Category Archives: health

Taking the Initiative (Away)

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Ohio residents voted a few days ago on a proposition that would make it harder for citizens to enact laws if the legislature refuses to do so.  Or to correct a legislative enactment many think based on something other than the general public welfare.

Ohio voters approved initiative and referendum in 1912, about the time Missourians approved it.  In the recent statewide Ohio vote, 57% of the voters rejected an effort largely led by those who do not want to see a pro-abortion amendment added to the Ohio Constitution.

In Missouri, constitutional amendments proposed by the people need only a simple majority to be approved.  This year, the Missouri House voted almost two-to-one (Republicans control the House by about the same ratio) to require 57% approval for any amendment proposed by the people.  Only another end-of-session mud fight in the Senate kept the proposal from a vote there sending the issue to the ballot.

Abortion was (is) the principle issue behind the failed legislative effort in Missouri. One major House supporter of the increase went on record during the session admitting the increased threshold was intended to keep a petition allowing abortions from being sent to the voters for their approval. The people, in turn, sent a message back to the legislature.

One of the key arguments for the supermajority threshold is that the change is needed to keep the state constitution from being further cluttered by amendments that should be only statutes.

The concern is legitimate. The proposed means of answering that concern, though, are questionable—and the legislature largely is to blame for the situation to begin with.

Some amendments have been added to the Missouri Constitution because the legislature has refused to pass a statute to address an issue.  The legislature has at times rewritten a statute approved in an election, a perceived rebuke to the will of the people who then can petition for an amendment to the constitution that is harder for the legislature to alter. The legislature cannot, on its own, rewrite a provision in the constitution. It can, however, suggest a replacement amendment that takes the place of the citizen-adopted language inserted into the constitution.

Government can be a little dizzying sometimes but at least the governed and the government are on the same level playing field. A national movement has materialized to tilt the field, however.

The initiative process does need some changing.  But making it harder for the people to propose and pass a law or an amendment on an issue the legislature has ignored, fumbled, or is not favored by the majority (or supermajority) party is not the proper approach.

There is a hypocrisy in this proposed change of the political process. Members of the legislature elected by a simple majority can pass a proposed law or amendment with a simple majority, even a proposal to require the people to get a supermajority to propose or pass a measure the legislature has ignored or bungled.

This is a philosophical problem that is often lost in the different worlds of politics versus popular sovereignty.  Benjamin Franklin defined popular sovereignty when he wrote, “In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns.”  Or as the Declaration of Independence reminds us, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

A simple majority governs.  A super majority dictates within the political system.

There are two kinds of supermajorities.  The human first one is a legislative majority capable of enacting laws with no regard to the presumed political equality of a minority. The second is an  entity on paper that keeps a simple majority from speaking or acting.

Supermajorities in their different forms are dangerous because they can ignore the unalienable mutual right to, in particular, liberty.

In this case, the Missouri legislature has a supermajority that wants to ban abortions with a fifty-percent-plus-one vote while requiring those who oppose the ban to get 57% support.  Changing the constitution to tilt the table against the minority is a tilt away from democracy.

There is an argument that the proposal likely to be back in the legislature next year will infringe on the right of citizens “to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”  That’s a basic right in the U. S. Constitution.  Although the document does not specifically address what it takes to petition government, our history has established the simple majority as the rule.  Making  it harder to petition for a redress of grievances hardly seems to keep faith with the founders.

The process needs improvement.  But limiting access of the people to an original right in our national charter is not the best way to handle the issue.

Here are some things—top of the head thinking so take it for what it’s worth—that could be done to improve the process. You might have others or prefer others:

—Limit the number of proposed propositions by one organizaiton to one.  Too often, petition campaign organizers file multiple versions of a proposal that vary only slightly, a process that places an unnecessary burden on the Secretary of State’s staff that has to review each proposal.

—Require clear reporting of the source of funding for the petition, identifying by name the donors and any organizations through which the financing is delivered. If someone wants to buy a part of the constititon or a state statute, voters need to know who it is and why.

—Require pre-filing public hearings in x-number of locations throughout the state so the people have chances to hear the specifics of the proposal and to criticize it within an audience of their peers, giving an early public airing of the issue which otherwise might go to the ballot with a well-financed and heavily one-sided campaign.

—-Require a hearing by a joint committee of the legislature before circulation begins. Neither the House nor the Senate could change the proposal but the hearings could explore shortcomings in a process that could be made by petition sponsors.  One of the major—and justified—criticism process is that petitions lack the refining process that legislative review offers for issues recommended for the ballot by the General Assembly.

The petition process is a right that is to be reserved and preserved for the citizens.  To limit citizens’ right by forcing on them an obligation not forced upon the people who purportedly represent them is to repudiate Franklin’s idea of a republic in which “the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns.”

We hope Missourians are as cognizant of their rights and responsibilities as citizens as the good people of Ohio are—regardless of any measure the Missouri General Assembly might try to enact that makes citizens lesser participants in their own governance.

 

Knocking off the big guys and racing in the rain: last week in sports

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor.

(BASEBALL)—Cardinals vs. Yankees; Royals vs. Dodgers.  Didn’t happen the way the experts thought it should have.  At the end of the week, both teams had split their last ten games, which means they’ve been playing well above their season’s average.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals took two out of three against the Yankees with Jordan Montgomery turning back his old team for the rubber game.  Montgomery outpitched Yankee ace Geritt Cole to lift his team to 35-48.  They are 10½ games out of a wild card slot for the post-season and they’ll have to play at a .582 clip to finish the year at .500.

