions in the Senate and the lost first half of the session to filibusters that went beyond making a point, whatever it was.

It won’t be much to go home and brag about in this campaign year.  And for those who will be spending their last days as decision-makers for the state, this year won’t be much of a legacy to be mentioned in the last newspaper article written about them.

It could be worse.

We remember when sessions went until June 15 in non-election years with a midnight adjournment.  Given what we’ve seen this year, we are intensely grateful that custom was ended some time ago when reason was more present in the General Assembly.

Motivational posters

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Your correspondent dislikes walking into a room—usually somebody’s office—decorated with motivational posters.  You know them.  Lovely pictures with some syrupy words about success, or greatness, or achievement, or—motivation.

The motivational poster industry probably has been around forever; I think I have read of some motivational sayings painted on the walls at Pompeii.  But they’ve become noticeably popular in the last two decades or so.  We will leave it to various “ologists” to study what has changed about us to warrant such treacle.

There always was this feeling that anybody who really needed one of these saccharine decorations must have been short of self-esteem—or working for bosses who think a treacly poster can be a transformative influence on the employee.

I know several apparently well-adjusted folks who have these things on their offices.  As far as I know they do not spend any time every day meditating on them and pondering the significance of the message. They seem to be perfectly normal people who do their work competently every day.  I’ve known some of them long enough to know that the poster in their office has not changed the high-quality work they have always done anyway.

All of this is why my newsroom work station, for several years, sported a calendar from Despair.com (https://despair.com/collections/demotivators) that countered the hard-hitting soupy sayings on walls elsewhere in the building.  Every couple of months there was a new mini-poster taped under my name thingie.

Now, understand that news people have a tendency to be kind of anti-establishment, independent, unruly, and untidy souls who have an inborn pride in being to some degree as manageable as a wheelbarrow full of frogs.  Or cats.  Or Beagle pups. We are only slightly more manageable than a wheelbarrow full of canaries.

But my work area used to be decorated with beautiful pictures such as one showing several hands hoisting a trophy with the big word, “Winning” beneath and the ensuing paragraph: “Because nothing says, ‘You’re a loser’ more than owning a motivational poster about being a winner.”

There are several others—enough that I did not have time to acquire them all.

One that some legislator with a sense of humor might want to hang in the outer office where visitors can see it. If features a lovely early evening sunset-illuminated Nation’s Capitol and its reflection in a mall pool.  It says “Government,” and beneath it are the words, “If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions.”

Apparently there is an alternate contemplation: “They may seem inefficient and feckless at times, but your Representatives in Washington just want what’s best for you assuming you’re a major corporation. Otherwise, you’re pretty mush screwed.”

Another poster shows a stack of newspapers with the big word “Media,” followed by, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies right to our faces.”

And there’s one labled “Conspiracy” that says, “Never attribute to stupidity that which can easily be explained by a pathological blood lust for control.”

Or one showing hands raised in high fives and labeled, “Teams,” with the note, “Together we can do the work of one.”

And of course the poster reading “Motivation,” which advises, “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job.  The kind robots will be doing soon.”

I’m waiting for the poster that says “Treacle.”  The accompanying line should be a pip.

Theatre of the Inane

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Elon Musk, insanely wealthy and looking to fend off boredom, has decided he wants to buy Twitter. He says he’ll pay $43 Billion.  Twitter doesn’t want to be bought and thinks it has a poison pill that will keep it Muskless.  He has suggested these are just the opening rounds of what can become an increasingly nasty fight.

We don’t twitt. We don’t Facebook. Both refusals probably are to our disadvantage when it comes to sharing this twice-a-week wisdom. But, frankly, we have a life and it’s not spent focusing on what’s between our thumbs.

When Twitter first came along, the Missourinet news staff was told it was going to have to start using it because it was the coming thing in communication.  The example given of its usefulness was a narrative series (forgive me, friends, I abhor the word “tweets”) of a friend of ours who was going somewhere and reported at various times that he had arrived at the airport, had been checked in, was waiting to board, was boarding, and was sitting on the airplane that was spending too much time packing in the passengers..

The Missourinet staff was unimpressed beyond description.

A few days later, your observer, the now-retired Missourinet news director saw a message from a friend who told the world that she was going to have to stop on her way home from work to get a new sump pump.

