Category Archives: government

The Pro Tem

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Jim Mathewson died a few days ago.  He was one of a dwindling number of state senators from a different era when “Senator” wasn’t a word; it was an honor.

It was a pre-term limits Senate before Missourians hypocritically denied themselves the right to vote for legislators they wanted to continue representing them.

It was the era of Harold Caskey and John Schneider, of A. Clifford Jones and Emory Melton, of John Russell and Wayne Goode, Betty Sims and Harry Wiggins, Danny Staples, Morris Westfall and others who respected the institution and honored its written and unwritten rules, who treated the Senate as a body rather than a series of factions.  It was a Senate where the filibuster was a legitimate tactic because the majority on any issue knew it might be the minority on any other issue and the object was compromise that produced progress, before a time when an unyielding steamroller ignored the possibility that someday roles might be reversed and a time might someday come when payback would be a steamroller run by the other side.

It was a time of bare-knuckle politics, have no doubt about that. But eye-gouging and rabbit punches weren’t tolerated.

Jim Mathewson was the leader of the state senate for eight years.  Nobody will ever equal that record or even match it as long as good men and good women are banished from public service because voters fell for the pitch of those who capitalized on the idea that those we trust in our elections every two or four  years instantly become untrustworthy.

Jim Mathewson was a Horatio Alger story, a poor boy who made good because he never gave up, eventually rising to what he argued was the most powerful office in state government, more powerful than the governor, in fact.

He was elected to the House in 1974, then moved up to the Senate in 1980. He was born on a forty-acre farm in Benton County to a “very poor” family. He father left when he was five years old and although he came back six years later, the two were never close. The fact that the family was poor, and he knew it was poor, was a motivating factor in his life. He told a State Historical Society interviewer, “I think it made me meaner and tougher and harder working.”

For a time he and his wife, Doris, ran a steakhouse in Sedalia until it burned down and there was little insurance. Some friends, seeing he had no real livelihood, decided to file him for State Representative, something Mathewson had no interest in being. He beat an incumbent, though, and got elected to a job paying, then, $8,400 a year, about one-eighth what he was making with the steakhouse.

“I got hooked!” he told the interviewer, “and I got hooked bad.”  He was a personable guy and a few years later he started getting some important committee assignments. And he started building bridges. “I’m of the Democrat philosophy, but I’ve never been offended by anyone that was of the Republican philosophy. We just happened to think different on some issues. I believe that Republicans love their family just like I love mine. I believe that they’re Christians just like I believe I am. I believe that they’re going to go to Heaven just like I am. They’re just kind of warped in their thought process about [things] while they’re here. Okay? (chuckling) And I say that jokingly, because I have probably as many friends that are Republicans as I do Democrats.”

Pure Mathewson. Taking his work seriously but not himself (a fellow Capitol reporter remarked a few years later that it seemed legislators had gotten that idea backward—and, frankly, sometimes it seems he is right).

But he was so focused on being a legislator that he wasn’t making much money in the real world. He narrowly avoided bankruptcy only because the father he hardly knew left enough in his estate for Mathewson to pay off debts. He was able to re-establish himself as a businessman in Sedalia.  He began to rise in authority and popularity among fellow Democrats in the Senate and in 1988 he was elected President Pro Tem, the leader of the Senate.

Why did he want the job?   “The power,” he openly admitted.  “The President Pro Tem of the Senate in many, many ways is the most powerful person there is in the state of Missouri. Even more powerful than the Governor because you control all the gubernatorial appointments! And a Governor cannot appoint anyone if they can’t get it by the President Pro Tem of the Senate. Because the President Pro Tem of the Senate is usually smart enough to make themselves chairman of the Gubernatorial Appointments Committee. And the President Pro Tem appoints all the committees, including the all-powerful Appropriations Committee where all the budget comes from. Not only do appoint the chair, but you appoint the members. So generally you have control over that, as you do over most of the committees — or all the committees, really, because you appoint all the chairs. So you know, I wanted to be that person. I wanted to feel that I was not only a person who could be a follower but I wanted to prove that I could be a person that was a leader. It was a unanimous election in our caucus and on the floor every time. So I feel awfully proud of that. It was a good thing.”

He thought he could have been elected for another term but felt it was time for someone else. A few years later, Republicans gained control of the Senate and the last few years were nowhere nearly as rewarding as the rest of his career had been.  The take-no-prisoners style of the new majority grated on a man who thought he had helped maintain the historically collegial atmosphere of the chamber—“the body,” he called it.

There’s one other thing about Jim Mathewson to tell you about.  He was the first Senate President Pro Tem to occupy the physical office of the Pro Tem.  The room complex next to the south end of the Senate Lounge had been the office of the President of the Senate, the Lieutenant Governor, from the day the Capitol was first occupied.  I tell about it in the Capitol history book that I hope goes to the publisher before the end of the year:

The Senate takeover of the Lieutenant Governor’s office space finally happened in the fall of 1988 through the efforts of outgoing President Pro Tem John Scott, who had grown tired of dashing back and forth from his fourth floor office to the Senate Chamber. Senator Jim Mathewson of Sedalia, the incoming President Pro Tem, remembered that Scott approached him at the end of the September veto session and said, “Don’t you think it’s a darned shame that all of these years that the Speaker’s had that office right there on the corner where he can have meetings?”