They have shown incremental progress since the Giants swept them in three-game set in mid-June, going 8-6 since, a .570 clip.

The Yankees are 46-38 but they have had a losing record since losing Aaron Judge with a toe injury.

The Cardinals made a roster move to start the week by calling up Luken Baker, who had a cup of coffee earlier this year when he came up and hit .286 in four games before being send down to the Memphis Redbirds, where he racked up 22 home runs in 64 games. The Cardinals have designated outfielder Oscar Mercado for assignment to make room on the roster for Baker.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals surprised the Los Angeles Dodgers by taking two out of three  from them to win their first series since mid-May. They still have the second-worst record in the American League at 25-59.  They started this week 21 games out of a playoff spot but team officials seem bullish on a much-better team within the next two years as the youngsters gain experience.

The Royals have only 15 players born before 1995 (Zack Greinke was born in ’83).  On their 40-man roster.

(ALL-STARS)—An indication of the lousy baseball seasons our Missouri teams are having can be found in the rosters for the July 11 All-Star game.  The only Cardinal picked is third baseman Nolan Arenado. He’ll be a starter.  The only other player from either of our teams is Salvatore Perez of the Royals, as a backup catcher.  Of some note is that another American League reserve is former Royals Second Baseman Whit Merrifield, reserve from the Blue Jays.

Before we go racing:

(FOOTBALL)—Vice Tobin, once a standout defensive player for the Missouri Tigers and later the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals who led the franchise to its first post-season victory in fifty years, has died. He was 79.

Tobin and his brother, Bill, were natives of Burlington Junction who played his high school ball in Maryville.  He was defensive back and later a coach for Dan Devine’s Missouri Tigers in the early sixties and mid-70s when the Tigers went 21-7-3 and were nationally ranked all three years.  He had six interceptions, returned punts, and played some halfback on offense—his first play as a halfback was a touchdown pass to Johnny Roland at California in 1962.

He was a defensive ends coach from 1967-70, including the strong seasons of 1968 and ’69 when the Tigers finished with top-ran rankings.  He called defensive plays under Al Onofrio during some of Onofrio’s most memorable wins against Notre Dame, USC, Ohio State, Alabama, and Nebraska and over Aubrn in the Sun Bowl. He coached in the DCFL with the British Columbia Lions before starting a 16-year career as an NFL coach.  He headed the Cardinals 1996-2000 and led them to a win over the Dallas cowboys in the first round of the 1998 playoffs. He later was a defensive coordinator with the Chicago Bears, Indianapolis Colds and Detroit Lions.

(NASCAR)—The streets of Chicago were nothing if not entertaining Sunday.  NASCAR ran its first street race in the modern era after a heavy downpour soaked the track—

(Michael Reaves, Getty Images/NASCAR)

Chicago got a record amount of rain for a July 2nd.  And a driver who had never competed in a NASCAR Cup race beat everybody to the finish line.

The rain gauges at O’Hare International Airport had almost 2.3 inches of rain in them by noon, breaking a record dating back forty-one years.  It was too much water for the NASCAR Cup cars to take to the track even with their rain tires.

The race finally got underway ninety minutes late with some water still standing on the track, leading to cars sliding into walls or into tire barriers several times. The track, however, was dry by the time the race ended with New Zealander Shane van Gisbergen 1.3 seconds ahead of Justin Haley and Chase Elliott.

Kyle Larson and Kyle Busch rounded out the top five—a considerable accomplishment for Busch, who buried the nose of his car in a tire barrier on the fourth lap and had to be retried by a NASCAR safety truck.

Van Gisbergen is the first driver in NASCAR history to win a points-awarding race in his first race.  Until Sunday, only Joplin’s Jamie McMurray and Trevor Bayne held the record for quickest to win a Cup race. Both won in their second ones.  No driver has won a Cup race in his first start since Johnny Rutherford won a non-points qualifying race at Daytona in 1963.  (Jared C. Tilton, Getty Images/NASCAR)

Van Gisbergen, however, is no rookie in stock car racing. He has won the Bathurst 1000, a 621-mile road race back home in Australia three times.  He is a three-time champion of the V8 Supercars Championship—Australia’s NASCAR.

This is the Camaro that runs in that series:

(carscoops.com)

Van Gisbergen is hinting that he might join NASCAR fulltime in 2025 after doing “one more year in OZ.” He is only the sixth foreign-born driver to win a NASCAR Cup race.  Mario Andretti, born in Italy, was the first, in 1967.  Canada’s Earl Ross won in 1974.  Juan Pablo Montoya, born in Colombia, won his first Cup race in 2000. Australia’s Marcus Ambrose was a winner in 2011, followed by Daniel Suarez last year and Giesberger on Sunday in Chicago.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen, this time, as Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium.  But zealous race stewards penalized eight drivers various amounts of time for cars going outside the racing surface to improve or to defend their positions that it took some time after the race to decide who finished where.  In the end Charles Leclerc was second and Sergio Perez got the other podium spot.

Could we survive yesterday?

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Someone asked me the other day, “If you could go back 150 years, what would be the first things you would notice?”

