Category Archives: history

What’s Next: Part Two—The Looming Threat

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Greg Olson is a terrific historian from Columbia who has a deep interest in the 12,000-year history of the people who were here long before the Europeans showed up for commercial, more than religious, purposes to exploit, conquer, and subjugate them.  His newest book is a voluminous report on Indigenous Missourians; Ancient Societies to the Present. He presented part of his research in the July, 2021 issue of the Missouri Historical Review, the quarterly publication of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

He points out something few of us realize. When what is now Missouri became American Territory with the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, the United States did not really get very much. He wrote, “When Missouri was admitted into the Union in 1821, only three Indigenous nations, the Sacs, Foxes, and Osages, had ceded rights to any property inside the state. In all, it would take thirty-four years of negotiating twenty-two treaties with thirteen different Native nations before the United States finally established clear title to all the land inside Missouri in 1837.”

Remember that figure: thirteen different Native nations.

That’s where a possible threat to our thirteen commercial casinos could lie.

In October, 2021, the Osage Nation announced plans for a $60 million casino/hotel complex on 28 acres of land at the Lake of the Ozarks on land it claimed as ancestral lands, part of the territory covered by the Treaty of Fort Clark. An application was sent to the U. S. Department of the Interior for approval under the U. S. Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The Osage Nation asked to transfer the land into a federal trust with tribal sovereignty rights granted, clearing the way for a casino that will be exempt from Missouri laws and regulations.

The defeat of Amendment 5 has no impact on the proposed Osage casino except that it eliminated competition from a commercial casino.

Editor Shannon Shaw Duty wrote in Osage Nation newspaper in September, 2021 that Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear already was looking for a second, similar piece of land to buy for construction of another Osage Nation tribal casinos. “Tell the people of the United States that this is our homeland, this is our legally recognized homeland. There are treaties in place that we did not fully agree with that drove us out of there and we want to claim those properties,” he said.

The American Gaming Association says the United States has 352 land-based casinos, 266 tribal  casinos, 66 boats and 50 racinos. Fourteen states have only tribal casinos. The states with the most tribal casinos are Oklahoma (140), Arizona (85), Minnesota (40), and Washington (35).

Although tribal casinos are not regulated by the states, they cannot operate without an agreement, or compact, with each state. Oklahoma has compacts with 35 tribes. Its model compact is at Microsoft Word – Model Compact.doc (ok.gov).

A summary of Arizona’s 24 compacts can be found at KNXV-TV, Phoenix’s website: https://www.ok.gov/OGC/documents/Model%20Compact.pdf

Minnesota’s compacts are at: Gambling – Tribal State Gaming Compacts (mn.gov) Washington’s compacts are at: Tribal gaming compacts and amendments | Washington State Gambling Commission.

Missouri’s commercial casino industry and other tribes likely are all paying attention to the fate of the Osage Casino at the Lake of the Ozarks. Given Missouri’s history of First Peoples occupation and the lengthy period of treaty-making with thirteen nations, it would not be surprising that success at the Lake of the Ozarks could trigger a push by other Native American Nations to build tribal casinos throughout Missouri in areas not tied to the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers, a constitutional limit on the commercial casino industry.

Such developments, of course, would provide unwelcome competition to the existing casinos and could provoke significant developments in lesser-populated areas or other parts of Missouri untouched by commercial casino gambling. The situation is fertile for speculation.

Tribal casinos in the vicinities of Highways 36 and 61 would threaten the state’s smallest casino at Lagrange. A tribal casino at 36 and 63 would serve a large, unserved, part of north Missouri and would draw some business away from LaGrange and Boonville—which already might have lost southern constituents to the casino at the Lake of the Ozarks—and one at 36 and I35 would threaten the casino at St. Joseph. A casino at Highways 60 and I55 would threaten casinos at Cape Girardeau and at Caruthersville.

Only Kentucky and Tennessee of our surrounding states do not have Indian casinos. Iowa has four; Nebraska five; Kansas seven; Arkansas 2. Oklahoma has 143 Indian casinos operated by 33 tribes. The casino industry is considered the second-largest industry in the state. Revenues generated at Oklahoma Indian casinos is second only the revenues generated by Indian casinos in California.

How Native American Tribal casino gambling would mesh with cultural/religious concerns and regional economic needs could become a long-term storyline.

All that we have written in these two entries is entirely speculation.  But casino gambling is changing in numerous ways and the people of Missouri and those we send to the general assembly need to be aware that they will be asked to take actions of some kind—and those in the decision-making roles should understand where their responsibilities lie.

Amendment 2 might be just the start.

Veterans Day

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It was called Armistice Day for a long time, celebrating the end of World War I. That morning of November 11, 1918, the Army’s Battery D, commanded by Captain Harry Truman fired its last 164 cannon shots at the “Hun.”

Truman had taken control of a unit known for its “wild” soldiers as the “Dizzy D.”  It was a group of tough young Missouri National Guardsmen who had worn out three other commanding officers and who ridiculed the professorial-appearing Truman after he first addressed them. Later that evening the unit got into a drunken brawl that sent four of them to the infirmary.

Truman was never one to tolerate foolishness and the men of the Dizzy D got the message the next morning when he posted a list showing about half of the noncommissioned officers had been demoted, along with several PFCs.

While Truman was writing a letter to his fiancé, Bess Wallace, on November 10, and commented: 1

“The Hun is yelling for peace like a stuck hog…When you see some of things those birds did and then hear the talk they put up for peace it doesn’t impress you at all. A complete and thorough thrashing is all they’ve got coming and take my word they’re getting it and getting it right.”

He was writing another letter to Bess the next day when he got notice the Germans had surrendered.  For Truman, surrender was too good for them:

“I knew that Germany could not stand the gaff. For all their preparedness and swashbuckling talk they cannot stand adversity. France was whipped for four years and never gave up and one good licking suffices for Germany. What pleases me most is that I was able to take the battery through the last drive. The battery has shot something over 1000 rounds at the Hun and I am sure they had a slight effect.”

Captain Truman rose to be the Commander in Chief of all of our country’s military forces. We think his message to Congress delivered March 12, 1947, not quite two years into his first term as President, in which he began what later became known as the Truman Doctrine has some echoes for our times.

One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.

To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations, The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.

We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.

The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes. The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration.

In helping free and independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation are of grave importance in a much wider situation… The disappearance of Greece as an independent state would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe whose peoples are struggling against great difficulties to maintain their freedoms and their independence while they repair the damages of war. It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these countries, which have struggled so long against overwhelming odds, should lose that victory for which they sacrificed so much. Collapse of free institutions and loss of independence would be disastrous not only for them but for the world.  Discouragement and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neighboring peoples striving to maintain their freedom and independence.

He called for “immediate and resolute action” to save Greece and Turkey—by authorizing aid totaling $400-million. He also asked Congress to allow American civilians and military personnel to help those countries re-build and to provide needed “commodities, supplies and equipment.”

This is a serious course upon which we embark. I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious. The United States contributed $341,000,000,000 toward winning World War II…It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain.

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive. The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world — and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.

