Category Archives: holidays

A Priddy Good Christmas Kiss

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A lot of people have visited towns bearing their names.  But your faithful correspondent’s name is not so common that it can be found in very many places.   There are two that I know of, one in the historic area of England, of Glastonbury and the territory of King Arthur, an area that legend records Jesus walked during the “lost years” not covered in the traditional Bible, taken there by his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, a tin merchant.  The area is known for its tin mines.  .

We shall not delve into a theological discussion today, however.  We shall instead tell you of a little Texas town and a seasonal crop that is a central part of the romance of the Christmas season and its seldom-discussed questionable reputation.

A few years ago, Nancy and I satisfied a long-held desire of mine to visit the other town named Priddy. It’s in Texas, south of Dallas and about 100 miles northwest of Austin, a community of 75-100 people with (it appeared to us) more cemeteries than churches, a one-bus school district (at least, we saw only one bus parked at the school), a former gas station that is now the town store, and some nice people.  Some might say it’s out in the middle of nowhere, of which Texas has plenty, but the people in the little town—as people in small towns throughout the nation—think it’s just fine, a good place to live, and to raise their children.  It’s the quality of the people, not their number, that makes any town a nice place to live.

Priddy, Texas is one of those towns that becomes important at certain times of the year.  And this is the time of year for Priddy because that area is prime growing area for one of the most important crops for Christmas.

Mistletoe.

The stuff mommy kissed Santa Claus under.

Scott W. Wright wrote for the Cox News Service thirty years ago, “This out-of-the-way little town is the place where the makings of romance are ripe for the picking. Where kisses are conceived.”

Mistletoe grows in a lot of places. It’s the state floral emblem of Oklahoma.

The Tiemann family has run a mistletoe business in Priddy for many years. Some years they don’t ship any because the stuff just didn’t grow in enough quantity to make processing and shipping worthwhile. Other times, there’s been a lot. Wright wrote about the company processing 2 ½ tons of it in one day.

Dozens of folks have gone out and harvested it in the good years and when they do, other plants are probably glad—as much as trees and bushes can show gratitude, because—and this was a surprise to us—mistletoe is a parasitic weed that attaches itself to trees and bushes.

Sort of takes the romance out of things, doesn’t it?

Kind of like some relationships, we suppose. Clinging vines.  Parasitic.

But it’s a symbol of how we can recycle something bad into something nice.

Kind of like relationships, too, we guess.

And who really cares, especially if two people can use it as an excuse for some public or private osculation?

Priddy, Texas never claimed to be a mistletoe capital of anything. It’s just been a big business in a little town on the vast central Texas plains.

We wonder if people who work on this weed all day find anything romantic about it.

And what do you suppose the school athletics teams call themselves in a town known for mistletoe?

The missiles?    Surely not to Toes.  The Parasites?   The Osculators?

Pirates, as the town sign says.  The Priddy Pirates.

As in people who steal kisses.

Under the mistletoe.

 

Sports fan Christmas gifts

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Let’s take a break from the heavy observations of the contemporary scene and help you with your Christmas shopping, particularly if you have sports fans on your list.

How about t-shirts, sweatshirts, or replica jerseys from some unique teams?  Your Christmas Shopping Advisor was prowling around on the internet the other day during the fifteen free minutes that our president was taking a breath or resting his thumbs and we found some teams your loved one would turn heads by wearing one of their t-shirts, caps, jerseys, or hoodies.

Some are based on movies or television shows:

Crash Davis’s Durham Bulls

and Corporal Klinger’s Toledo Mud Hens.

New York Knights, the fictional team of Roy Hobbs in The Natural

And for the female sports fan: Rockford Peaches—but no crying is allowed when wearing this shirt.