The news director quickly dubbed Twitter “the theatre of the inane.”

While Twitter has proven to be useful in distributing news in real time (as well as lies, conspiracies, accusations, and general trash), it still is awash in inanities.

Representative Harry Yates of St. Joseph would not have liked Twitter if it had existed in his day. He introduced a bill in the 1925 legislative session making gossip and scandal-mongering a criminal offense.   He proposed fines of ten to one-hundred dollars or a ten-to-fifty day jail sentence for anyone “maliciously repeating or communicating any false rumor or slander detrimental or harmful to another person.”

Yates would, of course, be apoplectic about Facebook.

His bill never made it into the statute books. It had some obviously serious First Amendment problems. And worse yet, if people couldn’t gossip or be mongers of scandals, there would be little to talk about, especially at the Missouri Capitol.  The place is a hothouse for gossip of varying degress of veracity.

But then again, imagine how nice would be the Silence of the Thumbs, at least in some places, if Representative Yates had succeeded.

 

Morbid Bracketology

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A lot of office employees have filled out basketball tournament brackets this year but I’ll bet you’ve never seen one such as the staff at the Missouri State Archives has each year.

Instead of “March Madness,” these folks have a “tournament” called Morbid Madness. It started six years ago when staffers were talking about some of the “weird, interesting or amusing causes of death while researching, processing or indexing records,” as archivist Christina Miller explained it to me a few days ago. “We come across death certificates, mortality schedules (1850-1880), probate records, coroners inquests and court records during the course of our work,” although the brackets are not limited to those years. Since it was about March when this came up, the staff decided to create a bracket to determine a “winning” unusual cause of death. Before long, people from other divisions of the archives joined in and before long the bracket became a “team building” activity.

One example from a previous bracket was a death certificate that listed “drowned while washing car.” That set the staff off on a search of newspaper accounts which showd the car apparently was partiallyi driven into a lake for washing (strange enough right there!) and the driver got his foot stuck under water and drowned.

These are folks that are keying thousands of old records into databases that the public can access. Among those records are death certificates and the supporting documents, usually coroner’s inquest reports.  These folks discover all kinds of funny (in a grisly sort of way) causes of death.

Here is this year’s Morbid Madness Bracket;

Some of these are pretty prosaic—smoking in bed, for example.  Others are just—–Well, we don’t know that to say they are.

We don’t have room to include coroner’s reports but the case of the death of William Nabe who died of a knife wound in an argument about pies at the Coker School House in Cape Girardeau County, 1916—which reached the final round—happened this way:

A deposition from witness Louis Schatte recalled there was an “entertainment” at the school that featured a pie sale. One Jim Thompson bid to buy all of the pies, prompting Nabe to ask in a friendly way, “What are you going to do with all those pies?”  To which Thompson replied, “It’s none of your damn business.”   A short time later, Nabe told Thompson he’d be better off saving his money because the next day he wish he hadn’t spent all of it and had let the other guys a chance and “if he was going to invite the boys to eat pie with him.”  Schatte said, “All Nabe’s remarks were seemingly in fun and Thompson replied in a very short plain manner that it was none of his God Damn business.” (The involvement of the Deity indicates things are much more serious now.)

In a follow-up conversation, Nabe said he wasn’t looking for a fight inside the school but if Thompson was looking for trouble “to come outside and he would get it.”  Outside, Thompson was ready to go but Nabe didn’t want to fight on school property. There were some other words exchanged and the two wound up wrestling in the road in the process of which Thompson stabbed Nabe while Nabe was on top of him.  We don’t know what happened to Thompson or to all the pies he bought.

“Died during a fight over pies” prevailed over such causes as dragging dead hogs, burned by a kettle of ketchup or by really hot hotcakes, being shot “slyly,” and just plain old smoking in bed, or in a drunken brawl.

Reaching the championship round on the other side was the death of William Diez (as nearly as we can decipher the old handwriting) from “Drinking Almond Oil”  in February, 1848.  It seems a man named Magnus Gross (perhaps) was making a liquer called Maraschino, the recipe for which called for the oil of bitter almonds. Diez argued with Gross about the properties of the oil. Although Gross said it was among the most dangerous of poisons, Diez disagreed and said that while he was a student in Europe he drank the stuff after a night’s spree. The dispute continued until Diez suddenly grabbed the glass containing the oil and chugged it down.  Not long afterward he complained of feeling ill, vomited material strongly smelling of almonds, and lost consciousness. He died within a half-hour.

