Category Archives: holidays

Would He Really Have Said This? 

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We wonder if he even saw it. Or read it.

He certainly didn’t write it because he only writes in the middle of the night and what he writes is semi-incoherent and dotted with numerous misspellings, usually lacking honesty, is often loaded with hateful attacks on those who dare to disagree with him, and id intended only to keep his base inflamed.

His Holy Week statement, issued on Palm Sunday, clearly was written by someone else. It is typically Trump, though, in that it reeks of faux sincerity and reverence.

Last Sunday, the day the statement was released, the White House listed his schedule for the day:

12:01 AM The President arrives Palm Beach International Airport
12:10 AM  The President departs Palm Beach International Airport en route Mar-a-Lago
12:25 AM  The President arrives Mar-a-Lago

10:26 AM  The President departs Mar-a-Lago for his golf club

10:34 AM  The President arrives at Trump International Golf Club West Palm Beach

5:00 PM  The President departs Mar-a-Lago enroute to Palm Beach International

5:15 PM  The President Arrives Palm Beach International

5:25 PM The President departs Palm Beach International en route Joint Base Andrews

7:30 PM  The President arrives at Joint Base Andrews

7:40 PM  The President departs Joint Base Andrews en route to the White House

7:50 PM  The President arrives at The White House.

We doubt that The President paused during his afternoon of worshiping the putter and the 5-iron and the 2-wood to have a prayer to celebrate Christ’s death and resurrection, as he promised that he would be doing.

This Holy Week, Melania and I join in prayer with Christians celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ — the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity.

Beginning with Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and culminating in the Paschal Triduum, which begins on Holy Thursday with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, followed by Good Friday, and reaching its pinnacle in the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night. This week is a time of reflection for Christians to memorialize Jesus’ crucifixion—and to prepare their hearts, minds, and souls for His miraculous Resurrection from the dead.

During this sacred week, we acknowledge that the glory of Easter Sunday cannot come without the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on the cross. In His final hours on Earth, Christ willingly endured excruciating pain, torture, and execution on the cross out of a deep and abiding love for all His creation. Through His suffering, we have redemption. Through His death, we are forgiven of our sins. Through His Resurrection, we have hope of eternal life. On Easter morning, the stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty, and light prevails over darkness — signaling that death does not have the final word.

This Holy Week, my Administration renews its promise to defend the Christian faith in our schools, military, workplaces, hospitals, and halls of government. We will never waver in safeguarding the right to religious liberty, upholding the dignity of life, and protecting God in our public square.

As we focus on Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, we look to His love, humility, and obedience — even in life’s most difficult and uncertain moments. This week, we pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our beloved Nation. We pray that America will remain a beacon of faith, hope, and freedom for the entire world, and we pray to achieve a future that reflects the truth, beauty, and goodness of Christ’s eternal kingdom in Heaven.

May God bless you and your family during this special time of year and may He continue to bless the United States of America.

It makes sense, doesn’t it?  The President, who proclaimed that he would “celebrate the crucifixion and resurrection” would observe Palm Sunday by playing golf all day surrounded by PALM TREES.

Now that’s a sincere Christian for you. It’s a definition of Palm Sunday most of us never considered.

We wonder if he defended the Christian faith by mentioning the Savior’s name on the golf course, perhaps when one of his shots went the wrong way.

We have read some news accounts of The President’s Palm Sunday looking for accounts of Melania joining him in this celebration and observance, as he said she would. But nobody reported her presence.  It was probably a plot by the Associated Press to ignore her presence.  Had to be. Or maybe it was CNN or CBS or ABC or NBC.

And we wonder how his prayer “that America will remain a beacon of faith, hope, and freedom for the entire world” with a future “that reflects the truth, beauty, and goodness of Christ’s eternal kingdom in Heaven” sounds to the tens of thousands of people who are targets of his revenge and his deportations.

They didn’t have time for Palm Sunday golf.  They were too busy—really praying.

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The Meritocracy

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We are waiting to see the day the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion do two things.

  1. Proclaims Black History Month will not be recognized.
  2. Eliminate the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Black History Month began as “Negro History Week” in 1926 at the urging of one of our nation’s greatest Black historians, Carter G. Woodson, and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, with Woodson saying it was important to the cultural survival of Blacks within the broader White society.  The week was observed in the February week when the birth of Abraham Lincoln was celebrated.

