Category Archives: people

Food at It’s Best

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“Ignorance and laziness have won,” said retired British journalist John Richards a while ago.

Richards, who turned 96 when he made that observation, started the Apostrophe Protection Society about twenty years ago.  He crusaded for the correct use of the “much abused” apostrophe.  But he has given up.   He told the London Evening Standard late in 2019 there were two reasons for disbanding his organization: “One is that at 96 I am cutting back on my commitments and the second is that fewer organisations and individuals are now caring about the correct use of the apostrophe in the English Language. We, and our many supporters worldwide, have done our best but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won.”

His society was a small one.  Depressingly small, it seems.  He told the Standard he started the APS after he saw the “same mistakes over and over again.”  He hoped to find a half-dozen people who felt the same way.  He didn’t find a half-dozen.  Within a month of his announcement of the founding of the society, he said, “I received over 500 letters of support, not only from all corners of the United Kingdom, but also from America, Australia, France, Sweden, Hong Kong and Canada.

But that wasn’t enough (Note the apostrophe).

That sentence is an example of one of the three simple rules Richards has given for proper use of the apostrophe.

  1. They are used to denote a missing letter or letters.
  2. They are used to denote possession.
  3. Apostrophes are never used to denote plurals.

And there’s a corollary.  “It’s” only means “it is.”  The possessive version is “its.”  The cat had its breakfast.

Otherwise, this sign says “Food at it is best.”  The Towne Grill in Jefferson City isn’t (note the proper use of the apostrophe to symbolize the elimination of the letter “o”) going to change its (note proper use of the possessive) sign.  It has become an institution in Missouri’s capital city, a quirky but incorrect use of the apostrophe that is part of the city’s (proper use of the apostrophe to denote the possessive) culture.

The Apostrophe Protection Society seems so English.  The story about it reminded us of Professor Henry Higgins in Lerner & Lowe’s Broadway musical “My Fair Lady,” of a half-century ago.  Professor Higgins decided to teach an untutored London flower girl to speak proper English and lamented:

An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him
One common language I’m afraid we’ll never get
Oh, why can’t the English learn to

Set a good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears
There even are places where English completely disappears

In America, they haven’t used it for years!

To end this on a couple of more serious notes:

First, John Richards died earlier this year—March 30.  He was 97. Mr. Richards’s Washington Post obituary is at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/john-richards-dead/2021/04/25/9c7c1994-a425-11eb-a774-7b47ceb36ee8_story.html.

Second, I had a friend named Ed Bliss who used to write news for Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite at CBS.  Ed, who died several years ago, often conducted newswriting seminars at our conventions of news directors. I can still hear him say, “We have become a nation slovenly with language. The slovenliness in grammar, punctuation, and spelling is all about us.”

If we lack respect for our language in speaking and writing, we limit our abilities as a people to communicate effectively and we damage the trust we can have in one another. Today, we shout more than we speak; we talk but we don’t listen; we tweet more than we write; we dismiss one another with disparaging personal assessments.  In the midst of this noise, this transformation of the grace of our language into crudeness, it is no wonder that a group that upheld something as small as an apostrophe should feel that “ignorance and laziness” have won.

It’s not just the continued improper use of apostrophes that should concern us.  Our language deserves better use than we are making of it. We cannot respect one another if we do not respect the language we use with one another.

 

The Pro Tem

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Jim Mathewson died a few days ago.  He was one of a dwindling number of state senators from a different era when “Senator” wasn’t a word; it was an honor.

It was a pre-term limits Senate before Missourians hypocritically denied themselves the right to vote for legislators they wanted to continue representing them.

It was the era of Harold Caskey and John Schneider, of A. Clifford Jones and Emory Melton, of John Russell and Wayne Goode, Betty Sims and Harry Wiggins, Danny Staples, Morris Westfall and others who respected the institution and honored its written and unwritten rules, who treated the Senate as a body rather than a series of factions.  It was a Senate where the filibuster was a legitimate tactic because the majority on any issue knew it might be the minority on any other issue and the object was compromise that produced progress, before a time when an unyielding steamroller ignored the possibility that someday roles might be reversed and a time might someday come when payback would be a steamroller run by the other side.

It was a time of bare-knuckle politics, have no doubt about that. But eye-gouging and rabbit punches weren’t tolerated.

Jim Mathewson was the leader of the state senate for eight years.  Nobody will ever equal that record or even match it as long as good men and good women are banished from public service because voters fell for the pitch of those who capitalized on the idea that those we trust in our elections every two or four  years instantly become untrustworthy.

Jim Mathewson was a Horatio Alger story, a poor boy who made good because he never gave up, eventually rising to what he argued was the most powerful office in state government, more powerful than the governor, in fact.

