Category Archives: Places

Monstrosity

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President Trump says he wants to build a 250-foot tall arch to celebrate this country’s 250th anniversary.  It is yet another project that wreaks of excess and of self-promotion.  Whatever its official name becomes, it’s always going to be known as the arch that Trump built. Arch deTrump, some already are calling it.

The only thing taller in the area that stretches from the Arlington National Cemetery east to the Library of Congress across from the Capitol is the Capitol itself, and by only a few feet.

Grace, beauty, and appropriateness have never been in his lexicon.  Gross, ugly, and inappropriate too often define him to an increasing number of people.  Last week, in an oval office reveal of the design for this monstrosity. CBS reporter Ed O’Keefe asked the President who the arch is for.  “Me,” he said.

The fact checkers who have built their careers on Trump’s lies had a day off on that one.

The Commission on Fine Arts refers to it as the Triumphal Arch. To be honest, the  letter “i” should replace the “h.”

The only manmade arch that we have been able to find that is bigger than this is the one on the St. Louis riverfront.

Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in Paris is almost 100 feet shorter, at 164 feet.  The Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City is only 220 feet. The Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea tops out at 197 feet.

The four-sided arch that is the Pennsylvania State Memorial at Gettysburg, honoring the 34,500 Pennsylvania soldiers who fought there, checks in at 110 feet. Not far away, the National Memorial Arch at Valley Forge honoring those who wintered there 1777-78 is sixty feet high.

The top of the Memorial Arch in Huntington, West Virginia is only 42 feet from the ground. The Camp Randall, Wisconsin arch honoring Civil War veterans from that state needs only thirty feet to dignify them. The Bushnell Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Hartford, Connecticut is but 116 feet and the Washington Square Arch that commemorates George Washington’s inauguration in New York City gets the job done in 77 feet.

“It’s going to be beautiful,” he says.  Philip Kennicott with the Washington Post offers a brutal opposing view:

It is an insult to the men and women who risk their lives to protect democracy, who have fought in wars against fascism, who have actually achieved victory rather than merely declared and celebrated it. Its symbolism is borrowed and confused, and it will block a sacred vista that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the final resting place of the Civil War dead, and veterans from every major war and conflict this country has fought.

This is a subtly that escapes people such as Trump who think symbolic as well as real sledgehammers and wrecking balls are among mankind’s greatest inventions. The arch will stand at the southern end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, interrupting the flow of history from the Lincoln Memorial to the peaceful hillside that is Arlington National Cemetery, a cemetery on land confiscated from Confederate commander Robert E. Lee as a resting place for those who defended the Union in the Civil War.

Some critics say the planned arch will obscure much of he cemetery but will frame Lee’s mansion at the top of the hill beyond. Is that intentional?  Who knows, although Trump has expressed a fondness for honoring Confederate leaders.

Trump has said it will be 250 feet high as a symbol of the nation’s 250th birthday. As of last week, however, it is only colored drawings.  The first shovel of dirt for the project has not yet been turned and Independence Day is less than 90 days away.  As one critic put it, “If it isn’t going to be done this year, it really has nothing to do with the 250th Anniversary, and as Trump said, it’s for him.”.

Kennecott concludes, “It perverts a fundamentally American idea about war. We have fought them, we have died in them, and we have brought war to too many people who did not deserve our meddling with their politics and sovereignty.

“But no matter the cause, no matter how great the victory, we fundamentally honor sacrifice and service. We celebrate the end of wars and the achievement of peace, not victory. Roman victory arches are lovely to look at, but they were primarily political statements, assertions of personal power and propaganda by ambitious men”.

Caesar Trumpus wants his arch.

If it can’t be finished by July 4, maybe he can complete it in time to celebrate his glorious victory over Iran.

Reaching To the Stars

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They’re there.

Our “Star Sailors” travelling farther away from their source of life than anyone ever has traveled before, are circling the Moon today, four thousand miles beyond the flight of three men of Apollo 13, seeing parts of the noon only mechanical recording system have seen.

They are spending about six hours in their Orion spacecraft photographing places on the back side of the moon. And then they will sling shot back for a fiery return to our blue marble

Fifty-seven years ago, at Christmas 1968, three men from the planet earth saw what only had been seen with telescopes and the naked eye for millennia. Apollo 8’s Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders described the black and white images we saw of a gray and black world below them as they looped around the moon.

To those of us who could not take our eyes from our television screens showing us a desolate place almost a quarter-million miles away, the event was astounding. All of the science fiction we had read since we were in grade school dissolved in the reality of what we and the rest of his precious planet were witnessing along with those three men.

The men of Apollo 8 later showed us color photographs of earthrise over the Moon and the first photograph of the round blue marble as they left it behind and to which they gratefully returned.

It was Anders who is credited with seeing the entire earth at a glance who likened it to a fragile “little Christmas tree ornament against an infinite backdrop of space, the only color in the whole universe we could see. It seemed so very finite.” This image from Apollo 8 was the first time we saw what they saw—how alone we are.

The four astronauts aboard the Artemis II flight these five decades later, are the first people since December 1972 and Apollo 17 to let us see it again. To a new generation, to whom the daring dash to the Moon by Apollo 8 is only a page in a history books, the adventure is renewed.  Its goal, different from the Apollo landings, an exciting reach for humanity, perhaps re-establishes a focus on something greater than petty politics and near-constant wars.

Perhaps in these and other photographs to come will end decades of looking inward and increasingly finding the worst of ourselves and once again lift us to rediscover a time when, as one of the original Apollo astronauts said, “nothing was impossible.”

It brings back echoes of President Kennedy’s speech at Rice University in 1962 when called for this country to send astronauts to the moon and bring them back safely.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war. 

He saw he mission to the Moon would “serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skill.”

A new generation now picks up that challenge as the last of the old generation waits to learn what “new knowledge is gained, what new rights will be won and used for the benefit of all people.”