He commented, “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated. The American Indian left no continuous record. He did not appreciate the value of tradition; and where is he today? The Hebrew keenly appreciated the value of tradition, as is attested by the Bible itself. In spite of worldwide persecution, therefore, he is a great factor in our civilization.”

The Black United Students group and Black educators at Kent State University proposed in 1969 that the week-long celebration become Black History Month.  The first observance was in 1970.

President Ford endorsed it as part of the national Bicentennial celebrations in 1976.

But with the arrival of the second Trump term, Black History Month appeared to be on somewhat shaky ground.  One of the first things Trump did when resuming office was to sign an executive order ending “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government.”

Within a matter of days, agencies were circulating memos, many of them announcing in terms similar to the line used by a Justice Department memo, “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”

To the surprise of some, Trump did sign a proclamation recognizing Black History Month at the start of February calling on American citizens and public officials to “celebrate the contributions of so many black American patriots who have indelibly shaped our Nation’s history.”

EEOC:

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission exists but President Trump has rendered it useless, as he has the National Labor Relations Board.

Acting quickly after resuming office, he fired then-Chairman Charlotte Burrows, a Biden appointee who became the first chairman ever fired by a President. He also canned Commissioner Joycelyn Samuels, one of his own appointees from 2020, leaving only two members of the five-member commission. Trump appointee Andrea Lucas was named the acting chair. She is identified as a strong opponent of DEI programs, which she says promote reverse discrimination. The also is known as a critic of legal protections for transgender people. Her term expires July 1.

Failure to reappoint her or to name a successor will leave only Kalpana Kotagel on the commission.  Kotagel is an African-American employment attorney appointee of President Biden. Her term expires in 2027, potentially leaving the commission with no members.

Kotagel is doomed.  She’s the kind of person Trump loves to hate. As a private attorney, she specialized in DEI cases, particularly involving the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and has represented clients in other civil rights employment actions. Four years ago she worked with the Transgender Defense and Educational Fund when Aetna Insurance Company granted access to breast augmentation surgery for male policyholders who underwent surgery to become women. She also is a member of the Advisory Board Office of Equity and Inclusion at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trump criticized the EEOC in his first term as ineffective and took no steps to make it so. The commission’s staff has been cut by more than 40% by Congress.

About the same time he was ravaging the EEOC, Trump fired National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, a Biden appointee, and Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB also with just two members and three vacancies, thus unable to do any business.

In place of these and other programs created to insure qualified people have equal chances to become employed, Trump trumpets the meritocracy, saying people should be hired on the basis of merit, not race or other factors. But he has dismantled the agencies that were established to make sure that everybody was considered on their merits.

And he has celebrated the month by firing a lot of Black American patriots—including, just last week, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who are shaping our present.  Someday our present will be someone else’s past.  We hope those of the future are harsh in their judgments of our present and the President who is making it.

LIGHT

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Just in time—–

The Christmas Cactus is blooming.

It’s called a Schlumberia in formal language.  The story is told of a Jesuit missionary, Father Jose, working Bolivia to convert the natives but failing.  He could not convince them of the Christmas story but as he was praying on Christmas eve, he heard them singing a hymn he had taught them, the children coming toward him with a plant with beautiful flowers that they gave him to decorate his altar.

It is summer in Bolivia now, in the southern hemisphere.

We checked the weather in the northern hemisphere, Bethlehem on the West Bank of Israel to be precise, a couple of day ago and we learned that it’s going to be in the upper 50s and lower 60s there today.  December is the third coldest month of the year there—generally damp and mild with highs of about 59 and average lows of 43.

Okay, that’s not bad.  A baby probably would be quite comfortable in a stable and many people in those days lived in the same house with their animals anyway.

We don’t know exactly when He was born; some celebrate it on December 25 but others celebrate it on January 7. In fact, there are those who study ancient history who think he was born in 4 BCE.

That’s an archaeological term that doesn’t try to pin things down too exactly in a time when there were no calendars from the bank or the insurance company or the university hanging on the wall. “BCE” is an archaeological term that denotes periods, not exact dates. It means, “Before the Christian Era,”  a secular starting point that lacks specificity but defines eras when events happened.

So, Jesus—some calculate—was born four years before the start of the Christian Era. BCE, therefore is a way of dating things in a way that works for Christians, Buddhists, followers of Shinto, the Hindus—whatever.