 

It’s convenient. Everybody knows where it is and they all run in there and they meet and they settle issues and so forth, press conferences and whatever, and we have to use our individual offices when we’re President pro-Tem, and we hold the same power as does the Speaker.  Why don’t we create a special President pro-Tem’s office?

 

Mathewson asked, “Which one d’you have in mind?” Scott answered, “The Lieutenant Governor’s office.” Scott and Mathewson decided to enlist the support of the Senate’s top Republican, Richard Webster…Webster had done some research and told them, “The truth of the matter is there’s no provision in the constitution or the statutes that says the Lieutenant Governor even gets an office.” Scott introduced a resolution at the end of the veto session that let the Senate take control of the office after that year’s election. 

            Shortly after Mel Carnahan won the Lieutenant Governorship, he asked Mathewson not to kick him out of the office.  “Yeah, Mel, I am,” Mathewson told him,

 

And he said, “You can’t do that.” And I said, “Yeah, I can.”  And he said, “Well, by what authority?’ And I said, “We did the research. That office belongs to the Senate. The Senate voted…that the Pro Tem would have that office, and I guess that’s me, Mel, because the caucus just elected me and we’ve got twenty-two votes. I think I’m probably going to be Pro-Tem.” And he…got red-faced as hell…and said, “You’re not going to do this.” And I said, “Yeah, I am, Mel. Gonna do it.  Sorry.”

 

Carnahan threatened a lawsuit but Mathewson played hardball: “You can do that but let me remind you of something that’s just going to offend you further…You don’t have a great big budget already. You take on the Senate and you won’t have any.” Carnahan stomped out of Mathewson’s office, returning more cool-headed a few days later to ask Mathewson what could be done if he accepted the plan.  Mathewson, Scott, Webster, and Carnahan quickly went to the first floor to look at a complex of Senate staff rooms in the northeast corner of the building. Mathewson told Carnahan the Senate would pay to remodel the space if he would take it. Carnahan agreed a few days later.  Mathewson kept his promise to have the new office ready for Carnahan by the time he was sworn in at the start of 1989.

A few years later, then-Lt. Governor Peter Kinder convinced his friend from Cape Girardeau, Senate Administrator Mike Keathley, to have the auditor swap office spaces with the Lt. Governor’s office space.

Mathewson couldn’t run for another term in 2004. He seldom returned to the Capitol. His day was already slipping away, his desk in the chamber and his office occupied by a new generation of Senators.

Are they worse people than Jim Mathewson was?  As people, I don’t think so.  As Senators, as Jim and the others of his era might perceive them in their behavior as senators, maybe.

But comparing generations against each other is hard and risks being unfair because nostalgia is not fair. Perhaps it is accurate to say that today’s senators are not like yesterday’s senators. Sometimes the old lions growling in the weeds who remember those of the Mathewson generation think “Senator” has become just a word. It will be interesting to hear the eulogies (many years from now, we hope) for those who have come after his era.

He concluded his interview with the State Historical Society by saying:

“You know, sometimes you’ve got to hang your life out there. And I have time and time again, and I’m proud of the fact that I did it and I have no regrets! My attitude is this: If the issue is important enough to do, then it’s more important than my political future. And I’ll do it.”

That’s worth thinking about.

(If you want to read Jim’s entire interview—and those of us who knew him can hear his voice as we read the transcript—go to “James L. Mathewson State Historical Society oral history” and click on the icon on the upper right for a download.)

Notes from a Quiet Street (Fall Colors edition)

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(Being a compendium of random thoughts that don’t merit full bloggiation.)

Would someone, preferably one of the people Missourians have sent to the U. S. Senate or the U.S. House, enlighten us about why we have a federal debt limit if it can be increased at congressional will?

And, members of our Washington delegation, don’t get all puffy about how you oppose raising it when you and your colleagues previous DID raise it.

Please write a 500-word theme about how you will pay back this debt. If you expect to pass this course, do not give me the tiresome argument that if government reduces its ability to pay for its programs, the public will create more economic growth that will reduce the debt.

There will be no grading on the curve. This is strictly pass/fail.

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When it was announced a few days ago that the nation was averaging 1900 COVID deaths a day for the first time since last March and that 90% of COVID patients in hospitals are unvaccinated, an ugly stroke of capitalist brilliance overwhelmed me.

Monogrammed body bags.  There’s a big constituency for this product—the thousands of people who refuse to get vaccinated.  Take your personal bag to the hospital with you so you can go out in style.

It would be the last status statement, a last chance to be SOMEBODY instead of just some body.

It will be a wonderful memento for your survivors and an inspirational symbol of your stalwart independence.  Could become a family heirloom.

And there would be a good market for used ones.  Run an ad on the internet, or maybe in the newspaper, or offer it on EBay: “Body bag, reasonably priced. Great savings if your initials are _____ (fill in appropriate letters).”

If ya don’t got it, flaunt it.

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The University of Missouri football team, a few days ago, held a charitable event for the athletic department of Southeast Missouri State University. The Tigers gave the Red Hawks $550,000 and all the team from Cape Girardeau had to do was get the snot beaten out of it again at Faurot Field.

Early in the season we see a lot of these games, usually routs.  We’re not sure they should really count on the season’s record of either team but they do—-because they are two college football teams and they do play and somebody keeps score.