Minor league baseball teams:

Richmond Flying Squirrels

Hartford Yard Goats

Montgomery Biscuits

Modesto Nuts

Binghamton Rumble Ponies

Clinton Lumber Kings

Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp

Wichita Wing Nuts (although they folded in 2018)

Akron Rubber Ducks

Traverse City Beach Bums

Albuquerque Isotopes (the town is the home of the Atomic Museum)

New Orleans Baby Cakes

The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City has some great shirts or jerseys:

Homestead Grays

Kansas City Monarchs

New York Black Yankees

New York Elite Giants

Atlanta Black Crackers

Detroit Stars

Chicago American Giants

—and a lot of other great caps and other souvenirs

A few colleges:

University of California-Irvine Anteaters

Webster University Gorelocks—right here in Missouri

The University of Missouri-Kansas City Kangaroos

University of California Banana Slugs

Campbell Fighting Camels

Scottsdale Community College Fighting Artichokes

Presbyterian College Blue Hose

Youngstown State Penguins

Fort Wayne Mad Ants—actually it’s an NBA development league team

Hockey:

Toledo Walleyes

Halifax Mooseheads

Macon Whoopee

Odessa Jackalopes

Kentucky Thoroughblades

Lewiston Maineacs

Minot Minotaurs

And a wild card:

Thailand Tobacco Monopoly Football Club—we call it Soccer here.

We’ve also come across some great high school sports team names but we don’t know if any of them have t-shirts.  But here’s an article from T. R. Robertson about some of the more unusual names he has come across. You might check various websites to see if the schools do have a potential gift for you.

http://www.thevistapress.com/unusual-and-creative-high-school-team-names/

The Washington Football team in the NFL is playing without a name this year after being the Redskins since 1933.  Other teams with ethnic names at all levels and in all sports have come under some scrutiny from those who find the team names derogatory.  What we have seen in these shopping suggestions, however, is that there is no lack of creativity in naming sports teams. We’re confident that they’ll find a new name in Washington.  The Memorials.  The Navy Yards.  The Malls. The Air and Spaces. The K-Streeters.  Maybe they could name themselves after the man who designed the city, the Washington L’Enfants.  But probably not that one.

Or maybe they could name themselves after the city. The Washington Washingtons.  After all, George was a pretty good quarterback in his day. Stood six feet-two. And he could throw.  He did NOT throw a silver dollar across the Potomac River, which is about a mile wide at Mount Vernon, which is just south of town.  But his step-son, Washington Parke Custis, claimed he once threw a piece of slate across the Rappahannock, and threw another one over a natural bridge 215-feet high.

Whatever, we hope this has helped those of you with sports fans in your family have a happy and an unusual Christmas.

 

 

 

 

Us vs. It—part IX, prayer and politics.

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Last Sunday was Ascension Sunday in our faith tradition. Our minister remarked that he had seen a joke circulating on Facebook that when Jesus ascended into Heaven, he became the first person to work from home.

President Trump, just before the holiday weekend, ordered churches to open “right now” for face-to-face worship. As he has done in the past, he claimed exclusive power to override local and state orders for worship-in-place limits. The president who has proclaimed that it’s up to states and their governors to fight the Coronavirus, with his administration only as a backup, seemed to think on the issue of opening churches that governors and states (and mayors and cities) have no business standing in his way when it comes to letting congregations, uh, congregate.

As is often the case with this president, he was claiming a power he does not have and the motive behind a statement, a bluster, a tweet, a fabrication, a rant—whatever—is a matter of what benefits him.

It isn’t all that hard to see who President Trump really tried to please with his sudden “order.” Politico reported his bolt-from-the-blue announcement Friday was the result of “a sudden shift in support…among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his reelection campaign.” A couple of reputable religious polling organizations show a “staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics.” Both groups strongly supported Trump in 2016. The Public Religion Research Institute last month showed double-digit drops in favorability among mainline Protestants (down 18%), white Catholics (down 12%) and white evangelicals (down 11%).

Once again, it appears the president responded to his advisors who said, “You’ve got to do something!”

The PRRI cited above is run by Dr. Robert P. Jones, who has Baptist roots, a Master of Divinity degree from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar and who once was an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University in Springfield. His 2016 book, The End of White Christian America is a thoughtful study of cultural changes underway in our country, the fears of some that are motivating some political considerations and actions, and an analysis of how the white Christian culture that has dominated the course of this nation can maintain significance in the face of ongoing and inevitable cultural change.

The President last Friday didn’t answer any questions that inevitably would have been asked about his ongoing claim that he has absolute power over such things as this.