On this Veterans Day, it is vitally important that we remember our veterans not only for the freedoms they had protected for us, but to remember that we understand the freedoms they also have given other peoples.

As we look with uncertainty about the return of a former President whose record in international support of free nations is cause for concern, we should keep in mind the last lines quoted above—”The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world — and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.”

Harry Truman was a leader in two world wars. We should honor his service and his call for this nation to never back down from its role as a world leader for freedom.

(Picture credit: Pathe News)

The Choice

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We will decide the future of our state and nation tomorrow.

Some argue we will decide the FATE of our nation tomorrow.

We harken back to the story of an English stable owner in the 16th and 17th Centuries who had forty horses, leading customers to think they could choose one from among the forty.  But the stable owner allowed only the horse in the first stall to be rented, believing that he was keeping the best horses from always being chosen.

Customers believing they had many choices actually had only one. Take it or leave it, even if neither was desirable.

The stable owner was named Thomas Hobson, whose name is preserved in the phrase “Hobson’s Choice,” meaning only one thing is really offered while it appears there are other choices and it isn’t particularly desirable.

Many believe that is what we are facing tomorrow, a Hobson’s Choice.

We’ve all survived the weeks of rhetoric, weeks of misstatements and lies, or misinformation from insiders and outsiders on our social media, weeks of efforts to denigrate competing candidates and competing issues.

We have listened to the two sides paint the picture of the other side. And after listening to all of that noise we have concluded that we have these choices at the top of the ticket:

—A candidate who claims to be middle-class child of immigrants whose party has been branded as Marxist and Socialist and a threat to our democracy by the other party.

—A felon, a congenital liar and narcissist whose party is backing him despite complaints that he wants to emulate Hitler and other dictators and is a threat to our democracy.

Thomas Hobson would be greatly entertained.  Take it or leave it when neither choice seems to be desirable.

The political process seems to have given us horses in the first of two stalls in a stable full of better mounts that we can’t have.

This might not be any help to you at all, but let’s skim the surface of the two possibilities.

Both Karl Marx and Adolph Hitler wrote books: Marx’s Das Kapital, and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Marx is described as “a German-born philosopher, political theorist, economist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist.”  The description is from Wikipedia, which serious researchers caution should not be considered original research. It is an amalgam of the evaluations done by others presumably well-acquainted with a subject.  So, We are going to rely on one of Wikipedia’s sources, English historian Gareth Stedman Jones, whose work focuses on working class history and Marxist theory and who wrote in 2017 in the journal Nature:

“What is extraordinary about Das Kapital is that it offers a still-unrivalled picture of the dynamism of capitalism and its transformation of societies on a global scale. It firmly embedded concepts such as commodity and capital in the lexicon. And it highlights some of the vulnerabilities of capitalism, including its unsettling disruption of states and political systems… it [connects] critical analysis of the economy of his time with its historical roots. In doing so, he inaugurated a debate about how best to reform or transform politics and social relations, which has gone on ever since.”

The same resource describes Hitler as “an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator” of Germany under the Nazi Party that “controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship.”  He wrote his book in prison while serving four years for treason after a failed coup in 1923. The book outlined his plans for Germany’s future, the main thesis being that Germany was in danger from “the Jewish peril,” a conspiracy of Jews to gain world control. It is considered a book on political theory. “For example, Hitler announces his hatred of what he believed to be the world’s two evils: communism and Judaism…Hitler blamed Germany’s chief woes on the parliament…Jews, and Social Democrats, as well as Marxists, though he believed that Marxists, Social Democrats, and the parliament were all working for Jewish interests. He announced that he wanted to destroy the parliamentary system, believing it to be corrupt in principle…”

So there you have it. A choice between an economic theorist whose theories challenge our capitalistic society and a political theorist who used every means necessary to be an all-powerful manipulator of a political system, including mass incarceration and murder of undesirables.

You might have a different evaluation for these two whose partisans have stereotyped each other throughout this campaign.

We had a coworker who once observed, “Stereotypes are so useful because they save a lot of time.”

In American politics, stereotyping saves the voters a lot of thinking.

And that’s too bad.

From our lofty position, we offer this thought;

Economic theories are abstract offerings that do not imprison or murder those who differ from them.  Political theories can create tangible results that, taken to extremes, can produce (in order) division, disrespect, control through, if necessary, mass incarceration and—-at the very worst—murder.

We have two politicians to think about tomorrow.  It’s too bad none of the others in the stable are available.  It’s take it or leave it time.

Which Hobson’s Choice are you going to make?

-0-.

 

Then They Came For Me…..

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Our almost final pre-election meditation today focuses on a former president, a comedian/social commentator/political satirist, a German leader, a Christian movement that might sound familiar, and a Lutheran minister.

We are focusing on Donald Trump’s promotion of “the enemy within” and the failure of people today to recognize the dangers of that philosophy in the past as a warning for us now.

There are several versions of a famous quotation although scholars have found no indication that he was the one who distilled his words into the poetic version in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. The one we will use here comes from the British Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and is slightly longer.

The Lutheran minister is Martin Niemoëller, an anti-Communist supporter of Adolph Hitler during his rise to power. But he became a leader of German religious leaders opposing Hitler when Hitler announced he supported the German Christians movement that sought to remove the “Jewish element” from Christianity, including portraying Jesus as Aryan, rejecting the Old Testament and trying to rewrite the New Testament. Niemoëller was a leader in the opposition to Hitler and the German Christians.

He was arrested in 1937 and imprisoned at Dachau and Sachsenhausen until American troops liberated the camps in 1945.  The next year, he began a series of speeches apologizing for those who remained silent about Hitler’s crackdowns. Among his comments we find, “The people who were put in camps then were Communists. Who cared about them?…They got rid of the sick, the so-called incurables [who] just cost the state money; they are a burden to themselves and others….”

His apologies came to mind as I watched a recent edition of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show.  Stewart is a liberal comedian and social commentator who has a large following, especially among young people, and is an intellectual critic of American politics and the contradictions within the practice of them.  In this case, we refer to his comments after Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden event.

We have omitted the audience applause and Stewart’s pauses and facial expressions that are part of his schtick.  He inserted several video excerpts of events as part of his program:

Trump at his Madison Square Garden rally; On day one I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.

Stewart: Day one? Have a snack. Meet the staff.  Day one is typically—we just read the syllabus. There’s no—there’s generally no homework. OK, day one, mass deportation.  How is that going to happen?

Trump: I will invoke the Alien enemies act of 1798.

Stewart: …From the man himself, that is his priority.  From day one, I’m going to round up all the so-called illegal immigrants. It’s a tough policy but I guess it’s gotta be done. And it’s not like anyone else, i.e. legal immigrants or who are American citizens going to be caught up in that dragnet. I’m sure that Trump has a very detailed and precise plan.  How many people are we talking about?

Niemoëller: First they came for the Communists but I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.  

Trump (montage of previous statements at rallies and in interviews); Millions of illegal immigrants.  They think it’s two million; it’s probably five times that amount. You hear 15, 16 million, sometimes you hear 17. We have 21 million, at least 21 million; I think it’s much more than 21.