He was elected to the House in 1974, then moved up to the Senate in 1980. He was born on a forty-acre farm in Benton County to a “very poor” family. He father left when he was five years old and although he came back six years later, the two were never close. The fact that the family was poor, and he knew it was poor, was a motivating factor in his life. He told a State Historical Society interviewer, “I think it made me meaner and tougher and harder working.”

For a time he and his wife, Doris, ran a steakhouse in Sedalia until it burned down and there was little insurance. Some friends, seeing he had no real livelihood, decided to file him for State Representative, something Mathewson had no interest in being. He beat an incumbent, though, and got elected to a job paying, then, $8,400 a year, about one-eighth what he was making with the steakhouse.

“I got hooked!” he told the interviewer, “and I got hooked bad.”  He was a personable guy and a few years later he started getting some important committee assignments. And he started building bridges. “I’m of the Democrat philosophy, but I’ve never been offended by anyone that was of the Republican philosophy. We just happened to think different on some issues. I believe that Republicans love their family just like I love mine. I believe that they’re Christians just like I believe I am. I believe that they’re going to go to Heaven just like I am. They’re just kind of warped in their thought process about [things] while they’re here. Okay? (chuckling) And I say that jokingly, because I have probably as many friends that are Republicans as I do Democrats.”

Pure Mathewson. Taking his work seriously but not himself (a fellow Capitol reporter remarked a few years later that it seemed legislators had gotten that idea backward—and, frankly, sometimes it seems he is right).

But he was so focused on being a legislator that he wasn’t making much money in the real world. He narrowly avoided bankruptcy only because the father he hardly knew left enough in his estate for Mathewson to pay off debts. He was able to re-establish himself as a businessman in Sedalia.  He began to rise in authority and popularity among fellow Democrats in the Senate and in 1988 he was elected President Pro Tem, the leader of the Senate.

Why did he want the job?   “The power,” he openly admitted.  “The President Pro Tem of the Senate in many, many ways is the most powerful person there is in the state of Missouri. Even more powerful than the Governor because you control all the gubernatorial appointments! And a Governor cannot appoint anyone if they can’t get it by the President Pro Tem of the Senate. Because the President Pro Tem of the Senate is usually smart enough to make themselves chairman of the Gubernatorial Appointments Committee. And the President Pro Tem appoints all the committees, including the all-powerful Appropriations Committee where all the budget comes from. Not only do appoint the chair, but you appoint the members. So generally you have control over that, as you do over most of the committees — or all the committees, really, because you appoint all the chairs. So you know, I wanted to be that person. I wanted to feel that I was not only a person who could be a follower but I wanted to prove that I could be a person that was a leader. It was a unanimous election in our caucus and on the floor every time. So I feel awfully proud of that. It was a good thing.”

He thought he could have been elected for another term but felt it was time for someone else. A few years later, Republicans gained control of the Senate and the last few years were nowhere nearly as rewarding as the rest of his career had been.  The take-no-prisoners style of the new majority grated on a man who thought he had helped maintain the historically collegial atmosphere of the chamber—“the body,” he called it.

There’s one other thing about Jim Mathewson to tell you about.  He was the first Senate President Pro Tem to occupy the physical office of the Pro Tem.  The room complex next to the south end of the Senate Lounge had been the office of the President of the Senate, the Lieutenant Governor, from the day the Capitol was first occupied.  I tell about it in the Capitol history book that I hope goes to the publisher before the end of the year:

The Senate takeover of the Lieutenant Governor’s office space finally happened in the fall of 1988 through the efforts of outgoing President Pro Tem John Scott, who had grown tired of dashing back and forth from his fourth floor office to the Senate Chamber. Senator Jim Mathewson of Sedalia, the incoming President Pro Tem, remembered that Scott approached him at the end of the September veto session and said, “Don’t you think it’s a darned shame that all of these years that the Speaker’s had that office right there on the corner where he can have meetings?”

 

It’s convenient. Everybody knows where it is and they all run in there and they meet and they settle issues and so forth, press conferences and whatever, and we have to use our individual offices when we’re President pro-Tem, and we hold the same power as does the Speaker.  Why don’t we create a special President pro-Tem’s office?

 

Mathewson asked, “Which one d’you have in mind?” Scott answered, “The Lieutenant Governor’s office.” Scott and Mathewson decided to enlist the support of the Senate’s top Republican, Richard Webster…Webster had done some research and told them, “The truth of the matter is there’s no provision in the constitution or the statutes that says the Lieutenant Governor even gets an office.” Scott introduced a resolution at the end of the veto session that let the Senate take control of the office after that year’s election. 