One indisputable thing he did say in his Friday announcement is, “In America, we need more prayer, not less.” He’s correct, of course, although he might not like many of the prayers that are being offered. Plus, prayers don’t have to be said inside a religious building to be heard. This observer has heard prayers on street corners. In fact, he and his wife were once stopped on a street in Philadelphia—near the cemetery where Benjamin Franklin is buried—but a great big fella who grabbed my right hand and her left and offered up a mighty prayer for our well-being. Scared the living bejeezus out of us for a second or two. But on reflection, it was kind of nice.

We know the President will be deeply disappointed and maybe angry that our church is ignoring his pronouncement. We don’t plan to gather in our sanctuary at First Christian in Jefferson City until June 7. We hope he doesn’t become upset that Governor Parson did not force us to gather there last Sunday.

It often has been observed that a church is not a building. When a pastor says, “Good morning, church,” the pastor is not talking to a structure but to a flock.

Someone, we tuned in too late to hear who it was on the radio Sunday morning, suggested the President probably hasn’t read the Bible very much, particularly the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus suggests (as we in these times might interpret it) that it is not necessary to gather in groups under a roof to pray. In fact, it seemed to suggest just the opposite:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you..

Baptist minister Rod Kennedy, who is doing an interim ministry at the First Baptist Church in Ottawa, Kansas, responded to the President’s demand that churches open “right now” on his Facebook page:

President Trump,

On behalf of my Baptist congregation, I want to thank you for your concern for houses of worship. We respectfully decline your suggestion that we reopen. The Frist Amendment, religious freedom, separation of church and state,—all that constitutes our right to ignore you.

I’m not drinking bleach, taking suspected drugs, or buying your demagoguery. We will let you know when our church decides to reopen. After all, we are a free, independent Baptist congregation and government interference iirritates our Baptist gumption.

When churches do re-open we would be happy to see you in church every Sunday. It might help you find some divine wisdom.

If you want to help, wear a mask, stop being divisive, make sure voting will be easy in November, and stop mocking, threatening, and demeaning others. It’s not a religious practice.

Kennedy, who describes himself as a “Catholic Baptist,” retired after twelve years at the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio. He has no trouble pointing out the differences he has with the more fundamentalist members of the diverse denomination. He posted a couple of longer additional messages to the President and the responses illustrate the wide differences among Baptists—and among those of other denominations who call themselves Christian. See https://baptistnews.com/article/self-described-catholic-baptist-leaves-ohio-church-embarks-on-writing-career/#.Xsrq8mhKiUk if you want to know more about him and if you’re a Facebooker, you can go to his page or if you want to hear what he sounds like in the pulpit, go to the First Baptist Church webpage in Ottawa, Kansas.

Last Sunday morning, we went to the presidential webpage to check on President Trump’s schedule for Sunday, May 24:

President Donald Trump has no public events on his schedule today and is expected to remain in the White House with the first family. With the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts, the president is likely to meet with national leaders and public officials regarding the needs of the coming week.

Mmmmm-hmm. Churches are essential but not so essential that he would do what he urged millions of Americans, particularly his faithful followers (read that any way you would prefer) to do—go to church even “with the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts.” Wonder why he didn’t tell Melania and Baron Sunday morning, “We’re going to church—right now!”  Instead he went out and he worshipped the putter and the driver.

Sometime when the man gets all worked up like this, we wish somebody would say, “Oh, go take a pill!” But—– hasn’t he already been doing that?

Dr. Crane: The new year

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(A 1919 advertisement for Dr. Frank Crane’s books said, “Nine years ago Dr. Frank Crane was scarcely known outside of a small circle. To-day he has a million friends. And these million friends are happier men and women to-day because of this friendship. They occupy a higher, finer place in life because of it.” Dr. Crane stepped away from his Methodist pulpit to become one of the most-published inspirational columnists of his time. We are starting our weeks be recalling his writings).

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS

The New Year is here. It is inventory time. Let us look over the stock of habits, ideas, and relationships we have accumulated the last twelve months and clean up.

The New Year’s resolution is a good thing. Why drift along, the slave and plaything of our unmanaged desires and of our accidental circumstances? Why not be our own master and live one year like an intelligent human being?

