Category Archives: people

Us vs It—part IV, Best guess

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(Before we get to the main point of today’s missive, your constant observer must confess that he feels a slight fever and has trouble breathing every time he hears the phrase “new normal.” He would quickly recover if the political and media leaders more accurately referred to the next positive step as the “new ABnormal.”   Likewise, he would be interested to see if President Trump could communicate without using the word “beautiful,” including the usual hand gestures.)

Legislative leaders, last we heard, are still thinking of reconvening the session on the 27th despite concerns by some members that the recall will be happening just about the time some analysts say Missouri will hit its Coronavirus peak.

Several issues could be before the House and Senate but the biggest one is the state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The Missouri Constitution says the legislature must adopt a budget by the next-to-last Friday of the session, in this case, May 8.

Our lawmakers face complicated and sad choices. Today we are going to try to explain how our state government has no good alternatives and why. Please stay with us because this will be a long class.

Here’s some history of why the Missouri Constitution requires passage of a budget a week before legislative adjournment and what that means in today’s circumstances.

Last nights of legislative sessions were usually quite wild until 1988. We recall when the legislature adjourned at midnight and the last budget bills, “Midnight Specials,” some called them, hit the floor minutes before the deadline. Chaos might not be an adequate word to describe those minutes when the legislature rushed to pass last minute budget bills. The fact that everybody was exhausted and not a few were feeling the effects of early celebration of the session’s end added to the disorder.

But in 1988, Article 3, Section 25 of the Missouri Constitution was changed to say, “No appropriation bill shall be taken up for consideration after 6:00 p.m. on the first Friday following the first Monday in May of each year.” That left the session’s final week for consideration of regular legislation, created a less chaotic ending, let members get home to their families before midnight and let the reporters file their stories before sunrise the next morning. Your faithful correspondent thinks it was one of wisest laws ever enacted in the state of Missouri. Until then, members of the General Assembly had a tendency NOT to go home after midnight adjournment but to go out to the Ramada Inn after midnight and get really serious about celebrating. And it often was sunrise or later before he could go home from his Missourinet newsroom.

If the General Assembly fails to enact a budget by the deadline, what happens? If economic uncertainty makes it unrealistic to adopt a reasonably realistic budget during the regular session, the Constitution allows the governor to call a special session to get a budget done for the fiscal year starting July 1. The General Assembly also could call itself back. But it will be easier for the governor to do it, and he would. The legislature has never operated a budget on the basis of a continuing resolution, as Congress too often has done, so it is unlikely to take that strategy—-which (to a non-lawyer) seems to be unconstitutional in Missouri anyway.

A special session in June is not unprecedented.

The legislature in 1997 failed to appropriate money for Health and Mental Health, nor did they appropriate money for their own salaries as well as those of judges and statewide officials. That last problem arose when legislators argued they could not appropriate money for themselves and others until they have approved funding for everybody else. Governor Carnahan called a special session that, we recall, started right after the regular session adjourned so the last two budget bills could be approved. It took six days to do it because the legislative process of introducing and passing bills takes a little time.

In 2003, Governor Holden and the legislature got into a big snit and he vetoed appropriations bills for education and social services. He called a special session in June that was unproductive. With time running short, he called another one. The legislature told him to take it or leave it. He finally signed appropriations bills for elementary, secondary, and higher education on the last day of the fiscal year.

Special sessions usually cost more than six figures a week, mostly for legislative travel expenses and per diem payments. However, the expenses of one this year would be significantly reduced by savings realized by the shutdown of the legislature from mid-March until late April—except for the couple of days lawmakers returned this month to pass the important supplemental appropriations bill.

After the legislature approves a budget and the governor signs it, he will have to make sure the state does not fall into constitutionally-forbidden deficit spending. Given what is likely to be an indefinite period of economic uncertainty, it would not be surprising for the governor to sign a budget but withhold funds from various services and programs to make sure the budget remains in balance for the entire fiscal year. He can announce spending restrictions when he signs the budget and he can make adjustments throughout the year, although the later in the year he makes them, the harder it is for agencies and their employees to deal with them.

Under the circumstances any budget the legislature approves is likely to be only a best guess.

Governor Parson will have to adjust it downward, if necessary, to keep it in balance. We have seen examples of that within the last few days when the governor withheld $228 million in the current budget because the diving economy makes the amount of money available for the fourth quarter uncertain.

Education has a tendency to absorb the biggest share of cuts and withholds. Here is why.

