Category Archives: history

Jefferson City vs. the Pandemic, 1918—I

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We are facing weeks of uncertainty, nobody knows how many, as we are stalked by a dark shadow that threatens to envelop us with the scariest health challenge in more than a century. We are taking the Coronavirus seriously because our ancestors throughout the world were devastated by a virus known as the “Spanish Influenza”—-although it didn’t start in Spain—and the terrible outcome has remained a specter within our culture. Now it is here and many find themselves trying not to think of their mortality.

The 1918-18 influenza epidemic might have started right next door to us. In Kansas, not Spain. Its first major flare-up was at Camp Funston, a World War One training camp at Fort Riley, Kansas. In March, 1918, five-hundred soldiers got sick. The outbreak quickly waned, perhaps because many of the Funston soldiers headed to Europe after war was declared in April.

The flu spread from there throughout the world, mutated, and eventually came back to the States.

By the time it had run its course, the worldwide death total was at least 50-million people, maybe 100-million. In this country, 670,000 deaths were attributed to it, more than the combined death counts in both world wars, Korea and Vietnam.   Missouri’s total was 12,250.   To put that in some context, the population of Jefferson City at the time was a little less than 14,500.

In those days there were two primary information sources: the newspapers and the telephone. The newspapers brought our ancestors news about the slow course of the disaster. The speculation (“analysis” if you will) of the day was two people on the telephone talking to one another.

Missouri had no cases of Spanish Influenza when St. Louis Health Commissioner Max Starkloff issued three “don’ts” to fight the spread of the disease “if it reaches here.”

—Don’t cough or sneeze unless your mouth is protected by a handkerchief.                                 —Don’t, if you can avoid it, sleep in the same room with another person if you have influenza.   —Don’t fail to call a doctor when the first symptoms are felt.

Less than three weeks later, on October 8, the Jefferson City Daily Capital News reported the Secretary of the State Council of Defense, Frank Robinson, had been sent to the “quarantine hospital” suffering from apparent Spanish Influenza. “Local physicians are not alarmed over the prospect in any way, but they are ready to take all precautions necessary,” aid the paper.

The very next day the newspaper reported the city had fifteen cases of the flu. The mayor called a meeting of physicians, ministers, and heads of the city schools to decide if schools, churches, and theatres should be closed. The state prison was under quarantine.

On October 10, the schools were closed, churches cancelled services indefinitely, students at Lincoln Institute were forbidden to leave the campus, gatherings of more than fifteen people were prohibited, and streets were to be flushed each morning. “These precautions are deemed sufficient to prevent the spread of the influenza epidemic in the city,” said the newspaper.

The next day city had “no fewer than 50 cases.” By October 15th, there were 65 and former Madison Hotel clerk Raymond Smith had become the city’s first fatality. Among the newly-infected people: City Physician, Dr. Edward Mansur, who was in bed with a “mild form.”

The next day, another man died, Missouri Pacific engineer Charles Alcorn, whose flu degenerated into a fatal pneumonia.

On October 17th, the city had 150 cases and a day later the number topped 185. The city already had a serious shortage of nurses and by the 22nd, Community Nurse Ruth Porter had taken to her bed with the flu.

Churches were allowed to have services for the first time in two weeks but the theatres remained closed. So were schools.

Forty-two new cases were recorded October 23-26. Dr. Mansur was able to visit some ill folks that day but was back in bed the next day. The number of cases passed 300 by the end of October.

About a dozen people had died by November 14 when the newspaper published a large public notice on the front page citing “Unusual measures” that were to be taken to “remove the influenza from our city.” Some of them sound familiar today. Others tell us about some of the sanitation issues of the day:

—Spend a lot of time out of doors but away from crowds.

—Open doors and windows of your homes, especially in the bedrooms, for a few hours each day and clean out dirty corners.

—If anyone in your home has had a cold or even felt bad fumigate their bedrooms at least if not the entire house. Fumigation can be done by anyone in three or four hours with Sulphur or formaldehyde candles which can be purchased at any drug store at small cost.

—It is the duty as well as a law that every contagious disease be reported to the City Physician for the protection of yourself as well as your neighbor.

—Business houses are urged to at least fumigate their stores one night this week. Formaldehyde is inexpensive and harmless, also there is no fire hazard. Those businesses serving other than alcoholic beverages must wash glasses and china used by patrons in hot water and with soap. Saloons must wash glasses used by patrons more thoroughly than usual. Water basins used for the washing must be emptied and refilled at least four times a day. And care must be exercised to keep large numbers of people from gathering in those businesses. Even small groups must be made to spread out. Any business allowing more than 15 people to assemble or enter the place at one time could be closed.

—All business places must have prominent signs asking people not to cough or sneeze in their places. Such signs will cause people to cough or sneeze into their handkerchief.

—Factory superintendents must take the temperature of all employees at least once a day and anyone who is 99 or more must be sent home and not allowed to return until he has a doctor’s certification that he is not affected with a contagious disease, particularly the flu. Each factory must be fumigated at least once a week.

The city board of health agreed a couple of days later to delay any closings for four days. If, on November 22, “there is not a decreased number of influenza cases reported daily in the city, the businesses houses will be closing tight for four days in an effort to stamp out the disease.”

The Miller and Weiss Pool Hall on Madison Street was closed for a week after a policeman found thirty-one people inside.

But people kept getting sick. And people kept dying. The Capital City—as well as all of Missouri and the nation—was fighting a plague with no medicine that could stop it.

We’ll have more next week.

 

Dr. Crane on egoists

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Here we are, deep into the early days of a political campaign year. We will have to endure the preening, boasting, promising—and sometimes bullying—of those who want to attract our money and our votes. It’s a time for Egos on Parade, candidates from all parties promising that they can do magnificent things—as if there were no other parts of government or levels of government with a voice in doing things.   The phrase “reality check” didn’t come into use until thirty years after Dr. Crane died. But that’s what he offers. This entry might not matter to our big-time candidates but maybe it might help us little people (who are bigger if we vote) to look for someone with a tinge of—–

HUMANITY

What is my boasted independence? I am dependent upon everybody and everything. I go with the crowd. I am caught in the press of men. I must move with them.