Examine your habits. Lop off the bad ones. Free yourself from any ways you have fallen into that make you lazy, unhealthy, miserable, and disagreeable to other people.

Determine this year to be master of self; that you will control your thoughts, regulate your passions, and guide your own deeds; that you will not let events lead you by the nose.

Resolve to be happy. Remember Lincoln’s saying that “folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

This year you shall not neglect your friends. They are too valuable, as life assets, to lose.

You will adopt some system and stick to it, knowing that nine-tenths of our irritation comes from lack of system.

Lay out a course of study. No one is too old to learn. Resolve to give some time each day to reading some helpful book. Cut out the trash.

Resolve to keep an account of all the money you get and of all you spend. You may have tried this many times and failed. Never mind; you are still alive and have the chance to try it again.

Save. Put a certain fraction by of all you make. There’s no friend like money in the bank.

Son’t spend any money till you get it. Don’t go into debt. Beware of buying all those things you “must have,” for you mustn’t have anything until you can pay for it.

No alcohol this year. Let your body rest 365 days from this poison and see how you feel. Don’t get into a moral fever over this. Don’t “try” not to drink. Just don’t drink.

Resolve to take that daily exercise.

Eliminate worry. This year make up your mind to fret over nothing. Adjust yourself to facts instead of getting into a stew over them. If a matter can be helped, help it; if it cannot be helped, forget it.

This year resolve to keep discord out of the house. Nobody can quarrel with you if you do not quarrel with him. Say to yourself that you will not once…speak crossly to your children; that you will not say one unkind word to your husband or wife, and that you will keep agreeable…

This may be the last year you will have. Make it a good one.

You know how you ought to live. At least, you think you do. And if you do as well as your own judgment tells you, it will be an advance.

This is old-fashioned advice. But happiness is old-fashioned, and life. There is no new-fangled way to be content.

And learn this of wise Marcus Aurelius:

“To change your mind and follow him who sets you right is to be none the less free that you were before.”

Also: “The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.”

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.

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.

Christmas: Just another working day

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Merry Christmas from the Missouri Capitol.
Governor Mike Parson’s office is fully involved in the Christmas season. We don’t recall anything like this in all the years we have covered the capitol. Don’t expect to see him at his desk on Christmas day, however, although there were many times when a lot of people were at their capitol desks at Christmas.
The governor’s office often has been on display during this Christmas season because of something else Governor Parson has done that we’ve never seen done before. The double doors between the capitol hallway and the big oval office are open often with a glass barrier that people can walk up to and look into the office. The doors are closed when he’s doing governor business but at other times they’ve been opened so the visiting public can see the office and its Christmas decorations.
We’ve often thought it’s a shame that capitol visitors don’t get to see that magnificent room.
History tells us that Christmas has been through a lot of changes through the decades. For decades, it was just another day. Not until Victorian times did it begin to assume the secular commercial bonanza it is.
When the state legislature moved from its temporary home in St. Charles to the City of Jefferson, the fourth session of the General Assembly convened on Monday, November 20. Christmas day was just another regular business day, as was New Year’s Day. A reading of the House Journal for December 25, 1826 sounds similar to the House Journals today. It is—as it is now—pretty dry stuff.

MONDAY MORING, DECEMBER 25, 1826
The house met pursuant to adjournment.
Mr. Speaker appointed Messrs., O’Bryan, Grant, Thornton, Jewell, Canole, Bollinger, Nash, Johnson, Bruer, Brinker and Brock as a select committee on an engrossed bill from the senate, entitled an act supplementary to an act to organize, govern and, discipline the militia, approved 11th Feb. l825.
Mr. Grant of the committee of ways and means introduced bill appropriating money for defraying the expenses of government, which was read a first time and ordered to a second reading. On motion of Mr. Watkins, the rules of this house requiring a bill to be read three several times [sic] on-three different days was dispensed with, two thirds of the members present concurring therein, and said bill was read a second time on to-day.
On motion, said bill was committed to a committee of the whole house. Mr. Harris of the select committee to whom was referred the petition of sundry inhabitants of the counties of Chariton and Ralls, praying for the formation of a new county, reported a bill to establish the new county of Marion which was read a first time and ordered to a second reading.
On motion of Mr. Burckhartt, the rules of this house requiring bills to be read three several times on three different days was dispensed with, two thirds of the members present concurring therein, and said bill was read a second time on jo-day,
On motion of Mr. Cook, said bill was committed to a committee of the whole house.