Joe and Josephine Missouri might have trouble understanding why it’s so painful to make cuts in the state budget of almost $30.1 BILLION dollars proposed by Governor Parson in the flush days of January. If you are a Joe or a Josephine, we hope we can help you understand some important things about that thirty-BILLION dollars.

The legislature can decide how to spend only about one third of that money and even then it is limited in what it can do.

More than ten billion of those dollars come from the federal government for state-run federally-financed programs.

Another ten billion dollars is considered “other” funds. Those are funds that are dedicated to specific purposes. Gas tax money that goes for our road and bridge system is one example. The Conservation Sales tax money that funds our wildlife areas and Conservation Department programs is another. The special sales taxes that help fund our state parks system and help limit soil erosion is another one. Gambling proceeds that fund a tiny part of education. The legislature can’t fiddle with those because the Missouri Constitution sets them outside of legislative control.

That leaves $10,431,666,579 that the governor’s budget proposal said was under control of the state. But even that is not fully in play because other state mandates require funding for some things. One-third of that ten-Billion goes to Elementary and Secondary Education under the statutory formula for funding K-12 education. Other mandated spending eats up another $5.108-Billion.

So out of that thirty-billion dollars-plus, the legislature actually only has $1.881,921,936 to play with, if you will. But remember, that’s the figure the governor recommended back in January when the restaurants and malls and theatres and bars were open and we could go wherever we wanted to go.

When big budget withholdings have to be made or when cuts have to be made—as they have been and will be—that $1.9 billion dollars is the place to cut. That’s only six percent of the entire proposed budget.

Of that $1.9 Billion dollars, two state departments consume $1.102 Billion—Higher Education and Social Services. The next two are Elementary and Secondary Education ($136 million), and Corrections ($107 million). That chews up about $1.345 Billion of that $1.9 Billion dollars. But there are five other state agencies. The governor proposed $365 million to fund them. There’s another $166 million that falls into the “other” category. A good chunk of those “other” funds go to Elementary and Secondary Education and Social Services with relative pocket change scattered through several other agencies.

In his COVID-19 daily briefing on April 9, Governor Parson was pretty direct. “We’re gonna have to rebuild the budget,” he said. His January proposal is junk because of the pandemic.

It is likely the best-guess budget for the programs and services all of us use will take some really painful reductions for the fiscal year starting July 1. Everybody is going to be hurt to some degree. Programs already dealing with serious problems are going to be dealing with even bigger ones.   The biggest programs are going to take the biggest hits because that’s where the money is. People are going to lose jobs. People relying on those programs will struggle even more than they struggle now.

The people we elect to work for us are facing the possibility that they will have to hurt many of us. Do not think that when they show up at the Capitol on the 27th, or whenever the decision is made to reconvene the legislature, that they will not anguish about what they have to do.

If you were in their place, which of YOUR neighbors would you choose to hurt even more than they already are hurting?

Most of us can rage against our circumstances. These folks are the ones we have chosen to get beyond rage and do something about the circumstances facing us. They will have no easy choices.

Dr. Crane on TR

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(A little more than five years ago, I landed on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. This week’s news of the firing of the ship’s commander because he sought help he felt he wasn’t getting to combat an outbreak of the Coronavirus on his ship brought back memories of a mammoth ship with a crew half-again as large as the Illinois town in which I grew up, and visions of what could happen to the population of a city-ship whose people had nowhere to flee and nowhere to seek medical help except in the small part of the ship that is its hospital. The commander left the ship in Guam to rousing cheers of the large crew he sought to protect. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a “hero’s sendoff.” He was removed because he violated the chain of command and in the process showed a negative light on the Navy. He was a man who cared about his people. Dr. Frank Crane wrote about the man for whom the ship was named when Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919. What he wrote leads me to think he and Captain Brett Crozier have some things in common. It also leads me to wonder what will be written of today’s leaders sometime in their futures.)

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Theodore Roosevelt is dead.

He has stepped from the midst of controversy and taken his place among the immortals, against whom no man can speak.

For the moment, the conflict ceases, friend and foe stand with bared heads to do homage to a great and valiant soul.

There is a sudden and loyal silence throughout all the hosts. For no man has ever been more a part of every man in the United States than Theodore Roosevelt.

His friends will rush no more quickly to speak his praise than his enemies.

For he was a man’s man, and it was a joy to fight him, as well as to agree with him.

His spirit was a fierce and beautiful flame.

His opinions were simple, and always avowed with the wholeness and self-abandon of a true believer.