Carl Sagan, an astronomer of another generation whose television series Cosmos explained the wonders of the universe and mankind’s place in one tiny place in the vast emptiness of space, once showed a photograph taken far, far, farther away than these from Apollo and Artemis.

The photograph taken from 3.7 billion miles from us show only a tiny blue dot.  “Look again at that dot,” he said. “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

The next step will be to send a new generation of Moonwalkers to make the dangerous descent,  to find new discoveries, and—we all hope—leave new footprints behind before they come home.

Geologist Harrison Schmitt was the last man to set foot on the Moon, the only true scientist to be there so far.  But Mission Commander Gene Cernan was the last man to leave a footprint on the Moon as he climbed the ladder to the Lunar Lander behind Schmitt.  He looked forward to the return and had some advice for the next people who step onto the lunar soil:

Cernan told Politico a few years ago:

There are times when I find myself almost involuntarily gazing at the moon — looking back on a time in my life that seems unreal. Oh, I’ve been there, all right, and know that my last footprints, along with Tracy’s initials, will be there forever — however long forever is. But it is not the past that any longer challenges me, but rather the future. Our destiny is to explore, discovery is our goal — curiosity being the essence of human existence. I often ask myself if we will ever go again where humans have never been before and see again what has never been seen before. The answer is absolutely yes.

In 1969, the world took a giant leap into the future as the result of that one small step by Neil Armstrong. Many more steps were to follow Neil’s, launching us into a new era of science, technology and, perhaps most important, discovery led by a new generation of young, eager scientists, engineers and educators who were inspired to accept the challenge and committed to see their dreams fulfilled. Today’s media coverage of that epic moment seems to many like science fiction. But it wasn’t. It was science fact and continues to this day to have significant impact on our lives, on our future, and, indeed, on the entire world. The benefits that have followed were hardly imaginable at the time. One of the core lessons from Apollo is that the greatest advances in science and technology happen as a byproduct of the bold steps we take when committing ourselves to expanding human knowledge and understanding. Perhaps the most important byproduct of Kennedy’s vision that took us to the moon is the passion inspired in the hearts and minds of those generations who follow in our footsteps.

We have again reached a challenge in human history. The moon, Mars and beyond — they are calling. The technology and systems to again reach for the stars are now within our reach. The benefits are there for us to claim. However, it will take the will of the American people, a sustained political commitment, and, once again, a leader with foresight and vision. Now is the time for America to recognize with pride our nation’s exceptionalism, regain our leadership in space and lead the free world on the next giant leap for mankind.

Today’s highly evolved and improved answer to Apollo is the Space Launch System and the Orion crew exploration spacecraft. Together they can open the door to the future, providing the capabilities we need, allowing us to finally reach the furthest frontiers of space. NASA and industry are making significant progress with the development of these deep space systems. American workers across the nation are making the probability of future space exploration again attainable. If I can call the moon my home before today’s generation was even born, what challenge can be beyond their reach? The driving force is the understanding that human space exploration is essential to the vitality of our nation, providing untold opportunity for generations to come.

Bipartisan support for space has remained strong since the days of Sputnik continuing to the present time. With determined leadership from the administration and ongoing support from Congress, we can enable NASA and industry to complete their work to build the systems we need to explore beyond the moon.

With SLS/Orion we are ready to seek out what the heavens have to offer — it is time for our nation’s leaders to commit to a clear logical destination, a mission, a goal with a timetable, plotting a course of new discovery. It is time to re-ignite, to re-energize the meaning of American exceptionalism. It is time to recognize what it takes to inspire young minds to dream big and accept the challenges their generation faces. We have the responsibility to provide them the direction and the opportunity to once again reach beyond their grasp in leading mankind into the future of discovery.

In a later interview, Cernan said, “Their future is going to depend on what we did a half a century ago. I’d like to be here to congratulate them, to thank them, and ask them what people ask me all the time, ‘What did it feel like?’

”Enjoy. Take advantage of the opportunity. Don’t take anything for granted. Be prepared for what you don’t expect to happen, and know that you, whoever you are, can do it. Not only can you do it, but can do it better than it’s ever been done before.“

Gene Cernan didn’t make it to this day. He died nine years ago.

Those who are sharing their view of the Moon with all of us here on “the good green earth” of Apollo 8’s Christmas message are the table-setters for those who will next land. Perhaps in this new era of exploration we will rediscover a belief in ourselves that has been dwindling since those days when “nothing was impossible.”

Only four of those who walked on the Moon survive.  Buzz Aldrin is 95 and in poor health. Dave Scott is 93. Charlie Duke, the youngest man to walk on the moon at age 36, is now 90. And Harrison Schmitte, the geologist who later became a U.S. Senator from New Mexico, also is 90. A dozen other men flew to the moon but did not walk upon it. Only Fred Haise of Apollo 13 survives from that group.

Just for the record: The remaining Apollo capsules were used to send nine astronauts to Skylab, our first space station. Joe Kerwin, 94, Jack Lousma, 90, and Edward (Hoot) Gibson, 89 are still with us.

Lousma and Haise were involved in the early flights of the Space Shuttle, as was moonwalker John Young (who died in 2018 as the only man to fly in the Gemini, Apollo, and Shuttle programs). Vance Brand, who would have commanded Apollo 18 if the program had not been cancelled, took part in the Skylab and Shuttle programs. He will be 95 next month.

NASA doesn’t plan a Moon landing until September 2028. We hope at least one of this generation will be here to welcome that crew back home.

(Earth pictures: NASA; Apollo astronaut Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon, an accomplished artist who spent the rest of his life depicting that earlier era of moon flights died in 2018. His work that gave its name to the title of this entry, is signed by more than twenty of the Apollo astronauts. Several of his prints are available through Novaspace.com or on various other internet sies)

 

IGNORANCE

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Any good journalist abhors ignorance, even personal ignorance. Consumers of our products in all of their forms probably have no idea of the number of stories, programs, and books that spring from seeing something and thinking “?” and then learning the answer.