It took me about two seconds to come up with an answer—because I’ve sometimes thought it would be interesting to be able to go back as an invisible observer of the past.

“Color,” I said. “And smells.”

“And the water would kill us.”

The images with which we are most familiar are all one-dimensional and black and white.  Take that picture of great-great-grandfather and grandmother and imagine what a shock it would be to meet them on the street, in three dimensions, their flesh the same color as yours, eyes (perhaps) the same color as yours, hair—-well it might be the same color but it also might be pretty greasy with the men and not particularly clean with the women.

And they likely would have an odor about them, especially if you met them at this time of year.  Stale sweat for one.  Showers were unknown in most homes (indoor plumbing of any kind). Bathtubs were not as well-used as our tubs and showers are now.  Underarm deodorant was nonexistent.  Mum was the first underarm deodorant, and it didn’t come along until 1888, a paste applied under the arms, by hand.  Deodorant, not anti-perspirant.

Underwear probably went a few days before changing.

In those days, if everybody stank, nobody stank.

Last year, I was on the town square in Springfield, Illinois and I noticed a sign on one of the historic buildings denoting it as the former home of the Corneau and Diller Drug Store. The sign said the store had been opened in 1849 by Roland W. Diller and Charles S. Corneau, who installed a big wood stove circled by chairs, making the pace a popular place for mento gather and swap stories or discuss events of the day including politics, a subject that was appealing to Abraham Lincoln, whose law office was a short walk away.

Wife Mary purchased toiletries there “such as bear’s oil, ox, marrow, ‘French Chalk’ for her complexion, a patent hairdressing called ‘Zylobalsam,’ and ‘Mrs. Allen’s Restorative.”

It continues: “Because daily bathing was not yet customary, the Lincolns—like most other people—bought cologne by the quart!”

Visitors to the Steamboat Arabia Museum in Kansas City can purchase 1856 French Perfume.  It’s not the real stuff that was found when the boat was excavated but it is a reproduction.  The museum sent a bottle of some of the real stuff to a laboratory in New York that did a chemical analysis and reproduced the perfume.

It’s strong stuff.  But for hundreds of years, perfume often was not the olfactory decoration and attraction that it is today; it was a masking agent sometimes poured on and sometimes used to soak kerchiefs that were kept up the sleeves and used to waft away some personal unpleasantness of a companion.

So color and odor would be the first things to jolt us if we went back 150 years.

But the smells would not be confined to the people you meet on the streets.  The streets themselves would be pretty rank.

The New York Almanack published an article a couple of years ago observing that the city had 150,000 to 200,000 horses, each of which produced “up to 30 pounds of manure per day and a quart of urine…over 100,000 tons a year (not to mention around 10 million gallons of urine.”

“By the end of the 19th century, vacant lots around New York City housed manure piles that reached 40 or 60 feet high. It was estimated that in a few decades, every street would have manure piled up to third story levels.”

Jefferson City’s streets didn’t produce that much manure and urine.  But New  York’s problems were the problems of every city in the country, including the capital city.

The manure on the dirt streets (such as High Street in Jefferson City) attracted flies by the thousands, millions.  New York once estimated that three-billion flies were hatched from street poop every day.  They were disease carriers. The dust from the streets and the dried manure mingled in the air, was inhaled and worn on the clothing.

And when it rained in the summer or when the show thawed in the winter, the streets turned into a gluey muck that was tracked into every business and home in town—except for the ones that required footwear to be removed before or upon entering—at which point socks that weren’t changed daily added their own atmosphere to life.

These conditions led to the rise in some communities of a new institution—the country club.  People needed a place in the country where they could breathe clean air, at least for a day or two.  Golf courses and horse-racing tracks developed outside of towns.

Missouri Governor Herbert Hadley, who suffered from a lung disease—pleurisy—bought a farm west of town and several prominent residents gathered one weekend for a big barn raising and cabin-building.  Later, a nine-hole golf course was created and thus was born the Jefferson City Country Club.

Sanitary sewer systems were rare. Homes had outhouses, often not far from the well that provided the house with water.

If we went back 150 years and took a drink of the water of the day, we probably would choke on the taste and if we dank a little too much, we might just die of a water-borne disease.  Even with natural immunity that residents of those times developed, the average life expectancy in the United States in 1880 was 40, a good part of it because of high infant mortality and primitive obstetrics that led to high mortality rates for women giving birth.

We forget how tough, how strong, our ancestors had to be to survive in such an environment.  The Missouri State Penitentiary kept a log of every Confederate prisoner it took in.  The average prisoner was 5-feet-7 and weighed 140 pounds.  Women prisoners averaged 4-feet-11.

Imagine wearing a wool uniform, marching ten or 20 miles a day carrying a heavy rifle and a 50-pound backpack, eating unrefrigerated rations and drinking whatever water you could find, even if it was downstream from a cattle farm.

The good old days weren’t very good.  The problem with going back to them is that we might not live long enough to return.

 

Us vs. It—part XIII, Empathetic edition 

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We began this series in the early days of the pandemic. It’s been a long time since the twelfth chapter that likened what we have been going through, or went through, and yesterday.

An odd thing sometimes happens to the historical researcher.  Names and addresses become more than words and numbers on a printed page.  Something empathetic happens sometimes.  I like to say that ghosts live in those boxes of letters and journals or in the stories on the pages of microfilmed newspapers that make yesterday immediate.