To most of those who peruse these lines, today is December 25, 2024, according to the Gregorian Calendar that we use, introduced in 1752.  In adjusting away from the Julian calendar, which dates to 45BCE, some days had to be eliminated—ten of them. We won’t go into all of the explanation except  to note the Gregorian Calendar is a more accurate way to measure the time it takes us to go around the sun.

But today, as it as well as we can determine, it’s 24 Kislev, 5785 on the Jewish calendar and Jumadal Akhira 16, 1446 AH on the Muslim calendar.

Scientists looking at other recorded events, Biblical references, and seasons suggest the birth happened in  mid to late September. The conception, they calculate, is what happened about now in the Jewish month of Kislev.

But really, it doesn’t matter, does it?  This is the day we celebrate the birth.

Have you noticed the days are getting longer now?  The winter solstice has passed and it’s getting lighter…..at the time we celebrate the birth of Him who is called “the light of the world”  There are more than 35 verses in the Bible using that phrase or something akin to it.

We celebrate His birth as light coming into the world.

Perhaps some time today there will a minute or two to think about that.  And about how His followers themselves can be lights to others.  Every day.

(photo credits:  Bob Priddy. The candle is a painting done by Sara Elizabeth Priddy for her Grandma Priddy a long time ago.)

Some Children See Him—

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One of the first pieces of Christmas music heard in our sanctuary during Advent was played on the piano  by Ken Kehner during communion. It’s one of my favorites, from one of my favorite Christmas albums—This is Christmas by the Voices of Jimmy Joyce. It’s called “Some Children See Him.”

The album is sixty years old this year, which is the seventieth year since the death of composer Alfred S. Burt Jr., a preacher’s kid from Michigan. His father, Episcopal Bishop Bates Burt, began sending family members and members of his church Christmas cards each year (beginning in 1922) with original Christmas carols—words and music.

When young Alfred got his music degree from the University of Michigan, dad asked him to take over the music-writing for the annual family carol.  He wrote his first one in 1942 while in the Army. His last collaboration with his father was in 1947, shortly before his father’s death. After that, he composed the music and the organist at his father’s church, Wihla Hutson, wrote the lyrics.

When Alfred Burt died of lung cancer in 1954 at the age of 33, only one of his songs had been performed in public. But he knew his songs were being recorded by an all-star cast of singers at Columbia records because he was well enough to conduct the choir in the recording session. He finished his last carol two weeks before he died.

The Jimmy Joyce Singers album was the first album that had all fifteen of his carols.

Most of the carols are gentle harmonies. But “Some Children See Him” is my favorite. Here are Wihla’s lyrics:

Some children see Him lily white,
the baby Jesus born this night.
Some children see Him lily white,
with tresses soft and fair.

Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
The Lord of heav’n to earth come down.
Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
with dark and heavy hair.

Some children see Him almond-eyed,
this Savior whom we kneel beside.
some children see Him almond-eyed,
with skin of yellow hue.

Some children see Him dark as they,
sweet Mary’s Son to whom we pray.
Some children see him dark as they,
and, ah! they love Him, too!

The children in each different place
will see the baby Jesus’ face
like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,
and filled with holy light.

O lay aside each earthly thing
and with thy heart as offering,
come worship now the infant King.
‘Tis love that’s born tonight!

(38) Some Children See Him by Alfred Burt – The Colorado Choir – YouTube

The Alfred Burt Christmas card tradition was revived in 2001 by his grandniece, composer Abbie Betinis. She introduces her new carol each holiday season on Minnesota Public Radio.

If  you are not familiar with the Alfred Burt carols, Youtube has the complete Jimmy Joyce album and various other renditions of his carols. Please consider them my gift to you this year.

(38) Jimmy Joyce – This Is Christmas: The Complete Collection Of Alfred S. Burt Carols in 4k (1964) – YouTube

 

Holiday

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Today is Martin Luther King Day.

Yesterday, we were among a few who went to church in person on a minus-4 degree morning.  Many more worshipped from the warmth of their home through our Facebook page.  I suggested to the minister that this would be a day for an old-fashioned hell-fire sermon, that the grape juice for communion should be warmed and the communion wafers be toasted.

We sang a hymn that seems appropriate on this holiday.  We often like to take hymns and turn them into the original prose or poem they were originally.  These lyrics were written by Shirley Erena Murray and copyrighted in 1998 by Hope Publishing Company. The tune is called “For Everyone Born.”