Most people don’t have or don’t take the time to pursue an answer. But it’s the old “who, what, when, where and how” that defines the journalist’s mind and the journalist’s work product.

I often have told people that it is the unknown that journalist face at the start of every day that makes getting up long before the rooster crows and staying up long after the sun sets. At the end of the day we have done something that science says is impossible: We have made something out of nothing. It’s called “news,” the unpredictability of life captured and the story told, a vanquishing of ignorance—-sometimes whether you want it vanquished or not.

Ignorance is dangerous whether it is in common courtesies, traffic codes, health warnings, but especially in politics where ignorance not only is preyed upon by candidates and advocates but by those who have been given great responsibility.

We are alarmed by steps being taken to erase the unpleasant parts of our past and to be dishonest about our heritage and the responsibilities we have as citizens to conquer our baser relations with others, based on how we have overcome them in the past.

Today’s observation was triggered by the appearance of President Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who recently denied to host Joe Kernan of  CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the President’s interest in Greenland amounts to American imperialism:

“When has the United States engaged in imperialism? Never. Europe has engaged in imperialism. The reason the Danish have Greenland is because of imperialism.”

When has the United States engaged in imperialism? How about two centuries of it.  We would not be the United States if it was not for imperialism.

I reached onto my bookshelf for Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire, a volume Landry should read if he wants to rise above the ignorance that soaks this administration. What might we call the administration’s takeover of Venezuela and its threatened takeover of Cuba and Greenland and the earlier blabbering of making Canada the 51st state if not “imperialism?”  Added to that discussion is the frequent dismissal in this administration that Puerto Ricans are not Americans.

The administration in its efforts to cleanse or whitewash our history prefers we are ignorant of many things including that the imperialistic spirit was part of this nation from the beginning, when early explorers operating under an already-ancient papal proclamation that it was proper to seize lands from “infidels,” claimed lands occupied for thousands of years by others in the name of God and Country.

Just 55 years after the landing of businessmen the a few religious dissenters landed at Plymouth, the first war broke out between Europeans and Native Americans when the Europeans wanted to expand the borders of Massachusetts Bay and Rhode Island. It was the beginning of a 200 year-plus takeover of territories occupied by dozens of previously independent nations.

Two especially egregious examples are the subjugation of the Cherokees, a people with their own constitution and their own written language, with their own plantations is six southern states, their own capital and their own system of slavery.  They were given a new territory to occupy in the 1830s so the Europeans could have their ancestral lands.

Throughout the rest of the 19th century, similar measures were enforced with the forced movement of other nations, some of whom wound up in the same place, a place set aside for Indians. But the attraction of unassigned territory in that area created the 1889 Land Rush when 50,000 settlers roared in to take over the area. The now-“American” area was recognized in 1907 as the state of Oklahoma.  Not until seventeen years had passed did the people displaced through the decades and now disrupted by the land rush—the people of the Indian nations forced there— become recognized by congressional action as American citizens although it was not until 1948 that Congress passed the Indian Voting Rights Act.

The 1846 Mexican war made one-third of Mexico part of the United States. Fifty years later, we went to war with Spain and fought the Philippine War to claim that land.

Immerwahr looks at 1941 as an example of our imperialist holdings: Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states. But these also were NOT foreign countries: Philippines, Puerto Rico, Panama Canal Zone, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa. (Panama was Panamanian but it was leased to the United States at the time.) One out of eight people in the United States lived outside the 48-state “logo map” as he calls it.

He also notes a “stream of smaller engagements” that have bought at least parts of other nations under our control for military bases. He cites 211 times that American troops have been deployed to 67 other countries since 1945.

The book came out before Venezuela and Iran.

Immerwahr concludes the introduction to his book, “At various times, the inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured, and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen”

Landry asked, with his ignorance on full display, “”When has the United States engaged in imperialism?”  The truth is in Immerwahr’s book should he care to read it although this seems to be an administration led by a President whose questionable reading habits and abilities have been much discussed and whose preference for historical literacy seems non-existent, a “blessing” he demands be extended to all of us in a year when accurate recall of our history should be our guiding interest.

We leave you with these cautionary words from President Calvin Coolidge:

“It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exaltation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.”

And ignorant.

 

 

It’s Time to Order Another Obelisk 

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The Missouri Veterans Memorial at the Capitol is a quiet place,  of a slow-moving cascade of water flowing into a reflecting pool around which people can ponder how much is lost to war.

And how much will be.

To the east of the pool is a shaded walk that takes visitors past nine memorial obelisks remembering the nine wars in which Missourians have fought since statehood in 1821—Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and finally the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, less than a year after the ninth obelisk was dedicated—after an end date of that long war was determined—it is time to plan for a tenth one.

As this is written, no Missourian has been killed in Trump’s War—-which is not what it will be called in the black granite when the tenth obelisk is installed.  As of now, it probably will say “Iran War,” but it’s too early to carve anything into stone because we don’t know what the scope of this conflict will finally be.

Nor, apparently, does the man who ordered it. He started the war and now he is whining that NATO is giving him no help.

NATO, the people he has spent the last several years insulting and threatening, seems content to letting President Trump stew in his own juice.  NATO is more about protecting Ukraine (remember Ukraine, Mr, President?) and itself than helping President Trump.

The Coalition of the Willing has become the Coalition of the Unwilling.

To refresh our minds:  then-President George W. Bush declared at a NATO summit in 2002 that if Iraq President Saddam Hussein did not disarm (he was accused of having weapons of mass destruction), that the United States would assemble a “coalition of the willing” to do it for him.