Maybe it’s because the address is a place the researcher has driven past many times without a thought.  But now, knowing something that happened at that address produces a peculiar personal tie to the place. These are some of the Jefferson City Sites of Sadness during the great Spanish Flu expidemic of 1918.

1022 West McCarty

1029 West Main

1303 Monroe Street

708 East Miller Street

804 Broadway

Particularly, in this case, is this note in the newspaper from December 10, 1918:

Mrs. Fred Landwehr died at her home east of the city.

The house was east of the city in 1918. It’s well within the city in 2022.  I used to drive past this house almost every time I went to my home on Landwehr Hills Road where we lived for twenty years.  Mrs. Landwehr was one of the victims of the Spanish Influenza pandemic.  One of her descendants is a former Mayor of my town.

In most instances, the people who now live at the addresses above where part of that terrible history happened in 1918-19 have no knowledge of the small but enormously tragic event that enveloped their home so many years ago. They don’t know that the living room of their home might have held the coffin of a loved one who died in that pandemic—funerals often were held in homes in those pre-funeral home days.

We don’t know if such information would be particularly meaningful to the way the current inhabitants live their lives.  But these houses remain memorials to the citizens whose name mean little or nothing to most of us but who were part of the fear and the sadness that was there in that awful historic time.

And in the past three-plus years some modern addresses have been added that were the homes of victims of the worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu of 1918-19.

History is more immediate and more valuable than you might think if you know you are in a place where life and death happened or if you know as you drive past what circumstance of life was played out behind those windows.

But What About Jenae?

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The recent traffic crash in St. Louis that has cost a 17-year old volleyball player her legs has triggered outrage focused on St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner—who has been something of a political lightning rod throughout her career.

The Missouri Senate is considering a remonstrance—a word describing a severe grievance or protest against a person or institution, usually demanding corrective action—against Gardner, who is accused of letting the driver of the car remain on the streets despite having a revoked driver’s license and having violated his bond in a robbery case at least fifty times.

The remonstrance is signed by every Republican in the Senate.  Gardner is a black Democrat and her defenders say the remonstrance and the Attorney General’s ouster petition filed against her are politically partisan and racist.

We will leave that fight to be waged in the political arena. We hope, however, that those who are and who will be focused on Gardner do no harm to Jenae Edmondson, the young volleyball player from Tennessee, for it can be too easy for them to use her as an instrument of their political rage at a time when she might desperately need support and hope.

What will they say to her?   What should they say to her?  What should you and I, most of us along in years with legs that carry us in the halls of power, on the playing fields and hiking and biking trails, and even on walks with our grandchildren?

Legs are part of our identity, particularly when we’re young. They’re part of running through life, part of our future, part of our social involvement—we dance with them; we jump to our feet when our team scores in a close game; we begin to drive a car with them.

If you and I—and the senators and the Attorney General—were to send her a letter, what would we tell a 17-year old girl who is dealing with the terrible question double-amputee Drake McHugh asks in King’s Row, “Where’s the rest of me?”

She is not the first person to suffer such a tragedy. But she’s the first person in her own body and in her own mind to go through it. And those who become immersed in the political fallout of this disaster should remember that and not victimize her additionally.

There are others, too, who intimately share her tragedy.  Her parents are doubly affected because they must deal with her injuries and with sustaining her character while they deal with suddenly becoming parents of a disabled teenager and the costs of her care now and in the future.

They are getting help from the Middle Tennessee Volleyball Club that has set up a GoFundMe account that is about halfway to meeting its one-million dollar goal to help pay medical and other bills.

There are many who can give her hope, who can inspire her at the right time to live through this, who can teach by their examples that there will be bikes to ride, trails to hike, games to be played, life to be lived.  Thousands of those who returned alive but damaged from Afghanistan are the ones we hope she will focus on.  At some point, Paralympians can provide inspiration. At some point, the remarkable U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois can become an inspiration—a woman who lost her legs in a military helicopter crash and who told Vogue magazine that when he sees her artificial legs, painted to match her skin tones, she sees “loss.”  But when she sees her steel and titanium prosthesis, “I see strength.”

But that is in the future.  Jenae and her family are living very much in the present with its present challenges.  We hope she does not become a pawn in a developing political battle.

She and her family have more important things to do.

 

 

Gambling Addiction? Don’t Blame Us

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The big push is underway in the legislature to let Missourians bet on sports.  A House committee has held a perfunctory hearing on two bills that have a tax structure in which the state will LOSE money.  An industry that profits from tilting the tables against its customers is about to tilt the tables against the state. And it’s likely the legislature will let them get away with it.

An article last week in The Hill, a D.C. publication that reports on government, says gambling addiction is going to be “the next opioid crisis.”

And the casino industry does not seem to care. At least not in Missouri.

Nationwide legal sports wagering will be five years old this year.  The Supreme Court threw out the national ban on it in 2018.  The growth of this betting has been nothing short of explosive. Missouri legislative fiscal experts say profits from sports wagering will exceed profits from all table games in all of our thirteen casinos in just three years.

The gambling industry has spent, and is spending, huge amounts of money wooing state legislatures. Last year The New York Times investigation detailed how it was done in Kansas. The newspaper also had a reporter in Missouri but when the issue died in a completely dysfunctional Senate, the investigation focused elsewhere.

