Category Archives: Places

Smithsonian Museum of Un-American History 

Posted on by
Reply

If Donald Trump thought he could get away with naming the Smithsonian Museum of American History something such as a Museum of Un-American History, he would already have signed an executive order doing it.

While most of us were paying attention to celebrating Independence Day, Trump’s White House Domestic Policy Council was issuing its latest accusations targeting that museum. For months his administration has been busy “reforming” our national parks, monuments, and museums to get rid of “anti-Americanism.”  He prefers to pretend that slavery was a friendly relationship between master and slave, that the Confederacy and its key figures who repudiated the United States Constitution and fought with a breakaway segment of our country openly based on protecting slavery were just advocating for state’s rights, that nothing serious happened to Native American nations, and that his White Christians are the only important religious policy setters of our society.

Last year, Trump ordered the Smithsonian to remove anti-American ideology from the 21 museums and galleries (and the National Zoo) that fall under the Smithsonian system.

The Trump Domestic Policy Council’s 162-page report refers to “thinly veiled anti-Americanism” at the history museum and accuses it of showing this country is “a fundamentally oppressive nation.”  The council accuses the museum of moving “toward an extreme political activism.”

Then it breaks down that activism as “anti-white activism,” and “illegal alien activism,” and “transgender activism.”  It is also critical of the museum for having exhibits and programs depicting slavery, race, and systemic inequality, as ABC News put it in one of its reports.

I have been to many of those 21 museums, some of them—including American history—many times.  I am a white Christian with an ancestor who settled in Virginia on a land grant given him by the first Queen Elizabeth and I can tell you the council report, as is the case with the majority of Trump’s appraisals of the general history of our nation, is pure BS.

Perhaps Trump doesn’t like to see (as if he has ever visited the place) the whites-only Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where four black college students sat down on February 1, 1960 and politely asked for service.  They refused to leave when asked to leave, setting off demonstrations that led to eventual integration of the lunch counter and helped trigger the civil rights movement in the south and its large student base. Four years later, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

One of the museum’s directors, Anthea Hartig, has called the exhibit in question, “central to our mission to explore, preserve and share the complexity of our past (that would be part of the America 250 celebration)…a bold and immersive experience across all three exhibition floors of the National Museum of American History. Suggestions that the Smithsonian had planned or intended to remove the lunch counter and stools are false. Daily, thousands of visitors view and learn from these cherished objects in the national collection.”

The Organization of American Historians charged the Trump administration with trying to “coerce Smithsonian leadership to shape ​its presentation of ⁠U.S. history so that it serves the administration’s political agenda – part of an ongoing and multi-pronged assault by the Trump administration against accurate and evidence-based history in American public life.”

Trump has issued an executive order directing notices be put at the entrances to the history museum with a warning that “the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.”

It is precisely love of country that makes Trump’s signs and his attacks on this and other Smithsonian museums so putrid.

This statue in the history museum by Horatio Greenough might be the symbol of Trump’s America.  Washington, all-victorious and all-virtuous, a symbol of American courage, a legendary figure whose human shortcomings are overlooked—including owning 317 slaves at the time of his death and dispatching the Army to punish Native Americans in the new Northwest Territory objecting to white settlers taking their lands (resulting in an ignominious defeat), a man who refused a $48,000 salary to lead the army and asked only to be reimbursed for his expenses that turned out to be about $450,000.

Next thing you know, the man who thinks Mount Rushmore is incomplete without him will decide this museum needs a Trumpian figure like the one of George Washington. I’m afraid a marble image of Donald Trump without his shirt might make the museum for adults-only because the statue would be too frightening for children.

One wonders if Trump ever saw The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the great western film about a man credited with killing a dangerous outlaw who actually was killed by another man.  After telling the truth to a newspaper editor near the end of the film, James Stewart’s character asked, “You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?”  And editor Maxwell Scott (played by Carleton Young) responds, “This is the West, sir.  When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

That’s Trump’s preferred history. Ignore the truth. Ignore the reality. Believe a legend—and he’ll tell you what the legend will be.

But this isn’t the West.  It’s America. Our history has had its troublesome times (including this seemingly endless period). How we overcome those troubles is a part of history that says we can always do and be better, a concept he has trouble grasping for himself as well as for the nation.