Saddam didn’t. So George Bush’s United States and troops from 48 other countries backed the plan. Four countries eventually put boots on the ground—us, the UK, Australia, and Poland). More than three dozen other countries provided some troops but not major numbers. Some don’t even had standing armies but provide other kinds of help.

The coalition did not hold and it became a topic of political ridicule (Busch had offered foreign aid to participants, a policy that one columnist termed “a coalition of the billing” and another observer considered “a coalition of the shilling.”) By mid-2009 everybody but the United States and the United Kingdom coalition had backed away.  The Coalition of the Willing was considered ended in 2010.

President Bush assembled his coalition before the fight began.  President Trump just barged right in—BOMBED his way right in—to a new war and did not ask for help until Iran fought back and closed the Straits of Hormuz. Only then did he look for friends in NATO only to find he didn’t have very many anymore.

He’s watching his foreign policy by sledgehammer wielded by amateurs turn into quicksand. He is so desperate that he has lessened some sanctions against Russia—imposed as a reaction to the invasion of Ukraine—in an effort to relieve some pressure on the oil supply which seemingly could help finance further Russian operations against Ukraine, if we understand where this policy is leading.  He’s firing missiles the way kids fire bottle rockets on July 4th while China watches our war-making or defensive armaments dwindle and also watches Taiwan. The early talk about not using troops is ominously sounding like —using troops.

Some observers have suggested that Iran is Trump’s Ukraine.

“Some people will die, I guess,” the President has said.

Order the tenth obelisk. Too bad the state can’t send the bill for it to President Trump.

A few weeks ago, my state representative, Dave Griffith, asked me if I could find how many Missourians died in the wars of the eighth and ninth obelisks (Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan).  I could not locate numbers but I did find a website that listed the names of all of the military people who died in those conflicts. I picked out the Missouri names and sent them to him.

Their names won’t be on the obelisks although the number of those who died will be someday.

Their names are on their own monuments scattered throughout the graveyards of Missouri and elsewhere, unfortunately soon to be joined by similar monuments from Trump’s War.  Here is the list from President Bush’s War, with the date of official notification.  We pray their tragic coalition will not be joined by a new coalition from Mr. Trump’s War, but we fear it will be.

Let us know if your loved one killed in these long wars is not on the list.

Continue reading →

The Missouri  Optimist

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Two years from now, we will observe the sesquicentennial of the publication of the first edition of the Blue Book, the Official State Manual as it is more formally called. Secretary of State Michael McGrath published it in 1878 not only to list the people and agencies that constituted Missouri government then but to use it as a one-man state chamber of commerce.  Amidst his extensive horn-blowing, we find some things still true of ourselves. We also find some things to which we still should aspire almost 150 years later.

This is his Foreword to “The Almanac and Official Directory of Missouri:”

MISSOURI. It is a truth that must be admitted, that very many outside of Missouri, and some even in it, know but little of its vast resources or of its immense wealth and unexampled prosperity, and when told scarcely believe it, so great is the extent and magnitude thereof.

There is no territory of equal size on the continent which contain so varied and such large quantities of the most useful minerals. Missouri may safely challenge the world to produce a Superior in this respect.

It is estimated by those who have computed the quantity of Iron in Pilot Knob and Iron Mountain, that there is, above the surface of these mountains alone, iron sufficient to afford an annual supply of 1,000,000 tons for two hundred years.

Lead and Zinc Ores are found almost everywhere in South Missouri, and the lead mines of Granby, Joplin, and Mine LaMotte, are almost inexhaustible.

Iron and Coal underlie some of the richest lands in the State. In many cases it is difficult to determine whether the agricultural or mineral resources are most remunerative. If Missouri were as densely populated as England, it would have a population of 25,000,000, and by the extent and diversity of its resources is far better able to support this vast number in competency and independence than England is to maintain its present population. This seems incredible but is nevertheless the fact.

 Missouri presents to the farmer conditions of soil and climate favorable to his calling. The richness of the soil cannot be surpassed. Farms, after bearing without artificial fertilization twenty-five successive crops, have failed to show scarcely any decrease in productiveness; water is abundant, and streams and springs are found in every portion of it,

Its climate is delightful; the winters are short and mild, and the summers long and temperate. In Missouri, agriculture will compensate the skillful and industrious follower with independence and wordly riches. To it manufacturers are invited, with the offer of rich facilities, and if natural adaptation, be any evidence of the future, Missouri will at no distant day become the workshop of the Great Valley of the Mississippi.

It is unnecessary to enumerate the articles that ought to be manufactured in it; there is scarcely a want or luxury of domestic manufacture known to the human family but what can be readily supplied from it. Railroads traverse all portions of the State, and reach almost every city, town and village in it.

Missouri, being already rated the fifth State in the confederation, and soon to become the fourth with an area exactly equal to that of all the New England States put togeiher, and once and a half as large as tbe great State of New York; and in the City of St. Louis, now the third in size and population in the Union, as its Metropolis, it requires no prophecy to foretell the millions who will within the next twenty years seek homes within it.

A calculation based upon the census is all that the prediction demands. The present population, according to the last State census of 2,100,000 is entirely insufficient to develop her vast resources, and it therefore seeks the co-operation of colonists from the Eastern, Northern, and Southern States, and of the sturdy and industrious immigrants who annually arrive in this free country, fleeing from oligarchal and despotic governments, to better themselves. It invites also the overcrowded of the seaboard cities of this country, to cross the father of waters and make their homes within her.

Missouri may be regarded as offering greater inducements, as to climate, soil and fertility to the farmer, artisan, laborer, colonist and immigrant than any of the other States or parts of the country. Missouri promises to all a cordial welcome, and liberal compensation for labor. Millions may settle within her borders without exhausting the ample means in store for them. Her schools, both public and private, are the best in the country.

It may be said without fear of contradiction that Missouri is today the most prosperous and best governed State in the Union. In fact, no location in the Republic presents a more encouraging field for the honest laborer or the aspiring citizen.