For everyone born, a place at the table. 

For everyone born, clean water and bread, a shelter, a space, a safe place for growing.

For everyone born, a star overhead, 

Refrain:And God will delight when we are creators of justice and joy, compassion and peace;

Yes, God will delight when we are creators of justice, justice and joy! joy! 

For all who share life, a place at the table, revising the roles, deciding the share, with wisdom and grace, dividing the power.

For all who share life, a system that’s fair.

For those we neglect, a place at the table, a voice to be heard, a part in the song, the hands of a child in hands that are wrinkled, for those we neglect, the right to belong, 

For all who have breath, a place at the table, a covenant shared, a welcoming space, a rainbow of race and gender and color. 

For all who have breath, the chalice of grace, 

For you and for me, a place at the table, though wounded and sore, with need to forgive, in anger, in hurt, a mindset of mercy, for you and for me, a new way to live, 

For everyone born, a place at the table, to live without fear, and simply to be—to work, to speak out, to witness and worship.

For everyone born, the right to be free. 

There are scriptural references attached to this hymn:

Genesis 1:27: So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

And Luke 14:12-24: Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,  and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, ou will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

When one of those at the table with him heard this, he said to Jesus, “Blessed is the one who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of God.”

Jesus replied: “A certain man was preparing a great banquet and invited many guests. At the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said, ‘I have just bought a field, and I must go and see it. Please excuse me.’ Another said, ‘I have just bought five yoke of oxen, and I’m on my way to try them out. Please excuse me.’ Still another said, ‘I just got married, so I can’t come.’”

 “The servant came back and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and ordered his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’ ‘Sir,’ the servant said, ‘what you ordered has been done, but there is still room.’ Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.  I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’”

Coretta Scott King wrote on this day eight years ago:

On this day we commemorate Dr. King’s great dream of a vibrant, multiracial nation united in justice, peace and reconciliation; a nation that has a place at the table for children of every race and room at the inn for every needy child. We are called on this holiday, not merely to honor, but to celebrate the values of equality, tolerance and interracial sister and brotherhood he so compellingly expressed in his great dream for America.

It is a day of interracial and intercultural cooperation and sharing. No other day of the year brings so many peoples from different cultural backgrounds together in such a vibrant spirit of brother and sisterhood. Whether you are African­American, Hispanic or Native American, whether you are Caucasian or Asian­American, you are part of the great dream Martin Luther King, Jr. had for America. This is not a black holiday; it is a peoples’ holiday. And it is the young people of all races and religions who hold the keys to the fulfillment of his dream.

Or as that hymn says:

For everyone born, a place at the table, to live without fear, and simply to be—to work, to speak out, to witness and worship.For everyone born, the right to be free.We still have far to go, don’t we?  “Miles to go before we sleep,” write poet Robert Frost.  But no matter how much time we have, we have time to create a world where all are welcome at the table, all have a right to be free.

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A Christmas Carol Some Christians Wouldn’t Want to Sing

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A final thought about Christmas before we focus on the challenges of 2024:

Ken Kehner, the extremely talented pianist who accompanies our great Director of Music Ministry and incredible organist, Greten Hudepohl, at the First Christian Church here in Jefferson City,played a Christmas hymn during our communion service yesterday.  I recognized it on about the second note as one of my favorites.

It’s one of the Alfred Burt carols and it’s too bad that they are not better known or more frequently performed.

Alfred Burt was the son of a Michigan Episcopal cleric who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1942 as an outstanding student in music theory, and played trumpet, primarily jazz trumpet, in orchestras and bands.  But once a year, for 15 years between 1942 and 1954, he carried on his father’s tradition of writing a Christmas carol that was sent out to friends instead of Christmas cards. He was only 34 when he died.

Actually, Burt wrote the music and Wihla Houston, the organist at the senior Burt’s Church wrote the lyrics.

In 1951, they produced “Some Children See Him:”

Some children see Him lily white
The baby Jesus born this night
Some children see Him lily white
With tresses soft and fair.

 

Some children see Him bronzed and brown
The Lord of heaven to earth come down
Some children see Him bronzed and brown
With dark and heavy hair.

 

Some children see Him almond-eyed
This Savior whom we kneel beside
Some children see Him almond-eyed
With skin of yellow hue.