He would have made a wonderful knight in the days of Charlemagne, a fair and worthy companion to Roland.

He conceived of life, of duty, and even of love in terms of conflict. His make-up was militant. But his conceptions were always sincere.

His chief characteristic was courage. Whatever may have been charged against him in the extravagances of dispute, his bitterest foe must concede that he was to the last a warrior unafraid.

And that quality of fearlessness, that indomitable bravery, when lodged in this weak humanity, is always a thing of beauty, a little spark of God. We love it. We respect it just for itself. It is the great worthwhile thing in an immortal soul.

So he was a friend, conceived of as a friend, in a passionate and personal way, as no other statesman of American history, except Lincoln.

He was very near to the American heart. And even in the stormy days of these vast issues that have beyond him, the tribute of respect that this people pays to him will be honest and profound.

He had a public mind and gave himself to the service of the people with a singleness of purpose that will be an inspiration to American youth.

He was thoroughly human. He was frank, overfrank sometimes, but we love the man whose heart outruns him.

Kings may pass and be followed to their graves with “the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power.” Presidents and premiers may die and their statues be set up in halls of fame; but none will go from the midst of the living and leave a sense of deep personal loss than this splendid man, this impetuous companion, who has been snatched by death from the intimate affection of a great people.

The Bull Moose has made his last charge.

The Rough Rider has led his last assault.

Bwana Tumbo, the mighty hunter, is back from this perilous expedition we call Life, and is gone home.

Friends and opponents, with equal earnestness, cry out, “God rest his soul!”

Upon his tomb there can be inscribed an epitaph, than which there can be no nobler, no prouder, no truer tribute:

“Here lies a real American.”

 

Dr. Crane on truth

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(We normally reserve any political observations for our Wednesday posting but an event a few days ago has led us to bend that standard for this Monday. Last week, President Trump held a conference call with the nation’s governors to discuss the pandemic. When some governors questioned the federal help their states could get from Washington, the President said Washington was serving only as a “backup” to their efforts. That prompted Washington’s governor to respond that the nation doesn’t need a backup, it needs a Tom Brady—a reference to the great quarterback of the New England Patriots. At a news conference, the President seemed to miss the point entirely when he told reporters, “They think Tom Brady should be leading the effort. That’s only fake news, and I like Tom Brady, spoke to him the other day, he’s a great guy.” Our strong personal attitude on the President’s accusations that the mainstream media is nothing but liars aside, there is nothing fake about the news of the COVID-10 pandemic as it envelops our world ever more tragically. Truth, consistent truth, is badly needed in these circumstances. So we turn to Dr. Frank Crane and his thoughts just after the Great War on—

THE UPROAR

Violence is the gesture of Impotence.

Brutality is the outward sign of inward Cowardice.

The persecutor is not quite sure of himself. It’s the half-doubt lights the fagot.

When the boy passes the graveyard at night he whistles, because he is afgraid of being afraid. It’s the same with all who vociferate.

Only those who believe with their whole hearts can keep still.

The screaming reformers do not believe their cause—wholly.

If the Germans had been sure of the superiority of their Kultur they would have left it alone, to conquer the world by its inherent excellence. Because they were not sure, they went to war.

“Defenders of the Faith!” Ludicrous title! For real faith needs no defense. It is a defense.

You don’t need to stand up for the Truth, and to fight for it, and to preserve it against the enemy. When you talk that way it shows you don’t understand the quality of Truth.

Truth is the one indestructible, ever-green, eternally persistent thing on earth.

All we have to do is to see it, to believe in it, to adjust our lives, thought, and speech to it, and wait. By and by, it always wins.

Hence genuine believers in the Truth do not “strive nor cry, neither is their voice heard in the street.” They are quiet, calm, glad. They have hold of the one thing that cannot fail.

They lean against the pillars of the universe.

The Infinite flows through them, and they smile at the contortions of the Finite.

Whoever is sure is undisturbed.

All fret, worry, apprehension, and morbidity arise from uncertainty. Those who fight are not quite sure.

Only those who are sure can afford to turn the other cheek.

Only the sure can afford to forgive their enemies.

Few reach the dizzy height of Jesus, who saw the Truth so clearly, and believed so utterly inits triumph, that He refused to struggle for it.

The most amazing thing about Him was His leisureliness.

So true it is that “he that believeth shall not make haste.”

Most of us have only caught up with Joshua; we are miles from Jesus.

We juggle His texts, but have no idea of His vast, calm spirit.