All my ancestors have left me something. Not money or goods, but deeper potencies. What I call my character or nature is made up of infinite particles of inherited tendencies from those whose blood runs in my veins. A little seed of laziness from this grandfather and of prodigality from that. Some remote grandmother, perhaps, as stamped me with a fear of horses or a love of dogs. There may be in me a bit of outlawry from some forefather who was a pirate, and a dash of piety from one who was a saint.

So everything in me passes on through my children and flecks of my children’s children with a spot of strength or weakness. I am sewn in between ancestry and posterity. I am a drop of water in a flowing river. I am a molecule in a mountain. I am a cell in a great tree.

The words I think are not mine. They are humanity’s. Millions made them, as a coral reef into which my thoughts creep.

My gestures, ways, mannerisms, so-called peculiarities, I borrowed them all.

Religion is not a personal affair so much as it is a communal. You are a Jew because you were born a Jew; for the same reason you are a Catholic, you are a Presbyterian, you a Mahometan, you a Buddhist, you a Mormon. As we enter life we find these cells already made in the human beehive and crawl into them.

The Young lover imagines no one else ever felt his pangs and ecstasies; yet Nature is but repeating in him the motions she has made in a myriad others.

“Nothing human is alien to me,” said the philosopher.

Said Burke, “Society is a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living and those who are dead—and those who are to be born.”

What I call my opinion—how much of it is but echo? Opinions are catching, like measles or smallpox. Our notions of art, letters, politics, morals, we have but secreted them from the mass.

Original ideas? Where will you find them? All the ideas there are exist now, floating in the human sea. I, an oyster, absorb a few and call them mine. Even the phrases of the Lord’s Prayer have been traced to Talmudic sources.

“The dewdrop slips into the shining sea.” The river of humanity emerges from the infinite and pours ever into the infinite again.

In passing how we perk ourselves up into strange egotisms! We strut, gesticulate, contend, and talk of me and mine, only to go down at last in the cataract that, unceasing as Niagara, empties into the unknown.

Let us, therefore, put away the coarse egotisms and the partisan passions that infest us, and learn to love humanity, to think and feel in terms of humanity.

Let America Be America Again

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For many people, America has never been as great as some have nobly proclaimed it to be or proclaim to have made it. Again.

It’s good. But great? Yes, for some. For others, no. Can it be great if it is not great for all? We explore that issue today through the words of a great Missouri writer.

Langston Hughes is considered one of the nation’s greatest African-American authors, a Joplin native whose poetry and prose spoke powerfully of the African-American experience from the time his great grandmothers were slaves to the days when segregation was still a powerful and widely-accepted social institution. He died in 1967, still writing about what this country was but aware of what it could be or should be.

In 1935, he wrote a poem that portrayed the two Americas—the one he dreamed would come with a counterpoint describing the America he knew.

In our turbulent times today, it’s a good idea to think about Langston Hughes, who hoped for a better country while the real world around him seemed far from it. His voice from 85 years ago is a voice for many in these times and a challenge for others who are comfortable with their station.

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Langston Hughes reminds us from generation to generation we have much work to do before we should proclaim ourselves great. Proclamation is cheap. Achievement of greatness is hard and the quest for it should be never-ending if we really want to create, “the land that never has been yet—and yet must be.”

It not a matter of “again.”  It’s a matter of “yet.”

The beast

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Sometimes as we go through old newspapers, magazines, journals, etc., we come across things that remind us of what we were as a society. They’re painful to read in today’s world but they’re reminders of something that remains not far beneath the thin social crust on which we live, as recent events show. It was difficult to read the accounts we relate today, but we pass them along as a reminder of what we can become if we listen to the wrong people, believe the wrong words, and fail to recognize that all of us have a responsibility to each of us.

The Republican takeover of the governorship and the legislature in the 1908 elections immediately increased racial tensions of the time at the capitol. The Clinton Henry County Weekly Democrat commented, “The first fruit of Republican victory…was the distribution of patronage; and in this the black bullies from Kansas City and St. Louis were not overmodest in their demands.” Ten African-Americans were hired for jobs with the House doorkeeper and the House Chief Clerk. “Naturally their first thought was to swell up and strut around, shedding the perfume of their presence among white members,” said the newspaper.

The “negro question,” as it was called, turned ugly in the Missouri House when a white woman Senate stenographer told State Auditor John Gordon she had been approached by a black employee of the House bill clerk’s office as she walked home one night. She reported she had refused to respond when he tried to engage her in conversation, although he told her, “The women clerks in my department like me.” She was badly frightened.

Although the Senate had no black employees, some senators joined some House members in questioning bill room clerk Virgil Franklin. The inquisitors were angered by what they considered his “impertinence,” and were stopped by cooler heads from throwing Franklin over the capitol’s second floor railing to the tile floor a story below. Franklin was suspended from his job and quickly put on a train to safety in St. Louis.

The incident prompted an angry resolution in the House from Representative Jesse Duncan of Lincoln County complaining that “numerous negro employees of this House…have, by their constant use of toilet rooms and towels provided for the members of the General Assembly and white employes [sic] become such a nuisance” and recommending the firing of almost all black employees of the House. The resolution also demanded separate toilets and towels be provided for black employees remaining.

But Duncan would go only so far. When Representative William H. Wade of Greene County asked him if he would accept an amendment calling for firing all negro cooks and waiters at boarding houses, restaurants, and hotels where legislators boarded, Duncan responded, “Certainly not. That is a different thing.” Wade retorted, “I would as soon have a negro pass me a bill as handle my food.”

A second resolution, from Iron County Representative C. H. Polk went further, proclaiming, “This is a white man’s State, and the white man has ruled its official conduct in the past and will continue to do so as long as time lasts.” He complained, “The big negro bucks continue to loiter and lounge around the corridors and the ingress and egress of the Assembly hall,” forcing lawmakers and others entering the chamber “to push and edge their way through this motley crowd of unclean, common, stinking negroes or return to their homes or lodging places in the city.”