A doctor later testified that eight drops of the oil would often kill a man.

Drinking almond oil defeated whiskey of questionable quality, thought bug killer was wine, a watermelon seed in the lungs, drowned in a keg, and used a railroad tie as a pillow.

Drinking the oil of bitter almonds was this year’s Morbid Madness champion.

Last year these jolly archivists had an all-star bracket that featured winners of past brackets. The winner in 2018 was suicide with booze and women as the contributing cause. In 2019 it was about a man hit by a cow on a public highway. In 2020 it was a guy whowas attached to a chain on his wife’s car—which was ruled a justifiable homicide.

The winner of last year’s All Star contest was the winner from the 2017 bracket—a guy more than fifty years ago who tried to throw a beer can to a neighboring house. There was a little more to the incident than that, though:

Moral of the stories for 2022: If you’re going to have a pie fight, throw them and in the other case sometimes (I can hear Shirley Bassey singing this) “Almonds are forever.”

Electronic Wampum

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Saw an article in The Hill last week that, “The value of most cryptocurrencies have plummeted in recent weeks, wiping out billions of dollars of wealth.”

Aside from the story needing a good editor (it should be “the value….HAS plummeted), I confess that I do not have the slightest idea why I should buy, sell, or invest in cryptocurrency.  And the Super Bowl commercials for it were pretty useless for me.  I wonder if they were paid for in cryptocurrency.

As I understand what I read from “helpful” internet sites, it’s a kind of currency that exists “digitally or virtually.”  There is no central or national issuing agency for the stuff.  There’s no FDIC.  It seems to be an anarchic system that creates something out of nothing other than the mind of someone who decides to start issuing “it.”  That person decides how many dollars buy a unit of whatever “it” is and people go nuts buying some of it. The person who creates it gets a lot of dollars and the person who buys it gets——

Well, some kind of units that have no physical properties. In other words, you can’t reach in your pocket and pull out some cryptochange to put in the parking meter. There’s nothing printed on paper for me to pull out of my wallet to buy a lottery ticket.

I get the idea that beads, shells, buttons, coins, and pieces of paper have value only if two parties agree on what their value is. But there seems to be no single worldwide party that determines what any particular “unit” is worth, as in an Indian Rupee is worth so many United States dollars, which are backed by a bunch of gold stored in Kentucky, which is itself valuable because somebody has decided it is.  But at least it is something somebody can see, touch, feel and perhaps even smell.

How much in “real” money will it cost me to buy 1,000 cryptosomethings?  And if I buy it or them as an investment, how will I realize any “real” money in return? Is this stuff more secure than the money I have stashed through the investment counselors at my local bank—who I don’t think have any, of my chidren’t inheritance invested in this electronic wampum.

Apparently there are coins of some kind, or tokens, or something in at least some of these operations but what is the common substance or means of exchange that establishes their worth—as in a dollar is the equivalent of so many Euros, or so many rubles equal a dollar?

Can I pay my taxes in cryptocurrency? When I look in the church offering plate and see that it’s pretty empty of tangible funds can I be comforted to know that it is heaped with non-tangible units?  Some sources say this stuff appears to be like stock.  If I buy some for $X and then sell it for $Z I might be liable for a capital gains tax and I would have to pay that in dollars.

Right?

But when I buy stock in American Veeblefleetzer, I know there’s a brick and mortar building tht is making veeblefleetzers.  If I invest in cryptostuff, am I investing in air?

I went to Kaspersky.com, which seems to know something about this, but I was not comforted when I was told, “If you own cryptocurrency, you don’t own anything tangible.  What you own is a key that allows you to move a record or a unit of measure from one person to another without a trusted third party.”

Kind of like our ancestors traded three beaver skins for a knife, I guess.  Except it’s not.

In this case it seems as if it’s more three  beaver skin units for a VIRTUAL knife unit—which I guess can be used to skin more beavers units that are chewing down tree units and building dam units on stream units.

Are the human equivalents of this system Unit-arians?   I spoke to a group of them a few months ago.  They looked pretty real to me.  I think I touched one or two of them and they seemed very solid.  Not virtual.