            Shortly after Mel Carnahan won the Lieutenant Governorship, he asked Mathewson not to kick him out of the office.  “Yeah, Mel, I am,” Mathewson told him,

 

And he said, “You can’t do that.” And I said, “Yeah, I can.”  And he said, “Well, by what authority?’ And I said, “We did the research. That office belongs to the Senate. The Senate voted…that the Pro Tem would have that office, and I guess that’s me, Mel, because the caucus just elected me and we’ve got twenty-two votes. I think I’m probably going to be Pro-Tem.” And he…got red-faced as hell…and said, “You’re not going to do this.” And I said, “Yeah, I am, Mel. Gonna do it.  Sorry.”

 

Carnahan threatened a lawsuit but Mathewson played hardball: “You can do that but let me remind you of something that’s just going to offend you further…You don’t have a great big budget already. You take on the Senate and you won’t have any.” Carnahan stomped out of Mathewson’s office, returning more cool-headed a few days later to ask Mathewson what could be done if he accepted the plan.  Mathewson, Scott, Webster, and Carnahan quickly went to the first floor to look at a complex of Senate staff rooms in the northeast corner of the building. Mathewson told Carnahan the Senate would pay to remodel the space if he would take it. Carnahan agreed a few days later.  Mathewson kept his promise to have the new office ready for Carnahan by the time he was sworn in at the start of 1989.

A few years later, then-Lt. Governor Peter Kinder convinced his friend from Cape Girardeau, Senate Administrator Mike Keathley, to have the auditor swap office spaces with the Lt. Governor’s office space.

Mathewson couldn’t run for another term in 2004. He seldom returned to the Capitol. His day was already slipping away, his desk in the chamber and his office occupied by a new generation of Senators.

Are they worse people than Jim Mathewson was?  As people, I don’t think so.  As Senators, as Jim and the others of his era might perceive them in their behavior as senators, maybe.

But comparing generations against each other is hard and risks being unfair because nostalgia is not fair. Perhaps it is accurate to say that today’s senators are not like yesterday’s senators. Sometimes the old lions growling in the weeds who remember those of the Mathewson generation think “Senator” has become just a word. It will be interesting to hear the eulogies (many years from now, we hope) for those who have come after his era.

He concluded his interview with the State Historical Society by saying:

“You know, sometimes you’ve got to hang your life out there. And I have time and time again, and I’m proud of the fact that I did it and I have no regrets! My attitude is this: If the issue is important enough to do, then it’s more important than my political future. And I’ll do it.”

That’s worth thinking about.

(If you want to read Jim’s entire interview—and those of us who knew him can hear his voice as we read the transcript—go to “James L. Mathewson State Historical Society oral history” and click on the icon on the upper right for a download.)

Racing: History at Talladega

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—William Darrell Wallace, known to friends and fans as “Bubba,” has been declared the winner of the rain-shortened race at Talladega, a historic win at a track with great historic significance to the first African-American driver to win a race in NASCAR’s highest division in 57 years.

Wallace, the only black driver in NASCAR Cup competition, drives for a new team owned by basketball star Michael Jordan and fellow driver Denny Hamlin.  The race, postponed from Sunday because of rain, was called after 117 of the scheduled 188 laps Monday because of more rain.  Wallace, who had started 19th, drove his way to the front five laps from the end, passing Kurt Busch to become the 19th driver to lead the race on the track that traditionally features nose-to-tail racing and at least one big crash.  A wreck on the 116th lap, just before the rains came, froze the field with Wallace at the head of the pack.

Restrictor plate races at the big high-banked tracks of Daytona and Talladega are traditionally mad and unpredictable scrambles but Wallace has shown flashes of strength in those races.  He has finished second twice at Daytona although his best previous finish at Talladega was 14th.

He finished ahead of two Ford teammates, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano.  Bush was squeezed back to fourth, just ahead of Christopher Bell.

The next race, on the Charlotte Roval, will be a cut-down race in which four drivers are eliminated from the chase for the championship.  Kevin Harvick, who led more laps in the Talladega race than any other driver, was shuffled back to eighth when the red flag came out, short-circuiting his hopes of climbing into the top eight in the points chase. He’s nine points out of the playoff field heading to Charlotte.  Christopher Bell’s fifth-place run still leaves him 28 points back.  William Byron, who tangled with two other cars just before the rains hit, is in a must-win situation if he is to advance, as is Alex Bowman, whose chances for a good finished vanished when his car was badly damaged in an early-race wreck with three other competitors.

The victory in the playoff race will not propel Wallace into the next three-race runoff round because he was not among the top sixteen drivers in the points when the regular season ended.