Stewart: So we are going to be rounding up and deporting between two and 21, or more, million people. But listen, they’re all bad. And they’ve all committed terrible crimes. And we have cataloged—without due process—the terrible things they have done, yes?

Trump (from debate with Kamala Harris): In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.

Stewart: So, between 2 and 21 million people—and while they weren’t actually doing that, still, chase them with guns. Because at the very least they are here illegally. Yes, they are illegal.

John Berman, CNN, during broadcast: Donald Trump threatening to deport thousands of migrants in the country legally…

Stewart: So that one’s tricky. But I’m confident that on day one, Trump does his mass deportation of anywhere from two to 100 million people, it won’t be you. It’ll be them because of how precise Trump is, especially when it comes to people of color.

Niemoëller: They came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.

Trump: I know Willie Brown very well. In fact I went down in a helicopter with him.

(Part of News Nation’s The Hill Sunday excerpt, with Chris Stirewalt): The African-American politician in question was not Willie Brown but rather this man, Nate Holden.

Reporter: Holden says, quote, “Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco. I’m a tall black guy living in Los Angeles. I guess we all look alike.”

Stewart: I guess there’s some confusion there. But he’s not deporting California politicians day one. And that story makes him racist. It’s not the point. He really can’t tell white people apart either.

Trump (video from grand jury deposition in the E. Jean Carroll case): Roberta Kaplan asks, “You say Marla’s in this photo?”  Trump: “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife.”  Kaplan: “Which woman are you pointing to?” Trump: (points) “Here.” Kaplan: “That’s Tara. The person you just pointed to is E. Jean Carroll.”  Trump: “Oh, I see. Who is that? (points to another woman in the picture). Kaplan: “And the person, the woman on  your right is your then wife, Ivana?” Trump: “I don’t know.  This was the picture.”

Stewart: You know what I just realized? Donald Trump doesn’t have affairs—just thinks everyone is his wife. So clearly an attempt to deport between thirty and 500 million people is gonna be complicated. So it’s gonna be important to know how carefully the former president would execute this plan.

(Portion of interview on Full Measure, the weekly television news show hosted by Sharryl Attkisson):

Niemoëller: Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Attkisson: “A lot of the millions of people have had children here who are American citizens. So, yes to mass deportation of women and children—”  Trump: So we’re going to look at it very closely. They way that you phrase it is exactly right. You put one wrong person on a bus or on an airplane and your radical-left lunatics will try and make it sound like the worst thing that’s ever happened.”

Stewart;  Because it’s the worst thing that ever happened to THEM, the American citizens, the American citizens you mistakenly deport. Yet Trump is like (imitating Trump), “That makes me look like the bad guy.” And why is my wife interviewing me? (a takeoff on his inability to identify people in the photo, shown earlier and a reference to Attkisson) You are my wife, right? Marla? Ivana? Ivanka? I don’t know. This sounds awful. But as everyone knows, you can never listen to what Trump’s saying and hear it.

(Montage of Republicans responding: Unidentified member of Congress: “I think you’re taking everything a little bit too literally.”  New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sunnunu: “Look, Trump speaks in hyperbole. This is nothing new.” KellyeAnn Conway, at the time of the interview the incoming White House counselor: “He’s telling you what was in his heart. You always want to go with what comes out of his mouth rather than what’s in his heart.”

Stewart: You’re right Why hold former presidents to what they say they’re going to do from their mouth holes?… Look. You know what? Sure, maybe Trump’s just talk. But on day one when the deportation of between two and eleventy billion people begins, what will be the guiding principle? Perhaps we should ask the dead-eyed architect of these plans, Stephen Miller.

Miller (at Madison Square Garden rally): America is for Americans and Americans only.

Niemoëller: Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Stewart:  Oh, that makes sense. We’re only deporting people who’ve come here illegally, or people who have come here legally but sneaky legally. Or people who have children who actually are citizens, or some people who look like they may have come here illegally, or people who have protested the war in Gaza, or a special prosecutor that Trump doesn’t like, like Jack Smith, which, by the way, name a more American name than Jack (bleeped) Smith. Where are you going to report him to, Faneuil Hall in Boston? Or maybe we just going to be deporting the people that always bring wretchedness and want.

Oh, I’m sorry. That’s how we describe the Irish in 1832 (with image of portrait of New York Mayor Phillip Hone who said, “They will always bring wretchedness and want.”)

Or maybe we’re just going to deport people whose race inherently has a certain kind of criminality.  Oh, I’m sorry, That was the Italians in 1911.

The point is, every one of these groups was at a place and a time on the wrong side of not being American enough. And right now you think you’re safe. Because the group Trump’s people are talking about—It’s not you, as if…Donald Trump can tell the (bleep) difference or even cares that day one implementation of the 1798 law that was last used to intern Japanese and German citizens in World War II, will be a fine-toothed comb.

It just makes me very sad, it—the whole thing—it

(Interrupted by the show’s former senior correspondent, Jessica Williams) Jon, Jon, Jon…Don’t be sad.  Jon, everything’s going to be okay—for you, a white guy, a rich old white guy.

Stewart: You think my rich old white guy privilege will save me?

V: Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Williams; Maybe…It doesn’t matter. Because for non old white people, for people of color, and women, and queer people it’s gonna be a completely different story, all right?

Let me give you some advice.  I know you’re exhausted. Hell, I’m exhausted. Everybody’s exhausted. Anger and disappointment in our political discourse is exhausting. But it’s easy to throw up our hands and be like fine…I’m tired.  Go ahead and take people’s rights…

—–

In one of his 1946 speeches, Niemoëller  wondered what would have happened if thousands of clergy in Germany would have spoken out against Hitler and his German Christians and the disaster and the tragedy they brought to the world.

Niemoëller: … I believe, we Confessing-Church-Christians have every reason to say: mea culpa, mea culpa! We can talk ourselves out of it with the excuse that it would have cost me my head if I had spoken out.

We preferred to keep silent. We are certainly not without guilt/fault, and I ask myself again and again, what would have happened, if in the year 1933 or 1934—there must have been a possibility—14,000 Protestant pastors and all Protestant communities in Germany had defended the truth until their deaths? If we had said back then, it is not right when Hermann Göring simply puts 100,000 Communists in the concentration camps, in order to let them die. I can imagine that perhaps 30,000 to 40,000 Protestant Christians would have had their heads cut off, but I can also imagine that we would have rescued 30–40,000 million [sic] people, because that is what it is costing us now.

Williams: Focus, okay? I just want to be clear, all right? Do not let them exhaust you. Don’t let the constant draining bull— wear you out. Do not turn away. Look it right down that barrel and say, not today, apathy… And no matter what happens, we have to throw our arms around the people who need us the most, and hang…on. All right?

If you want to watch the entire routine, it’s at (15) Jon Stewart on Trump’s Xenophobic MSG Rally & Mass Deportation Plan | The Daily Show – YouTube.

(Photo Credits: Amazon, The Daily Show, Holocaust Museum)

Centennial

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A big centennial event slipped past us in Jefferson City last weekend and nobody seemed to notice.