The journal continues for several more paragraphs of routine business before the House adjourned until the next day. Representative Jewell, by the way as Dr. William Jewell of Boone County, a founder of Columbia for whom William Jewell College was named. Bollinger was George F. Bollinger, who represented Cape Girardeau in the territorial and state legislatures from 1812 until 1840. When a new county was formed of Cape Girardeau County, it was named for him.
Working on Christmas was not all that unusual in those times. It was seventeen years yet before Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published or that Sir Henry Cole, an Englishman, printed a couple thousand Christmas cards that sold for a shilling each. Christmas would not be declared a federal holiday for forty-four more years.
In 1828, the second general assembly to meet in Jefferson City took December 25 off but was back at work the next day. The practice was common for several years. In 1840, the House took the day off but the Senate did meet on Christmas day, a Friday, and on Saturday the 26th but adjourned both days because it could not achieve a quorum. Business as usual resumed in both chambers on Tuesday the 29th.
The House met on Saturday, December 21, 1844 and transacted business before adjourning until Monday the 23rd. But not enough people showed up to make a quorum again until the afternoon of December 30. The Senate met on Christmas day but only five members answered the roll call. It tried to meet each day after that but didn’t get enough members in the chamber to do official business until the 30th.
Then we get to this entry:

JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, At the First Session of the Fifteenth General Assembly, begun and held at the City of Jefferson, on Monday, the Twenty-Fifth day of December, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight.
The Senate was called to order by the Hon. JAMES YOUNG, Lieutenant Governor and President of the Senate, and FALKLAND H. Martin, Esq., acted as Secretary pro tem.

That’s right. The 1848 legislative session began on Christmas Day. And it happened again just six years later:

JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, AT THE FIRST SESSION, BEING THE REGULAR SESSION, OF THE EIGHTEENTH GENERAI ASSEMBLY, BEGUN AND HELD AT THE CITY OF JEFFERSON, ON MONDAY THE 25TH DAY OF DECEMBER, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD ONE THOUSAND EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR, THAT BEING THE DAY FIXED BY LAW FOR THE MEETING OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

The Senators were called to order at 11 o’clock, A. M., by the Hon. Wilson Brown, Lieutenant Governor, and President of the Senate.

Lt. Governor Brown was one of about thirty people killed in the Gasconade bridge disaster on Nov. 1, 1855, the day the first passenger train was to have arrived from St. Louis.


In this building, long ago, Christmas was just another day for many years. There were times, though, when it appears some members of the general assembly left town for a few days, leaving the House and Senate without enough members to transact business although a few members who lived too far from home in those pre-highway, pre-bridge, pre-railroad days when the rivers were too icy to travel by boat stayed in Jefferson City, a town of no paved streets, few amenities, and fewer than three-thousand people before 1860.
The new Missouri Constitution adopted in 1865 established the January start date for the legislature, ending the winter sessions. Although the observance of Christmas had been slowly building, it was not until the Reconstruction years that December became the biggest month of the year for retail sales.
In a couple of weeks, today’s legislators will start a new session in today’s capitol. By then the Christmas decorations will be gone and the present capitol will feel, as the old one undoubtedly felt, the quickening pulse within it. Christmas and the old year are gone. A new year and new careers soon will begin to take shape. And so will the new journals that somebody else might read 170 years hence.

Notes from a quiet street—elections issue

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A week from today is elections day.  We look forward to elections days for the wrong reasons.  Instead of being excited about taking part in the voting process we are excited because it’s the end of that interminable period when our intelligence is assaulted 30 seconds at a time—all the time, it seems, on the television.

—and when our mailboxes are stuffed with mailers of questionable veracity usually provided by people without the courtesy or the courage to admit they paid for the appropriately-named junk mail.