Tbe contentions of the war have long since disappeared. Liberalism and toleration in politics and religion, are noted characteristics of her people. They are generous, hospitable and enterprising. Among them poverty and humble birth present no barrier to the attainment of wealth, distinction and honor. True merit is the criterion of success, and is fostered by hearty encouragement and profitable recognition.

Occupying, as she does already, a front rank among the States of the Union, it is easy to forecast her future as one of glory and renown! M. K. McG.

We recognize this is a certain amount of puffery intended to promote Missouri and we frankly see the same sort of thing today although in modern language.

One line jumps out, however.

The present population, according to the last State census of 2,100,000 is entirely insufficient to develop her vast resources, and it therefore seeks the co-operation of colonists from the Eastern, Northern, and Southern States, and of the sturdy and industrious immigrants who annually arrive in this free country, fleeing from oligarchal and despotic governments, to better themselves.

Would he write that about us today?

 

War

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It was an interesting juxtaposition of events last Saturday night at a birthday party for a submarine at the American Legion Hall—the USS Jefferson City, which was launched on February 29, 1992.

The boat is based in Guam but none of us knew where it was at that moment.  We hoped it and its crew were safe regardless of whether they were involved in the war with Iran—and I think most of us believe it is in the area.

The Jefferson City isn’t the largest class of submarines; the USS Missouri. It is part of the first class of submarines beneath the group of which the USS Missouri is a part. It’s an attack sub longer than a football field with about 140 crew members. It is loaded with missiles.

So, our capital city has a reason to pay attention to what’s happening and what’s going to happen.

There’s not much doubt that the world is a better place without the Iran’s religious leader and ruler but there’s no guarantee his successor will be any less troublesome.

There are many things that are problems with this conflict, the biggest one being Trump pulling this country out of the landmark Iran Nuclear Deal, more formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. We have heard one talking head suggest the President Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA was done because it had been achieved during the Obama administration and we’re all well aware of  Trump’s disdain for anything Obama did. Among other things, the agreement required interference-free inspections by an international group looking for any signs Iraq was generating bomb-capable amounts of uranium.

The Obama White House said the agreement “blocks every possible pathway Iran could use to build a nuclear bomb while ensuring—through a comprehensive, intrusive, and unprecedented verification and transparence regime—that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful moving forward.”  The deal went into effect in January, 2016 after the Center for Arms Control reported Iran had “significantly reduced its nuclear program and accepted strict monitoring and verification safeguards to ensure its program is solely for peaceful purposes.”

President Obama called the issue the “most consequential foreign policy debate that our country has had since the invasion of Iraq.” The deal went into effect in January 2016 after inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency had dismantled and removed two-thirds of Iran’s centrifuges and certified that Iran had shipped 25,000 pounds of enriched uranium elsewhere and dismantled.

President Trump pulled this country out of the agreement, calling it “horrible,” a “decaying and rotten structure,” and “defective to its core.”

It’s too bad nobody has ever been able to pin him down on what was so wrong with the agreement that merited his flamethrower verbiage.

Time and the flow of information will tell us if he is repeating George H.W. Busch’s entrance into a Middle Eastern war because of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction and an assumption that a populace relieved of the despotic rule of Saddam Hussein would welcome our troops as heroes—and adopt a democratic form of government.

Regime change is acknowledged as one reason for this war—with Israel as our only apparent ally— against Iran. He has not explained how his attack is a guarantee of peace and stability in the region.

Trump promised he would not involve this country in another endless foreign war.  But he has not announced any ending goal. Nor has he announced how Iran will be transformed into a peaceful democratic republic that is grateful to him to for eliminating the Ayatollah.  It is unlikely the Iranian military will give up easily or quickly. And it is hard to think that this war can be won without American boots on the ground and American bodies in it.

It is already more than an American-Israeli war against Iran.  Iranian missiles have hit other countries friendly to the Trumpian effort. Three American lives have been lost. Nine Israeli people are dead. The United Arab Emirates reports three deaths.

Trump has admitted, “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.”

“That’s the way it is,” he said.

His actions have united our allies and our enemies. Russia has called it “an unprovoked armed aggression” China has expressed “deep concern” and has urged respect for Iran’s security, territorial integrity, and respect for its sovereignty—-something it has not suggest Russia do in is Ukraine war. Europe is keeping its distance. The European Council President calls the attacks “deeply disarming” and calls for full respect for international law.

Good luck with that one.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have condemned the Iranian retaliatory missile attacks that have expanded the conflict to other countries such as Sudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and the Arab Emirates agree.

Congress is waiting to hear about all of this, officially, and might soon be considering stiffening the War Powers Act because of Trump’s attack on Iran as well as his miliary action in deposing Venezuela’s leader.

Is it only an effort to take away Iran’s nuclear capability.  Or are his conquests, or planned conquests in Venezuela and Iran focused on controlling much of the world’s oil supply and weaponizing it? Trump has offered no cogent reason for his attack, especially after withdrawing from an agreement that might have made it unnecessary.

If he thinks this conflict with Iran is going to reverse his increasing unpopularity, he’ll find that each American soldier death in what we now can call Trump’s War certainly will not improve his standing.

The United States fought a two-front foreign war in the 1940s in Europe and in Asia. But no President ever has fought a war against an enemy abroad and also fought one against people in his own country until Donald Trump.

Lord knows how all of this will end. But there will be more American blood spilled.  In every war there has been a first casualty and nobody ever has found a way to calculate how many more there will be.

“That’s the way it is,” says the man who is causing this.

Olympian Words

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Those whose undies quickly got into a knot when some of our Olympic athletes questioned their nation’s course seem to live by the motto, “My country right or wrong.”

They aren’t right—correction—they aren’t correct.