Let us find the Truth, even if it be only the Truth about wood, or metal, or mathematics, just any little piece of the Truth, and believe it, and adjust ourselves to it, and be happy; for out of Truth flows peace.

 

Dr. Crane on fearful times

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(Several years before President Franklin Roosevelt told Depression America, “The only thing we have to fear….is Fear itself,” Dr. Frank Crane had the same message in his nationally-syndicated newspaper column. In these fearful times of 2020, his message is renewed).

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST FEAR

The campaign against Fear is the greatest movement of the race. Fear is not bred of ignorance. It is the child of half-knowledge. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” What we don’t know at all we are not afraid of; as a sheep is happy, ignorant of the slaughter-house.

What we half-know scares us. Men used to be afraid of electricity, seeing it only in lightning; now they know it, and the motor-man whistles as he regulates the power of ten thunderstorms.

All along, humanity has been walking up to bugaboos and finding out they were absurd.

Stranger! Men have thought fear helped morality. They tortured, imprisoned, killed, to cure criminals. They beat children. They burned heretics. Gradually they saw their folly. They are learning that crime is essentially fear, the fear of the consequences of doing right, and that you cannot put out fire with kerosene; that is, you cannot cure the fear of doing right by the fear of punishment.

The Romans build a temple to Fear. Fear has played a malign part in the history of religion. The most amazing creation of the human imagination is hell.

There are still those who are afraid to walk under a ladder, to carry a spade through the house, and to start on a journey on a Friday.

Business once was based on fear. Men thought the only way to get work done was by slaves, and by keeping them frightened. The capitalist and the laborer still appeal to fear. But little by little, the futility of it all is appearing.

Employers and employed are learning to appeal to the free co-operation of beach other.

When men half-know gods they trembled at them. Timor fecit deos—fear made the gods. The race today fears and dreads God less because we are nearer Him than in the past.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight—

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It’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Call it what you will: a saying. Or an axiom, or a truism, and maybe an adage or a precept or an aphorism. The thought comes to mind with the President of the United States, who is six-feet-three, disparaging his most commercially visible challenger, “Mini-Mike” (as he calls him) Bloomberg, who is five-foot-eight.

We will not indulge in stereotyping politicians by saying all of them would be smaller if they lost all their hot air. That’s not fair so we’re not going to go down that road.

We will note, however, that President Trump ranks only third on the physical stature list of presidents. He’s a half-inch shorter than Lyndon Johnson. We wonder if being only THIRD tallest irritates him.

The President’s comparison of his physical size to the physical stature of those who think he should be one-and-done has prompted us to look at the physical sizes of those who want or wanted to be chosen to oppose him later this year.

In recent memory (my “recent” might be more “past” than your “recent”) the tallest presidential candidate was Crystal City, Missouri native Bill Bradley, who was 6’5” tall when he ran in 2000. Bradley will be 77 later this year and probably has shrunk by an inch or two. One brief candidate in this election cycle equaled him—New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio, whose support came up way short and made him one of the first pretenders to the throne to drop out.

President Trump, however, does still have an opponent taller than he—more or less. Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld got nine percent of the vote in New Hampshire last week (obviously he didn’t import enough illegal aliens to vote for him—-oops, we apologize for that remark; it just slipped out). One unidentified person who also uses Twitter suggested that President Trump did not want to debate Weld in New Hampshire because Weld is an inch taller than the President. So, by the way, was Abraham Lincoln.

Two 6-4 Democrats got in and got out of the campaign: Beto O’Rourke and Wayne Messam. Cory Booker is 6’2” tall. Two six-footers remain: Biden and Sanders.

Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Mike Bloomberg can stand nose-to-nose-to-nose (a picture of that would go viral in an eyeblink and would trigger tweeting like you wouldn’t believe) at five-eight.

The leader of the Yang Gang is 5-7. Kamala Harris is 5-2.

If Harris had stayed in the race and had she been elected, she would be the shortest President in American history at 5’2” tall.

Only nineteen of our Presidents have been taller than six feet. Our own Harry Truman was only one inch taller than “mini-Mike.” Among the political giants but physically small men to precede the proudly-tall President Trump are John Adams (5-7), the same size as William McKinley. Martin Van Buren and Benjamin Harrison were 5-6. And the shortest of our Presidents was James Madison, who is considered the “Father of the Constitution” and the Bill of Rights and the co-author of the Federalist Papers, all of which played a big part in the arguments for and against the removal of President Trump. Madison only five feet four inches tall. And what a debate opponent he would be in contemporary times!