(THE BACKSTORY)—Wallace’s victory was a popular one among his colleagues who showed their support of him by pushing his car to the front of the starting field at Talladega in June, last year, after a noose was reported on the pull-down rope of the door of his garage at the track.  The FBI investigated and determined that the noose had been there since the previous October, at a time when it could not have been predicted Wallace’s team would later use the garage.  Wallace supported the finding.

Wallace was born almost three years after the death of the only other black driver to win a top-level NASCAR race.  His victory comes a little more than 100 years after the birth of Wendell Scott, who passed Richard Petty with 25 laps to go on the half-mile dirt track at Jacksonville Florida in 1964 and went on to win. He was not announced as the winner, however—some say it was because of the racist culture of the time—and the win originally went to Buck Baker, who was two laps behind. NASCAR discovered two hours after the race that Scott had won but he was not officially awarded the win for two more years.  He never received a trophy.  NASCAR presented his family with the trophy he had earned in 2010, seven years before Bubba Wallace ran his first NASCAR Cup race.

Scott ran his last NASCAR race in 1973 but it was injuries he suffered in a crash at Talladega earlier in the year that forced him to retire.  He died in 1990. He never had a sponsor.  His low-budget owner-driver operation nonetheless saw him finish in the top ten in the points standings four times in a thirteen-year, 495-race career.  He finished in the top ten at the end of 147 races.

Bubba Wallace’s team has had full sponsorship all year.  Next year, 23XII Racing (23 was Jordan’s jersey number and XII refers to Hamlin’s car number, 11) will expand to a second car with former NASCAR champion Kurt Busch as driver.

(INDYCAR)—Wheels already are turning for the 2022 INDYCAR season.  The Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Rookie Orientation Program tomorrow will feature two drivers who focused on road courses this year, Jimmie Johnson and Romain Grosjean.

Johnson, who raced on the track’s road course this year, is not unfamiliar with the big oval. He ran eighteen Brickyard 400s in his NASCAR days and won four times.  But this will be his first time on the oval in an open-wheel car.  He has tested an Indycar on an oval however, running some test laps at the Texas Speedway. He has expressed an interest in running the Indianapolis 500 in May but has not committed to the other ovals on the schedule at Texas, Iowa, and Gateway.

Joining him in getting the feel of the big track is Romain Grosjean, the former Formula 1 driver who built a big following in the series this year.  He got a taste of oval racing late in the season at Gateway’s Worldwide Technology Raceway in August.  It will be his first run for his new team-owner, Michael Andretti.  He’s moving over from Dale Coyne racing.

Before drivers are allowed to run on the Indianapolis oval, they have to prove they can handle it.  The program requires them to run ten laps at 205-210 mph, fifteen more at 210=215, and then 15 laps at more than 215.

The big test will come in May.  In this year’s 33-car starting field, Simona DeSilvestro had the slowest four-lap qualifying run at 228.353. Will Power had the slowest qualifying lap at 227,535.

Scott Dixon sat on the pole at 231.685 with a fast lap of 232.757.

The last NASCAR driver to run the 500 was Kurt Busch, who was the rookie of the year with his sixth place finish in 2014. “The Indianapolis 500 will blow you away,” he said after the race. Johnson could become the nineteenth driver to drive in both the Indianapolis 500 and the Brickyard 400, which was first run in 1994.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 was off last weekend. It resumes racing in Istanbul with the Turkish Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton is clinging to a two-point lead over Max Verstappen. \

(Photo credits:  Bob Priddy; Wendell Scott—NASCAR Hall of Fame)

 

The Basic Question

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(In our quieter moments, all of us probably have questioned our existence. Most of us find it unprofitable to dwell on the issue because it gets in the way of living. But there are those who (often sequestered) ponder this matter. Do we exist only because of combinations of atoms set in motion billions of years ago by the Big Bang? And if there is life elsewhere in the universe, what will our discovery of it mean to our understanding of what we are and how we became what we are? Dr. Frank Crane is among those who have asked—-)

WHY WAS I BORN?

There is one question upon the answer to which rests the success or failure of life.

It is the question: “Why was I born?”

A strange fact is that nobody knows the answer. The purpose which the Creator had in mind when he made me has never been known, will never be known.

Curious that the most fateful of all problems should be forever  unanswerable!

We may believe this or that to be the reason; we cannot KNOW.

Notwithstanding this fact, the net result of my life depends upon the  THEORY I form to answer this query.

But how can I tell which theory is best when there is no means of knowing which is true?

There is a way to tell which theory is, if not true, at least approximately  true. This way is suggested by what is called PRAGMATISM.

That is to say: That answer to the question is most likely to be true Which WILL WORK .

We cannot answer the question, “Why was I born?” by investigating Causes. The secrets of life are beyond us. The Creator will not be interviewed.