Smaller schools are willing to take on these challenges because—in this case $550,000—they get a relative ton of money for athletic programs that come nowhere near having the resources bigger schools have.  If being a punching bag one Saturday afternoon makes sure there are volleyball and soccer and other minor games available for student-athletes in Cape Girardeau, the price is worth it.

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We are sure we are not the only ones to think, or to say when buying a new car, “This is probably the last gas-powered car I’ll ever own.” We’ve said it for the last two cars we’ve bought and the second one is coming up on eight years old. Will there be a third?  Two developments in the past few days make it clear the future is silently roaring (if such thing is possible) our way.

New York’s new governor, Kathy Hochul, has signed a new law saying every new passenger car or truck sold in the state must be zero-emission vehicles by 2035.   Medium and heavy-duty trucks have a 2045 goal. This is a huge goal—electric vehicles constituted only two percent of sales last year. The new law is similar to an executive order issued by the governor of California earlier.  Big difference: executive orders are not laws.

That’s plenty of time to develop EVS that don’t need to recharged on round trips to St. Louis or Kansas City.

In fact, one such car is coming over the horizon.

We’ve said that we’ll start to seriously look at an electric vehicle has a 500-mile battery.  There is such a vehicle and the EPA says its range is 520 miles, topping Tesla’s best by more than 100 miles.  The company is called Lucid and it plans to start deliveries of its cars before the end of the year. Lucid is a Silicon Valley-founded company that recently picked Casa Grande, Arizona as the site for its first purpose-built EV factory in North America. It will start by making 10,000 cars a year and plans expansion to produce more than 300,000 a year.

Prices are believed to start at about $77,000. They’re going to have to come down a few tens to be affordable to people such as I am.

Still…….

The future is coming.

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The big inaugural/bicentennial parade in Jefferson City on Saturday, September 18t, was a week premature.   True, Missouri was admitted to the Union on August 10, 1821.  But people living out here in central Missouri didn’t know about it until September 25 when the proclamation was published by The Missouri intelligencer¸ in Franklin—Missouri’s first newspaper outside of St. Louis.   Folks in St. Louis celebrated twenty days earlier when Missouri’s first newspaper, The Missouri Gazette and Public Advertiser, published the proclamation.  No big stories or headlines Just the proclamation.  That’s the primitive reporting style of the day.

 

Why didn’t you go with them? 

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You promised you would.  Remember you said during  your pep rally, “We’re going to walk down—and I’ll be there with you—We’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.  Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women….’

You said “we” five times, and you promised to “be there with you.”

But you didn’t go, did you?   You just turned them loose then and you strolled back to the warmth of the big white house.

Sure was a funny way to lead.

Kind of like Jimmy Doolittle.  Remember how he watched fifteen B-25s take off from the security of the bridge of the Hornet?

And we’re all familiar with General Patton, commanding the Third Army from his bunker in London as his soldiers swept across France and into Germany.

George Washington, relaxing by the fireside at Mount Vernon, received regular reports on the fine living conditions at Valley Forge.

The examples are so numerous—-

Some of us are old enough to remember Martin Luther King telling his marchers who had traveled with him from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, “The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going.”  And I’m sure you remember that Dr. King, after speaking words somewhat more eloquent than yours, got into his long black Cadillac and drove back to Selma where he waited for reports of what happened in Montgomery.

Actually, the leaders in these and other situations never said, “I’ll be with you.”  But they were.  They were with those they commanded.

What might have happened if you had been a man of your word that day?  Could you have spoken to the crowd of “peaceful tourists” and urged them not to break windows, break down doors, assault security officers, vandalize offices, and force members of the House and the Senate to flee for their lives?

Would you have tolerated a noose and a sign that said, “Hang Mike Pence,” or would you have encouraged more respect for a man carrying out the constitutional duties of the Electoral College?

Could your calming presence have saved the life of Ashli Babbit?

Could you have prevented the arrests of more than 600 “tourists,” many of whom face significant time in prison or in jail while their families wonder what’s to happen to them if you had said as the crowd surged toward the doors and windows, “Wait!  We’re just here to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.  Go back out behind the fence and demonstrate out there.”

Oh, if only you had kept your promise.

“I’ll be there with you,” you said.

You’re no Jimmy Doolittle. Or George S. Patton.  Or Martin Luther King.

Or any number of other great leaders who led from the front instead of retreating inside their  nice, warm, safe quarters where they could do as you did(according to some accounts),  joyfully watch what you unleashed.

You expressed some concern a few days ago that the September 18h celebration of the January 6 insurrection was intended to make you look bad. What looked bad was the small number of people who gathered to celebrate the day,

Too bad you weren’t with them, either. Be comforted by the fact that you could not have looked worse on September 18th than you did on January 6.

But, once again, you weren’t in the front ranks. Others took all the risks and you watched it all on television. Again.

Once again you’re the man who wasn’t there.

Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today.

Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

—or maybe, walk away.  You’re good at that.

Running government as a business, or—-

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It’s an easy suggestion to make: Government should be run like a business. We first heard this piece of oratory so long ago we have forgotten when and we’re sure it wasn’t original then.  So let’s test the validity of that idea. We’ll test it by reversing it. Suppose you ran your business the way Missouri government is run.