Some children see Him dark as they
Sweet Mary’s Son to whom we pray
Some children see him dark as they
And they love Him, too.

 

The children each in different place
Will see the baby Jesus’s face
Like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace
And filled with holy light

 

O lay aside each earthly thing
And with thy heart as offering
Come worship now the infant King
To his love that’s born tonight. 

This should be a hymn/carol of our time, a time when some who are convinced only their interpretation of Jesus is acceptable or that skin color is a measure of humanity, opportunity, and place, or that believe origins presently or long ago define the quantity of equality to be granted.

But there will be some calling themselves Christians who will reject the idea that other faces see the face of Jesus differently.

Alfred Burt had lung cancer.  He died on February 7, 1954, just two days after he finished scoring the last of his songs, “The Star Carol.”

Ten years later, the singing group “The Voices of Jimmy Joyce, recorded Burt’s carols. It has been in my heart for all these years since.  Although Christmas already is fading from our lives and memories on this New Year’s Day, it might be worth listening to Alfred Burt’s carols that I hope stay with you, too, from Christmas to Christmas.

(58) Jimmy Joyce – This Is Christmas: The Complete Collection Of Alfred S. Burt Carols in 4k (1964) – YouTube

A grander performance was done by the Boston Boys Choir and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus accompanied by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the baton of John Willliams, the great movie theme composer.

(58) John Williams: The Carols of Alfred Burt – YouTube

Alfred Burt, who died 70 years ago this year, gave us a great and abiding gift with the carols he and Wihla Houston composed.

Would that we could see each other the way “Some Children See Him.”

Suppose—-(A Brief Christmas Thought)

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Suppose the only thing we know about Abraham Lincoln was written by a few of the members of his cabinet many years after his assassination.

Suppose nobody had thought him important enough to preserve the cabin in which he was born (the one on display in Kentucky has a lot of questions about its validity) and mark it as a historic site.

Suppose none of his writings survived and only a few of his speeches and only a few anecdotes of what he said were preserved.

Suppose the address of the place where he died was lost to history.

Suppose nobody got around to taking his picture.

What would we think of Abraham Lincoln today?

Would there be a Lincoln’s birthday holiday?

—-such as the person’s birth billions of people are celebrating now?

Must have been a pretty remarkable guy.

The one we’re whose birth we’re celebrating  today.

The Shrinking Book of Numbers

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Two things of note happened in our household during Thanksgiving week.  On the day itself, Nancy and I celebrated our wedding anniversary.

Only 56 of them.

The national record for longest marriage is that of Herbert Fisher Sr. and Zelmyra George Fisher, who made it to 86 years, 290 days before Herbert died on February 27, 2011.  Here’s the happy couple on their wedding day:

We are within 30 years and change of setting a new United States record.

The all-time record is held by Karam and Kartari Chand, who were married in India but lived in England when Karam ended 90 years, 291 days of married life by dying on September 30, 2016.  He was 110.

So we’re 34 years and change from setting a new world’s record.

We haven’t discussed it but I’m in if she is.

Incidentally, the longest current marriage is between Evert Stolpe and Annni Lepisto Stolpe, who are still hitched in Narpes, Ostrobothnia, Finland after (as of Thanksgiving Day in the USA) 82 years, 244 days.

Studies show (What The Average Marriage Length In US Says About Your Divorce Risk (fatherly.com) that the highest risk of divorce happens within the first two years of marriage, before there are children to complicate things. The possibilities flare up between years 5-8, the infamous “Seven Year Itch” period. But years 15-20 are average but growing because in this time of late marriages, people reach their 50s, the kids are gone, and who wants to stick around with this person through their declining years when there’s fun to be had?  “Gray Divorce” is increasing.

Apparently, we missed our chances.  Now, we’re stuck with each other, which is fortunately very good for both of us.

When I sent my parents a letter informing them of the upcoming nuptials in 1967, my father wrote back to note of congratulations and hope that we would be as happy as my parents had been.  “We never thought about divorce,” he wrote.  “Murder, sometimes, but never divorce.”

Or something like that.

Bowling Green University’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research published a study that only seven percent of American marriages make it to 50 years or more.

Hooray for Us!!!

The second thing that happened during Thanksgiving week was the arrival of the telephone book.