But we can select an answer by noting RESULTS. For instance:

“I was made in order that I might get all the pleasure possible out of        life.” This solution means wreckage. Its fallacy is proved by insane hospitals, feeble-minded asylums, and by those murders, adulteries, and heartbreaks that constantly attend the end of the pleasure seeker.

“I was made in order that I might escape this evil world and get safely into a better one after death.” Such an answer leads logically to the asceticism that marked the dark ages and the hard morbidity that characterized Puritanism.

“I was born to labor for others” means a race of slaves.

“I was born to live and to enjoy myself upon the fruits of others’ labor”  means a class of snobs .

The most satisfactory answer, in twentieth century terms, is: “I was born to express what forces my Creator planted in me; to develop my instincts and talents under the   guidance of reason; to find permanent happiness by fostering the higher, more altruistic, and spirit impulses and by subduing the violence of the more brutal impulses. I was born to find love and my own work, and through these liberty. In one word the purpose of creating me was that I should be as GREAT as possible.”

Only by this answer do we get strength without cruelty, virtue without narrowness, love without contamination, reverence without superstition, joy without excess.

I do not know this answer is correct. I believe it to be the most NEARLY correct for the simple reason that IT WORKS .

 

Notes from a Quiet Street (Fall Colors edition)

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(Being a compendium of random thoughts that don’t merit full bloggiation.)

Would someone, preferably one of the people Missourians have sent to the U. S. Senate or the U.S. House, enlighten us about why we have a federal debt limit if it can be increased at congressional will?

And, members of our Washington delegation, don’t get all puffy about how you oppose raising it when you and your colleagues previous DID raise it.

Please write a 500-word theme about how you will pay back this debt. If you expect to pass this course, do not give me the tiresome argument that if government reduces its ability to pay for its programs, the public will create more economic growth that will reduce the debt.

There will be no grading on the curve. This is strictly pass/fail.

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When it was announced a few days ago that the nation was averaging 1900 COVID deaths a day for the first time since last March and that 90% of COVID patients in hospitals are unvaccinated, an ugly stroke of capitalist brilliance overwhelmed me.

Monogrammed body bags.  There’s a big constituency for this product—the thousands of people who refuse to get vaccinated.  Take your personal bag to the hospital with you so you can go out in style.

It would be the last status statement, a last chance to be SOMEBODY instead of just some body.

It will be a wonderful memento for your survivors and an inspirational symbol of your stalwart independence.  Could become a family heirloom.

And there would be a good market for used ones.  Run an ad on the internet, or maybe in the newspaper, or offer it on EBay: “Body bag, reasonably priced. Great savings if your initials are _____ (fill in appropriate letters).”

If ya don’t got it, flaunt it.

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The University of Missouri football team, a few days ago, held a charitable event for the athletic department of Southeast Missouri State University. The Tigers gave the Red Hawks $550,000 and all the team from Cape Girardeau had to do was get the snot beaten out of it again at Faurot Field.

Early in the season we see a lot of these games, usually routs.  We’re not sure they should really count on the season’s record of either team but they do—-because they are two college football teams and they do play and somebody keeps score.

Smaller schools are willing to take on these challenges because—in this case $550,000—they get a relative ton of money for athletic programs that come nowhere near having the resources bigger schools have.  If being a punching bag one Saturday afternoon makes sure there are volleyball and soccer and other minor games available for student-athletes in Cape Girardeau, the price is worth it.

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We are sure we are not the only ones to think, or to say when buying a new car, “This is probably the last gas-powered car I’ll ever own.” We’ve said it for the last two cars we’ve bought and the second one is coming up on eight years old. Will there be a third?  Two developments in the past few days make it clear the future is silently roaring (if such thing is possible) our way.

New York’s new governor, Kathy Hochul, has signed a new law saying every new passenger car or truck sold in the state must be zero-emission vehicles by 2035.   Medium and heavy-duty trucks have a 2045 goal. This is a huge goal—electric vehicles constituted only two percent of sales last year. The new law is similar to an executive order issued by the governor of California earlier.  Big difference: executive orders are not laws.

That’s plenty of time to develop EVS that don’t need to recharged on round trips to St. Louis or Kansas City.

In fact, one such car is coming over the horizon.

We’ve said that we’ll start to seriously look at an electric vehicle has a 500-mile battery.  There is such a vehicle and the EPA says its range is 520 miles, topping Tesla’s best by more than 100 miles.  The company is called Lucid and it plans to start deliveries of its cars before the end of the year. Lucid is a Silicon Valley-founded company that recently picked Casa Grande, Arizona as the site for its first purpose-built EV factory in North America. It will start by making 10,000 cars a year and plans expansion to produce more than 300,000 a year.