Sunday, October 6, was the 100th anniversary of he dedication of the Capitol.

Local historian Michelle Brooks did a presentation about it last night for the Historic City of Jefferson. I couldn’t go because I was doing a presentation at the library about the 250th anniversary of the First Continental Congress—the one before the Declaration of Independence was written but the one that created a document that created our country.

A whole chapter of the Capitol dedication will be in my next book, a history of the capitol and some of the history of the people who worked in it, for it, against it, and died for it.

The Capitol Commission, which has been doing centennial observances since a 2011 event in the rotunda commemorating the fire that destroyed the 1840 Capitol, has been focused more on restoration and renovations for some time now and is doing persistent and diligent work on bringing the Capitol back to the way the original designers intended for it to look.

A massive exterior effort in recent years has brought Ceres down from the dome for restoration and cleaning (who wouldn’t need it after being hit by lighting about 300 times), the statues and the fountains have been cleaned and repaired.  The stonework has been cleaned and tuckpointed.

Inside, the great stained glass window over the grand stairway is back in place and the vaulted ceiling has been restored to its original color.  The contractor let me get up on the scaffolding for some personal time with it a few days ago.  The cleaning and restoration of he window, which was installed about 1917, has brought out details that had been hidden for years and the restoration of the original wall colors makes the window’s beauty even more striking.

The legislative library will be open soon after cracks in its ceiling have been fixed and the room and its columns have been restored to their original colors.

Eventually, the double-decker offices that now house state representatives and are handicap Inaccessible will be turned into single-story offices again but that is an ongoing struggle linked to other issues—-where to put these people and who has to move to where else when that happens being a question that has been unresolved for a long time.

The goal is to return our capitol to the majesty it was when it was dedicated in 1924.  The House of Representatives was restored in 1988 and the Senate in 2001.  The trip to visit the window as something of a trifecta for me.  I am one of the few people who has touched the ceilings of both legislative chambers, and the window is the icing on the cake. And when Ceres was on display before she was put back on the dome, I got close to her.  In fact, her face is on the back of my business cards.

I often have wondered what Egerton Swartwout, the architect of the Capitol, would think of it if he were to walk in to it today and see so many of the things that were put in it in his day are still there.  I know he’d be dismayed at some of the abuses the building has undergone—the double-decker offices one of the greatest, and the decades of monochrome off-white paint that has covered the color scheme that he created to highlight the architectural details of the monumental rooms, and so forth.

The dedication was held in 1924 although the building was occupied starting in 1917.  A dedication planned for 1918 had to be cancelled because of the war and the building languished undedicated until 1924 when members of the commission that oversaw its construction started a movement to dedicate the building while they were still alive to enjoy it.

It was a huge event with speechifying going on all afternoon and an elaborate 1920s-style pageant (folks, I think it would be considered pretty awful today but back then it was some doin’s) that portrayed various epochs in state history.  The last act was halted because of a heavy rain and lightning storm that rendered the unpaved roads of the day quagmires, and the bridge across the river dangerous.

Perhaps it was an appropriate bookend to the story of the present Capitol, which began with a rainstorm and a single lightning bolt that hit the dome of the old Capitol on February 5, 1911 and not only destroyed the building, but it created the last great challenge to Jefferson City as the seat of government.

A peach farmer from West Plains generated the greatest threat. But that’s another story. (Some folks say that Sedalia tried to get the capital designation then but that’s not true.  That happened in 1896.)

But that’s another story.  And if the book gets published it might make interesting reading.  It sure was interesting writing, I can tell you that.

So happy anniversary to our Capitol.  And to our Capital City which will celebrate its BIcentennial as the seat of state government in a couple of years. What a great time that will be to commit to being a greater city.

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

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

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

Now, to start the next million—-

A Concert of Missouri Music

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

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

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

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,

To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

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

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

By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.

What then am I? Am I more senseless grown

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

‘Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs.

Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night

The silent Tomb receiv’d the good Old King;

He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg’d

Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom.

Why am not I at Peace?

Now, a proposed concert:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music from The Unsinkable Molly Brown Broadway musical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They Gotta Quit Kicking My Dog Around (Bing Videos

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

Or a beautiful orchestral version:

Neal E. Boyd – MISSOURI ANTHEM Orchestral 2013 – YouTube

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

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

Your ideas?

Erifnus Caitnop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is Erifnus:

It’s a Pontiac Sunfire.  Spell it backwards.

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

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

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

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

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

The Gun, The School, The Town , The Times

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I took a gun to school once.

In a more innocent time.

A long, long time ago.

It was a revolver that held seven .22-short bullets.

It wasn’t loaded.

Here is the gun:

Well, not really THE gun. Our house burned down three weeks before Christmas when I was a high school freshman.  I lost my coin collection that included a mis-strike nickel that had two heads, several plastic model airplanes, a baseball card collection that probably included a Mantle rookie card, a few Red Man Chewing Tobacco cards, and assorted other baseball cards that would have put both of our children through college had the collection survived, a collection of Lone Ranger novels (since re-accumulated through the years), my old maid aunt Gertrude’s National Geographic collection that began in 1907 (I had looked through only a few as I sought out the ones that had stories about African natives whose lack of above-the-waist attire was very interesting to a boy my age), and the gun.

Today I would be rushed to the principal’s office; my parents would be called; I would be home-schooled for a while, to say the least.

My great-grandfather played the fife for the 126th Illinois Infantry that served under General Sherman at Vicksburg and then was instrumental in gaining control of northern Arkansas, including the capture of Little Rock.  He enlisted in another town in Moultrie County and after the war lived in what we called a big city in those days—Decatur—for sixty more years where he once owned an ice cream store.

His pistol was the first Smith & Wesson pistol.   Not THE first, but—well, you get the idea.

I think I took it to school because we were studying the Civil War in an elementary school class and it was no big deal.

I don’t remember the duck-and-cover drills some children of that vintage practiced, thinking that hiding under a school desk would save them from an Atom Bomb.   We had fire drills, though.  A couple of times a year.  Outside we’d go. Never in rain or snow but I do remember some cold days standing on the sidewalk while the teachers checked every room to make sure one of my classmates hadn’t decided to hide out.

I grew up in two towns in which Abraham Lincoln, then a circuit-riding lawyer, occasionally visited to take part in trials.  I have been told that the one in which I spent the most time had a Sundown Ordinance—no Negroes allowed in town after dark.  (I use the word because that’s the word that was used then.) Many years later I considered the irony of a town where Lincoln was a sometime-lawyer that told black people they were not welcome after sundown.  But then, as I have learned, Lincoln’s own attitudes toward black people were pretty undeveloped then.

My class was the first to graduate from the new high school that I could watch being constructed when I was in my Junior English class in the old high school—which was torn down a few months ago. Some black men from Decatur were part of the construction crew and one day one of my classmates told me he had heard that they planned to move their families to our town after the new school was built and “if they do, there’s going to be trouble.”