Those young people know what their country is experiencing and that knowledge will bode well for this country as their generation grows in experience and influence. National polls indicate a significant part of the citizenry agree with them.

The erroneous interpretation of that famous comment spiced up the first days of the Olympic games and led to some pretty tasteless retorts to the concerns expressed by those Olympians about the direction of our country.

Let’s begin by setting the record straight on this famous quotation. Should it be the guiding principle of our patriotism/ Or is it, as one source has put it, “a jingoistic war cry?”

There are various versions of this statement.

This is the original statement, from Commodore Stephen Decatur, a hero of the War of 1812, who reportedly offered a toast: “My Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong.”

Leaving out the words that precede the six words at the end short-changes the total message.

In 1871, one of Missouri’s U. S. Senators, Carl Schurz, got into a debate with fellow Senator Matthew Carpenter of Wisconsin, a power in Reconstruction America, who had quoted Decatur in one of his fiery orations.  Schurz told Carpenter the sentiment should be, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” Reports indicate his interpretation led to thunderous applause from the Senate gallery.

Olympic freestyle skier Hunter Hess told reporters, “It brings up mixed emotions to represent the U.S. right now. I think it’s a little hard. There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

Figure skater Amber Glenn referred to Trump policies against the LGBTQ community and said, “I hope I can use my voice and this platform to help people stay strong in these hard times.”

Snowboarder Chloe Kim, the daughter of immigrants, told interviewers, “I think in moments like these, it is really important for us to unite and kind of stand up for one another for all that’s going on and I think that I’m really proud to represent the United States.”

They represent the best that American can be body.

Our President, of course, couldn’t stand it when the athletes exercised their free speech rights. He went on Untruth Social to call Hess “a real loser” and said it was “very hard to root for someone like this.”

Vice-President Vance added, ”You’re not here to pop off about politics. So when Olympic athletes enter the political arena, they should expect some pushback.”

I guess Vance is saying it would be just fine if these athletes “popped off’ at home although their comments would not be any less irritating to the constantly irritable—and irritation-producing—administration.

Republican Senator Jim Jordan, a Trumpian, called the remarks “ridiculous,” and said, “It’s an honor to get to represent the greatest country in history in the Olympic Games. That makes no sense to me. I haven’t seen some of the things they’ve said, but if they’re disparaging the country while representing it, that makes no sense.”

Sorry, Senator, It does make sense. The freedom to question power is inbred in the American character. It’s how we became an independent nation 250 years ago. Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware understands that. “There is nothing more patriotic than questioning your own country when its leadership makes decisions that are so sharply out of line with our values and traditions,” he said.

As far as “disparaging the country while representing it,” perhaps Jordan should consider the degrading things his President has said. They are far worse. John Stewart created a montage for his Daily Show to examine the hypocrisy of Jordan, Vance, and other defenders.  In the montage, President Trump proclaims, “Our country is now a cesspool.”

“We are a nation in decline.”

We’re in a failing country; we’re in a country that’s being laughed at.”

“We’re a dumping ground. We’re like a garbage can.”

“Our country is going to Hell.”

“We have blood, death, and suffering on a scale once untenable.”

“…a third world hell hole ruled by censors, perverts, criminals and thugs.”

I guess we could give him credit for speaking the truth (to himself although he doesn’t recognize it) on some of these points. His crude words and actions validate what our athletes voiced.

What our Olympians were saying is more closely attuned to something the great English statesman William Burke said in 1790:  To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”

A book written in 1958 that became a best seller was called “The Ugly American.”  It’ still in print.  The title has more than some relevance today. And there has been no reason for these Olympians to say so because—-

—-a lot of the rest of the world has the same impression of what our country has become—and our President seems to be the epitome of that book’s title.

They show us grace on the ice, courage on the ski jump and on the bobsled run, subtlety on the curling floor, and daring as they skate at frightening speeds on a small track.  They are in deeds as well as in words representatives not of the United States that unfortunately is, but of what the United States can be—and will be as their generation, having witnessed these times, become shapers of better times to come.

(photo credit: NPR)

The Great Religious President

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President Trump spoke at one of the two national prayer breakfasts held in Washington a few days ago and showed once again what a great Christian he is.

Except for the great Christian trait of modesty.  He’s never been very good about that.  “I’ve done more for religion than any other President,” he proclaimed.

I agree.  Wholeheartedly.

No other President has been able to have as many people shout the name of The Savior with more exclamation points than Donald Trump has.

No other President has said or done things that have had more people say, “Oh, My God!

No other President has ever had so many people praying.  For our country.

He displayed his high regard for prayer by telling of Speaker Mike Johnson saying when they’re having lunch, “Sir, may we pray?” to which our reverent President reported his answer was, “Excuse me? We’re having lunch.”

In his speech he showed Christian respect for others by calling a Congressman “a moron” and pondered how Christians could vote for Democrats.  The answer, as he might learn this fall, is: “very easily.”

He remarked that 2025 was a record year for Bible sales although he modestly didn’t proclaim that sales of the Trump Bible made anything more than a tiny drop in the sales bucket. The remark, however, was a rare stroke of truth in his long verbal ramble.*

This is the great Christian who told a group of religious leaders ten years ago or so, “I think if I do something wrong, I just try and make it right. I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.”

At least at the prayer breakfast he didn’t repeat something the man who worships the putter on Sunday mornings told at an earlier Turning Point USA meeting, “I love you Christians.”

Is he categorizing Christians the same way he has categorized immigrants in a 2024 speech: “The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans, they’re animals.”

This is the same guy who washed his hands of any responsibility for the weekend portrayal on social media of the Obamas as apes. The buck never stops at HIS desk. He blamed a White House staff member and professed ignorance of the portrayal. He didn’t say if the staff member still has a job.