Prices are believed to start at about $77,000. They’re going to have to come down a few tens to be affordable to people such as I am.

Still…….

The future is coming.

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The big inaugural/bicentennial parade in Jefferson City on Saturday, September 18t, was a week premature.   True, Missouri was admitted to the Union on August 10, 1821.  But people living out here in central Missouri didn’t know about it until September 25 when the proclamation was published by The Missouri intelligencer¸ in Franklin—Missouri’s first newspaper outside of St. Louis.   Folks in St. Louis celebrated twenty days earlier when Missouri’s first newspaper, The Missouri Gazette and Public Advertiser, published the proclamation.  No big stories or headlines Just the proclamation.  That’s the primitive reporting style of the day.

 

Sedimental Value

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(My mother-in-law, Yuba Hanson, used to refer to things that we didn’t need to keep, but did keep, as items of “sedimental value,” things that just accumulate, like sediment in a corner.  As one advances in years, the word “downsizing” grows in importance. And that provokes thoughts of why and how we accumulated so much stuff to begin with. Dr. Frank Crane thought about that, too, and wrote about—–)

THINGS

Miss Mathilda Tommet of Milwaukee left a will the other day eight and one-half feet long, written in her own hand on sheets of paper pasted together. In it she bequeathed to one relative “my best bedspread and one-half of my best towels;” to another a high-backed-chair, admonishing her executors to “be sure to take the one standing on the north side of the sideboard;” to another her chickens and feed; while vegetables, fruit, pickles, a pail of lard, and “father’s old clock” go to another, and to her dearest enemy a pair of old shoestrings.

Then there was Thoreau, who in his house by Walden Pond would have no furniture; he found a stone once which he fancied, and kept awhile, but soon threw it away, as    he found it had to be dusted.

One of the greatest tyrannies of life is THINGS.

The most common form of insanity is the mania to Own.

One of the first acts of a person who comes into money is to load himself down with a pile of rubbish that makes his life a fret and his death bed terrible.

The very rich collect. They get together spoons, canes, pictures, vases, pitchers, books, or marbles.  When there is no more room for them in the house they build a wing and pack it full.

I knew a man who had $ 20,000 worth of old postage stamps locked up in a safety deposit vault.

I knew an old woman who never traveled, although she longed to travel and had plenty of means, because she was afraid her parlor carpet and her blue china dishes would not properly be taken care of.

The stores are heaped up with THINGS. The most skillful men are employed to persuade people to buy THINGS for which they have no earthly use.

Every home contains sets of books that were bought at a high rate, and that have stood for years without a soul looking into them.

American living rooms are as cluttered as Westminster Abbey. Every  mantel is loaded with junk. The walls are covered with pictures, most of them bad. The floors are so thick with chairs and superfluous stands and tables that few can wind their way through them by day and none by night.

Things, things, things! Bedrooms are full of them, closets heaped with  them, the attic is choked with them, the woodshed and barn are running over.

When we go away on vacations we take trunks full of things. When we go to Europe also we find that baggage is the plague of our life.

It is a relief to turn to the books of the Hindus and read :

“Even if they have longer remained with us, the objects of sense are  sure to vanish. Why, then, not forsake them ourselves? If they pass away by themselves they cause  the greatest pain to the mind, but if we forsake them ourselves they cause endless happiness and peace.”

And in another Oriental book we find this searching word:

“For a man ‘ s life consisteth not in the abundance of THINGS which he possesseth.”

 

Why didn’t you go with them? 

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You promised you would.  Remember you said during  your pep rally, “We’re going to walk down—and I’ll be there with you—We’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.  Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women….’

You said “we” five times, and you promised to “be there with you.”

But you didn’t go, did you?   You just turned them loose then and you strolled back to the warmth of the big white house.

Sure was a funny way to lead.

Kind of like Jimmy Doolittle.  Remember how he watched fifteen B-25s take off from the security of the bridge of the Hornet?

And we’re all familiar with General Patton, commanding the Third Army from his bunker in London as his soldiers swept across France and into Germany.

George Washington, relaxing by the fireside at Mount Vernon, received regular reports on the fine living conditions at Valley Forge.

The examples are so numerous—-

Some of us are old enough to remember Martin Luther King telling his marchers who had traveled with him from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, “The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going.”  And I’m sure you remember that Dr. King, after speaking words somewhat more eloquent than yours, got into his long black Cadillac and drove back to Selma where he waited for reports of what happened in Montgomery.

Actually, the leaders in these and other situations never said, “I’ll be with you.”  But they were.  They were with those they commanded.