I couldn’t understand why he felt that way. I was young, innocent of worldly things.  I did not meet my first black people until the second semester of my freshman college year when the Residential Assistant for my dormitory floor brought a couple of black guys around to every room and introduced them.  To me they were just guys.  Years later, I figured out that the university was integrating the dormitories (I watched the first black football and basketball players perform for the school).  By the time I left, America had undergone a painful change. I had changed, too, picketing a segregated bowling alley one evening with my church group, and came to work in a segregated city with an HBCU that would taste violence during the Civil Rights struggle.

My little town surrounded by the rich land of the Illinois prairie still has high school sports teams unapologetically called Redskins. It’s about fifty miles from the University teams are called the Fighting Illini. My class ring, safely in a bank deposit box, features the abstract image of a Native American Chief.  Or at least the profile of a Native American in an ornate headdress.

Not commenting. Just saying.

One of our World War II heroes was a B-25 pilot who wasn’t satisfied to just fly over his hometown. He buzzed it.  Stood that plane on its wing and flew around the courthouse dome.  That was before we moved there.  By the time we moved there he was our school principal.  Col. Loren Jenne’s Army Air Corps uniform is in the county historical museum.  It’s a really, really good recently-built museum constructed with the help of an advisor for the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.  Visiting it for a reunion a couple of years ago made me realize how lacking we are in Jefferson City for a good local historical museum.

The town library’s board room holds part of local resident’s collection of 700 hood ornaments and the former Illinois Masonic Home has one of the largest collections of sea shells in the country.

I had a laid-back high school history teacher who once told me he became a teacher because “it was better than working for a living.”  Everybody had to do a report on some historical event for his class. Mine was on the Battle of Gettysburg. It took as long as the battle took—three days. Even then I could write long.

I missed one of the biggest events in town history because I was in college.  Richard Nixon dropped in on this little town of about 3600 during his 1960 campaign. Town leaders had invited him and challenger John Kennedy to hold an old-fashioned debate at the annual buffalo barbecue.  Kennedy didn’t show but Nixon ate half a sandwich and then spoke to about 17,000 people who gathered in a park where I had learned to love playing baseball.  A Boy Scout who helped provide security at Nixon’s table picked up the remainder of his buffalo sandwich and took it home.  His mother put the remnant in a pickle jar and froze it.  Sixty years later, he published a book, The Sandwich That Changed My Life, recounting how the sandwich is still in that jar but occasionally had been on public display including the day he took it to Los Angeles for an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  Carson gave him one of his half-eaten sandwiches, which led people such as Tiny Tim and Steve Martin to make additional contributions.

Nixon wasn’t the first presidential aspirant to visit my little town.  When Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were holding their famous debates throughout the state—Lincoln was challenging Douglas for a seat in the U. S. Senate—Lincoln paused to give a speech in a little grove of trees that is now the site of the civic center. Douglas wasn’t there. However, a riot between Lincoln and Douglas supporters broke out on the town square during the 1858 campaign.

We had a Brown Shoe factory, as did many small towns, for decades. It was near the now-gone elementary school I entered late in my fourth grade year.  I hit a softball through one of its windows one day during a noon hour game on the vacant lot between the school and the factory. Foreign competition shut it down. The building is still there, re-purposed several times. .

I went away from that little town to study journalism at the University of Missouri.  In those first few days, new college students ask and are asked many times, “Where are you from?”  There were nods of the head when the answers were St. Louis, or Kirksville, or Joplin, or Polo, or Hannibal (my roommate), or other Missouri towns.  But when I said, “Sullivan, Illinois,” there was the second question:

“Where’s that?”

And I would reach into my back pocket and pull out an official Illinois State Highway Map, William G. Stratton, Governor, and I would unfold it and show them.  Today I would say, “It’s about 40 minutes north of Effingham” and everybody would know because Effingham, then a bowling alley and a gas station-small town on Highway 40, is a major stop on straight and boring I-70 between St. Louis and Terre Haute.  I’m sure some of my new classmates walked away thinking, “He’s too weird.”

In a few days, I’m headed back to Sullivan for my (mumble-mumble) class reunion. I cherish these get-togethers, especially as our numbers dwindle.  I have a nice red polo shirt, although I wish I could find an appropriate red and black sweatshirt or jacket to wear while I ride in one of the 1959 convertibles a classmate has arranged for classmates to ride in during the homecoming parade. It shouldn’t be as hard as it was the other day to find the right thing in Jay and Chiefs country.

But the other day I bought a new car that’s red with black trim and I hope that is appropriate.

A few years ago I came to the conclusion that the last time we met as a class was the night we graduated.  Now, we are the Community of ’59.  Then, were a homogenous group raised in the same county, for the most part, part of the same culture for the first 18 years of our life, no more acutely aware of the greater world beyond us than teenagers today probably are plugged into life outside their schools.  But since then, life has changed us, has filled us with our own unique experiences and we come together as diverse individuals shaped by the decades that have passed.

Yet, when I think of them, it is easy to see them in my mind as perpetually young. And when we meet, we don’t spend a lot of time reminiscing. Instead we talk as contemporary people who have been friends for a long, long time who have nothing to prove to each other or no reason to try to impress one another.  We are special friends bound together by long-ago experiences who can talk about present issues, even those on which we not unexpectedly differ, and then go back to our homes and our separate futures cherishing this one more chance to be with each other.

I’ve lived in Missouri (except for three summers while I was in college) for almost eighty percent of my life. Each year I travel from Jefferson City to Indianapolis for a couple of races.  I usually stop for lunch in Effingham.  And each time, I feel a little tug to turn north.

All of our towns and each of us have stories such as these. Someday, descendants I will never know, might read these stories.

Think about writing yours.

For them.

I went to school with a gun one day in a time my grandchildren probably would not understand, when the only drill we had to worry about was the fire drill.

That was a long, long time ago. But if nobody every tells about those times, how can anybody else ever hope that there ever can be that kind of safe era again?

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Medal

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I am really, really angry about our former President’s comments that the Presidential Medal of Freedom is better than the Medal of Honor.

Most of you have watched or listened to what he said a few days ago, speaking of the Medal of Freedom:

That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”  

She is the equal of soldiers who are “hit so many times by bullets or they are dead?”

What is it with this guy who shows no respect for honor, courage, or sacrifice, whose vacuousness regularly produces such instantly cringeworthy observations as his discussion of the Battle of Gettysburg?—

“What an unbelievable battle that was. The Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable—I mean, it was so much and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many different ways.  Gettysburg, Wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And the statement of Robert E. Lee—who’s no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? No longer in favor—‘Never fight uphill me boys, never fight uphill.’  They were fighting uphill. He said, “Wow, that was a big mistake.” He lost his great general, and they were fighting. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys,’  But it was too late”

Civil War historians have never found any verification that a native Virginian ever sounded like a native of Ireland in encouraging his soldiers to fight.  Uphill, downhill, or on flat land. Or that he said anything such as that or—

According to Trump, Lee said, “Wow, that was a big mistake.”

Wow?  Here is part of Lee’s report of the battle:

“The highest praise is due to both officers and men for their conduct during the campaign. The privations and hardships of the march and camp were cheerfully encountered, and borne with a fortitude unsurpassed by our ancestors in their struggle for independence, while their courage in battle entitles them to rank with the soldiers of any army and of any time.”