Interestingly, at the end of the day, a lot of people will transfer from being the kind of people they campaigned against to being those people. And what will they do to correct the impressions their voters have about government?

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We have been interested in some of the reasons various groups don’t want us to vote for a new system of drawing legislative districts after the 2020 census.  One side says it would be a mistake to let the state demographer (a person who spends his or her life analyzing population and population trends) draw new districts because they’ll just use statistics and will come up with districts that are more gerrymandered that some districts from the last go-around.  Others worry that letting the demographer draw the districts will weaken the political power of this or that group.   We must have been mistaken all these years because we thought reapportionment dealt with representation rather than power. Silly us.

Could it be that the state demographer won’t care if two legislative incumbents wind up in the same district instead of benefitting from a process that is suspected of protecting incumbents or at least their party majorities?  As far as the demographer coming up with screwball districts, surely that person couldn’t do worse than the creation of the present Fifth Congressional District that I dubbed the “dead lizard” district after the last congressional redistricting (it looks like a dead lizard lying on its back with its feet in the air) that has a former Mayor of Kansas City representing a rural area as far east as Marshall.

What the heck.  We can always change the constitution back to the present system if the legislative districts after the 2020 census are as bad as some interest groups forecast they will be, can’t we?

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Elections almost always have issues created by petition campaigns.  It’s an important freedom we have as citizens to propose laws or to ask for a statewide vote on something the legislature did that raises questions in the minds of enough people that they want citizens to have the final say.  But that freedom can carry with it unintended consequences because petitions don’t go through the refining process of legislative committee hearings, debates, votes, and compromises where possible.   Of course the legislature sometimes fumbles an issue and in both cases ballot issues can be issues financially backed by a special interest if not an individual.

Voters have an often-overlooked responsibility to get out the spy glass and read all the fine print in the election legal notices.  We haven’t talked to very many folks who have done that. So we get what we get and the courts often have to figure out what we got regardless of what we thought we were getting.

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The best part of election day is that all of the junk mail campaign propaganda that goes straight to our waste baskets will be replaced by Christmas catalogues.  We prefer Christmas catalogs for several reasons.  They don’t forecast national or international catastrophes if we buy something offered by another catalog.  They usually are honest about their products (the pictures usually are more accurate than the pictures of the hamburgers at fast foot joints). We have never gotten an L. L. Bean catalogue that suggests the products in a Land’s End catalogue are dangerous to our well-being because of who wears them or because of who the wearers hang out with.

And they don’t proclaim exclusive knowledge of what our “values” are.  The Vermont Country Store is filled with traditional values—soap on a rope, Adams Clove chewing gum, old-fashioned popcorn makers or hand-cranked ice-cream makers, or dresses whose styles are timeless.  Coldwater Creek is for people whose values tend toward the stylish with a little “bling” thrown in.   We have yet to see the Vermont Country Store catalogue that says the Coldwater Creek catalogue is too liberal to be good for us.

In short, the catalogues have a lot more things that we will buy than most of the campaign junk mail that winds up in landfills instead of recycle bins.

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Jefferson City is building a new fire station, replacing an older one in the east end of town (the building will be for sale, by the way, in case you want a unique home, assuming you can get a zoning change).  News of the planned sale of the old fire house brings to mind our old friend Derry Brownfield, who used to occasionally remind us why fire engines are red:

“Because they have eight wheels and four people on them, and four plus eight is 12, and there are 12 inches in a foot, and one foot is a ruler, and Queen Elizabeth was a ruler, and Queen Elizabeth was also a ship, and the ship sailed the seas, and in the seas are fish, and fish have fins, and the Finns fought the Russians, and the Russians are red, and fire trucks are always ‘russian’ around.”

Uh-huh.

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Go vote next Tuesday.  Do yourself and your state a favor and spend the next seven days with your reading glass studying all that fine print.

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Remember the document

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Tomorrow is Independence Day. But in too many places, it will be just a Fourth of July holiday.  Some places have events honoring veterans—although it is likely few, if any, of these events will remember to mention the veterans who should be recognized on Independence Day—the Revolutionary War veterans who might be buried in their community’s oldest cemeteries.