In this time of heightened awareness of our nation’s history, we cannot let the bigotry of our historically-illiterate President prevail. We cannot become a better people if we ignore the times when we were at our worst and a President who desires a return to that era should be resisted strongly by an unafraid nation.

We are likely to have more about Trump’s desire to make us as historically ignorant as he prefers to be.

(Photo credits: Smithsonian)

Secretary of Censorship 

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s be clear about what I am about to discuss.  As a journalist, a writer, an author, a parent, grandparent and great-grandparent, and a long-time library board member, I will not let someone else, particularly a government official, dictate what is appropriate for me to read, to think, or to speak. Nor will I allow someone else, government official or private citizen, to tell me I do not have the right to decide what is appropriate reading material for my family.

It appears our latest Secretary of State has assumed the odious role his predecessor took on as a censor for our libraries.

Denny Hoskins has decided he has the authority to take state funding away from the Columbia Public Library because it has books in it that he doesn’t like and furthermore tells people it has them, taking it upon himself to decide that some members of the public who want to go to the public library should not make their own decisions about what they or their children can read.

Hoskkins had a fit recently when he learned the Columbia Public Library was going to have a “rainbow story time” for families who wanted to participate.  Josh Hancock of The Missouri independent reported library staff read books called “Rainbowsaurus” and “Big Wig” to the children and their parents. The first book is about a rainbow-dinosaur. The other book is, says Josh, “about a child who wins a costume contest in drag.”

The library spent all of $26 for a wig and contact paper for the event. Eighteen dollars went for the wig. Hoskins wants to withhold thousands of dollars in state library aid because the event was held.

Hoskins heard about it before the event and warned the library that it would lose all of its state and federal aid if it held the $26 event for people to willingly attend.

Then when the library, where like all libraries the freedom to read, to  think, to learn, and to form one of the most dangerous things allowed in a Democracy—ideas—are cherished held the event anyway, Hoskins and State Senator Rick Brattin threw together a news conference to announce punishment for the library’s refusal to follow their dictates.

Brattin is hoping to be a Congressman in one of the gerrymandered districts he and other legislative Trumpians drew up to protect the political interests of a president who is only interested in libraries in terms of a potential library that will preserve his greatness, and his surplus Qatar 747 that is costing a billion dollars to convert to presidential transportation.

“Unconscionable if not criminal,” Hoskins called the event. It was, he said, an effort to groom children.

Groom children? It’s a pejorative that has become popular on the Right, defined by the Cleveland Clinic as the “process of manipulation and abuse {that} can stem from what may initially seem to be an innocent relationship with a stranger or adult authority figure.”

A story time at a public library designed to foster “manipulation and abuse of children?”

These two justified their outburst with a letter from Attorney General Catherine Hanaway.  But the Independent story said that Hanaway “acknowledged the library’s right to determine its own programming and said she was prepared to act only if a program broke the law.”

It doesn’t break the law, which talks about giving pornography to minors or making a public display of sexually explicit material in public.

It’s quite a leap for these self-righteous officials to declare a rainbow-colored dinosaur is pornographic or a cheap wig as sexually explicit material.

Apparently Hoskins and Brattin have superior thoughts of such evaluations. Brattin complained the books had “a message that’s meant to sexualize” and advocated a “lifestyle” that would weaken the defenses of the children.

We wonder how the parents feel about being categorized as enablers of such behavior..

Boone County Prosecutor Roger Johnson told Columbia TV station KOMU that talking about LGBTQ+ issues is not a crime. Hoskins admitted at the ;press conference that “pornography is OK to be talked about because it’s a First Amendment right.”

The Independent says neither he nor Brattin could identify any laws that had been broken but Hoskins vowed that he would ask future legislatures “to ensure that this is illegal in the future.”

First Amendment to the contrary, of course.

One of the all-time great science fiction books is Ray Bradury’s dystopian novel about book-burning, Fahrenheit 451. Midway through story, one of those who burn books is confronted by one of those who memorizes them before they can be destroyed—

The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.

—Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Sometimes books do  indeed “remind us what asses and fools we are.”