The first thing you would do because it would be popular with your customers is cut prices.  Customers like free stuff and if it can’t be free, it should be priced as lowly as possible.  People will like your store a lot because they will pay as little as possible for the merchandise. The best way to keep your prices low is to pay your employees as little as possible. Many won’t stay very long but that’s okay.  There are always more where they came from.

Of course, your merchandise won’t be of the quality of some of your competitors because you’re holding down the prices and you couldn’t afford better merchandise anyway. Your customers won’t complain about the inferiority of the product until it falls apart on them when they need it the most.  And their complaints will be easy to ignore because most of the others are satisfied with inferiority or mediocrity.

You won’t be able to pay for the new roof your store needs.  The parking lot will develop cracks and potholes you can’t afford to fix.  The place might not be as clean because there’s not enough money for a cleaning crew.  A lot of your business equipment is outdated because you can’t afford new stuff that will speed up payment processes or handle orders. You don’t have the money to train employees to use the new equipment anyway.  Your customers won’t mind the inefficiencies as long as you’re cheap enough.

You think about all of this for a while and you realize you’ll make the money you need to fix all of these problems if you just lower your prices some more, which will produce more customers who will in the long run spend more money.  You also can get by with fewer employees. That will help you become more prosperous and shoppers won’t mind if there are fewer people to wait on them or fewer people who can help them find something or order something.

Yep.  That’s the answer.  Keep prices low. Don’t worry about quality. Don’t bother with retaining employees. People will love you because they don’t have to pay much. Of course, they won’t get much.

Run your business the way government is run. Watch government be run the way you run your business.

Prosperity is just around the corner!

What we’re made for 

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(Sometimes we have to be reminded of our proper roles and the proper place in our lives for our possessions and our institutions.  Today, Dr. Frank Crane tells us there is a difference between—)

USE AND BEAUTY

The Sabbath, said the teacher, was made for Man, and not Man for the Sabbath.

The bearin’s of which, as Dickens would say, is in its application.

Any Institution was made for Man, and not Man for the Institution.

The college, for instance. No, friend Procrustes, whilst we appreciate your zeal to make a record for yourself as President, yet we would remind you that we are sending our boy to your University for the good he can get out of it, and not for the benefit he can be to it. He is not there for you to find out how far he falls short of your standards, nor what glory he can add to his Alma Mater; He is there for you to find out what’s in him, and to develop that. We don’t care a hang about your grand old traditions and things, except as they help you in being the making of our particular pup.

The Church was made for Man, and not Man for the Church. And if your meeting-house is just occupied in keeping itself up, parson, why, close it up and start a hennery…We don’t care about how much money you raise, nor how beautiful are your vestments, nor how high your theology, nor how numerous your membership, nor how gay your stained glass. Are you helping friend Man? Are you making him sober, industrious, clean, and honest? Are you developing in him a civic conscience? Or are you simply being good—so good you’re good for nothing? Come, produce! Or quit!

The House was made for Man, Ma, and not Man for the House. Let the boys play marbles in the dining-room, and the girls have their beaux in the parlor, and grandpa smoke his pipe in the kitchen, and everybody raid the ice-box at 11 p. m. if they want to; what better use can carpets be put to than that children’s knees should wear them out a-gleemaking, and what are sofas for if not for spooning, and kitchen-warmth and cheer if not for old folk homing? Use the old home up, and get a better product—of love and laughter and undying memories.

Books were made for Man, and not Man for Books. Use ’em. Thumb ’em. Mark ’em. Go to bed with ’em. Carry ’em on trains. And don’t own books that cannot be carried down through the Valley of Every-day as the soul’s lunch-basket.

The most perfect ornament is that which is of the most perfect service to Man. No cane is so beautiful as the one grandfather wore smooth on a thousand walks; no chair so lovely as that one mother consecrated by many a night of rocking the baby; no table so priceless as that one where father used to write; no pipe so pretty as the one he smoked; no dress so charming as that one that still has the wrinkles in it worn there by the little girl gone—gone forever into heaven, or womanhood.

It’s the human touch that beautifies. Nothing can be warmly beautiful that is not, or was not, useful.

And Democracy is beautiful because it exists for the welfare of the People that compose it, and not for the glory of the Dynasty that rules it.

The State was made for Man, and not Man for the State.

Moderates-in-waiting

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President Trump heard something a few days ago that he hadn’t heard before. He was booed by an audience he had called to hear his latest, uh, whatever.

Boos at a Trump rally?

Who else was listening?

Who else in the Republican Party was listening?

Maybe we’re reading too much into the event. But there have been, all along, questions about how tight Donald Trump’s grip on the party will remain the longer he is out of office.

It’s doubtful many people left the rally and left Trump because he suggested it might be a good idea for people to get their COVID shots.  It was only a tepid endorsement but it was the first time he had encouraged his followers to do what he had secretly done before leaving the White House.

Boos.  At a Trump rally.

And on this quiet street, these thoughts quietly began to emerge.

The competition for Roy Blunt’s to-be vacated Senate seat has drawn several Republican early entrants, the biggest names of which seem determined to prove they are the most like Trump. They are betting Trump will be the dominant force in the 2022 elections that he claims he will be.

But there are some other Republicans who are holding their counsel.  And it might be wise for them to do so. August, 2022 is a long ways away, politically. The world can take a lot of turns in the next twelve months.