He also complained, “The toilet rooms, eating counters, benches and seats, drinking cups, wash basins and towels furnished at the expense of the State for the convenience and comfort of the members of the Assembly and their white employes [sic], and…This horde of colored men use indiscriminately and with impudence all the above named necessaries and comforts of life without authority or consent given them by this assembly.” He wanted to protect “the white girl…where she is compelled to come in contact with him in any way whatsoever, her very nature revolting against his presence and rebelling against his every touch or attention.”

His resolution continued in the same vein for another couple of paragraphs but we have run out of capacity to share more of it. In the end, Polk advocated firing all “colored” employees of the House except for those doing menial labor for the doorkeeper and told “to leave the hall at once.”

The resolutions were sent to a committee that recommended a compromise replacing two black employees in the House mail room with white men “who would not mind” working with the two remaining black clerks. The compromise was suggested when all Democrats in the House refused to go to the bill room as long as all of the clerks were black. The committee also recommended separate bathrooms for black employees and visitors, a move called by one correspondent, “the first Jim Crow order…in Missouri,” further observing, “For years such democrats as James M. Seibert, Sam B. Cook and the democratic governors down to the present time had used the same wash rooms as the janitors. But the first change was made by the Republicans in the report of the clerical force committee…” (Seibert had been the State Treasurer, 1885-1889, and Sam B. Cook had been Secretary of State 1901-1905.)

The Keytesville Chariton Courier commented after the legislature had acted, “The only way that it is possible for the white race to get along with the negro is to make him know his place and then see that he stays in it.” Keytesville, in Chariton County, had been the home town of former governor and later Confederate General and former governor Sterling Price.

Before the end of the month, however, the first African-American lobbyist appeared in the legislative halls, Kansas City minister T.C. Unthank, who became the fortieth lobbyist to register for the session. The legislature had voted in 1905 to spend thirty-thousand dollars for a separate building for “incorrigible negro girls” at the Chillicothe Industrial School. But when the building was completed, so many white girls wanted to be in it that the building was made whites-only, leaving black girls to go to jails, work houses, or even worse to the state penitentiary. The sentencing in 1908 of a twelve-year old black girl to the state penitentiary added impetus to Unthank’s lobbying. He asked for a separate industrial school for girls—somewhere other than Chillicothe. His work paid off but the school did not open until 1916, largely because of trouble finding a community that would allow such a school. The Missouri Industrial home for Negro Girls opened in Tipton in 1916.

Eleven years after these events, Walthall M. Moore of St. Louis was elected the first African-American member of the Missouri House of Representatives. Forty more years passed before Theodore McNeal of St. Louis became the first black state senator.

Even after McNeal took his seat in the senate, no black member of the Missouri legislature could stay at a Jefferson City hotel. They either stayed in private homes or in dormitory rooms at Lincoln University. Not until fair housing laws came in the mid-1960s did that situation change.

Three years after Walthall Moore took his seat in the House, the Ku Klux Klan tried to hold its state convention in the House chamber. But it moved elsewhere when the governor ordered the chamber doors to be unlocked so anyone could enter.

Next year will mark 100 years since the election of the first African-American to the state legislature. Missouri has yet to elect a member of a minority race to a statewide office.

We debated with ourself whether to create this entry. But we recalled a few years ago when we were talking about newswriting to an Indiana college class and we let them listen to Edward R. Murrow’s powerful report from the German concentration camp at Buchenwald. We watched the impact it had on those young people, some of whom were near tears. Later, some of those students told me they had never been told about that part of history.

We do ourselves no favors by forgetting about or hiding from the painful words and deeds of the past in these times of anti-Semitic attacks on the streets of New York; of culturally-motivated mass murders in theatres, malls, churches and synagogues; of concerns about white nationalism shaping public policy; of toleration of cruel words and characterizations. The beast lurks beneath the thin social crust of our daily existence and we fail to recognize its nearness to each of us at our own peril.

Dr. Crane: Yesterday

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(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them.)

As we leave one year and begin another one, we are reminded of Al Stewart’s 1978 hit song that includes:

Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.

Dr. Crane wrote in his column about the importance of living for today and working for our tomorrows:

YESTERDAY

I am Yesterday. I am gone from you forever.

I am the last of a long procession of days, streaming behind you, away from you, pouring into mist and obscurity, and at least into the ocean of oblivion.

Each of us have our burden, of triumph, of defeat, of laughter, of bitterness; we bear our load from you into forgetfulness; yet as we go we each leave something in your subconsciousness.

We fill your soul’s cellar.

I depart from you, yet am I ever with you.

Once I was called Tomorrow and was virgin pure; then I became your spouse and was named Today; now I am Yesterday and carry upon me the eternal stain of your embrace.

I am one of the leaves of a growing book. There are many pages before me. Someday you shall turn us all over and read us and know what you are.

I am pale, for I have no hope. Only memories.

I am rich, for I have wisdom.

I bore you a child and left him with you. His name is Experience.

You do not like to look at me. I am not pretty. I am majestic, fateful, serious.

You do not love my voice. It does not speak to your desires; it is cool and even and full of prudence.

I am Yesterday; yet I am the same as Today and Forever for I AM YOU; and you cannot escape from yourself.

Sometimes I talk with my companions about you. Some of us carry the scars of your cruelty. Some the wretchedness of your crime. Some the beauty of your goodness. We do not love you. We do not hate you. We judge you.

We have no compassion; only Today has that.

We have no encouragement for you; only Tomorrow has that.

We stand at the front door of the past, welcoming the single file of days that pass through, watching Tomorrows becoming Todays and then enter among us.

Little by little we suck out your life, as vampires. As you grow older we absorb your thought. You turn to us more and more, less and less toward Tomorrow.

Our snows cumber your back and whiten your head. Our icy waters put out your passions. Our exhalations dim your hopes. Our many tombstones crowd into your landscape. Our dead loves, burnt-out enthusiasms, shattered dream-houses, dissolved illusions, move to you, surround you.

Tomorrows come unnoticed. Todays slip by unheeded. More and more you become a creature of Yesterdays.

Ours are banquet halls full of wine-soaked tablecloths, broken vessels, wilted roses.

Ours are empty churches where aspirations were, where only ghosts are.