Curiously, Kaspersky says using a credit card to buy cryptothings is “risky.” Well, I guess using a piece of tangible plastic to buy a virtual unit of something that is stored in an electronic wallet that I cannot carry my credit card in, in my pocket, is——

Darned if I know.

Can you imagine what a turmoil things would be in if Missouri tried to pay for Medicaid expansion in cryptocurrency?

Here’s something else that I wonder about:

If, sometime in the future after I have departed this bewildering new economic world, these means of exchange that have been so common for centuries are completely replaced by cryptothings, what will be the purpose of Fort Knox?

Will gold reserves mean anything in a world where there is no central or issuing agency for various cryptocurrencies that might be established, the value is which is determined by whomever does the establishing?

Will a Pound still be a Pound the world around? You know, pound, as in £?

The Yen?

The Rupee?

The Leu?

The Sol?

The Euro?

I guess they’ll have value as collector’s items.  And then people will use virtual currency to buy them as decorative collectables and people of the future will look a our clothes and wonder what pockets were for.

The Past, The Present, The Future

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(The beginning of a new year is a frequent opportunity to look back, to ponder how the past has led us to where we are, and the degree to which yesterday should shape tomorrow.  Dr. Crane tells us each has its place.)

PRECEDENT

Precedent is solidified experience. In the realm of ideas it is canned goods.

It is very useful when fresh ideas are not to be had.

There are advantages in doing things just because they always have been done. You know what will happen. When you do new things you do not know what will happen.

Success implies not only sound reasoning, but also the variable factor of how a thing will work, which is found out only by trying it.

Hence, the surest road to success is to use a mixture of precedent and initiative. Just how much of each you will require is a matter for your judgment.

To go entirely by precedent you become a mossback. You are safe, as a setting hen or a hiving bee is safe. Each succeeding generation acts the same way. There is a level of efficiency, but no progress.

Boards, trustees, and institutions lay great stress upon precedent, as they fear responsibility. To do as our predecessors did shifts the burden of blame a bit from our shoulders.

The precedent is the haven of refuge for them that fear to decide.

Courts of law follow precedent, on the general theory that experience is more just than individual decision.

Precedent, however, tends to carry forward the ignorance and injustice of the past.

Mankind is constantly learning, getting new views of truth, seeing new values in social justice. Precedent clogs this advance. It fixes and perpetuates the wrongs of man as much as the rights of man.

Hence, while the many must trust to precedent, a few must always endeavor to break it, to make way for juster conclusions.

Precedent is the root, independent thinking is the branch of the human tree. Our decisions must conform to the sum of human experience, yet there must be also the fresh green leaf of present intelligence.

We cannot cut the root of the tree and expect it to live, neither can we lop off all the leafage of the tree and expect it to live.

The great jurist, such as Marshall, is one who not only knows what the law is, but what the law ought to be. That is, to his knowledge of precedent he adds his vision of right under present conditions.

Precedent is often the inertia of monstrous iniquity. War, for instance, is due to the evil custom of nations who go on in the habit of war-preparedness. The problem of the twentieth century is to batter down this precedent by the blows of reason, to overturn it by an upheaval of humanity.

Evil precedent also lurks in social conditions, in business, and in all relations of human rights. The past constantly operates to enslave the present.

We must correct the errors of our fathers if we would enable our children to correct ours.

Our reverence for the past must be continually qualified by our reverence for the future…

The momentum of what has been must be supplemented by the steam of original conviction, and guided by the intelligence and courage of the present.

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Humanity’s Control

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(We begin a new year next weekend. Many will say, “It’s good to get 2021 behind us.”  But changing the page of a calendar does not wipe out lingering fears and uncertainties. Nor does it erase lingering joy, lingering hope, lingering striving for truth.  Cruelty and inhumanity remain.  But so, says Dr. Frank Crane, remains ideals that can overcome that cruelty and inhumanity. We must, however, constantly be on our guard that our ideals do not become the cruelty and inhumanity they should overcome.)

THE HUMANITIES VERSUS THE IDEALS

The humanities are the ordinary universal feelings, such as family affection, aversion to cruelty, love of justice and of liberty.

The ideals are the so-called big enthusiasms, as religion, patriotism, reform, and the like.

The humanities are sometimes called the red passions; the ideals the white passions.