It’s coming to Missouri—on the gaming industry’s terms.  A bill in the House that would allow sports wagering on the state’s terms will get a hearing this year but will go nowhere. That’s the official word.

The industry-backed bills set aside up to one-half million dollars for dealing with people who are affected by gambling addictions. If you think the casinos are being noble and responsible in doing this, you are wrong. They want nothing to do with that funding.

The money, instead, will come from the fund underwritten by fees the casinos pay for each person who enters the gambling area—fees that have been rendered woefully inadequate because of inflation since they were put in place n 1993.  The industry has fought, successfully, every attempt to bring the two dollars up to contemporary values.

One result of that resistance is that funding for our veterans homes is about one-third what it was a decade ago and it’s going to get worse.  Even the host cities of our casinos have seen their casino payments decline by about half, a circumstance their association doesn’t seem to think is worth discussing.

The bills in the House that set aside that half million dollars take it from the programs that draw support from that admission fee fund, meaning taking funding away from the veterans homes, the host cities, a state college scholarship program and a National Guard funeral escort program.

The industry doesn’t care. It accepts no financial responsibility for those who develop problems by over-participation in its offerings.

The Hill article says, “Most Americans ignored the opioid crisis, a staggering increase in overdose deaths in the 1990s and 2000s, until the government and news media processed the data and tendered a response.”  Timothy Fong, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, told the publication, “We have a movement toward expanding what was once considered a sin, what was once considered a vice, and embedding it at every level of American culture, down to kindergarten.”

“You have exactly the same players you had with opioids. You have government. You have industry. You have civilians, a lot of whom will benefit from this. And then you have a population who will develop an addiction, let’s say one [to] one-point-five percent of the population.  It’s a hidden addiction. You can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it.”

We’ve looked at a lot of studies in this country and others of gambling addiction.  All of them point to gambling addiction at least tripling with the advent of sports wagering.

Lia Nower, the director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University, told The Hill, “Gambling is a very different addition from drugs or alcohol. If I’m drunk or high, at some point my family is going to figure it out. With gambling, I can be sitting with my kids, watching cartoons, and gambling away my house, my car, everything I own, on my mobile phone. How would you know?”

Nower says New Jersey, the first state to have newly-legal sports wagering studied the issue of problem gambling BEFORE it allowed sports wagering. But she says most states “are just legalizing this stuff without any idea of the effects.” Missouri seems to be in that category.

We have yet to hear anybody outside of those with special interests in the topic, even so much as mention this coming potential public health crisis. Passing a bill with a pick-a-number amount set aside—subject to appropriation by the legislature—is not addressing the problem.  And having the industry that causes the problem directly take responsibility for it seems to be out of the question.

The Missouri Gaming Association once proclaimed, “As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than a fair share for military veterans…We honor and support our military veterans and will continue to do so…”

Just don’t trouble us to adjust outdated admission fees to stop the financial bleeding of Missouri’s nursing homes for veterans. And certainly don’t expect us to have any financial responsibility for veterans or anyone else who become the victims of our enterprise.

Just remember, we’re good corporate citizens. And we expect the people you elected to represent you and to protect your citizens’ interests to do what we want.

“I do think there are watershed moments in all public health crises. Unfortunately, it usually takes some kind of crisis or tragedy to turn the tide,” says Nower.

The “next opioid crisis” and accompanying tragedies is developing at the state capitol. Does your legislator care?

 

Sports—Keeping Your Head in the Game

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Kurt Busch was sitting in a chair he didn’t want to be in Sundary afternoon.  He would rather have  been strapped in to his usual seat in his NASCAR Cup car,  racing three-dozen other drivers on the three-quarter mile track at Richmond.

But for the fourth weekend in a row the 2004 Cup champion was ruled unfit to race because of a concussion incurred in a qualifying crash at Pocono last month. He appeared unhurt when he got out of the car but doctors at the infield care center determined he was showing concussion symptoms.

Concussion protocols have become a much more important issue in sports at all levels in the last decade, highlighted by auto racing’s Dale Earnhardt Junior’s struggles in 2016 when he missed the second half of the NASCAR season. He retired at the end of the 2017 season, a season that began with the abrupt retirement of Columbia driver Carl Edwards, whose run for the 2016 championship had ended with a hard crash at Atlanta.

Edwards gave three reasons for leaving the sport. The third was his health. “I can stand here healthy after all the racing I’ve done and all the stupid stuff I’ve done in racecars. I’m a sharp guy and I want to be a sharp guy in thirty years.”

Edwards’ wife, Kate, is a doctor who works with people who have severe and traumatic brain injuries.

What do doctors look for when assessing concussions (and a person’s recovery from them?

The Mayo Clinic says someone, such as Busch after his crash, might not show signs and symptoms until hours or days after the injury.  Busch apparently did show signs because he was quickly ruled out of that weekend’s race at Pocono.

Doctors run some neurological tests that check on a person’s vision, hearing, strength and sensation, balance, coordination, and reflexes.  There also are cognitive tests—how thinking skills are working. Memory, ability to concentrate and the ability to recall information are part of that evaluation.

If the person shows signs and symptoms of severe headaches, seizures, repeated vomiting or worsening symptoms, brain imaging might be needed to see if there is bleeding of brain swelling.