What might have happened if you had been a man of your word that day?  Could you have spoken to the crowd of “peaceful tourists” and urged them not to break windows, break down doors, assault security officers, vandalize offices, and force members of the House and the Senate to flee for their lives?

Would you have tolerated a noose and a sign that said, “Hang Mike Pence,” or would you have encouraged more respect for a man carrying out the constitutional duties of the Electoral College?

Could your calming presence have saved the life of Ashli Babbit?

Could you have prevented the arrests of more than 600 “tourists,” many of whom face significant time in prison or in jail while their families wonder what’s to happen to them if you had said as the crowd surged toward the doors and windows, “Wait!  We’re just here to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.  Go back out behind the fence and demonstrate out there.”

Oh, if only you had kept your promise.

“I’ll be there with you,” you said.

You’re no Jimmy Doolittle. Or George S. Patton.  Or Martin Luther King.

Or any number of other great leaders who led from the front instead of retreating inside their  nice, warm, safe quarters where they could do as you did(according to some accounts),  joyfully watch what you unleashed.

You expressed some concern a few days ago that the September 18h celebration of the January 6 insurrection was intended to make you look bad. What looked bad was the small number of people who gathered to celebrate the day,

Too bad you weren’t with them, either. Be comforted by the fact that you could not have looked worse on September 18th than you did on January 6.

But, once again, you weren’t in the front ranks. Others took all the risks and you watched it all on television. Again.

Once again you’re the man who wasn’t there.

Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today.

Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

—or maybe, walk away.  You’re good at that.

Why Didn’t I Just say—?

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(It’s the hardest word for many of us to say and we often regret not having the courage to say it.  Failing to say it gets us into all kinds of good and bad situations.  Dr. Frank Crane suggests we think more than we do when we say—-)

NO

No is next to the shortest word in the English language.

It is the concentrated Declaration of Independence of the human soul.

It is the central citadel of character, and can remain impregnable forever.

It is the only path to reformation.

It is the steam-gauge of strength, the barometer of temperament, the electric indicator of moral force.

It is an automatic safety-first device.

It has saved more women than all the knights of chivalry.

It has kept millions or young men from going over the Niagara Falls of drunkenness, profligality, and passion.

It is the updrawn portcullis and barred gate of the castle of self-respect.

It is the dragon that guards beauty’s tower.

It is the high fence that preserves the innocence of the innocent.

It is the thick wall of the home, keeping the father from folly, the mother from indiscretion, the boys from ruin, and the girls from shame.

It is the one word you can always say when you can’t think of anything else.

It is the one answer that needs no explanation.

The mule is the surest footed and most dependable of all domestic animals. No is the mule-power of the soul.

Say it and mean it.

Say it and look your man in the eye.

Say it and don’t hesitate.

A good round No is the most effective of known shells from the human howitzer.

In the great parliament of life the Noes have it.

The value of any Yes you utter is measured by the number of Noes banked behind it.

Live your own life. Make your own resolutions. Mark out your own program. Aim at your own work. Determine your own conduct. And plant all around those an impregnable hedge of Noes, with the jaggedest, sharpest thorns that grow.

The No-man progresses under his own steam. He is not led about and pushed around by officious tugboats.

The woman who can say No carries the very best insurance against the fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, and accidents that threaten womankind.

Be soft and gentle as you please outwardly, but let the centre of your soul be a No, as hard as steel.

What we’re made for 

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(Sometimes we have to be reminded of our proper roles and the proper place in our lives for our possessions and our institutions.  Today, Dr. Frank Crane tells us there is a difference between—)

USE AND BEAUTY

The Sabbath, said the teacher, was made for Man, and not Man for the Sabbath.

The bearin’s of which, as Dickens would say, is in its application.

Any Institution was made for Man, and not Man for the Institution.

The college, for instance. No, friend Procrustes, whilst we appreciate your zeal to make a record for yourself as President, yet we would remind you that we are sending our boy to your University for the good he can get out of it, and not for the benefit he can be to it. He is not there for you to find out how far he falls short of your standards, nor what glory he can add to his Alma Mater; He is there for you to find out what’s in him, and to develop that. We don’t care a hang about your grand old traditions and things, except as they help you in being the making of our particular pup.

The Church was made for Man, and not Man for the Church. And if your meeting-house is just occupied in keeping itself up, parson, why, close it up and start a hennery…We don’t care about how much money you raise, nor how beautiful are your vestments, nor how high your theology, nor how numerous your membership, nor how gay your stained glass. Are you helping friend Man? Are you making him sober, industrious, clean, and honest? Are you developing in him a civic conscience? Or are you simply being good—so good you’re good for nothing? Come, produce! Or quit!