Ours are ghastly Pompeiian streets, rich galleons a hundred fathoms deep, genealogical lists of sonorous names, mummies in museums, fragmentary pillars of battered temples, inscriptions on bricks of Nineveh, huge stone gates standing amidst the tropical landscape of Yucatan, Etruscan wine jars now dry and empty forever.

From us comes that miasma of inertia that holds humanity in thrall; from us comes the strength of war-makers, monarchs, and all the privileged.

We reach up long, sinewy, gray arms of custom and tradition, to choke Today and impede Tomorrow.

We are the world’s Yesterdays. If you knew enough to put your feet upon us you might rise rapidly. But when you let us ride on your backs we strangle and smother you.

I am Yesterday. Learn to look me in the face, to use me, and not to be afraid of me.

I am not your friend. I am your judge — and your fear.

Tomorrow is your friend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Notes from a quiet street—New Year’s edition

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It’s 2020. What vision will we have for our state and country in this Year of the Eye Doctor? We’ll have a serious commentary at the end of this entry from a St. Louis theologian who worries, as we enter this campaign year, about who is telling or will tell the truth.   But first, a couple of things to unburden our chest.

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Thing one: Your ever-alert observer has noted some instances in which people have referred to 2019 as the end of a decade. We suppose it is, if you consider the decade to have started in 2000.  And if you count to ten and think 9 is the last number.

We’re a little peevish about this sort of thing. It isn’t the end of a decade unless you count a year ending in zero as the first year of a decade. We realize some of you will quickly take umbrage at that observation but we need look no farther than our own birthdays.

Let’s assume you were born on May 5 in the year 0.

By explanation— if we go from 1BCE to 1CE —archaeologists use the phrases “before common era” and “common era” to avoid conflicts with various religious calenders—and since BCE counts backwards (King Tut served from about 1342 to 1325 BCE), time works backwards from one to zero and time then moves forward a like amount to year 1, the first anniversary of the switchover from BCE to just CE.

When were you be one year old in you were born on May 5, 0?

Right. Year 1. You have completed one year since your birth. On May 5 in year nine you celebrated the NINTH anniversary of your birth, not the tenth. You celebrated your tenth anniversary on May 5 in year 10, the end of your first decade. Therefore the decade begins with one and ends with zero, or as we would say in our time—2011-2020. (Incidentally, I think it is Kurt Vonnegut who has suggested we have only one birth day. All succeeding observances are anniversaries of our birth day.)

To put it less obtrusively, when Count von Count on Sesame Street counts, what does he start with?

When a boxing referee counts a fighter out at the count of ten, what number does he start with?  If he started with zero he’d be giving the fighter eleven seconds to get up.

When we count out the number of pennies in a dime, how many are there? 10.  If we stated out with the first penny at zero, we’d have 11 when we got to ten cents, which doesn’t seem to make much, uh, sense.

So the decade has another year to go.

Of course, in the cosmic sense, decades are immaterial. And we can consider a decade anything we darn well want to consider it.   A person born in 1994 would celebrate a decade of life in 2005. Since time is an abstract concept invented by the human mind, a decade can be anything the human mind wants it to be whenever it’s convenient.

So what the heck are we arguing about?   Let’s move on.

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Thing two: If you can’t do anything else, get the name right (that was one of the first rules of journalism I learned).  As long as we’re chest-unloading, let’s again see if anybody thinks it’s disrespectful to mispronounce the name of another. We heard a reporter on one of our mid-Missouri television stations report something a few nights ago that was going to happen at Jefferson City’s Bynder Park. It’s not pronounced “Bine,” it’s “Bin.”   Frederich Heinrich Binder was born in Hanover, Niedersachsen, Germany in 1845. He came to Jefferson City in 1866 and until his death in 1911 he was a major leader of our city and a builder. It’s Binder, not Bynder.

One of the grocery stores where we stock up is Gerbes East Supermarket. It’s bad enough that regular folks on the street refer to it as “Gerbs,” but it’s just plan inexcusable that the store’s public-address system that tells you what wonderful bargains there are today says the same thing.   Frank Gerbes (Gur’-bus) was running a Kroger store in Tipton when he started his own business in 1934. In coming years he established Gurbus stores in several mid-Missouri towns. In 1986, he merged his company with Dillon’s which two years later became part of the Kroger chain. Frank had been dead eleven years by then, long enough—we guess—for the people who are now Kroger employees (and the company, apparently) to forget how to pronounce the name of a small town merchant who built a little grocery store empire in mid-Missouri named Frank GURBUS.

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Okay, now it’s time to start the new year on a more thoughtful although more volatile topic: truth.   A friend of ours passed along something from an internet site called Theologycorner, a contribution that worries about what has happened to truth and what will become of it—and of us—if we are not afraid of discovering it from people we don’t want to listen to. This is from a theology professor here in our state:

https://theologycorner.net/blog/blogs/idioglossolalia/the-death-of-truth-both-sides-dont-deserve-our-consideration/

The Death of Truth: “Both Sides” don’t deserve our consideration

Ruben Rosario Rodriguez   December 30, 2019 Idioglosalalia

As a university professor of Theological Studies I have always engaged current events, and have always done so with a high degree of objectivity. By the same token, as a theologian, ethicist, and practicing Christian, I have always asserted that the church ought to stand outside partisan politics while working across party lines for the common good, remaining free to offer a prophetic critique whenever the state overreaches or neglects its duty. In other words, I have taken the apostle Peter’s advice as my guiding mantra for navigating church and state: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29, NRSV).

 

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in the context of serious class discussions I have been critical of the Trump administration’s policies separating children from their families and creating border detention centers. Just as I am critical of Trump’s immigration policies now, I was critical of Obama’s use of drones and W’s use of torture then. However, unlike previous students, my most recent batch of first-year undergraduates is unable to grasp that I am not being partisan when making a serious theological critique of politicians.

Though I have explained to them how I leveled equally harsh—yet justified—criticisms at previous administrations regardless of party affiliation, for these kids so much of this is ancient history. Even though I argued cogently and fairly that Congress was justified in initiating impeachment proceedings against both, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019, all they see is the now—and since Trump is currently in office, it leads to comments like this in my course evaluations:

“Sometimes I felt uncomfortable when the professor would share some harsh political views that I didn’t fully agree with. I’m always interested in learning about the point of view of others, [but] I just felt that as a teacher it’s important to share both sides of an issue even if you have a bias towards one.”