We wonder if President Trump has a disparaging nickname for him.

It’s not the size of the dog, etc.

Speaking of dogs, particularly old dogs—-

Another bunch of information for your campaign trivia discussions is the age of the candidates when they were or will be sworn into office. A related discussion items is the importance of their selection of a running mate.

The youngest President of the United States was Theodore Roosevelt, who was sworn in at the age of 42 years, 322 days after William McKinley was assassinated. The youngest elected President was John F. Kennedy, who was 43 years, 236 days old in 1961.

President Trump is the oldest person ever to take the Presidential oath. He was 70 years, 220 days, older the Ronald Reagan at his first inauguration. Reagan as 69 years, 349 days. Four years later, some thought his age was a campaign issue. But in a debate four years later with challenger Walter Mondale, who was 16 years and 11 months younger than Reagan, the incumbent uttered the memorable, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan, of course, became the oldest president to leave office, another record President Trump could break if he wins in November.

One of the remaining Democrat candidates would break the records of Roosevelt and Kennedy by a significant margin if he wins in November. Mayor Pete would be 39 years and one day old.

On the other hand, FOUR Democrats would break the record as the oldest President if one of them wins. Elizabeth Warren would be the youngest of the bunch at 71-212. Joe Biden would be 78 years, 61 days old. Bloomberg would be 78-341 and Bernie would be 79-134.

Tom Steyer, by the way, would be a spritely 63 years, 207 days. Amy Klobuchar would be 60-240.

All of which points to an issue seldom discussed either in debates or among radio talkers or even around the table at the local coffee place: the vice-presidential candidate.

Michael Richard Pence will be 61 on June 7. Unless he inadvertently disagrees with the president about something, he’s going to be on the ticket again this year.

Among Democrats who have fallen by the campaign wayside: On inauguration day, 2021, Andrew Yang will be five months away from turning 47. Cory Booker will be eighty-eight days short of 52. Michael Bennett will be just past 56. Tulsi Gabbard will be 75 days short of 40. Beto O’Rourke will be about 47 ½.

Nothing prohibits a nominee from picking someone outside his field of opponents, as President Trump did, with Mike Pence.

And some voters, looking at the ages of the incumbent and of many of his challengers, might find the choice of vice-president a factor in what they do in November. Not many, maybe, but some.

 

Dr. Crane on egoists

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

HUMANITY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exonerated?

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We got a message from Eric Greitens last week proclaiming, “We’ve been exonerated.”

—as in not guilty of criminal charges.

As we discussed last week, “not guilty” does not mean “innocent.”   But the Greitens news release said the Missouri Ethics Commission found “no evidence of any wrongdoing” by Greitens.

Well, except for that little finding that his campaign has been fined $178,000 because a political action committee supposedly independent of Greitens’ gubernatorial campaign violated laws requiring independence. The commission says the failure to disclose that A New Missouri, the non-profit set up to support the Greitens agenda, paid for a poll that was given to the Greitens campaign—a violation of rules requiring the reporting of gifts.

Greitens told his faithful followers in his emails that the ruling “makes it clear…our justice system was abused. Lies were told and bribes were paid in a criminal effort to overturn the 2016 election.” He points out that “some of the people” who lied about him face criminal charges for lying under oath and evidence tampering.

Frankly, we‘ve heard just about enough of this “overturning an election” business. Getting elected is a gift, not a license. And one thing government does from time to time is take away the license of someone who misbehaves behind the wheel, in a profession, or even misuses the gift of public office.

Some of the people” actually is one person, William Tisaby, who was hired to investigate the Greitens sex scandal is scheduled for trial next month on six charges of perjury and one of tampering. Greitens resigned as governor in a plea deal with Tisaby’s boss, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, that she would drop criminal charges connected to the sexual affair if he quit.

Greitens’ email message to the faithful quickly becomes a pity plea. He cites “constant harassment and vitriol, the lies—repeated and magnified over and over again—the vicious attack on family and personal finances.” The months since he left office, he says, have been “the hardest of my life” with “plenty of dark days.” But he’s been uplifted by “how compassionate, strong, and loving most regular people are.”

Greitens is not the first political figure to experience “dark days” because he or she fumbled the big chance to be significant.