The standard test to determine the condition of the brain right after an injury is a computerized tomography scan (or as they say in every episode of Grey’s Anatomy,  CT scan).

And a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be sued to identify brain changes or complications.

The great 1950s and 1960s English Grand Prix driver Sterling Moss, who raced long before sophisticated concussion evaluations, decided after a horrible crash in his Lotus that he knew his brain was no longer fit for him to race when he had to think about doing things he had previously done automatically.

Whether it is race drivers or athletes in general, head injuries that leave them having to think about what they normally would do automatically is a sign that they need to step out of the arena until the automatic response returns.  Sometimes it doesn’t and the person risks greater harm by trying to bull through the condition.

That’s why concussion protocols are so important in sports. It’s dangerous to the individual and sometimes to those also in the game with them to play before they have recovered. Self-assessment cannot be tolerated.

As Kurt Busch put it when he was ruled unfit for last weekend’s race at Richmond:

 “Brain injury recovery doesn’t always take a linear path. I’ve been feeling well in my recovery, but this week I pushed to get my heart rate and body in a race simulation type environment, and it’s clear I’m not ready to be back in the race car.”

For Kurt Busch, the brain is more important than trying to win another trophy, a recognition that now exists across various sports platforms.  Infield care hospitals or tents on the sidelines—they’re all signs that the idea of “playing through an injury” is increasingly unacceptable.

As Carl Edwards put it: “I’m a sharp guy and I want to be a sharp guy in thirty years.”

(NASCAR)—Kevin Harvick had so much fun finally winning another race a week ago that he decided to do it again—at Richmond, where he took the lead after the last round of pit stops and then held on to beat the charging Christopher Bell, on fresher tires, by four-tenths of a second.

The win is number 60 in his career, moving him to ninth place on the all-time winner’s list.

Only two races remain in the regular season. Ryan Blaney, who has yet to win this year, is the only non-winner in the playoffs and he widened his points advantage over Martin Truex Jr., for the last  of 16 playoff slots.  If a non-winner claims one of the last two races,  other than those two, both will miss the playoffs although they are  second and forth in the overall points standings.

The Series moves to the Watkins Glen road course next weekend.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR runs the first of its last three races of the 2022 season at Worldwide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis next Saturday.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 ends its summer break with the Grand Prix of  Belgium on August 28, the fourteenth race in the 22-race season.

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The Fourth of July

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This is a day of eloquent words.  The celebration of that eloquence is overshadowed by the festival this day has become.

We’re not talking only about the eloquence of the Declaration of Independence, approved by the Continental Congress on this day (but not signed by the 56 delegates for some time), but for the eloquence of a speech by a special man before thousands of admirers on this date.

This is the day in 1939 that Lou Gehrig, one of the greatest players and greatest people to play baseball, said goodbye—with words of courage and gratitude before a crowd of almost 62,000 people in Yankee Stadium who had come for baseball games but mostly to pay tribute to Lou Gehrig.

The words were spoken a little more than a month after a consequential trip to Missouri.

The most memorable line came at the beginning, not the end—as is the case with the Declaration’s most famous line.

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

“Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

“When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift – that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies – that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter – that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body – it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed – that’s the finest I know.

“So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”

As far as the trip to Missouri—

Gehrig had sensed something was wrong when he hit “only” .295 in the 1928 season with 29 home runs and 114 runs batted in—the kind of season most of today’s major leaguers would love to have.  But it lowered his lifetime batting average to .340 and left him 287 hits short of becoming the seventh player with 3,000 hits, an achievement he could have expected to reach in 1939 under normal circumstances.  It also left him seven short of 500 home runs and six short of 2000 runs batted in, both statistics he would have achieved in ’38 if he had had a normal year.

He was troubled at the start of the 1939 season by the fact that he was only four for fourteen in the World Series, all of the hits being singles, and going four-for-28—again, all singles—to start the year.  He didn’t hit a home run during spring training and his coordination in the field was off.  He played his last major league game on April 30, then told manager Joe McCarthy he was benching himself after 2,130 straight games.

But there would be one more game. Gehrig was still the Yankees’ captain, often the man who took the lineup card to the home plate umpire at the start of the game, as he did during a series in June against the St. Louis Browns. It was there that Gehrig told reporters he was going to the Mayo Clinic soon for some tests but expected to return to the playing field during the summer.  “I can’t help believing there’s something wrong with me,” he told them. “It’s not conceivable that I could go to pieces so suddenly. I feel fine, feel strong, and have the urge to play…I’d like to play some more and I want somebody to tell me what’s wrong. Usually a fellow slows up gradually.” But this year, he said, “Without warning…I’ve apparently collapsed.”

After wrapping up the series with the Browns, the Yankees went to Kansas City for an exhibition game against their best minor league team, the Kansas City Blues, team that matched rising Yankee star Joe DiMaggio against brother Vince, who played the same position for the Blues against the Blues’ up and coming double play duo of shortstop and future Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto and second-baseman Jerry Priddy, who combined that year for 130 double plays, a league record. They were called up by the Yankees in ’41.

Lou Gehrig played his last game on June 11, 1939 in Kansas City. He played in great pain, but played errorless ball at first base. His last at-bat was in the third inning. He grounded out to Priddy.