One of the things I like to model in my class is a fair and balanced presentation of opposing viewpoints, so these words really cut to the quick. A colleague argues these students’ inability to transcend their point of view stems from the widespread perspectival approach to morality and ethics. In other words, “You may believe it to be true, but that doesn’t make it true for another.” To which I respond, “Yes, but as a teacher it is my responsibility to challenge these students to move beyond mere opinion and offer clear, defensible reasons why they believe one thing and not another.”

Truth has been devalued to such a degree that those who cannot recall a time before the post-truth era find it increasingly difficult telling fact from fiction. Thankfully, we have been here before, and can learn from the past. During the rise of fascism in the 1930s, journalist and novelist George Orwell observed that useful lies were preferred to harmful truths, and truth had been replaced by propaganda. Consequently, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In such times, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

In the aftermath of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, President Trump vacillated. Instead of immediately repudiating the heinous acts of white nationalism that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a peaceful counter-protester, and the beating of DeAndre Harris, an African American counter-protester brutally beaten by six white men, the President claimed there were “very fine people on both sides,” and that the mob chanting hateful racist propaganda included, “a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”

Ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate monument to Robert E. Lee, the rally was also a calculated move to draw national media attention to the various factions comprising the Alt-Right in an effort to move from the Internet fringes of U.S. politics into the Trump-era mainstream. Protesters included white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and various, heavily armed, militia groups. Amidst the chants of “white lives matter,” “Jews will not replace us,” “Whose streets? Our streets!” (co-opting a Black Lives Matter slogan used during the Ferguson protests), and the Nazi slogan, “Blood and soil,” marchers carried signs with anti-Semitic slurs, brandished Nazi swastikas and waved Confederate flags, while also carrying “Trump/Pence” signs.

This is not respectful conversation; when one’s interlocutor brandishes symbols of hatred and genocide—and even calls for violence against others—there is no duty to present “both sides.” However, as a Christian, I have a moral duty to condemn hatred and violence, and I recognize there are times when remaining silent is a morally reprehensible act. This we learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred in a Nazi concentration camp for resisting Nazi racial policies: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Anti-Semitic attacks worldwide rose 13 percent in 2018 from the previous year, most notably in the US and Western Europe. While it would be dishonest and slanderous to link the rise of anti-Semitism to the election of Donald Trump, it is fair game to critique his administration’s lukewarm condemnation of anti-Semitism. Five years ago such acts were deemed intolerable and the public outcry from pastors and elected officials would have dominated media coverage. Today there is too much silence from Christian leaders and elected officials in light of this increase. It started with vandalizing Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, then mass shootings in synagogues, and most recently a weeklong series of vicious attacks in NYC targeting Jews during Hanukkah.

In seminary, my first ever theology professor was the late James H. Cone. To this day I carry with me the words he shared the first day of class at Union Theological Seminary in New York: “The task of theology is saying ‘Yes’ to some things and ‘No’ to others.” Theology is an inherently political undertaking—not partisan but political—and as such Christians cannot remain neutral in matters of truth, justice, and ethics. We can respectfully disagree on matters of policy—i.e., on how to address the problem of hunger and food insecurity in our public schools—but we cannot ignore the reality of poverty. We can propose different solutions to the problems created by undocumented immigration, but that does not give us license to discriminate, marginalize, or in any way mistreat undocumented immigrants.

Consequently, students in my classes will continue to be exposed to “harsh political views” they might not necessarily agree with. I don’t expect my students to agree with me on matters of politics. I do expect them to present evidence for why they believe one thing and not another. Most of all, I expect them to see beyond political posturing and demagoguery in order to evaluate all politicians (and their words and actions) from the perspective of Christian truth. And I will not tolerate Pilate’s evasive response, “What is truth?” (John 18:38, NRSV), in my classroom.

 

Dr. Ruben Rosario Rodriguez is a Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Louis University. He describes himself:

“I am a constructive theologian and ethicist who stands within the Reformed Protestant traditions (Calvin, Barth) yet is steeped in liberation theology (Gutierrez, Ruether, Cone). The first theological text I read (at age 15) was Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology (3 volumes-in-one University of Chicago hardbound edition). James H. Cone was my first theology professor, and I once met Iggy Pop in lower Manhattan back in the early 1990s. I strive to be a theological pastor and a pastoral theologian, and here I am guided by the words of Prof Cone: “If I couldn’t preach it, I wouldn’t write it.”

—–Something to think about, particularly in this era and in this campaign year of 2020. We hope it turns out to be a happy new year.

The history of Christmas yogurt

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The following is based on a true event. The names have been changed to protect the innocent and any resemblance of the names used in this account and the names of real people is entirely coincidental.

To: all staff   From: Gala Landowski, coordinator of interoffice activities

This Friday will be the Christmas Party potluck. There are signup sheets in each department area. Please try to have your food items picked out by the end of the day.

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To: Gala Landowski, CIA   From: Armand LeSoir, Accounting Department

The Accounting Department will be meeting tomorrow to determine what brand of unflavored yogurt to contribute.

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To: Armand LeSoir, AD   From: Gala Landowski, CIA

We are emphasizing the use of home-grown products from producers throughout the state.

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To: Gala, CIA From: Armand, AD

A very good idea, Gala. I have a good friend who has an organic yogurt farm outside of Clarence, Missouri. In fact, he says the recent harvest of yogurt berries was exceptional and produced some very high quality product this year. His is one of the few farms in Missouri to escape the serious outbreak of yogurt blight this year, or as some call it, Yogurt Rust. He grows his yogurt organically with no pesticides, insecticides, or artificial sweeteners. Each berry is carefully picked and processed by the highest-trained immigrant workers, some of whom have worked for him since they were thirteen years old. All of them carefully wash their hands after they use the bathroom.