But beside that there’s the issue of mathematics.

Let’s go back to the 2016 presidential primaries. We wrote just before Missouri’s primary that year that earlier state primary voters “seem to favor ANYBODY BUT” Trump with the ABT vote through Super Tuesday that year looking like this:

Iowa   76% Anybody But Trump

New Hampshire  65

South Carolina  67

Nevada  54

Alabama  57

Alaska  66

Arkansas  67

Georgia  61

Massachusetts  50 (although in the total vote, he lost by about 20,000 out of 631,413 cast)

Minnesota  79

Oklahoma  72

Tennessee  61

Texas  73

Vermont  67

Virginia  65

Kansas  77

Kentucky  64

Louisiana  59

Maine  67

Hawaii  58

Idaho  72

Michigan  64

Mississippi  53

Trump had cracked the 40% support level only six times in 22 opportunities up to that time. By the time of the Missouri vote, only four GOP candidates remained in the running.  Eight candidates on the ballot had dropped out but their names could not be removed.  In 2016, Trump got 40.84% of the Missouri votes.  Ted Cruz got 40.63 (and he did not ask for a recount).  John Kasich and Marco Rubio combined for 16.2%.  The rest was scattered among the withdrawn candidates or for “uncommitted.”   The fact is that in Missouri, as in the other states, the majority opposed Trump.

We now have five big-name candidates trying to convince voters they have the shortest political umbilical cords linking them to the former president.

Might there be a moderate Republican or two just quietly watching the internecine warfare among the COTs (Children of Trump)?  And might we see a moderate Republican candidate step forward about the first of the year who can win the Republican primary with 35% of the vote while the five (so far) COTs divide the 40%—assuming Trump still has a solid-enough 40% following in the party by then?

COTs go 25-20-10-5-5% and the moderate polls 35% and moves on to November.

Memo to the COTs in the aftermath of the Alabama boos:  Be nervous. Somebody not like you might be lurking.  And one person who looks good to the 60% can beat the five of the 40.

Or maybe we’re just reading too much into that rally the other day.

 

 

 

Notes from a Quiet Street  (Hot Summer Days & Nights Edition)

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We have officials from Missouri and many other states who are threatening to punish school districts and local health departments, in particular, if they institute mask mandates.  Our Attorney General, Eric Schmitt, is the chief guardian against local mask mandates and he now has a class action lawsuit forbidding school districts from having the mandates. He says parents and families should decide if children wear masks, not those who act in loco parentis when hundreds of children are together.  Parents and families, he says, should make decisions based on science and facts—-as if officials in charge of hundreds of children in close contact with one another can’t make decisions based on science and facts.  Or should not be allowed to make decisions based on science and facts.

The lawsuit also cites a low COVID death rate among school children.

Isn’t one child dying from this plague too high a death rate?

We find all of this energy by governors and attorneys general—almost unanimously Republicans—on this issue peculiar.

Remind us again which party is it that does the most griping about government over-reach, especially the federal government telling states (who know what’s best for their citizens) what should be done.

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One thing we’ve noticed about the pandemic, and now “the pandemic of the un-vaccinated,” is that no preacher has tried to capitalize on it as God’s punishment for this or that nation condoning this or that whatever.  Perhaps it is because all nations, whatever their faults, are fighting this thing—and deciding what human trait is being punished is impossible to determine, even by those who in the past have claimed exclusive knowledge of God’s intent.

But maybe God can’t get in a word edgewise amidst all of the conspiracy cacophony that has helped give the pandemic new vigor.

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There’s been a slew of book released revealing more about the more chaotic last chaotic days of the Trump administration. It is unlikely—we certainly hope it is unlikely!!—that we will ever again see so many books from so many insiders so critical of a president. But there’s one insider book we are waiting for although it might not come until the author determines that he will be more benefitted than damaged by his words.  Potential bombshell-author Mike Pence seems to think the success of his future is still too closely tied to his recent past to discuss it.

But, boy oh boy, the tales he could tell…….

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We notice, by the way, that the former VP is becoming more visible on the public speaking circuit.  He’s hitting some of the big venues—a few weeks ago he repeated his lamentable attack on Critical Race Theory at the inaugural Feenstra Family Picnic in Sioux Center, Iowa.

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Watching the drought envelop the West, we are reminded of some jokes that we heard back in the very hot summer of 1953 while growing up on our little Illinois farm.  That was the summer when the thermometers reached the 90s in late May and the heat wave ran well into September with several days in the triple digits.  In fact, the last 90-plus day was not until October.  Few homes or cars were air conditioned and I can recall my mother closing the curtains in the morning to keep out the sun during the day.

It was so hot that I saw three dogs chasing a tree.

We got a little rain one day and we sent what was in our rain gauge to the University to be analyzed. It came back only 35% moisture.

That was the winter is snowed a little bit but the snow was so dry we just shoved it into the ditch and burned it.

Not sure but those might have been told by Sam Cowling on Don MacNeill’s Breakfast Club that broadcast from Chicago for 35 years on the NBC Blue Network (which became ABC Radio) and is known as the program that created morning talk and variety as a viable radio format.

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Several months ago we told the story of a Cole County man who got married into a family situation that sounded like the story told in the song, “I’m My Own Grandpa.”