He spoke for 75 or 85 minutes, depending on who was holding the clock. He made no references to any inspiring words from his “favorite book” and in fact has dodged citing any favorite verses—because he doesn’t know one that fits his religion (I differentiate religion from faith and as you’ve seen previously in this space have remarked that “nothing screws up faith more than religion.”)*

I wonder if he can pronounce “Beatitudes.” The fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew says Jesus pronounced certain people as “blessed. Let’s see how many blessings our president qualifies for.

“Poor in spirit,” as in humble.  Can’t check that one.

“they who mourn, for they will be comforted.”  He’s done a lot of thoughting and praying but that probably isn’t what Jesus was talking about.

“the meek.”  Meek, he is not.

“those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.’  His hungers and his thirsts have nothing to do with righteousness as far as we can tell.

“the merciful.”  Ask the people in Minneapolis about that one.

“clean in heart.”  Don’t get me started on that one.

“the peacemakers.”  I’ll stand with the Nobel Committee.

“those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.”  Again, the people of Minneapolis in particular among all of the occupied cities and cities to come most likely have a far different view of who is persecuted and who is righteous. But not Donald Trump.

Even if we give him the last one that makes him only one for eight. Somebody who does one for eight doesn’t last long in the major leagues of baseball, football, basketball or carpentry, where hitting the nail on the head once in eight tries won’t build much.

You remember, don’t you, who was a carpenter?  The one whose name Donald Trump prompts so many to say with such emphasis.

*To impress you with how important the Bible is to Donald Trump, go to the official Trump merchandise page where you will find, among other things, about sixteen versions of the Trump Bible. “The Day that God Intervened July 13, 2024” edition is sold out but there’s one on eBay for $129.99). Other editions range from $64.99 to $99.99 although one with a hand-signed (no autopen for him, remember?) for a thousand dollars. Don’t forget to read “Two Corinthians,” his favorite book.

(picture credit: Trump merch store)

The Air We Breathe 

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I’d reading Sam Kean’s Caesar’s Last Breath, a book with the subtitle of “Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us.”  I’m not far into it. I’m reading about the creation of the world  and with it the creation of the atmosphere that sustains our life.

Kean hooks the reader with a question— the death of Julius Caeser and his dying question, “You too, Brutus?” Imagine, he says, the air escaping your body as you breath. “How much do you really know about this air?  Feel your lungs deflate and sag inside your chest (as you breathe YOUR last breath). What’s really going on inside there?”

“Imagine you can feel the individual molecules of gas pinging your fingertips, impossibly tine dumbbells caroming off into the air around you? How many are there, and where do these molecules go?”

Our molecules, he says, blend in with the molecules of everyone on earth and all of us are re-breathing the molecules of others. And they do not disappear. Kean maintains that “our breaths entangle us with the historical past….Is it possible that your next breath…might include some of the same air that Julius Caesar exhaled when he died?” We won’t know it, of course but it’s possible because most of the air we breathe is in a ten-mile thick belt of atmosphere all around the world and the air we breathe is air someone else, somewhere else, some other time breathed.

Ten miles. That’s a lot of air.  It means you and I in our lives likely breathed some of Caser’s last breath, or the breath Moses used to announce the Ten Commandments, and—if you believe they actually existed—some of the Molecules of Adam and Eve’s breath.

We breathe the same air of Thomas Jefferson, of Jesse James, of Adolf Hitler, of long-dead friends and relatives—molecules of their breaths.  For some it is sobering and for others it is exhilarating to know that we are breathing some of President Trump’s breath.

It’s an intriguing suggestion.  It reminds us of something Maine Senator  Ed Muskie say at a 1972 Jackson Day dinner in Springfield in 1972, four years after he had been Hubert Humphrey’s running mate for the presidency. His remarks at the end of his speech were so profound that I listened back to my tape and typed them.  I don’t know what happened to that recording. I wish very much that I had it so I could hear again that great voice talking about “the nature of the balance that must be struck between man and man’s environment.”

He told the audience that balance had been “put most eloquently recently in a book translated from the Swedish by the University of Alabama Press.

“This point was made:  that every human being carries within him 100,000 genes.  These genes have given him his entire inheritance from the past; his personality, his character, intelligence, talents and skills.

“If all the genes of the two and one-half billion human beings on this planet were backed together, they would form a ball, a small ball, one millimeter in diameter.  That small ball is all that holds us together, as a species.

“It is all we own, as human beings.

“And what sustains its life?

“A thin crust which so far as we know is the only place in the whole part of the whole cosmos which can sustain this kind of life.  In order to portray on a desk size globe the portion of its diameter which will sustain organic life including the atmosphere, there is not a lacquer thin enough to indicate the proportions. 

“All inside that coat of lacquer is the black death of the inner planet, while all outside it is the black death of outer space.  We’ve not yet discovered anything duplicating this coat of lacquer anywhere within range of the technology we have developed to date.

“If it exists anywhere, it exists outside the range of anyone, any human being within his lifetime, using the most advanced technology of which we’re capable.

“This then is the dimension of our existence in this universe.  The numbers of people cannot expect to endlessly exploit that think coat of lacquer and survive.

“And it is poisoned today not only by the insults we make upon our physical resources, but by the poisons which divide us against each other.  We cannot survive unless we deal with both.

“I think the genius of our political system is that notwithstanding all of the evidence to the contrary today, we have demonstrated that a free people can rise to such a challenge, and I choose to believe that we were destined to develop our capacity to do so.  And whether or not we will must still be the result of our own deliberate intent, and intelligence, and work.

“That is the nature of the challenge.”

 The remarks have something of a contemporary ring to them and they underline some simple questions for which humans struggle to answer.

If we breathe the same air as our ancestors breathed all the way back to the beginning of humanity and before, and we live in a large but common atmosphere, why do we insist that some are more privileged to exist than others do?  Why do we spend so much effort trying to prove that some of us are better than others and deserve more for ourselves at a time when we all share  those molecules 17,000-29,000 in a day? We do not separate the molecules of our lives according to our differences?