But he’s right, you know. History shows that even disgraced politicians remain human beings. To go farther, if you get a politician out of his or her theatre of operations, they’re just regular folks (most of them, in our experience). And if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the face we wear while practicing our profession often is not the face that our friends outside the profession recognize. The ruthless politician, the toughest lawyer, the matter-of-fact doctor, the hard-bargaining car dealer, the flinty-eyed reporter are different people when they’re barbecuing hamburgers with friends or coaching their child’s sports team.

Greitens’ email shows the kind of magnanimity that people in his position eventually realize regardless of how much they maintain they have been persecuted. Dwelling on the hurt and resentment gets one nowhere. “Hang on, keep faith, and have courage—life comes back around and it offers a lot of joy, and purpose, and love.”

Sounds like the roots for another book. “A friend” told the Washington Examiner, a conservative monthly political publication, that Greitens is writing one. The same person said Greitens is preparing to launch a new service organization. The Mission Continues, the veterans services organization Greitens founded in 2007, became embroiled in the Greitens investigation when it was revealed he had used the organization’s mailing list to solicit campaign donations. The Missouri Ethics Commission fined the Greitens campaign $1,000 for that little episode (The campaign paid $100 of the fine and promised not to sin like that again with that organization). The Mission Continues continues, by the way.

However, his comment that, “The deepest possible tragedy in all of this would come if we let them change who we are” indicates an inability to grow beyond what he was. And what he was was a not-very-good-governor. He was arrogant. He was secretive. He tried to control the message although that didn’t go well in the end. He believed he could force some members of his own party to support ideas that weren’t going to fly by divulging their personal phone numbers on the internet. He was derogatory toward the legislature and saw no need to patch things up after he was in office for his critical but publicly-popular comments during the campaign.

And we shouldn’t forget that he quit when a legislative investigation headed toward likely impeachment had cornered him on possible serious campaign finance violations. The special investigative committee basically gave him a choice of revealing intertwined big-money links between various committees providing financial fuel for his political ambitions, or leaving town. So he announced his resignation, took no questions, and got out of Dodge.

It’s not altogether helpful for Greitens to suggest he’s not going to change his spots.

There have been rumors that Greitens would emerge and run for the governorship this year as an Independent; the Republican Party could hardly be expected to welcome him back. But the “friend” who spoke to the Examiner said he does not expect to seek political office this year although his options remain open for the future.

Greitens’ email says he’s not thinking of revenge, which is “about the past,” he said. “Justice is about the future…the future is bright.”

There is light at the end of the tunnel for Eric Greitens. “The future is bright.”

Unless, of course, that’s the headlight of a locomotive.

That House investigation shut down after the resignation before all the questions were asked or answered. He would prefer those efforts not be resumed in his future public life.

Eric Greitens will have a political shadow over him for a long time. He still has a core group of believers of seeming Trumpian loyalty that he was speaking to with his emailed statement. But it will take more than commercials showing him blowing up stuff and claiming he was wrongly persecuted to convince the general public it can trust him again.

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Dr. Crane on quitting

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Nineteenth century poet John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem on perseverance that was in one of our textbooks in high school, I think. It’s called “Don’t Quit.”   Part of it goes:

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

—He finished the poem with these two lines:

So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Dr. Frank Crane looked at quitting a little bit differently a century ago.   We pass along his thoughts to join those of Whittier in these times when many who are fatigued by the meanness of so much rhetoric want to withdraw, to quit the noise of our argumentative society. This entry also is something of a prelude for our entry Wednesday.

THE QUITTER

History is full of quitters. They furnish some of the most spectacular characters upon the world stage.

It’s an illustrious roll-call: Elijah, Jonah, Pilate, Romola*, Charles V., Hamlet—and how about you?

Some of these quit only temporarily and took hold again. With the others the quitting was fatal.

Running away and giving up were never a noble business.

The side-stepper does not cut an edifying figure.

At one time men imagined the ills of the world might be cured by deserting the world. They retired into caves and walled retreats. They gave mankind up as a hopeless lot and devoted themselves to getting themselves plucked as brands from the burning.

In Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” Christian is pictured fleeing his city and family, his fingers in his ears, bound for Heaven.

The world has got over this unwisdom. The church now sends missionaries into the world. Social reformers go and live in the slums. These systems indicate a healthier idea.

The question whether the world’s progress swill be furthered best by our activity or by our desertion needs not be discussed. Humanity will doubtless continue to advance whether you and I assist or not. Destiny has its own long plans; and if one man will not play the part it assigns him, another will be found who will do quite as well.