The great institutions of the race have been formed and kept alive by the white passions. These include churches, political parties, nations, and various societies and associations, secret and public.

The progress of mankind has been made through institutions, embodying ideals, which we may call the centrifugal force. The humanities have always pulled against this, and may be termed the centripetal force.

Thus, although great ideals present themselves to men as beneficial, yet in the carrying out of them men often become cruel, unjust, and tyrannical. So the greatest crimes of earth are committed under the influence of movements designed to do the greatest good.

Under the church we have seen persecution, a ruthless disregard of human feeling, families torn asunder, opinion coerced, bodies tortured.

The humanities in time destroyed the baleful power of the religious ideal, its dreams of dominance and its inhuman fanaticism. Plain pity and sympathy battered down the monstrous structure of iron idealism. The horrors of the medieval inquisition and the dark intolerance of puritanism had to yield to the humanities.

Most of the great tragedies have been the crushing out of human and natural feeling by some ideal which, once helpful, has become monstrous. Such were the Greek tragedies, where men were the victims of the gods.

War is the colossal force of an ideal, patriotism, where the check of the humanities has been entirely cut off.

It is supposed to ennoble men and states. It has always been the preferred occupation of the noble class, kings and courtiers, because the contempt of personal feelings and the merciless sacrifice of the humanities have seemed grand and royal.

But by and by war must yield to the eternal humanities. Sheer human sympathies will abolish it.

The humanities are peculiarly of the common people. Therefore they find expression and come into political effect quickly in democracies. In the United States, for instance, the rule of a religious party or the program of patriotic militarism is impossible. We have too much red passion to permit the ascendency of white passions.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a book of red passion, sympathy for the Negro, overthrew the “white” ideals of the slave oligarchy.

The cry of a starving mother, the protest of wronged workmen, can defeat the apparently resistless power of massed capital.

One drop of blood outweighs the most splendid scheme of the theorist.

The history of the world is the unceasing struggle of the humanities against great ideals which, crystallized into institutions, have become inhuman.

Of Me I Sing

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(Many of us are too modest to display our singing talents in public, preferring to save our performances to times when there is water flowing about us.  But The Carpenters advised us many years ago:

“Sing, sing a song.  Sing out loud.  Sing out Strong.  Sing of good things not bad. Sing of happy not sad….Make it simple to last your whole life long.  Don’t worry that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sing, sing a song.”

Long before the Carpenters were born, Dr. Frank Crane considered a similar sentiment—)

THE INWARD SONG

The poet speaks of those

“Who carry music in their heart

Through dusty lane and wrangling mart,

Plying their daily task with busier feet,

Because their secret souls a holier strain repeat.”

It would be interesting to have the statistics of what number, out of all the human stream that pours into the city every morning coming to their work, are singing inwardly.

How many are thinking tunefully? How many are moving rhythmically? And how many are going, as dead drays and carts, rumbling lifelessly to their tasks?

It is good that the greater part of the world is in love. For love is the Song of Songs. To the young lover Nature is transformed. Some Ithuriel* has touched the deadly commonplace; all is miraculous. The moon, the dead companion to our earth, the pale and washed-out pilgrim of the sky, has been changed into a silver-fronted fairy whose beams thrill him with a heady enchantment. Every breeze has its secret. The woods, the houses, all men and women are notes of that sweet harmony that fills him.

“Orpheus with his lute made trees,

And the mountain tops that freeze,

Bow their heads when he did sing.”

Every man is an Orpheus, so he but carry about in him an inward melody. There is for him “a new heaven and a new earth.”

This world is an insolvable puzzle to human reason. It is full of the most absurd antinomies, the most distressing cruelties, the most amazing contradictions. No wonder men’s minds take refuge in stubborn stoicism, in agnosticism, in blank unfaith.

There is no intellectual faith, no rational creed, no logical belief. FAITH COMES ONLY THROUGH MUSIC. It is when the heart sings that the mind is cleared. Then the pieces of the infinite chaos of things drop into order, confusion ceases, they march, dance, coming into radiant concord.

Marcus Aurelius, that curious anomaly of the Roman world, perfect dreamer in an age of iron, was rich in inner music. The thought in him beamed like a ray of creative harmony over the disordered crowd of men and events.