Well, we’ve found another one.  From the Sedalia Capital, a newspaper founded when Sedalia was making an ill-fated run at taking the seat of government away from Jefferson City, February 21, 1925 issue.  Page 5 has a picture of a nice-looking lady captioned, “Miss Ruth Davis’ marriage to her stepbrother, Andrew Jean Stormfeltz at Kansas City, Mo., made her mother also her stepmother and her mother-in-law, and her stepfather her father-in-law. She’s her own stepsister-in-law.  Figure it out.”

We’re not genealogist enough to know, but would that make their children their own cousins, or their own aunts and uncles, step or otherwise?

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Check your fly

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(There is a fly that insists on sitting on the ring finger of my left hand, or on my arm, as I write this introduction to another of Dr. Frank Crane’s musings on life.  I cannot ambush it; it senses my attack and flees a split second before my other hand comes down on it.  It is a stupid fly because it does not learn of its potential ultimate punishment and continues being annoying. Dr. Crane thinks flies are more than nuisances.  And they are more than insects, in fact there are—-)

HUMAN FLIES

Oh for a human fly-swatter! That is, for some sort of a swatter that would obliterate the human fly.

The most prominent trait of a fly is his ability and disposition to bother. He is essential, concentrated botheraciousness.

He is the arch intruder. He is the type of the unwelcome. His business is to make you quit what you are doing and attend to him.

He makes the busy cook cease her bread-making to shoo him away. He disturbs the sleeper to brush him off. He is president and chairman of the executive committee of the amalgamated association of all pesterers, irritators, and nuisances.

The human fly is the male or female of the genus homo who is like the housefly.

Some children are flies. They are so ill bred and undisciplined that they perpetually annoy their mother until her nerves are frazzled, and make life miserable for any guests that may be in the house. It may be well to be kind and thoughtful toward the little darlings, but the first lesson a child should be taught is to govern himself as not to be a bother.

There are respectful, considerate, and unobtrusive children alas—too few!

There are fly wives. Realizing their own pettiness they gain their revenge by systematically irritating the husband. They make a weapon of their weakness. They soon acquire the art of pestering, nipping, and buzzing, keep the man in a perpetual temper, and blame him for it. You can’t talk to them. Nothing can cure them but an eleven-foot swatter. And these are not for sale.

Some men are just as bad. Married to a superior woman such a man is inwardly galled by his own conscious inferiority. So he bedevils her in ways indirect. He enjoys seeing her in a state of suppressed indignation. He keeps her on edge. His persecution is all the more unbearable because it is the unconscious expression of his fly nature. Also for him there is no cure but to wait till he lights some time and swat him with some giant, Gargantuan swatter. And they’re all out of these, too, at the store.

There are office flies, likewise, who get into your room, occupy your extra chair, and buzz you for an hour upon some subject that you don’t care a whoop in Halifax about. Your inherent politeness prevents you from kicking them out, humanity will not let you poison them, and there is a law against shooting them. There ought to be an open season for office flies.

Where the human flies are proudest in their function of pestiferousness, however, is in a meeting. Wherever you have a conference, a committee meeting, or a convention, there they buzz, tickle, and deblatterate. They keep the majority waiting while they air their incoherence. They suggest, amend, and raise objections. They never do anything; it is their business to annoy people who do things.

I do not wish to seem unkind to my fellow-creatures, but it does seem as if to all legislatures, conventions, and other gatherings there should be an anteroom where the human flies could be gently but efficaciously swatted.

There are Senate flies, as well as House flies, politicians whose notion of their duty appears to be that they should vex, tantalize, and heckle the opposing party at every point.

There are fly newspapers, whose only policy seems to be petty, vicious annoyance.

There are fly preachers, with a cheap efficiency in diatribe and sarcasm, and no wholesome, constructive message.

There are fly school-teachers, who hector and scold; fly pupils, who find and fasten upon the teacher’s sensitive spot; fly beggars, who will not be put aside; fly reformers, who can only make trouble; fly neighbors, who cannot mind their own business; fly shopkeepers, who will not let you buy what you want.

And the name of the devil himself is Beelzebub; which being interpreted means “Lord of Flies.”

 

Hope

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About twenty-five years ago Dr. Harrison Schmidt traveled from his Albuquerque home to speak to a group in Jefferson City.  I do not recall everything he said although I recall the general topic.  But one sentence from his remarks is vivid in my memory and it is worth thinking about today.

We are living through troubling times, particularly in the last two calendar years, times of uncertainty and fear caused by a pandemic, times of uncertainty in our political system and campaign-induced fears, warranted or not, of our national future followed by the frightful events of January 6 and their lingering impacts on our political mentality.

There are major differences of opinion about the greatness of our nation.  Have we been made greater or has our greatness been dimmed by events of the past half-decade?  Do we dare think, regardless of how we answer that question, that we truly can be great or greater still?

We cannot be either if we wallow in self-pity, if we focus on our unresolved shortcomings as a people, if we accept that we as a people are limited in what we can achieve, what we should achieve, what we must achieve.  We cannot be if we worry more about false differences that divide us—and those who would stoke fears of those differences—than in the common interests we have within our diversity.

And so we come to Dr. Schmidt, world-famous geologist best known for finding one rock and finding some orange soil.  The rock is known as Troctolite 76535.  The soil is a mix of orange and black volcanic glass formed in a process we known as a “fire explosion.”