The only question is, not what will happen to the universe, but what will happen to me if I refuse to work. As Mordecai said to Esther when she hesitated to intercede with the king for her people, so it might be said to you or me: “If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, doubtless deliverance shall arise from another place, but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed.”

The point is that one’s fullest enjoyment of life is only found infighting courageously in that small corner of the battlefield where he has been stationed. No man ever found worthy content by running away.

To quit implies moral weakness.

Sensitiveness is not to be coddled, but to be overcome.

Go on, forget your wounds, never mind the bruises upon your soul, despise the danger, drop regret, brush aside premonitions, do your work, and you will get a quality of joy the deserter cannot know.

They say the sharks will shy off from a man if he keeps splashing about lively. The fear-birds will not settle upon a soul in vigorous movement.

The noblest drop of consolation that can cheer one’s last hour is to say, whether he has won or lost, “I have fought the good fight.”

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*Romola, the least-recognized of these six names, is the character in a three-volume novel by English Victorian-era novelist George Eliot (who was really a woman, Mary Ann Evans) that tells of a manipulative 15th century stranger in Florence, Italy and Romola, the daughter of a blind scholar. There are other characters in a plot that is too tiring to relate, as it is too tiring to discuss why Mary Ann wrote under the name of George. Look her up on the internet on your own. If you want to wade into the novel, it’s available thanks to Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24020/24020-h/24020-h.htm

If you begin reading it, remember Dr. Crane: “To quit implies moral weakness.”

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Dr. Crane and true grit

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“Grit” is a word we don’t hear much these days. Years ago, Grit was an enjoyable weekly newspaper to read at the grandparents’ home in rural Kansas. Grit is still around but is a magazine now and is often found at rural-oriented supply stores.

Sometimes we equate “grit” with courage.

But grit is something else. University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth learned as a seventh-grade teacher that IQ wasn’t the only thing that separated struggling students from successful ones. She found that “grit,” which she described as “passion and sustained persistence applied to long-term achievement with no particular concern for rewards or recognition” was a quality that indicated success. She wrote a best-seller about her research, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. The subject also is addressed by Caren Baruch-Feldman and Thomas R. Hoerr in The Grit Guide for Teens.

It is also addressed in direct terms by Dr. Crane.

IT TAKES GRIT

It takes Grit to do anything worth doing.

All real progress is upstream.

All the real crowns—soul-crowns and achievement crowns, not gold crowns—are rewards for fighting.

It takes Grit—

To be Patient,

To keep your Temper,

To improve your Mind,

To Exercise, and keep your Body fit,

To diet, that is, to eat for Health and not for Sport,

To save Money,

To push your business,

To tell the truth,

To keep your mind clean, your Mouth clean, and your Soul clean,

To say No,

To do what you don’t want to do, which means Discipline,

To pay your Debts,

To be Loyal—to yoru ideals, to your Wife, to your Husband, to your Friend, to your Country,

To say “I don’t know,”

To do your own thinking,

To resist the mob,

To be honest, simple, and straight,

And not to worry.

But these things are easy:

To be irritable,

To give way to impulse, to say “I can’t help it,” and to make no effort to control yourself.

To be mentally lazy, read nothing gbut trash, and have no habits of study,

To loaf, and to exercise only when you feel like it,

To eat what you please,

To wait for something to turn up,

To lie, to be disloyal, and to be unclean,

To agree with those you feel to be wrong, just to avoid trouble,

To side-step,

To go in debt, and to say, “Charge it!”

To join something and use partisanship for loyalty,

To go with the crowd,

To acquire a bad habit, and to nurse it along,

To follow your impulses and not your intelligence,

To fill your body with disease, your mind with error, and your soul with evil,

To slump, to pity yourself, to make excuses for yourself, to magnify your ego and ruin your character,

And to commit suicide.

It’s easy going down.

It takes Grit to go up, to get on, and even to keep decent.

Lord, but do I ever need baseball!

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It’s gray and it’s cold and it’s been gray and cold far too long and far too much. Or maybe grey and cold.

Life is so bad that I have been driven to ask what the difference is between “gray” and “grey.” Which one has fifty shades (It’s “e”). Is it Thomas Grey or Thomas Gray who was the 18th century English poet who wrote “Elegy Written in an English Churchyard,” a poem with the original ending that doesn’t do much to improve the mood on these cold, gray days.

No more, with reason and thyself at strife,
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room;
But through the cool sequester’d vale of life
Pursue the silent tenour of thy doom.

Gray (not “e” but “a”) rewrote the 128-line poem with a different conclusion but it offers no more solace on days like these.