Lee lost. He did not say wow.  But he did honor his troops, living and dead, in the full report.

Sixty-four Union soldiers received the Medal of Honor for actions at Gettysburg.

Or his extensive knowledge of the American Revolution, shared in a July 4th speech in 2019 when he educated his audience this way:

“The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware, and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their Star Spangled Banner waved defiant.”

Fort McHenry and the Francis Scott Key’s poem about the flag are from the War of 1812, not the revolution.  And—what is his definition of “rampart.”  And seizing the airports????!!!

(There was no Medal of Honor in the American Revolution. George Washington established a Badge of Military Merit, the first medal applying to private soldiers, in 1782. The medal today is awarded for reasons Washington did not mention and is known since its formal establishment 150 years later as the Purple Heart.)

I’m getting too worked up as I go back over the uncounted instances of disrespect for those who have worn our country’s uniforms and the historical and scientific gibberish that he thinks is clever and smart and that far too many people who must be a whole lot smarter than him accept anyway. Let me get back to what I started to write.

I am not a veteran.  But I cannot describe the depth of gratitude that I have for veterans, whether they came under enemy fire or whether they were a clerk at a stateside base. I was honored to be asked to work with a dedicated group made up of veterans and Gold Star Family members (Gold Star families are those who have lost loved ones in wartime) to build a Gold Star Family Memorial Monument near the Capitol a few years ago. I provided the words carved into the memorial’s stones.

The Chairman of that group was my State Representative, Dave Griffith, a Special Forces veteran who has spent most of his life in positions of service to the public. We differ on some political issues—some—but that has not affected our friendship and our working on some legislation for next year that will restore millions of dollars in funding for our state veterans homes and for other causes.  It is an honor to associate with people such as him.  And it is that kind of respect that leaves me so angry when someone such as our 45th President diminishes the Medal of Honor and disrespects those who have received it as well as those who have served honorably whether on the front lines or in the back offices.

There seems to be nothing this candidate cannot cheapen with his words and his actions. He awarded 24 Presidential Medals of Freedom, fourteen of them to sports figures. He interrupted one of his State of the Union speeches to give one to Rush Limbaugh. The quotation at the start of this entry refers to the award to Miriam Adelson, a doctor known for her humanitarian work and donations to Jewish organizations.  But probably more important to him is that she and her late husband donated $20 million to his 2016 campaign and another five-million dollars to his inauguration fund, then a half-million more to a legal fund for Trump aides, another $100 million that went to conservative groups and Republican candidates in 2018. Open Secrets, which watches political donations, says the Adelson’s total giving to these causes and to a pro-Trump political action committee is close to $220 million dollars in 2019 and 2020. She’s also “a healthy and beautiful woman,” which most of us would not consider a qualification for a presidential medal.

Here’s an important difference between those who get the Medal of Freedom and those who receive the Medal of Honor:

Military members are encouraged to salute a Medal of Honor recipient who is wearing the medal, even if that person is wearing civilian clothes. The military custom is for junior offices to salute senior officers.  But the Medal of Honor recipient is entitled to receive a salute from anyone, regardless of rank.

No Medal of Freedom winner is entitled to that show of respect. The former President is correct that many recipients of the Medal of Honor are dead or have dealt with serious wounds.  To say that they are entitled to less respect from the President of the United States than someone who hits a baseball, shoots a basketball, hits a golf ball, or carries a football is unforgiveable—or gives a lot of money to his campaign and also is a good-looking woman—is beyond forgivable.

It is best to stop here rather than go on with the altercation at Arlington that was as much about honoring soldiers killed in the Afghanistan withdrawal (that he planned while in office) as staging a photo op at a D.C. church was about sincerely-held faith.

NO, ON SECOND THOUGHT IT IS NOT BEST TO STOP.

The above material was written last Wednesday.  On Thursday, he blamed the Arlington controversy on “very bad people” and suggested that the Gold Star families he was with made the video of the event public, not members of his campaign staff who have been accused of pushing a cemetery staffer out of the way when she tried to enforce the no-politicking rule for the area out of the way.

“This all comes out of Washington, just like all these prosecutors come out of Washington. These are bad people we’re dealing with,” he told an interviewer in Michigan. “They ask me to have a picture, and they say I was campaigning. The one thing I get is plenty of publicity… I don’t need the publicity.”

If he didn’t need the publicity, why did he have a video crew with him?

The Army has confirmed that the shoving incident happened when the staffer tried to keep a Trump campaign aide out of the area that has strict rules about media presence. The area is for recently-buried service members and regulations published by the Army and Arlington National Cemetery prohibit political activity there. The Washington Post reported that “ahead of the visit, Arlington National Cemetery officials had warned Trump’s team that he could visit the grave sites, but not as part of a campaign event. The cemetery made clear that while media could accompany Trump to a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, they could not accompany him into Section 60.”

Officials have told The New York Times the woman refused to press chages because “she feared Mr. Trump’s supporters pursuing retaliation.”  Trump Campaign Press Secretary Steven Cheung says she is “suffering from a mental health issue,” and senior adviser Chris LaCivita has called her a “despicable individual.

Trump’s campaign social media site shortly afterwards posted several pictures and videos that were taken during the visit, including a recording of him blaming President Biden for the deaths of American soldiers in the final hours of our occupation of Afghanistan.

When asked by NBC if his campaign should have published the images, Trump gave his familiar excuse: he knew “nothing about” that.  And when the reporter bored in with another question, he suggested parents of the dead servicemen distributed the images.

On HIS social media??????.

“I don’t know what the rules and regulations are. I don’t know who did it, It could have been them – it could have been the parents.”  When pressed even more, he said, “I really don’t know anything about it.”

The family that invited Trump was contacted by Trump nemesis Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter. She posted on X:

“Contacted by NYT, Michele Marckesano issued a statement from the family saying they support the families searching for accountability around the Abbey Gate bombing. However, she said, their conversations with Arlington officials indicated Trump staff didn’t adhere to rules.”

The Gold Star families are the “very bad people????”

There is a terrible irony to this deplorable incident at Arlington:

A 1998 law allows Trump, if he wishes, to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery—-

—-the burial place of more than 400 recipients of the Medal of Honor.

Surely, he wouldn’t——

would he?

(This entry was changed on September 2, 2024 to include Maggie Haberman’s post on X)

Sports: One season fading away; Another dawning; And a possible plum race for the St. Louis area.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals, losers of 106 games last year, are on the verge of seizing the lead in the American League Central.  They started this week with a doubleheader sweep of the Cleveland Guardians yesterday to pull withing one game of Cleveland.  Salvador Perez had two home runs in the second game, one of them a grand slam.  His six career grand slams and his 17 multi-homer games tie team records.

(CARDINALS)—Mike Schildt returned to Busch Stadium last night for the first time since he was fired by the Cardinals two years ago over “philosophical differences.”  Shildt’s Padres scorched the Cardinals 7-4.  The Cardinals drop to 65-66.  San Diego is up to 75-58.