The House was made for Man, Ma, and not Man for the House. Let the boys play marbles in the dining-room, and the girls have their beaux in the parlor, and grandpa smoke his pipe in the kitchen, and everybody raid the ice-box at 11 p. m. if they want to; what better use can carpets be put to than that children’s knees should wear them out a-gleemaking, and what are sofas for if not for spooning, and kitchen-warmth and cheer if not for old folk homing? Use the old home up, and get a better product—of love and laughter and undying memories.

Books were made for Man, and not Man for Books. Use ’em. Thumb ’em. Mark ’em. Go to bed with ’em. Carry ’em on trains. And don’t own books that cannot be carried down through the Valley of Every-day as the soul’s lunch-basket.

The most perfect ornament is that which is of the most perfect service to Man. No cane is so beautiful as the one grandfather wore smooth on a thousand walks; no chair so lovely as that one mother consecrated by many a night of rocking the baby; no table so priceless as that one where father used to write; no pipe so pretty as the one he smoked; no dress so charming as that one that still has the wrinkles in it worn there by the little girl gone—gone forever into heaven, or womanhood.

It’s the human touch that beautifies. Nothing can be warmly beautiful that is not, or was not, useful.

And Democracy is beautiful because it exists for the welfare of the People that compose it, and not for the glory of the Dynasty that rules it.

The State was made for Man, and not Man for the State.

A Good Time for a First Win; And a Glimpse at INDYCAR’s Future

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contribution Editor

(NASCAR)—Win when it really counts.

Denny Hamlin, winless this year, picks up his first victory in the first of NASCAR’s ten playoff races and becomes the first driver to lock in a place in the next round.  Hamlin held off a banzai charge off the last turn by pre-race favorite Kyle Larson to win the Southern 500 at Darlington.

For most of the event, it was a two-man race between the drivers who finished 1-2 in regular season points.  They combined to lead 302 of the race’s 367 laps.  Larson, who challenged Hamlin for most of the last stage of the race launched an all-out run for the lead on the last turn, scraping the wall as he tried to get outside of Hamlin, finished two-tenths of a second short of his sixth win of the year.  Ross Chastain was third, his best finish of the year. Martin Truex Jr., and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top five.

Hamlin, who finished in the top five in half of this year’s races—including four thirds and a second—automatically qualifies for the round of 12 that will go on for the championship after the next two races.  Larson still leads in points, however, thanks to bonus points he piled up for victories, stage wins, and being the top points driver after the regular season.

Harvick and Tyler Reddick remain the only playoff drivers without a checkered flag this year.

The next playoff race will be at Richmond next Saturday night.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR resumes racing next Sunday afternoon on the road circuit at Portland, the first of the three races that will close out its season.  The last three races promise to be a shootout between Pato O’Ward, Alex Palou, and Josef Newgarden.  O’Ward took over the points lead from Palou three weeks ago at Worldwide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis and Newgarden put himself in the championship picture by winning the race there.  The three are separated by 22 points.

Six-time champion Scott Dixon is lurking in fourth, only 43 back.

This has been a year of emergence for INDYCAR’s young drivers as the series looks at changes coming in the next couple of years.

We spent some time with INDYCAR President Jay Frye after the INDYCAR/NASCAR tripleheader at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last month, talking about this year, next year, and the new engines coming in 2022—–and what might or might not be in the more distant future.

Frye is a Mizzou graduate (marketing/education), a former Tiger football player (tight end/offensive tackle)and Rock Island Illinois native who says he learned to drive by driving a truck for the family-owned garbage trucking company. Before joining INDYCAR, Frye was with NASCAR, where he was named by ESPN the 2008 NASCAR Executive of the Year.

We started by discussing the weekend tripleheader of two NASCAR races and an INDYCAR race on the IMS road course

AUDIO:frye edited 2021 indy

Donald Davidson was the Speedway historian for more than 50 years before his retirement last year.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has become the first Dutch driver in the 71-year history of F1 to win the Dutch Grand Prix.

His seventeenth career victory breaks a record he had shared with British great Sterling Moss for the driver with the most victories, but no F1 championship. That, however, could change this year.

Verstappen picked up his seventh win of the year, finishing twenty seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton and taking the points lead from the seven-time champion.  Verstappen is now up by three.  He barely beat Hamilton for the pole but Hamilton had nothing for him during the race.

Hamilton teammate Valterri Bottas was third and afterwards announced that he was going to be the number one driver for Alfa Romeo next year.  Taking his place on the Mercedes roster will be George Russell, who has driven this year for the Williams team, which uses Mercedes engines. His success in F1 feeder series championships has positioned him to take the place of Bottas, who has been second-banana to Hamilton, who has described him as the best teammate he’s ever had.