The 1967 phone book was the first one in Jefferson City to have my name in it.  Right there, Priddy, Bob  1519 E. Miller Street.  It was a third floor attic turned into an apartment reached by a laong narrow flight of stairs. The kitchen was the biggest room in the place.  I lived there for about three months before we moved in together after returning from our Thanksgiving Holiday honeymoon in St. Louis (how old-fashioned that must seem in today’s relationships).

The house number later was changed when the city decided to renumber houses so that there was some logic to addresses (so first responders had a better idea where the fire was or the heart attack or the overexuberant family disagreement).

We later moved to an apartment closer to my work, which was a radio station in a building that no longer exists on Capitol Avenue (the radio station doesn’t exist in Jefferson City, either—it’s one of several radio formats crammed into a single building in Columbia).  Then to a rented house where our Ericofon sat on the floor between the bedroom and the living room.

(Have you seen the video of two 17-year olds trying to figure out how a dial phone works?  Check it out at (107) Hilarious video show 17 year old teenagers baffled by rotary phone – YouTube or another example at (107) Rotary Phone Challenge for Students in 2022 – YouTube).   I’d hate to see them figure out an Ericofon, which was the first phone Nancy and I had as a married couple.

For any younger readers: the dial was on the bottom and there was a button that was pressed when the phone was put down that disconnected the call.

Look back at that 1967 phone book’s cover showing Capital City Telephone Company serving Jefferson City. But there also was Midstate New Bloomfield, Midstate Centertown, Mistate Taos, Midstate Brazito, Midstate Eugene and dial St. Thommas. It had 77 pages of residential numbers with “favored businesses”—meaning they paid more—set in bolfface and 128 Yellow Pages advertising businesses by category.

(United Telephone moved in in the early 70s.  One day I spied a company pickup truck with the first name of the company misspelled, “Untied,” on one of its doors.  I quickly called the newspaper, which ran an embarrassing picture on the front page the next day.)

The phone book for 2020-2021 was 234 Yellow Pages and 70 White Pages. It was small and obviously a lot thinner than that historic 1967 book.  But it was about half the size, top to bottom and side to side—about the dimensions of what is known in the book biz as a “trade paperback” edition—about the size of my Across Our Wide Missouri books. But way thinner.

The new pre-Thanksgiving book had 16 pages of “featured businesses.”  It has 118 Yellow Pages.  And it has only twelve white pages—people who still have land lines.

Nancy found the names of a couple of friends on those pages. I have learned of a couple of other wons.  I felt a strong urge to call them, land line to land line, to celebrate our distinctions.  But I was interrupted by dinner.

Here’s the cover of the new one.

Look at the list of towns. It takes 21 of them to generate just twelve white pages.  I’m not sure how important it is for somebody from Tipoton, 36 miles to the west on Highway 50, to have my home number in Jefferson City but what few people there have phones that don’t fit in their pockets have it now.  Same goes for people in Syracuse, 41 miles away from our house, or Otterville (where the James gang pulled one of its last train robberies), 49 miles away, or Smithton, named for railroad promoter George R. Smith who was so disappointed the town didn’t want a railroad that he moved a few miles farther west and founded another town that would be more welcoming—naming it for his daughter Sarah whose nickname was “Sed” and therefore the town became Sedalia.

Well, we got a little carried away there. But the phone book lets a person with a landline 54 miles west of my landline to call me.  The number is small enough we might invite everyone to a picnic at the Memorial Park Pavilion. We will provide a small Waldorf Salad, without marshmallows because I can’t eat them anymore.

Phone books are one of many commonplace things that remind us of the changes in our world over time.

Fifty-six years of marriage and phone books.  And phones.  We now have three numbers, two of which reside in our pockets unless we’ve forgotten where we put them.

Has anybody ever kept track of how many hours in a year we spend looking for our cell phones?

Anyway—

56 years of family and phones.  And we’re in no mood to hang up.

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It’s a holiday

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And for the first time ever, the blog is taking the day off.

We’ll be back with sports tomorrow and on Wednesday we’ll offer more penetrating analysis of something or other.

But we don’t want you to go away unenlightened. 

This is one of the great places on old Highway 66, which runs parallel to Interstate 44 as one crosses from Oklahoma to the panhandle of Texas.  Or as two or three or more cross into the panhandle.

It’s just down the street from the Dairy Queen in Shamrock, Texas—where we stop for foot-long chili dogs and Dilly Bars, if we time it right for lunch on the way to New Mexico.