The Cardinals have lost Wilson Contreras again. This time it’s a broken little finger because he was hit by a pitch last week. Ivan Herrera has been called up form Memphis to  back up Pedro Pages (pronounced PAW-hezz for non-Cardinal followers), who has proven himself to be a solid backup for Contreras—who has been among the team’s leading hitters since coming back from a broken arm in another HBP incident.  Was hitting .262 with 15 homers when he was hurt again.

(BASEBALL)—We have only about 30 games left in the regular baseball season. On one side of the state we have frustration. On the other side of the state we have elation. For the sport in general we are looking at an unusual situation—we might finish this season with no team winning 100 games.

Fansided.com raised the issue during the weekend.  When we checked the standings Sunday, the Dodgers had 78 wins and would have to go 22-9 the rest of the way to hit the century mark. The Yankees will have to go 23-7; the Orioles 24-6. Cleveland and the Royals and Twins have to play at a 25-6 and 28-3 to reach 100 wins.

The Cardinals are 35 games short of 100 victories this year. If they go on a 31-game winning streak, they’ll top out at 96.  They need to go 16-15 to finish at .500.

Don’t give up, Cardinals fans.  It’s doable.  Finishing .500, that is.

Fansided.com excludes the COVID year of 2020 as it points out the last year for no team winning 100 games was 2014, a year in which only six teams had 90 or more victories (the Dodgers were on top with 98). That was the year that the Giants and the Cardinals, both wild-card teams, took seven games to decide the Giants would win the World Series.

The next year, the Cardinals were the only team to win 100 games. The Cubs, with 103, were the only team to hit triple digits in 2016, the year they finally won a World Series.

While we are wallowing in statistics:  The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani has become the sixth player to steal 40 bases and hit 40 home runs in a season. His 9th-inning grand slam Friday night was his 40th home run.   He holds the record for being the fastest to reach both numbers. He has about thirty games to become the first member of the 50-50 club.

One other thing—-He threw off a mound for the first time this year during the weekend. Next year he could win his 40th game as a pitcher (assuming he doesn’t get activated before the end of this season).  He is 38-15 in five years as a pitcher with the Angels, for whom he was 25-14 before he was hurt in the 2023 season and signed with the Dodgers for ten years and $282 million.

Somebody else who had a good week last week was the Yankees’ Aaron Judge, who had seven home runs in six games and had 51 starting this week and plenty of time to break his American League record of 62 set three years ago.

And while we are talking about statistics and excellence, let’s mention some statistics and failure.  The Chicago White Sox lost their 100th game this weekend to go 31=100.  They are on track to break the modern record for most losses in a season, now held by the 1969 Mets, who went 40-120-1 in their first season.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs have cut a dozen players to get their roster down to the 53 players permitted for the opening game of the season. The biggest “name” among them is fourth-string quarterback Ian Book a fourth-round pick of the Saints in the 2021 draft. He played for Notre Dame before signing a four-year deal worth $4.153 million including a $673,584 bonus. The Eagles claimed him off waivers in August of 2022 before waiving him in the 2023 preseason. He was on the Patriots’ practice squad briefly, tried out for the 49ers and the Bills before signing a futures contract with the Chiefs for this season. His career shows he started one game, for New Orleans, was 12 for 20 passing for 135 yards, two interceptions and no TDs. He also ran three times for six yards.

Also cut were cornerbacks Miles Battle, Kevin Joseph and Ekow Boye-Doe; Wide Receivers Phillip Brooks and Kyle Sheets, Defensive End Owen Carney, Defensive Tackle Alex Grubner, Guards Griffin McDowell and Nick Torres, Tight End Geor’quarius Spivey, and Safety Randen Plattner.

Some former Tigers:

Harrison Mevis was cut by the Carolina Panthers a couple of weeks ago, beaten out by Eddie Pineiro, now the only kicker on the roster.

Two former Tigers appear to have made the season-starting Denver Broncos roster—Cornerback Kris Abrams-Draine and (remember him?) Tyler Badie. Badie, who was 5-feet-8 and 197 pounds, was a second-team All-American for Missouri in 2012 when he rushed for 1,604 yards and caught 54 passes for 330 more yards. The Ravens picked him in the sixth round, waived him in 2022 and signed him to their practice squad.  The Broncos signed him for their practice squad at the end of ’22. He played his first NFL game at the end of last season and took a Russell Wilson pass 24 yards to his first NFL touchdown.  He signed a futures/reserve contract with the Broncos last January.

As we went to press last night we were waiting to hear the fates of other Tigers, most particularly Cody Schrader of the San Francisco 49ers. He has won praise for his work ethic but the 49ers are loaded with talent left over from their big  year in 2023 and a strong draft crop.

(THE GOLDEN DAYS ARE PAST)—Former Missouri Tiger Markus Golden, who finished his career in Columbia as one of the nation’s top pass rushers,  has called it a career after nine years in the NFL with the Arizona Cardinals (second round pick in the 2015 NFL draft), New York Giants, and Pittsburgh Steelers. He had 51 sacks, 11 forced fumbles, and 343 tackles in a solid pro career.

(MIZ)—Thursday night.  First Missouri Tiger football game of the year.  Murray State Racers. Faurot Field.

The Racers have a new coach, Jody Wright, who knows what to expect from a SEC team. Last year, he was the tight ends coach at South Carolina that saw Trey Knox as a second team all-conference player.  He helped recruit the school’s recruiting class that year that was ranked 17th nationally.  He has been on the Alabama staff under Nick Saban twice, most recently as director of player personnel in 2015-2017.

The turnover in coaches and players with the Racers has made it hard for Tiger coach Eli Drinkwitz to map out a strategy for Thursday night’s game. He told reporters yesterday, “There’s really no way to watch Murray State film, they’ve got a brand new offense, defense, and special teams coordinator along with 60 new players. You can watch their schemes from last year to try to see what their players are, and so figuring out matchups is almost impossible. It comes down to us executing our plan and our schemes at a really high level.”

The Tigers depth chart released during the weekend seems to contain few surprises.

Brady Cook is the quarterback with sophomore Drew Pyne his top backup. Nate Noel or Marcus Carroll will start at running back with freshman Jamal Roberts, as their first backup with sophomore Tavorus Jones and freshman Kewan Lacy behind him. Noel gets the start.

Wide receivers are three familiar names: Luther Burden III, Theo Wease Jr., and Mookie Cooper. Mekhi Miller and Daniel Blood, a junior and a sophomore, are behind them. There is no shortage of wide receivers on the depth chart—ten of them including these guys.

Sophomore Brett Norfleet returns as the starting tight end with sophomore Jordon Harris or senior Tyler Stephens behind him. Harris is questionable for the Murray State game. He’s nursing a minor injury.

The starting offensive line looks like this:

Left tackle Marcus Bryant, a senior with Jayven Richardson, a sophomore, behind him; Cayden Green, a sophomore at left guard with freshman Logan Reichert as his backup. ; Connor Tollison, a junior, will be at center with either sophomore Triston Wilson or senior Drake Heismayer in reserve.  On the right side are senior guard Cam’Ron Johnson, ahead of sophomore Curtis Peagler, and tackle Armand Membou Jr., with senior Mitchell Walters behind him.