Notes From a Quiet Hill (Worst Campaign Commercials, Best movie scenes, Cavernous Man-Made Potholes edition)

Posted on by
Reply

We’re hoping to have enough time between automated Medicare phone calls to put these thoughts together. We did get a real person once a few days ago. He wound up apologizing.

Moving on to the pithy observations:

I can understand naturally-occurring potholes.  But I’m having trouble dealing with some man-made potholes in Jefferson City. A couple of years ago I had an expensive encounter with a pothole on I-70. We don’t have anything such as that in town but we do have some that give pretty big jolts.

The resurfacing of some of our streets has left some manhole covers below the street surface. Readers in Jefferson City might be intimately familiar with a real suspension banger for cars turning right from Jefferson Street onto East Capitol Avenue. For example.

It has taken me too long to decide on an alternate way to church.  That’s not the only man-made pothole in our street system but it’s the worst I’ve encountered so far.

-0-0-0-

Nancy and I are college graduates.  I even went to graduate school until I discovered her, at which point I got a real job so we could get married (This is only partly true but I’m not sure which part).  We, as educated people, have trouble accepting how awful the commercials are for the income tax elimination proposal on the August ballot.  In the case I’m about to cite, they are so intellectually silly that the point they want to make is lost, assuming they make a point.

Here’s the script for one that is a total turn-off in our household;

Some uninvited guests have been eating at your table for years. Property taxes and income taxes, helping themselves to money that belongs to your family. Amendment 5 shows them the door: it cuts property taxes, phases out the income tax, and shifts the burden to the big corporations that have been getting a free meal. This is your table. It’s time you had room at it. Vote YES on Amendment 5. August 4.

The shifting of the tax burden to big corporations is exactly the opposite of what we have understood the proposal to be about and the ad’s targeting of them is pretty bewildering.  As we understand the rational explanations of Amendment 5, the shift of the tax burden would be from the wealthy and the big corporations to the little guy.

Further, aren’t “big corporations” supposed to flock to Missouri because we’re cutting the taxes?  Not according to this awful commercial that says we need to “show them the door,” presumably the door out, not in.

000

The famous archaeologist Dr. Alan Grant died a few days ago.  We will always remember him for one of the most magical sequences in movie history—the day Dr. Grant saw his first living dinosaur—and when we saw it with him—and then the first dinosaur herd.

We know Dr. Grant, of course, by his real name—Sam Neill

Remember, he and the rest of the cast were not seeing what we saw on the screen, which made the acting that carried the impact of the scene so extraordinary. We were as emotionally awed as Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) were.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=sam%20neill%20sees%20a%20dinosaur&view=detail&mid=883E4913FA95A4A0FD448

Everything about the Jurassic Park movie franchise seemed formulaic after this.  But these first few moments are pure magic—and we saw them with the eyes of Alan and Ellie.

Off the top of our head we can think of few other movie scenes with the visual scope and emotional impact of those few minutes.

Perhaps our first view of the slowly revolving space station in 2001 (with perfectly chosen music making it even better). Maybe the great pull-back scene in Gone With the Wind that showed all of the casualties of the Battle of Atlanta.  Maybe the intensity of Pickett’s Charge in Ted Turner’s “Gettysburg” series.

You might have comparable scenes in your memory. Share them, if you like, in the box below.

(picture credits: Instagram)

The Stolen Celebration 

Posted on by
Reply

You might have gathered if you read Wednesday’s entry that I was a little peeved that our President torpedoed the national celebration of our country’s 250th birthday.

A few days ago, Sabrina Haake, a federal trial attorney from Gary, Indiana specializing in First and Fourteenth Amendment defenses, wrote this piece that appeared on Altnet. She also has The Haake Take on Substack. It explains and amplifies my resentment at President Trump’s hijacking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Here she reports on an investigation into those events.

Trump just robbed America of a sacred reckoning that may never come again | Opinion

House Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee have released a report describing how the  White House cheated the American public on its 250th birthday. It outlines interim findings that the Trump organization put together a shell company to supplant the Congressionally-created commission, America 250, with a partisan one, Freedom 250, defrauding donors and pilfering donations along the way.