“Welcome all that comes,” he wrote, “untoward though it may seem, for it leads you to the goal, the health of the world order. Nothing will happen to me that is not in accord with nature.”

None but so noble a mind can see a noble universe, a noble humanity, a noble God.

What a drop from such a level to the place of the mad sensualists and pleasure-mongers who only know

“To seize on life’s dull joys from a strange fear,

Lest losing them all’s lost and none remains!”

What a whirl of cabaret music, what motion and forced laughter, what wild discord of hot viands, drugged drinks, and myriad-tricked lubricity it takes to galvanize us when our souls are dry and cracked and tuneless!

Have you ever had the feelings of Hazlitt? “Give me,” he said, “the clear blue 50sky over my head and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours’ march to dinner—and then to thinking! I laugh, I run, I leap, I sing for joy.”

Whoever does something that makes the souls of men and women sing within them does more to make this earth habitable and this life tolerable than all the army of them that widen our comforts and increase our luxuries.

*Ithuriel is one of two angels sent by the archangel Gabriel in Milton’s Paradise Lost  to find Satan, who is in the Garden of Eden.  He is found in the shape of a toad, speaking to a sleeping Eve in an effort to corrupt her. Ithuriel touches him with his spear, causing Satan to resume his true form, after which he is taken to Gabriel.

 

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.

Being Influential

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(We recognize the true movers and shakers of our communities and our nation. They are the ones who influence the policies that shape our lives. Some have money. Some rely on personal integrity. Some know how the system works and what strings to pull.  But being influential is not just the bailiwick of those who walk the marble halls of government.  Dr. Frank Crane says we all can exercise—-)

PERSONAL INFLUENCE

Of all the forces that drive human beings, the greatest is personal influence.

By personal influence I mean that force that goes out from you, simply by virtue of what you are. It has nothing to do with what you do or say or try, except as these things express what you are.

Every person sends out what we might call dynamic rays or invisible electric-like impulses which are of such nature as to affect other persons. These rays from me can make other individuals gay or sad, good or bad, and so forth.

This is the only power that pulls souls, the only wind that bends them, the only fire that warms them, the only stream that bears them along.

Emerson said that “what you are preaches so loudly that I cannot hear what you say”; which is a striking way of stating that one’s unconscious influence far outreaches in effect one’s conscious effort.

It would be well if we would keep this in mind; it would save us a lot of futile busying.

For instance, reformers bent on saving the world should not be so hot and impatient seeing that there is no real saving that ever has been or ever will be done that is not the result of the influence radiating from good people.

Laws are dead and wooden, but when a man incarnates a law it begins to work on other men. The “Word” is of no force until it is “made Flesh.”

It is the personal influence of a teacher that affects all the real educating of the pupil. The wise man understood this who said that the best university was “a log with Mark Hopkins on one end and me on the other.”

I sometimes doubt if any real good has ever been done by didactic teaching or preaching. All the moral maxims in the world are poor beside one strong, sweet, normal life. And a good woman is worth, as a guide, the most select list of “virtues and their opposite vices.”

To create such a character in fiction as “John Halifax” or “Jean Valjean” or “Little Nellie” or the man in the “Third Floor Back,” is to exert a lasting and potent uplift agency, better than a thousand sermons.

It is fascinating to many minds, the idea of “doing good” and “working for the Lord,” and devoting one’s time wholly to inducing people to become better; but it is not practical. The only way to improve mankind is to be something that inspires them; your argument and exhortation are of small avail. Just as the only way to dispel darkness is to shine, and the only way to electrify iron is to be a magnet.

Goodness is a contagion; we must “catch” it, we must have it and “give” it.

When you say in your creed that you believe in God, your declaration is of no help to you or to others unless what you mean is this: That you believe in the inherent potency of goodness, that it will live down, outwear, and destroy evil; that justice, cleanliness, honesty, and kindness will win in the long run against fraud, dirt, lying, and cruelty; and that persons who are upright and altruistic get more joy out of every minute of their lives than idle, sporty, and self-coddling folk; and that there is altogether a vast tidal or subterranean movement in the human race toward health, strength, and beauty.

Therefore why worry over what you will say or do, since it makes no matter? Simply BE right, and then say whatever comes to your mind, and do whatever comes to your hand, and you cannot fail to do the most possible toward helping along.