On the Defense:

Senior Kristian Williams and Junior Chris McClellan start at tackle. They are backed up by four players, Sterling Webb, Marquis Gracial, Jalen Marshall, and Sam Williams. Webb is a junior, Gracial and Marshall are sophomores and Williams is a freshman.

Defensive ends, depending on the situation, will be Johnny Walker Jr., a senior, Junior Zion Young or Junior Eddie Kelly with backups Joe Moore III, a senior; freshmen Jakhai Lang, Williams Nwaneri and Jaylen Brown.

Middle Linebacker Chuck Hicks, a senior, or another senior Corey Flagg, are tops on the depth chart.

Outside linebackers  will be Triston Newson or Khalil Jacobs. Newson is a senior and Jacobs is a junior. They’ll be backed up by freshman Brayshawn Littlejohn, a redshirt, and three pure freshmen: Jeremiah Beasley, Brian Huff, and Nicholas Rodriguez.

Senior Drey Norwood will be the starter at one linebacker with junior Toriano Pride or freshman Nicholas DeLoach on the other side. Their backups will be senior Marcus Clarke or Ja’Mariyon Wade, a sophomore, redshirt freshman Shamar McNeil and true freshmen Cameron Keys and Jaren Sensabaugh.

Starting safeties will be seniors Joseph Charleston or Tre’Vez Jonson. Marvin Burks Jr., a sophomore and senior Daylan Carnell with freshman Trajan Greco, junior Caleb Flagg, and Senior Sidney Williams or sophomore Phillip Roche. Freshman Jackson Hancock is in reserve.

Freshman Blake Craig will be the successor to Harrison Mevis as the place kicker with Nick Quadrini, a sophomore, behind him.

Senior Luke Bauer, who often filled this role last year is number one as the punter with sophomore Orion Phillips, behind him.

Bauer and Phillips will get the ball snapped ‘way back to them by sophomore long-snapper Brett LeBlank. Senior Trey Flint will be the long-snapper on field goals.

Look for Burden, Blood, and Wease to return punts, with Burden the top choice; Manning, Burks, and Marquis Johnson will return kicks with Johnson listed on the depth chart as number one. (ZOU)

(BEARS)—Missouri State’s Bears are in their two-year transition to the Division 1 Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). They’ll play their last year in the Missouri Valley Conference this year before joining Conference USA next year and be given full FCS status in 2026.  They open against Montana from the Big Sky Conference next weekend.  The Bears were 4-7 last year. The Grizzlies were 12-1.  The Grizzlies have had only one losing season in the last 27 years, 2012, when the NCAA ordered five games forfeited for rules violations.

So much for stick and ball sports. Here’s the Zoom Department:

(NASCAR)—A purported NASCAR race schedule leaked last week says the Cup cars will race at World Wide Technology Raceway next September 7.  NASCAR says the schedule is “not entirely accurate.”

If, in fact, that date is true for WWTR, it’s a huge step up in status for the track, which is owned independently from NASCAR and Speedway Motorsports.

WWTR is in Madison, Illinois, just across the Stan Musial Bridge from St. Louis.  The scheduling is significant because it puts the track into the NASCAR playoff schedule, a ten-race series at the end of the season that determines the championship.

One of the skeptics is Dale Earnhardt Jr., who said on his podcast last week, “How in the hell did St. Louis end up in the playoffs? I would love to know…It’s bizarre. It’s fine. I mean there’s no sort of, ‘Oh you don’t deserve this’ kind of vibe, I just wonder how that even happened.”

Earnhardt says he didn’t think WWTR would ever become one of the ten playoff tracks. He wants to hear the reason for the scheduling. “I’m wondering where the reasoning is,” he said a few days ago.

Whether WWTR is, in fact, a playoffs track, the fact is that owner Curtis Francois and his folks have taken a track that was days away from being sold and dismantled to make way for a private developer and have turned it into a first-class multi-motorsport facility.  Its events have had enthusiastic sponsor support from the State of Illinois for the NASCAR race, from the Bommarito Automotive Group of St. Louis for the IndyCar event, and Mission Foods for its NHRA Midwestern Nationals.  It is a 1.25 mile oval with long straightaways and differing radius corners at the ends, basically flat, producing a challenging facility for drivers. Fan-competitor opportunities are excellent, parking is good, access to and from interstate highways is solid, and there’s plenty of concession and stage attractions space.

Plus, it plugs a marketing gap as the only NASCAR/IndyCar track between Chicago and Nashville.

(DAYTONA)— A feel-good story emerged from the mess that was the 400-mile race at Daytona Saturday night, with the win by Harrison Burton that gave Wood Brothers their 100th Cup win in a history that goes back to

Harrison Burton outdueled veteran Kyle Busch on the final lap of an Overtime finish of Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway to score his first career Cup Series victory and the 100th for his Wood Brothers team.

Burton, the son of former NASCAR driver Jeff and nephew of former driver Ward, went into the race 34th in the standings and knowing he won’t be back with the team next year, guaranteed that he will be one of the sixteen drivers running in the ten-race playoff series that starts after next Sunday’s race at Darlington.

Speedy Thompson gave the Wood Brothers their first victory in 1960. The team hasn’t won since Ryan Blaney won at Pocono in 2017. It’s the first win for the third and fourth generation of Woods to own the team.

Burton found himself in position to win in a race that had fewer than ten unbent cars at the finish because of three major crashes, two of which saw cars go airborne as the field started the final lap.  A push from rookie Parker Retzlaff on the backstretch put him in front of Kyle Busch, who desperately needed a win to make the playoffs.  Burton held off Burton to win by five one-hundredths of a second.

Burton’s win has a huge impact on the list of drivers who will make up the championship field of sixteen. His win has knocked Bubba Wallace 21 points outside the list of 16 and Ross Chastain 27 back. Busch is too far back to climb back into the playoffs on points. For all intents and purposes,  all three—Wallace, Chastain, and Busch—must win next weekend’s final race of the regular season.

(INDYCAR)—Will Power’s win at Portland Sunday moves him a bit closer to Alex Palou’s points lead as the IndyCar season heads into its last two races, both on ovals.  Palou’s lead is still 54 points on Power and 67 on Colton Herta, however.

Power finished where he started—first—on the road course but Palou finished second, minimizing any points damage Power made.
IndyCar runs two races next weekend at Milwaukee and then closes out its season September 15 at Nashville.

(FORMULA 1)—Lando Norris has taken another bite out of the once-huge points lead Max Verstappen ran up in the first ten races in F1 this year. Norris beat Verstappen by 23 seconds on Verstappen’s home track in the Dutch Grand Prix.

Formula 1 returned to the Zandvoort circuit in 2021 and this is the first time Verstappen has no won the race.

The race is the fifteenth of 24 Grands Prix in Formula One this year. Norris now trails Verstappen by only seventy points.

(photo credit: Wood Brothers Racing)