I have been driven to Grammar (“a” not “e”) dot com for help. It wasn’t real helpful.   Look for yourself.

The past few weeks have given us the leaden cloud of impeachment, the weight of which has left us tired and has left our political system with a terrible burden of public distrust precisely at the time we must start deciding who, if anybody, can lift our confidence in government, which is—after all—led by those we, ourselves, select.

It is easy on days like these to think of ourselves as victims of government instead of what we really are—partners in government.

We have attended too many funerals of friends in the last year, read far too many letters to the editor that are little more than partisan political popgun skirmishes, watched noble aspirations for public benefit wither under the power of campaign donations, seen too few films or shows or television series that leave viewers uplifted, and watched too many late-night comedians whose one-note monologues encourage fleeing to bed and seeking refuge fully under the covers.

Yes, the Chief won the Super Bowl but then the President tweeted that they made the state of KANSAS proud and I wondered if he could identify Ukraine on a map without country names printed on them.

Lord, do I ever need baseball.

Some friends at the YMCA, knowing of my media background, have asked if I can get them tickets to a New York Yankees-Chicago White Sox baseball game to be played near the small Iowa town of Dyersville, Iowa, population about 41-hundred, this summer. Dyersville, as you probably know, is widely recognized as the home of the National Farm Toy Museum and the home of the Ertl Company, which makes die-cast metal alloy scale models of farm equipment and other vehicles.

There’s also THE baseball field, the filming site of Field of Dreams, which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary last year.

Major League Baseball has been pretty close to the vest with information about tickets for the Dyersville game but there won’t be very many. https://www.mlb.com/news/field-of-dreams-game-tickets-and-faqs

The teams taking part were announced last November:

https://doyouremember.com/108307/mlb-field-of-dreams-game

Beyond that, there’s been little information. We do know the game is scheduled for August 13 and it will count as a regular season game. It will be played in a specially-built ballpark owned by Go The Distance Baseball, the present owners of the movie site. The park has only 8,000 seats and it will be north of the movie ball diamond, connected to it by a path cut through a cornfield.   There will be windows in the outfield walls so fans can see the corn. The owners say they’ll find other things to do with the ballpark after the game.

No, I can’t get tickets for you. But like you, I’ll probably watch the game on the teevee.   Who will throw out the first pitch?   Your guess is as good as mine but I’ll bet it’s a pretty close.

But baseball is coming near. And, boy howdy, do I ever need it!

Chasing down information about the ball game at Dyersville brought me to several Youtube sites about Kevin Costner, the movie, and even the composer of the theme music, James Horner, who was killed in a plane crash in 2015 and is best remembered for the soundtrack to Titanic.

And that, of course, led to James Earl Jones intoning his ode to baseball near the end of the movie. It’s been cited so often that it is almost corny. But, gosh, is it good.

“They’ll walk out to the bleachers, and sit in shirt-sleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they’ll watch the game, and it’ll be as if they’d dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick, they’ll have to brush them away from their faces….The one constant through all the years…has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game — it’s a part of our past…It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again.”

In the offseason we’ve watched baseball writhe because of the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. We’ve watched the free agent meat market produce players paid sums beyond our imaginations. The Royals have changed managers. The Cardinals still have enormous potential waiting to break through.

But when we hear the sound of baseball hitting leather or wood hitting the baseball, all of that offseason stuff fades away because games are played in their time and it is only the game that is important. Uniforms change, players once young and now old at 37 come and go. But it is still 60’6” from mound to plate, still 90’ from plate to first, still 127’ 3 3/8” home to second. The eternal dimensions contain the game.

The rules are clear and mostly unchanging year to year, decade to decade. Lines clearly mark what is fair and what is foul. Every batter has an equal chance to get a hit—three strikes and four balls. The tag of the bag in the first part of the double play, the infield fly, obstruction, the balk—all have rules requiring specific actions or situations. Baseball will be played this year with the same basic rules and dimensions it used last year. It’s one thing we can count on in otherwise unstable times.

Go to a baseball game and for a few hours you know how the game will be played. In the time before the game and the time after the game, we live in a world much less certain.

And the game is all there is for however long it takes to finish it. Cold, gray days, politics and impeachment, popgun partisanship in the letters to the editor page, and most of the cares of the world fade to insignificance because baseball is baseball, a game that by its eternal dimensions tells us there can be stability in life and that what once was good could be good again.

Lord, I do need baseball!