While the rest of the team took a train to Cleveland for a series there, Gehrig and his wife, Eleanor (in this AP photo from 1936), flew to Rochester for tests on the 13th that she had arranged.  Six days later, the clinic’s Dr. Harold C. Habein issued a “Two whom it may concern” letter telling Gehrig he had been diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, an illness that “involves the motor pathways and cells of the central nervous system and in lay terms is known as a form of chronic poliomyelitis—infantile paralysis.”

The letter concluded, “The nature of this trouble makes it such that Mr. Gehrig will be unable to continue his active participation as a baseball player inasmuch as it is advisable that he conserve his muscular energy. He could, however, continue in some executive capacity.”

Gehrig took the letter to manage Joe McCarthy and team president Ed Barrow on the 21st.  They released the information to the media that day and announced that July 4th had been set aside for Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at the stadium.

Gehrig admitted he was shocked by the findings. He told New York sportswriters, “Mrs. Gehrig and I are fully resolved to face the situation calmly” and he called the trip to the Mayo Clinic “the best move I ever made.” But he didn’t ignore the reality of his situation. “My friends tell me not to worry. They slap me on the back and say, ‘Don’t worry, Lou. Everything is going to be all right.’ But how can I help worrying.”

He was honored during a forty-minute ceremony held between games of a doubleheader against the Washington Senators.  There were a lot of gifts including a fruit bowl and two candlesticks from the New York Giants. The one that might have had the most meaning was a 21-inch silver trophy from his 1939 teammates, their names and a poem by New York sportswriter  John Kieran engraved on it.

To LOU GEHRIG

We’ve been to the wars together;
We took our foes as they came:
And always you were the leader,
And ever you played the game.

Idol of cheering millions:
Records are yours by sheaves:
Iron of frame they hailed you,
Decked you with laurel leaves.

But higher than that we hold you,
We who have known you best;
Knowing the way you came through
Every human test.

Let this be a silent token
Of lasting friendship’s gleam
And all that we’ve left unspoken.
Your Pals of the Yankee Team.

When Gehrig walked back to the dugout that day, the only one of the many gifts he took with him was that trophy.

Kieran said his poem was a “feeble interpretation” of how the players felt about Gehrig, who was his neighbor in the suburb of Riverdale, New York. Kieren often visited Gehrig as his health declined. One day, Kieran later related, Gehrig pointed to the trophy and said, “Some time when I get—well, sometimes I have that handed to me—and I read it—and I believe it—and I feel pretty good”

Lou Gehrig died, only 37 years old, On June 2, 1941.  Six months later, the Baseball Writers Association of America voted unanimously to ignore the traditional waiting period for admission to the Hall of Fame and unanimously elected him.

When Eleanor Gehrig died in 1984 she donated that trophy to the Hall of Fame. It and other Gehrig memorabilia are on display in Cooperstown.

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. There still is no cure for it. Nor is there an effective treatment to stop it or reverse its progression.

July 4th.  A day we normally observe eloquent words.  Perhaps a few of us today will remember, too, words not only of eloquence but of courage in the face of a life to come and gratitude for the life that had been.

 

It’s Not Over   

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Regardless of your feeling about the U. S. Supreme Court’s abortion ruling last week, here’s something to remember:

It’s not the final word.

It’s not the final word any more than the 1973 ruling in Roe was the final word.  It just turns the tables on the argument.  Abortion opponents have spent the last fifty years chipping away at the ruling and looking for the right legal lever to overturn the whole thing.  Dozens, probably hundreds, of state laws (somebody might add up all of the ones in Missouri) have attacked the issue only to be thrown out at some level of the court system. This one finally worked.

The ruling obviously does not end here.  The anti-abortion element of American society is on the defensive for the first time in almost a half-century. We will be interested to see if a pro-choice population that has watched as pro-life elements have attacked Roe will be galvanized into activism.

It is not generally a good idea to poke a dozing Tiger with a stick.

Survey after survey has indicated a general approval of Choice by Americans.  The Gallup organization in early June reported, “A steady 58% majority believe that the…ruling…should stand while 35% want it to be reversed. These sentiments are essentially unchanged since 2019.”

The wording on Gallup’s poll question has changed somewhat through the years but, “Dating back to 1989, support for reversing the decision has averaged 32%, while opposition has averaged 59%.”

In the most recent poll, the question focused on the impact of an overturn and whether respondents favored letting states set their own standards.  That survey, run last month, showed 63% of respondents thought it would be a “bad thing” to let states set their own policies. Those who said it will be a “good thing” were at 32%.

There has been no doubt this issue has been a partisan thing for a long time. In the most recent Gallup survey, 80% of Democrats and 62% of Independents favored the status quo.  Among republicans, 58% favored what the court ultimately has decided. Only 34% of independents and 15% of Democrats favored reversal.

But the U.S. Supreme Court is not ruled by polls although its makeup might be determined by people whose political positions ARE ruled by polls.

Catholic voters, for example.

A Pew Research Center 2019 survey found 56% of Catholics felt abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Forty-two percent disagreed.  The 56% is close to the 60% of non-evangelical Protestants and 64% of Black Protestants who supported legal abortion. In one of the fastest-growing demographics—people who are not religiously affiliated—83% told pollsters that abortions should be legal in all or almost all cases.