The Woodland Cemetery in Jefferson City, for instance, has the graves of Christopher Casey and John Gordon.  Casey also was a veteran of the War of 1812. They were young men when they likely heard one of the first readings of the Declaration of Independence.  And they fought to make that independence come true.

They are two of more than 350 Revolutionary War figures believed to be buried in Missouri.

Rather than make the ceremonies of this day another day to honor contemporary veterans, this should be the day to celebrate the document that declared our independence and proclaimed that the thirteen British colonies were equal partners in the formation of a new nation deserving equal rank with all other nations, the document that men like Christopher Casey and John Gordon defended in a revolution underway before the Declaration was written.

Princeton University Professor Danielle Allen, to whom we have referred in earlier entries, suggests in her book, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, that all of us need to read the Declaration slowly and in detail and think about why it was written, what it meant then, and what it means today.  She maintains it’s far more than a 240-year old statement of reasons for breaking away from England.

We class the Declaration in the same category as the Lord’s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, and a lot of church hymns—things we read, sing, or say (often in the wrong way) by rote, without giving any consideration to what we’re really saying.

Allen concludes, “There are no silver bullets for the problem of civility in our political life.  There are no panaceas for educational reform. But if I were to pretend to offer either, it would be this:  all adults should read the Declaration closely; all students should have read the Declaration from start to finish before they leave high school…It would nourish everyone’s capacity for moral reflection.  It would prepare us all for citizenship.  Together we would learn the democratic arts….The time has come to reclaim our patrimony and also to pass it on—to learn how to read this text again—and to bring back to life our national commitment to equality. It is time to let the Declaration once more be ours, as it was always meant to be.”

Allen’s book, in fact, explains line-by-line and sometimes word-for-word why the Declaration says what it says. Reading the document is one thing; understanding it is another.  And Independence Day is a time to do both.

In this era of ego-driven, selfish, and hurtful politics, it is time to seriously ponder the last sentence of the document’s text.  “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

There are those who will see only the words “divine Providence” and start making divisive proclamations about a Christian nation.  But they miss the entire point of the sentence and, indeed, the entire point of the Declaration if that is all that they recognize because, in doing so, they avoid acknowledging the commitments these men made to one another and to us—and a commitment we should be renewing on this day.

Some will see that last sentence in sharp contrast to today’s politics of mutual destruction.  Professor Allen makes it clear in her book that the Declaration was heatedly debated by strong personalities who, in the end, found the powerful words proclaiming the birth of a new nation.  In comparison, the hours of debates we have heard in the legislature and watched in the Congress are insignificant.  And at the end of those modern debates, the participants walk away without a thought to their lives, their fortunes, and whatever honor they might still have.

Those men in Philadelphia knew this nation would not be independent just because they said it would be.  Their final sentence committed each of them to stand with the others to fight for that independence, no matter the cost, no matter their differences.  As Allen puts it, “They are building their new country, their peoplehood, on a notion of shared sacrifice.”

Allen thinks the pledge that united these passionate, disparate, individuals was based on the understanding that each of them was equal to the others. “They all pledged everything to each other.  Since the signers made their pledges as representatives of their states, they were also pledging their states and everything in them.  They staked their claim to independence on the bedrock of equality,” she wrote.

Their pledge to one another of everything of value to them, she says, is an understanding that this diverse group recognized all were equal in creating this new system and, “They do so under conditions of mutual respect and accountability by sharing intelligence, sacrifice, and ownership.  The point of political equality, then, is not merely to secure spaces free from domination but also to engage all members of a community equally in the work of creating and constantly re-creating that community.”

Equality is the foundation of freedom because from a commitment to equality emerges the people itself—we, the people—with the power both to create a shared world in which all can flourish and to defend it from encroachers…Equality & Freedom.  The colonists judged them worth all they had.

Would that we in this era, when the focus is on achieving and defending power over others, could have leaders and candidates with the courage to rally all of us to equally share the sacrifices and the responsibilities of being a whole people.

It is time for us go beyond the Fourth of July and pledge to one another on Independence Day that we are, as they were, bound together equally in constantly re-creating better communities and a better nation, pledging

OUR lives.

OUR fortunes.

OUR sacred honors.