One rock and some dirt.

From the Moon.

Harrison Schmidt was the last person (for the last 48 years and counting) to set foot on the Moon.  The rock has been called by NASA “without a doubt the most interesting sample returned from the Moon!”  Note the exclamation point. Mission objectives do not often feature them.  Troctolite 76535 is at least 4.2 Billion years old and is significant beyond its age. It shows that the Moon once had a magnetic field “generated by a dynamo at its core” as our Earth has.

And the dirt shows that the Moon once was volcanically active, explosively so.

Dr. Schmitt, who reached 86 in July, is one of the four Moonwalkers still alive (Buzz Aldrin turned 91 on January 20; Dave Scott turned 88 in June and Charlie Duke will hit 86 in October).  Schmitt was 37 when I watched from the press site at Cape Kennedy as he, Gene Cernan, and Ronald Evans thundered into the night sky in December, 1972.

More than two decades later, when he talked in Jefferson City about space, his mission, the discoveries made in the Apollo program and the opportunities that waited for a nation unafraid to reach for the stars, he reminded us:

“Apollo is often forgotten as having been a program where 20-year old men and women were managed by a few 30-year olds, none of whom believed anything was impossible.”

Think of that last clause: “None of whom believed anything was impossible.”

That’s the path to national greatness.  It’s not just for 20 and 30-year olds.

Whether it’s finding rocks on the Moon, finding a vaccine against a worldwide plague within months or even finding middle political ground, we know that nothing is impossible.  But we have to look beyond ourselves. We have to look up for hope rather than down on others.

This entry can be dismissed as saccharine babble. And it might be by those to whom tomorrow is to be feared and to whom uncertainty precludes discovery. But they will not seek exclamation points in life and might limit opportunities for others to find them.

Greatness is not created by cultivating fear and uncertainty personally or on a broader stage.

Greatness is achieved by those who go beyond those issues, none of whom believe anything is impossible. Political leaders might say it.  But it is you and I who must live it and lift up others to join us.

It’s time for more exclamation points!

CRT

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A legislative committee has started holding hearings on Critical Race Theory, a 50-year old academic and legal-studies concept that has been weaponized for political advantage in the last few years.  Among the strongest criticism is that it rewrites history, changing the narrative from a nation founded on Christian values to a narrative that makes white people ashamed of their race (even, some critics say, brainwashing kindergartners into being ashamed of being white).

CRT has become so pervasive in our civic discussion that my Sunday School class talked about it a Sunday or two ago.  More accurately, I talked about it to the Sunday School class.

Faith is a personal thing and while I was comfortable discussing it with that class, I am not one who is comfortable publicly waving it about. But I often find myself in these divisive times turning to Paul’s letter to the Galatians (people living in modern Turkey) that admonishes, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” There are slight differences in the wording depending on the version of the Bible you prefer but the sentiment is the same.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where even many professing Christians of all races still seem to miss Paul’s point. Among its virtues, Critical Race Theory points to the many times when the concept of “you are all one” has been violently meaningless.

As for re-writing history: history needs some rewriting so that it is more history than myth.

To pretend that race has not been a major force in the history of the United States is deception, a willingness to accept myth rather than recognize a historical record that should compel us to be better than we are—regardless of our race. To suggest that it does not still influence attitudes and standards is to disrespect those who have walked a different path than yours for generations.

We should not fear raising the issue of ongoing racism in America.  Although I wish it were not true, it is hard for me to dismiss accusations that there remains a current of it in our country—especially after my experience in discussing removal of Jefferson City’s “Confederate Rock” and listening to an African-American woman who favored its removal read an unsigned letter she received that referred to her thirteen time as a “Nigger” and suggest that she is the kind of woman the Ku Klux Klan was created for.

There, I’ve used the word. I refuse to remove its ugliness by turning it into the linguistic pablum that is “N-word.”  We do no service to ourselves as a people by avoiding the issues behind it and barely beneath society’s surface.

I live in a part of Missouri sometimes referred to as “Little Dixie” because of the high percentage of enslaved people before the Civil War—the 1860 census showing almost ten percent of Missouri’s population in 1860 was enslaved.  Cole County, where I live, was at 10.3% and, perhaps because of the heavy anti-slavery German population, was one of the lowest counties in this region.  Across the river, the census showed almost 26% of the population of Boone County was slaves. Callaway County was at 25. A little ways upstream, 37% of the population of Howard County was slaves. One-third of the population of Saline County was enslaved.  More than one-in-five residents of Cooper County were slaves.

Within my lifetime, I remember the day a black couple moved into an upper-middle class white neighborhood in Columbia and in the newsroom where I worked, we listened to the police monitors for any signs of trouble. There was none.

I was ten feet away from Jefferson City’s leading realtor the night he urged the city council to defeat an ordinance saying people of color could live anywhere in town they could afford to live because of what it would mean for property values.

I have seen history and I have read historical myth—-do any of you remember from your elementary or even high school history lessons when slavery was ever discussed except in the context of the Civil War?

Here’s an interesting little piece of information that underlines the history-as-myth proposition:

Massachusetts—where the righteous Pilgrims and Puritans supposedly founded a nation based on Christian values and religious freedom (a myth of its own)—became the first British colony to legalize slavery, in 1641. Did anybody ever hear that in the Pilgrim stories we were taught as children?  Or even the stories we relate each Thanksgiving as adults?