Writing in America, the Jesuit Review in 2018, Patrick T. Brown, a former government relations staffer for Catholic Charities USA, said, “Since 1973, no institution in the United States has been more firmly committed to protecting the unborn than the Catholic Church. Yet Catholics are just as likely to procure an abortion as other U.S. women. Why?

“According to the latest numbers from the Guttmacher Institute, 24 percent of women who procure abortions identify as Catholic, almost the same as 22 percent of all U.S. women who called themselves Catholic in a 2014 survey by Pew Research Center. In the same sources, evangelical Protestants made up 27 percent of all women in the United States but only 13 percent of those who underwent abortions, revealing a greater reluctance toward choosing abortion, a greater reluctance toward revealing their religion on a survey or both.”

Here’s one thing you won’t hear:   Republicans who are critical of “activist” judges when discussing this ruling.  You won’t hear Republicans railing against “legislating from the bench” either.

Again, this ruling tends to reverse the table.

There are fears this ruling is just the beginning of court-established national policies on contraception, LGTBQ+ rights, and gay marriage being dismantled and becoming matters of states’ rights.  Roe does not mean the court’s rulings on those issues automatically will be part of the Right’s version of a cancel culture but those who want them reversed should ponder how hard they want to poke those Tigers and what the reaction will be when they have poked too hard.

This ruling is certain to become a significant election issue in November when we will learn if it and reactions to findings of the January 6 Committee as well as fears of the present court’s future actions will produce less of a Red Wave than many on the Right expect.

Pro-life interests have prevailed.

For now.

But a younger generation born and raised in an era of birth control, abortion, and gender recognition in its various forms might be maturing with different outlooks.

In times such as these and decision such as this, we often return to former New York Governor Al Smith, a Catholic who ran for President in 1928, a time when there was a lot of “anti” attitudes in our nation.  Many think Smith’s greatest liability in the election was his religion.  He warned:

“It is a confession of the weakness of our own faith in the righteousness of our cause when we attempt to suppress by law those who do not agree with us.”

Protest Ground Rules

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There are few, apparently.

The Hill, a political newspaper in Washington, D.C., reported a couple of days ago that “Abortion rights activists in recent days have gathered outside the homes of three conservative Supreme Court justices to protest Roe v. Wade’s potential demise, taking their advocacy in an intensely personal and politically divisive direction.”

The homes are those of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts. The article says the protests have “forced the White House to navigate a thorny question about the proper bounds of political discourse…” While outgoing press secretary Jen Psaki denounced threats of violence but stopped short of condemning the demonstrations—“We certainly allow for peaceful protest in a range of places in the country. None of it should violate the law,” she said.

But violating the law might be what they’re doing.  A friend of ours has pointed out Federal U.S. code 1507 that says any individual who “pickets or parades” with the “intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer” near a U.S. court or “near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer” will be fined, or “imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

We’ll wait to see if the Justice Department steps in.

These protests, while posing some liability for the participants, are not likely to be severe enough to launch a May 9th investigative committee.

But the circumstances do raise related issues about protests whether at courthouses, capitols, or street corners. Some are constitutional. Some are practical.

We have witnessed a lot of protests in a lot of years, including the storming of the local newspaper by Lincoln University students upset about an editorial highly-critical of Martin Luther King just days before his death, and disturbances on the campus (Lincoln in an HBCU, for those unfamiliar with the school) for a couple of years that resulted in a National Guard presence.

We have seen people standing quietly in front of the post office holding signs urging us to get out of Vietnam, Afghanistan, the United Nations, etc.

Many years ago when gay rights was in a much earlier stage we remember seeing members of a group called ACT-UP! Marching around the state seal in the Capitol rotunda chanting, “You say ‘don’t f—k,’ we say ‘f—k you!”’  That pretty well ended organized political protests in the Capitol.

We watched the Medicaid 23 interrupt Senate debate on Medicaid expansion one day with prayers and songs. They wound up being charged and dragged into court.

Prayers, cursing, burning, quietly holding signs are all part of our rights as American citizens to protest. It’s right there in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

So protesting grievances is an inborn right of Americans. The accompanying responsibility for doing so in a way that does not violate the word “peaceably” belongs to the demonstrators and the subjective judgment of what is beyond propriety lies with the justice system that has the U.S. Code on one hand and the First Amendment on the other.  .

Attached to that system is another value judgment that lies with the protesters: Will the event do harm or good to the causes of the protestors?

Frankly, we doubt demonstrations at the Supreme Court building  influence the opinion-makers inside the building very much if at all.  We do find targeting the private spaces of the judges by demonstrating at their homes is an unwarranted invasion of their lives and certainly the lives of their families and their neighbors.

Your quiet observer doesn’t even like it when a car goes slowly through my neighborhood with the bass turned all the way up in the large speakers in the backseat and shakes the windows of his house.

In our fervid proclamations of our rights, it is easy to overlook the responsible, reasonable, and respectful exercise of them. Trying to use statements of our rights as bludgeons doesn’t seem from this lofty view to be a responsible action to take.

But what is left when leaders appear to be unmotivated by the responsible, the reasonable, and the respectful?

Whatever it is, it must be a principle of our freedoms that the mob cannot be allowed to rule. It can express itself.  But decisions must be made in cooler surroundings than on the passionate streets.  And the likely best decisions are most often made in the quiet regardless of whether they please us.

Decisions by the courts can be protested in the courts with better arguments than those shouted outside the fences that protect the decision-makers.