Shamrock is a real little town.  Wish it had enough money to bury that power line.

Your faithful correspondent and observer of the passing scene,

b

July 4th came on July 3rd this year  

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Cartoonist Walt Kelly years ago had a popular cartoon strip called “Pogo,” about a possum and his animal friends who lived in a Georgia swamp.  Every now and then, one of them would proclaim, “Friday the 13th came on Wednesday this month!” or whatever day was appropriate.

So today we celebrate Independence Day. We can’t say we’re celebrating the fourth of July because that’s not util tomorrow.  And actually, there are several dates we can observe because the Declaration was a work in progress for almot a month before Congress adopted it.

John Adams thought July 2nd would be the day to be remembered. He wrote to wife Abigail 247 years ago today, “The second day of July 1776 will be the most memorable Epocha, in the history of America…It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forever more.”

Why July 2ns?

Let’s go back to June 7th when delegate Richard Henry Lee of Virginia proposed a resolution “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

Four days later a committee of five—Adams, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson—was appointed to write a document expressing those views. Congress recessed until July 1 while the document was written.

Jefferson reluctantly took the job of writing the first draft.  But he alone did not write the Declaration.  Adams and Franklin were his chief editors.  His first draft contained about 1850 words.

The five-member committee made about four dozen changes. Other committees of the Continental Congress made 39 more. Jefferson made five.  In the end of the document was reduced by about 25 percent, to 1,337 words.

One immediate change was made by Benjamin Franklin in the most-cited part of the document—“all men are created equal”

The idea is not Jefferson’s alone.  He borrowed the sentiment from fellow Virginian George Mason, the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights that had been adopted a month earlier, saying, “all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

Jefferson re-wrote that idea:

“We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty,& the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these ends, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, & to institute new government, laying it’s foundation on such principles & organizing it’s powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety & happiness.”

Jefferson took an already wordy sentiment and made it even more wordy.

And this is where Franklin made a significant change.  He immediately removed “sacred and undeniable” and inserted “self evident.”  Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson says Franklin argued that the new nation was to be one in which rights come from rational thinking and the consent of the governed, not from the dictates or dogmas of religion.

The document mentions God or substitute names for God several times but it does so in neutral phrasing.  This is not a Catholic God.  This is not a Christian God—in those days there were plenty of people who believed Catholics weren’t Christians and Protestant belief organizations were actively splintering into different denominations with differing interpretations of God and the Scriptures.

The God in the Declaration is nature’s God, not a denominational God for a reason.

In Jefferson’s state of Virginia, between 1768 and 1774, about half of the Baptist ministers were jailed for preaching.  In Northampton, Massachusetts—Adams’ state—eighteen Baptist ministers were jailed in one year for refusing to pay taxes to support the Congregational minister in the town.

The sentiment about God had been voiced in the very first sentence of the Declaration that asserted that the colonies are separate from England and as a unified entity assume “among the powers of the earth and the separate and equal stations to which “the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them.”

The Congress resumed its session on July 2 and the Lee Resolution was adopted and debate on the Declaration began immediately.  For the next two days, Congress made changes—the most significant one being the removal of a section that attacked slavery.

It was late in the morning of July 4 when the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration and the handwritten original with all of its changes was given to printer John Dunlap.  But until August 2, the only signature on the document was that of convention president John Hancock.

The document was not signed July 4th—the famous painting by John Trumbull showing the five-man committee turning in the document with other members seated behind them.

Most members of the Continental Congress did not sign the Declaration until August 27.  And there were stragglers: Richard Henry Lee, Elbridge Gerry (of gerrymander infamy), and Oliver Walcott did not sign until November 19.  And it was not until 1781 that Thomas McKean added his signature.

McKean had left Congress a few days after adoption of the Declaration to become a colonel in the Pennsylvania Association, a military unit despite its name created by Franklin.

They promised their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor when they signed the document.  Several, tragically, kept that promise.

Five of them were captured by the British, branded as traitors, and died after being tortured. A dozen saw their homes burned.  The sons of two of them were killed in the war. Nine of them fought in the war and died of their wounds or the hardships of the war.

Lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.  Those words and the passionate commitments behind them meant something in 1776.

As we honor them today, we should be haunted by those words and wonder what place they have in our political world today.