The yogurt plants on his farm are nourished only by manure from organically-grown Angus cattle fed only organically-grown grass and high-quality organic grains. His plants have been carefully bred, using the highest quality yogurt berries from Bavaria and Latvia which are known for their hardiness, with berries from France which have a certain tartness balanced by berries from South Carolina that are known for southern sweetness. These in turn have been bred to the famous Missouri wild yogurt berry, which was a favorite of our pioneer settlers after being introduced to Missouri by the legendary Johnny Yogurtseed. The result of all of this careful work that has spanned generations of his family is an outstanding natural and well-balanced organic yogurt.

I shall make every effort to obtain some of my friend’s yogurt for the event Friday. However as many of you know, the Corps of Engineers is holding back billions of gallons of water in reservoirs in the Dakotas and Montana so people in those regions have lakes on which to go ice fishing and to experience other winter activities that we in the South would never understand. Because the Corps has taken that step, the navigation season on the Missouri has been shortened considerably because of lack of water in the channel which, in turn, has made it impossible for the yogurt barge companies to operate.

You might remember that last week the final yogurt barge of the season didn’t get downstream quickly enough and one of the tows struck a snag near Boonville and settled on the bottom of the river. Only the fact that the tow had a double hull has kept us from having a major environmental disaster. The interior hull protected against a major yogurt spill but the frigid weather and the cold water has caused the yogurt to congeal, making it impossible for salvage crews to pump it out into their smaller boats. They won’t be able to remove the yogurt until a few days before the spring navigation season.

By then the yogurt—because it is organic and therefore contains no preservatives—will have rotted and will be usable only as feed for captured feral hogs. I understand a University of Missouri study done by the College of Agriculture, Food, Natural Resources, Home-Produced Ethanol, and Quilt-Making has recently shown that rotted yogurt produces a chemical change within the brains of feral pigs that transforms them into pets suitable for children who sometimes come to regard them as large and hairy potbellied pigs.

Fortunately my friend had insurance that will cover his loss and he did hold back some of his crop in a yogurt storage bin so he might be able to provide us with enough yogurt for our part of the party. The situation has produced a significant supermarket price increase to excessive levels for organic yogurt this winter. If my friend cannot provide some yogurt from his storage bin we won’t be able to afford to buy some at the supermarket and will be forced to look for other items for the food crawl. Should you find something other than yogurt on Friday, please understand that we have been forced to provide it with the greatest reluctance.

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From: Darrell Upton, Coordinator of Pencils and Stationery   To: AS, AD

If my memory is correct, the “first” yogurt was created by a special kind of bacteria—most definitely ORGANIC in nature.

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From: AS, AD   To: DU, CPS

Your memory is accurate to a point, Darrell.   In fact, the first yogurt bacteria was carefully cultivated by Neanderthals who found them in a cave near what is now Lascaux, France. It was found growing mysteriously and voluntarily in the dark recesses of a large room in the cave. (Did you know, by the way, that an analysis of my saliva by National Geographic shows that I am 1.8 percent Neanderthal, which is above average?) The leader of the group that found it was known as a sage because of his great intellect and his willingness to experiment in a primitive scientific way. He rubbed his finger through the bacterial growth and tasted it. He survived the experiment and, in fact, thought it tasted rather good. After consulting with others in his clan, it was decided the bacteria should be grown as a food source, a delicacy. Through experiments and using various ground herbs mixed with virgin’s urine, it was determined the bacteria could be grown rapidly enough to supply a small amount of food for the group.

The testing process took a considerable length of time during which various members of this Neanderthal band stood watch inside the cave to protect the precious small growing area. Although Neanderthals were not as intelligent as we are today, they nonetheless were as easily bored as we can become, especially in the dark. They took to carrying small lamps fueled by the oil of the glands of certain goats indigenous to the area into the cave and also took some ground- up berries native to the area. While waiting for the bacteria to flourish, they used the juice from the berries to paint some figures on the walls of that cave.

In time, this clan was able to get the bacteria to reproduce in a peat bog in a shaded area outside the cave and as the bacteria evolved it became capable of growing in the daylight and if not harvested for a lengthy time, formed into berries with reproducing seeds. Thus were born the earliest yogurt berries, the progenitor of the berries raised by my friend near Clarence.

In the middle of the 19th Century, some explorers discovered the cave and were dazzled by the great cave paintings those early yogurt developers left behind those thousands of years ago. Little did they know the other historic activity that happened in that cave, an early experiment that led to one of society’s most useful foods. Few know the name of that early clan elder, the sage, but this story was told to me in my youth by my high school science teacher who claimed to be a direct descendant of that Neanderthal family.

The old sage/scientist’s name was Yog, and the product became known as Yog-urt, which is Neanderthal meaning “Food from the Finger of Yog.”

At some indefinite time, it appears the Neanderthals had enough berries that they traded with some ancient Greek traders who found the berries flourished on Mount Oikos,

And the rest is history.

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To: AS, AD   From: Barbara Singlemom, Human Resources

Wow!   I heard it was newborn baby poopoo (thus very organic and all naturelle). Your story is much more interesting.

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To: BS, HR   From: AS, AD

Barb, you’re partly correct. Modern scientists who have reverse-engineered the yogurt berry have determined that the original bacterium began in the feces of the Miniature Jurassic Tyrannobat that lived in the cave before the species became extinct.

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To: AS, AD   From: BS, HR

Well, we all have much to think about now each time we enjoy our cup of Yoplait.

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To: BS, HR   From: AS, AD

Yo-Plait, in fact, was the first virgin whose urine was used in those early experiments.

If we are not able to get enough yogurt from my friend near Clarence, our department will provide some sourdough biscuits for the crawl.

Did you know there is a “Sourdough Citizen Science Project” that has sequenced the DNA of sourdough starters from throughout the world to better understand the sourdough microbial biodiversity? You can Google it.

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Dr. Crane: The meaning of Christmas

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(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. This entry is from a later book of essays, Christmas and the Year Round, published the year before his death.)

Christmas means the indestructibility of joy

Christmas is the protest of the human race against gloom.

The one thing neither time nor force can suppress is instinct.

In days past, religion tried to stamp out earthly gladness, play, fun, the joy of man and maid. As well one might endeavor to dam the waters of the Mississippi.

When we have clamped human nature down with our reasonings and revelations, along comes Instinct, and to use the words of Bennett*, blandly remarks:

“Don’t pester me with Right and Wrong. I am Right and Wrong. I shall suit my own convenience and no one but nature (with a big, big N) shall talk to me!”