Why do we waste so much of our time ignoring these basic similarities that unite us as a species?

What good does it do?

The breaths of Adam and Eve, if you believe in that origin story, or the breaths of the first protohumans are yet in our lungs.  Why do we waste so many of those breaths trying to define our differences?

As I live and breathe (as my grandmother used to exclaim), I don’t know.

Three Celebration 

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A few days ago we had a joint celebration at Lincoln University, the school on the hill at Lafayette and Dunklin Streets in Jefferson City.  The combination Black History Month observance, the celebration of the school’s 160th birthday, and the observance of our nation’s 250th birth anniversary also created a unique moment for local author Michelle Brooks.

Michelle has become a prolific author of nine books about Jefferson City’s history, including he one that debuted that evening, February 5 (another anniversary: the 115th of the burning of the Capitol that led to the construction of the magnificent building we have today). First to Freedom; Cole County U.S. Colored Troops, is a tribute to several of the Jefferson City black soldiers who were in the 62nd and 65th Colored Infancy of the Union Army whose financial contributions led to the creation of Lincoln.

One of the officers of the 62nd noted in his farewell speech that 99 of the 4312 men had learned to “read, write and cipher.”  In all, he noted “200 read and write understandingly, 284 can read, 377 can spell in words of two syllables and are learning to read.”

Jefferson City offered a ramshackle school building for the new institution. Classes began in the fall of 1866, nineteen year after Missouri passed a law making it illegal for black people to be taught to read and write.

I was asked to emcee the event that included an Abraham Lincoln reenactor reading the “Proposition 95—Regrading the status of slaves in states engaged in rebellion against the United States.”  Most people speak of it as the Emancipation Proclamation—which I believe should be pronounced with emphasis on the first word: EMANCIPATION proclamation—and another reenactor portraying Robert Foster, the founding officer. Missouri became the first slave state to have its own EMANCIPATION Proclamation. By the end of the war, one-in-ten Union soldiers was black—179-thousand in the army and another 19-thousand in the Navy.

Part of my remarks between presentations and to end the evening said:

“We have many great statues and bronze tableaus in and at our Capitol, but I think the finest, and most inspirational one in Jefferson City is just up the hill, the “Soldier’s Memorial Plaza” tableau.  It recalls the sacrifices made by members of the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Infantries, men who knew full well a way of life they fought to leave behind.

“They are symbolized in bronze now.  But they were symbols FOR millions of people in their time and remain in bronze as symbols of hope for all of us today and tomorrow—-life and freedom are only a hand-grasp away, and they are a reminder that an open hand  is always better than a closed fist in maintaining the nation whose 250th birth anniversary we celebrate this year.

“The first slaves were brought to Missouri to help mine lead in the 1720s.

“When Lewis and Clark went upstream past the bluff that is now the site of our city, a black man named York was part of the group, the slave of William Clark. When they came back from the Pacific Ocean in 1806, a black man was part of the explorers. His name was York. York was William Clark’s slave. He endured with them all of the dangerous times, saw all of the glories of the great mountains, and was the equal of all on that perilous trip. He  believed he would become a free man on the return and could not adjust to being nothing more than a slave again.   Eventually Clark shipped him off to Louisville Kentucky where he was reunited with his enslaved wife.

“If York and his wife had children, they would have been part of the freedom movement after the Civil War.  We don’t know what happened to him. History seems to have obscured him. But the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment gave his descendants the freedom he dreamed of.

“When the first black member of the legislature, Representative Walthall Moore of St. Louis took office in 1921, almost sixty years after the proclamation, he had to room in Jefferson City with a black family, had to eat at a black restaurant, travel in black-owned taxis, and drink from water fountains for the colored.

“But it was Moore who got the half-million dollar appropriation that transformed Lincoln Institute into Lincoln University. .

“Forty-seven years later, I watched as the Jefferson City council, in 1968, passed an ordinance that said black legislators no loner had to stay in Lincoln University dormitory rooms and private homes, and that black people could live anywhere in the city where they could afford to live.

“One-hundred-and-sixty years after the founding of Lincoln University, many people of color still struggle to be considered “people” and there are those who judge some to be unequal only because of their color, their faith, their identities—-and the country where they were born.

“In this year when we celebrate the 250th anniversary of a document that proclaimed that all men are created equal, we again find ourselves wondering meaning the meaning of those words. Some interpreters believe Jefferson meant that all of us are BORN equal in nature.  It is in nurture that divisions are made, distrust develops, and hate can take hold.

“We learn these lessons through the honest study of history and if we are free to learn that history, we can be the ones who bend the arc of the moral universe a little more toward justice.

“Let us go forth from this good evening in the hope that history gives us for peace.”

The event concluded with a fine prayer from Rev. Dr. Adrian Hendricks II of the Joshua House Church in Jefferson City.

Heavenly Father: Tonight as we take a moment and pause to celebrate the history of African Americans, we pause to celebrate American history, giving you thanks and praise, O God, for this nation; giving you thanks and praise or i’s foundation and for its forefathers and for its Declaration to uphold the high ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And yet In this hour, even as this nation struggles to uphold its identity, we give you thanks and praise for its potential, a potential that still has the opportunity to demonstrate love for our fellow man, a potential that still has the opportunity to pick up the poor and stabilize the impoverished, a potential that still has the opportunity to right historical wrongs, heal historical wounds, and to be the first global power that’s unafraid to let freedom ring!

Lord, go before us, as WE navigate a new pathway. Stand beside us, as we rediscover our moral compass and move within us as we continue to define what it means to be an American.

It’s in your mighty and matchless name that we pray,

Hallelujah & AMEN!

Amen, in deed.

(Photo credits: Jefferson City Convention and Visitors Bureau; Lincoln University)