Missouri law has long held that it is a crime “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to…be defiled.”  Our present statutes use different language but that’s the way the law was in 1855 when a Callaway County slave named Celia, purchased by farmer Robert Newsom at age 14 was raped by Newsom on the way to his home. She had three children, at least one by Newsom, When she was 19 or 20, she killed Newsom in self-defense when he tried to rape her again.  She was hanged because the law against defilement of an unwilling woman did not apply to slaves.

Along the way we might have heard something about the Dred Scott Case but we’ve forgotten that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in that case that slaves—as well as free persons of color—could never be U.S. citizens.

Is it useful to know that the Missouri House of Representatives was completely white for a century before Walthall Moore of St. Louis became the first African-American member of our legislature?  Or that, in 1939, the University of Missouri—under a Missouri Supreme Court order to admit Lloyd Gaines, an African-American, to its law school in Columbia used an “out” in the order to establish the Lincoln University law school in St. Louis for black students?

Is it useful to know that no black person served as the foreman of a Missouri jury until 1945? Or that we didn’t have a state Human Rights Commission until 1957 (and, unfortunately, still have to have it today)? Or that we did not have a black member of the Missouri Senate until 1960? Or that there were no black Highway Patrol troopers until 1965?  That we didn’t send an African-American to Congress until 1968?  Or we didn’t have any person of color on our State Supreme Court until 1995?

Or that Missouri did not elect a black woman to Congress until LAST YEAR?

And that, to this day, outstate Missouri is generally not a place where a person of color stands much of a chance of serving in the Missouri General Assembly?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing these seldom-mentioned parts of our past or of our contemporary lives. There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning, at whatever age, what our society has been and, knowing that, understanding what our society still can be.

And, to the discomfort of many who are comfortable with the status quo, what it eventually WILL be.

Critical Race Theory makes a lot of people uncomfortable because it challenges us to understand that we live in a complex human society of colliding political, legal, and social interests that are affected by long-standing and often subtle social and institutional norms.

History, not myth, recognizes that we have painfully slowly grown more equal despite ongoing reluctance to do so and demographics and other studies of our evolving society that indicate the trend will continue. Some feel threatened by that slow growth and have taken to flame-throwing attacks that CRT (as former Vice-President Pence put it recently) is “a state-sanctioned racism, pure and simple.”

“America is not a racist country. America is the most just, noble and inclusive nation ever to exist on the face of the earth,” he said.

He needs to read more history and believe less myth.

What is happening here?  This largely academic concept has been around for decades. Why is it suddenly “state sanctioned racism?”

The answer is obvious.  Donald Trump discovered that this largely-academic topic has become something he can exploit for his personal political purposes and there are those who think their political futures or their grasp on political power can be enhanced by agreeing with his ongoing mendacity and his fear-stoking rhetoric.

How deep is racism in our country today?  I can’t quantify it but I know from watching and listening that we have some distance to go before we are the “most just, noble and inclusive nation” that Pence prematurely proclaims. I do not fear CRT’s reminders that we can be better than we are.

I also lack the perspective of being part of another culture—black, brown, yellow, or red—and comparing my culture’s history to my perceptions of the dominant culture.  I do not descend from slaves and sharecroppers, migrant field hands, people imprisoned during wartime because of their national origin, or people living on reservations—but I have been to those places and I have spoken with those only a generation or two or three removed from the times people were herded into camps because of their Asian heritage or whose not-distant ancestors were taken from their Native families to be “Americanized” at schools..

So I do not resent nor do I fear Critical Race Theory because it demands examination of parts of our history that have been glossed over in the story of our nation as a “shining city on a hill,” as President Reagan called us in misquoting Puritan minister John Winthrop. His 1630 sermon aboard the Arbella before it landed at Massachusetts Bay, although delivered in a different time and for a different purpose, gives us a recipe for national greatness that starkly differs fromfrom what is sometimes heard in criticism of CRT:

“…The only way to…provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with…For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

If we want to be the “city on a hill,” it is clear that divisiveness perpetuated by self-serving narrow attitudes and political rhetoric, is not the face we claim is an example to the world.  Winthrop’s sermon delivered 391 years ago tells us what we yet need to be.

If we are honest, we must not fear confronting our past and dealing with the lamentable vestiges of it that remain. CRT should not be seen as a sudden contemporary push to “shame” the white race.  To the contrary, it should be seen seen as a fifty-year-old challenge to be a better people—of all races—than we have been.

Much of the focus on CRT is on white-black relationships. But be aware that it is much more than that. There are branches to examine structural discrimination against Latinos, Jews, women, the disabled, Native Americans, and white immigrants.

There is no limit to the study of our inequalities, for knowing our inequalities gives us the understanding we need to end them. To paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is ourselves.”   What he said after the actual phrase, however, is valid on this issue—his definition of fear as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” after which he noted, “In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

That’s a hope that will stand us in good stead in a time when some see currying distrust and division as the key to their success, whatever the price might be to the nation.

It is better to remember:

We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Or as the Gospel tells us: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Given a choice of following the words of Paul or believing the words of Pence, I shall always take Paul.