In the Fourth Century, the Christian World was pretty dismal. This world was considered a dreadful place, to get away from as soon as possible. Consequently, the girls and boys were lured off into heathen sports, for the heathen alone raced and danced and frolicked.

Then the church established the Christmas festival, which was one of her wisest strokes of policy.

In 342 A.D., the good Bishop Tiberius preached the first Christmas sermon, in Rome.

Into this opening poured the play instinct of the world.

This time of the winter solstice strangely enough had been the jovial period of the year everywhere. Then the Swedes of old used to light fires on the hills in honor of Mother Friga, goddess of Love. Then the Romans indulged in their Saturnalia, the one carnival of democracy and equality during the twelve months of tyranny and slavery. Then the Greeks lit torches upon Helicon in praise of Dionysus. In Egypt of this period the population bore palms for the god Horus, in Persia they celebrated the birth of Mithras, and the Hindus of India sang their songs to Vishnu.

Many of these festivals had become very corrupt. Excess and license darkened the hour of national joy.

The wisest things the Christians ever did was to turn this feast day over to a child.

The child Jesus stands for the childhood of the world, perpetual, evergreen, inexhaustible.

It’s a weary world to those who have lived wrong or too long, but to those who remain healthy in their tastes, it’s a wonderful world, full of undying youth running with sap, recurrent with primal joy.

Christmas means the supreme fact about life, namely: that it is joyful.

It is the opinion of many the greatest music ever composed is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As a climax for this orchestral composition the master chose a chorus to sing Schiller’s “Hymn to Joy.”

Christmas means that when this world and all its purposes and deeds are wound up, and the last men and women stand at the end of time and contemplate the complete story of humanity, they will not wail or hang their heads, but they will shout and exult.

The truest, most everlasting element of mankind is play, accompanied by laughter.

*Dr. Crane is referring to English novelist essayist, and journalist Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). The quote comes from his book, Friendship and Happiness and Other Essays, published in 1921.

The figure on top

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Ceres was lifted back to the top of the Capitol Tuesday morning. Not everybody was happy about it. The reason why is part of our national faith and national political history.

At a couple of the several pre-Christmas events we attended last weekend people asked if your observer had observed Representative Mike Moon’s letter in the local newspaper objecting to a pagan goddess being put back on top of our Capitol and what our observations were about his position that a statue of Jesus would have been better.

The tones of their voices as they asked those questions was indicative of their feelings that Rep. Moon was—–I guess “mistaken” is a generic way to put it.

My observation was that I disagreed with Rep. Moon, not because I am not a Christian—I shall let a much higher power than public opinion decide if I am and if being so entitles me to some eternal benefit—but because I am an American.

This incident and the attitudes implied in those brief discussion is both a commentary on some of the unfortunate polarization within our national community in which people tend to stake out a position and those who disagree are branded as political heathens, enemies, liberals, conservatives—whatever disparaging brands you can think of with which we brand people today instead of respecting their right to think differently from us.

There is nothing wrong with disagreement. Our nation, or at least the New England version of it that has been part of our school history lessons, was founded on disagreement. Unfortunately, our history tells us that those who disagreed with the Church of England enough to flee England often did not tolerate disagreement on matters of faith within their own ranks once they got here.

The discussion of Ceres vs. Jesus is part of our national faith fabric that we’ll explore a little bit later. But first, allow your faithful servant to explain why he comes down on the side of Ceres in this discussion.

Ceres is a symbol. Jesus is a person of worship. We do not worship Ceres by having her on our capitol. She symbolizes our greatest industry—agriculture—among other things. We do not worship agriculture although without it we could not exist. So her importance is in that quality of Missouri that is essential to all who live here. She might have been a goddess to be worshipped by ancient Romans and Greeks (who called her Demeter), but today she is but a symbol of a bountiful state.

The other day I drove past the Vipassana Buddhist Church, Center for Buddhist Development in Jefferson City, which has been in town since 2001. A few minutes later I drove past Temple Beth-el, the oldest synagogue building still in use west of the Mississippi River, built in 1883. Had I driven a little longer I would have gone past the Islamic Center of Jefferson City. Just outside of town is the Unity Church of Peace. And I have spoken several times at local Unitarian Universalist meetings. There even is a loose-knit organization of Atheists that gets together from time to time in Jefferson City.

Most Sundays you’ll find me at the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), one block from the Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopal Churches, kind of a mainstream nest in downtown Jefferson City.

All of these mainline and other organizations are free in this nation to worship as they please and who they please or to worship nobody if they please. This nation for centuries has tried to keep church and state apart. The degree to which that has succeeded has been discussed for as long as the effort has been made. But the underlying sentiment behind it has been that this nation is a nation where believers or non-believers of various ilks are equal in the eyes of the law and as such are to be respected as citizens of this country. Refining that concept has produced court rulings by the dozens without eliminating the attitudes by some that they are closer to God than others are. In the end, however, we think as an individual that God will decide who is closest to God and that the human tendency to separate ourselves on that basis is spiritually counterproductive.

Putting Jesus atop our Capitol would not recognize the diversity of faith or non-faith that is a perpetual part of American history, one of the things that sets our nation apart from many others.

Representative Moon sees things differently and he is entitled as a citizen and a man of faith to do so. Those who dismiss him out-of-hand are being dismissive of our heritage. A healthy and respectful discussion of the issues surrounding his feelings is not likely to produce many converts in any direction but the freedom we have to explore competing points of view on subjects such as this is part of who we are as a nation.

I’m reading George M. Marsden’s Religion in American Culture, a broad survey of the role of religion in creating and shaping our country. One of the things he writes about early in the book is the world that produced those we call Pilgrims and Puritans, people who came out of a Europe in which the Catholic Church only a century earlier had split into the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, and in which more recently the Roman church had divided through the Protestant Reformation (“Protestant,” as in one who protests), and the further divisions within Protestantism that was free of Catholic doctrine. In England, where King Henry VIII created his own church rather than follow dictates from Rome, a further split occurred between those who believed the Anglican Church could be cleansed from within and those whose disagreements with that church led to persecution and their eventual flight to Holland and ultimately to the New World.

But those who landed here in 1620 and the Puritans who came a few years later had a low tolerance for non-traditional interpretations within their ranks, the foremost result being Roger Williams’ banishment from Massachusetts Bay to found what is now Rhode Island as a refuge for those who felt church and state should not be one.

Williams was a co-founder of the Baptist Church in America with Dr. John Clarke. Marsden says, “Baptists carried the Puritan emphasis on conversion a step further by insisting that baptism of adults symbolizes spiritual separation from the world. Interested above all in the spiritual purity of the church, early Baptists believed in separation from the state Church of England, rather than working for reform from within, as most Puritans believed…Williams thus championed the separation of church and state, but not for the same reason that later Enlightenment thinkers, such as Thomas Jefferson, did. Jefferson was concerned that the church would corrupt the state. Williams feared that the state would corrupt the church.”

The challenges of survival by settlers who faced another new world beyond the Alleghenies led to new denominations that recognized individual responses to God rather than responses to the structured and creedal churches of the colonies.

We might have oversimplified what Marsden spent many pages explaining, but we remain today a nation of conversion-oriented, structured religions and religions that place greater emphasis on individual responses to faith outside of church-required adherence to doctrines.

One might be more likely to insist Jesus should be atop the Capitol. The other might be more likely to insist a state showing a preference for a particular faith tradition should not be what the country is all about. This discussion about the proper place of religion in American life is an ongoing one. Fortunately, we live in a nation that allows that discussion. We must be vigilant in protecting that right.

So Representative Moon is neither wrong nor right. He’s just being an American citizen and in his advocacy for Jesus being on top of the Capitol, he has reminded us of the differences that have shaped our free country and remain part of the diverse dialogue that is welcome here. We are glad that he can be such a citizen. And glad that those who respectfully disagree with him are Americans, too.

Notes from a quiet street (holidays edition)

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We’re puzzled by President Trump’s pronouncements that some people are “human scum.” Apparently he has forgotten that there are good people on both sides.

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Ceres will be on display this weekend at the capitol before she’s hoisted back into her position on top of the dome. She’s back from her year-long “spa treatment” at a bronze restoration company in Chicago. We expect a lot of folks to go to the capitol to see her before she goes back up. Who knows, it might be another ninety years before she comes back down.

However, the folks in Chicago did some detailed 3D scans of the old girl. The Capitol Commission hasn’t decided what to do with them yet. There’s been some discussion of creating a Ceres hologram somewhere inside the capitol so we won’t have to wait ninety more years to see her up close.   Your observer has advocated for years flying drones or something around the dome to do just such a scan so 12-inch reproductions could be made and sold at the tour desk.

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Speaking of Ceres: One of the questions we’ve been asked several times is whether she was supposed to face north instead of south (or at least, north as we think of it in Jefferson City—an observation about that in a minute). We think she was always intended to face south.

North advocates say it’s odd that the patron goddess of agriculture isn’t facing the most fertile farmlands in Missouri and is instead facing the rocky Ozarks.   Not really. She’s facing south because that’s the entrance to the capitol and she’s extending a hand of welcome to those who come to the building. It wouldn’t do to have her turn her back on visitors.

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Now, is she facing south? No. We think she’s actually facing, uh, southwest.   Columbia is north; Fulton is northeast. Check a map that shows where north is.

Many years ago, Jefferson City officials realized house numbering was a scrambled mess because some houses, say, were in the 400 block of West Kneecap Street while houses right behind them on West Headache Avenue had numbers starting with 700. It wasn’t a problem in the earliest days of the town when it was a nice grid. But when it spread and the streets began to snake along the high ground that conformed to the meandering river channel, numbering became scrambled.

It was a huge deal when the city launched a house renumbering program that brought things into a more sensible system that would make it easier for police or fire or other service people to find out where something was happening or had happened. A lot of folks didn’t like getting new numbers but they had to go out to Westlake/s Hardware or maybe uptown of Schleer Brothers Hardware Store (imagine that: a hardware store on High Street. And a grocery store. And a dime store.) and buy new numbers to put on their walls, mail boxes, and doors.   But they finally did.

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We’ve often observed that our church as a hymn, “In Christ there is no east or west; In him, no north or south” and we’ve suggested the substitution of “Jefferson City” for “Christ” would give us an accurate city anthem.

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Our city has a contest for the best house Christmas lights. There’s a place just up the block from our house where the folks seem to take great delight in the darkening months’ holidays, not with lights but with balloons. This year there are inflatable figures of Snoopy and Charlie Brown and other Christmasy things. We always look forward to the fall holiday season when we see the latest Halloween inflatables , then the Thanksgiving ones and, now, Charlie Brown figures, including Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel, complete with turning propeller.

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Something from the Jefferson City Daily Democrat-Tribune in June of 1914, a headline reading “Beautifying the River Front.”

Nothing is more unsightly than railroad tracks between a city and its river front. It was a mistake to ever permit the railroad tracks to be constructed between the city and the river. Under the circumstances, there is nothing to be done but to arch over the tracks, or at least a part of them…

The article was about an early drawing by the architects of the soon-to-be new capitol showing a terrace over the tracks on the capitol’s river side with steps leading down to the water. That part of the capitol project was never done, of course. But the often-maligned proposed Bicentennial Bridge might materialize that hope of 105-years ago.

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For the record, the last time a state official was impeached and removed from office in Missouri was when Secretary of State Judi Moriarty was removed from office for post-dating her son’s document filing as a candidate for the Missouri House. Eric Greitens quit before articles of impeachment could be taken up in the House. In about 1968 there was a circuit judge in St. Louis named John Hasler who had taken a fatherly interest in a woman whose divorce case he was hearing. But he resigned before the trial could be held. And the last impeachment before THAT was probably State Treasurer Larry Brunk in the 1930s, who was charged by the House but the Senate couldn’t get a two-thirds vote against him. Brunk had been a state senator a few years earlier. The Brunk case is considered one of the reasons the new constitution adopted in 1945 eliminated trial by the Senate and put it before the Missouri Supreme Court.

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And in each of those cases, we are sure there were good people on both sides.