In 2016, ten years in advance of the country’s 250th birthday, Congress created a nonpartisan commission called America 250 to plan and orchestrate the largest commemoration in U.S. history. Its mandated purpose was to encourage all Americans to ‘remember the nation’s past, celebrate the present, and look forward to building a promising future.’

America250 spent ten years organizing events, volunteer campaigns, and educational initiatives across all 50 states to celebrate our Semi-quincentennial. America250’s slogan, “350 for 250- Engaging all 350 million Americans in celebrating our nation’s 250th anniversary,” stresses civic inclusivity devoid of politics.

But last year, after his attempts to pack America250 with loyalists were unsuccessful, Trump created a competing commission, Freedom 250,  via executive order. Falsely describing Freedom 250 as the “national, non-partisan organization leading the celebration of our Nation’s 250th birthday,” Freedom 250 was incorporated as an LLC in October 2025. Under the National Park Foundation, governed by a board of Trump loyalists, Freedom 250 solicited pay-to-play from companies with major federal contracts pending— including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Oracle —to financially support Freedom 250 instead of America250.

Defrauding the nation on its 250th birthday

The report describes how Trump demanded that his name and name-branded politics should dominate the historic celebrations. When America250 pushed back on Trump’s plan as too partisan, he supplanted the commission by creating his own.

After Freedom 250 hijacked federal planning activities, most scheduled performers withdrew from the celebration. They had agreed to perform at a national, nonpartisan concert, but cancelled when they found out it was overtly partisan. Other activities planned by Trump’s Freedom 250 included the very on-brand Military Parade for Trump’s birthday and this year’s White House UFC cage fight, along with the controversial Great American State Fair.  The latter featured partisan exhibits complete with a confederate flag; the 16-day event caused extensive damage to the lawns and the National Mall. Meanwhile, Freedom 250 continues the Trump-centric assault, planning construction on his  250-foot-tall “triumphal arch.”.”

Trump illegally billed his July 4 culminating speech on the National Mall as a “TRUMP RALLY,” making himself—not the nation, not our history— the central figure of America’s only 250th birthday celebration. Trump’s rally, replete with partisan rhetoric and fearmongering about Democrats, concluded with “the largest fireworks display ever,” costing taxpayers an estimated $45 million..

Millions for Trump’s cronies

A separate report from Public Citizen describes how a “Trumpified series of events at the public’s expense” awarded over $100 million in no-bid contracts to celebrate our 250th birthday to a network of Trump-affiliated political allies. One of those contracts awarded tens of millions of dollars to Event Strategies, Inc., the same firm behind the J6 attack on the U.S. Capital.

Out of $120 million in public funds Congressionally earmarked for America250 planned celebrations, over $100 million was funneled directly to entities with political ties to Trump, essentially turning it into Trump’s slush fund with little or no transparency, accounting, or public reporting. Overall, Trump’s Freedom 250 received between $65 and $80 million of the funding Congress allocated to America250.

Alas, the fraud and self-dealing didn’t stop there. Aside from the deceptive rebrand, awarding hundreds of millions in no-bid contracts to Trump cronies, inviting pay to play federal contractor donations, and diverting Congressional funds to Trump’s partisan commission, public donations intended for America250 were purposely diverted to Trump’s organization.

Wire fraud and deception are not Presidential activities entitling Trump to criminal immunity

According to interim findings, donors who tried to send money to America250 were misled and given Freedom 250’s banking information, meaning contributions solicited in the name of the Congressionally mandated commission were routed instead to the President’s substitute entity. As yet unverified, the facts suggests that America250 donors were defrauded through wire transfer instructions, bank account numbers, and routing numbers that funneled their donations to Trump’s Freedom 250 commission.

Trump converted America’s once-in-250-years celebration into a parade of self-regard and personal enrichment, embodying our founders’ warning about men like him. Assuming the evidence matches the allegations, his tactics constitute criminal fraud, and the evidence won’t be hard to track down. Electronic records of online donations and routing can’t be erased; metadata will prove what was sent, by whom and when, and how it was diverted to Freedom 250. Such deception also likely constitutes wire fraud as well as charitable solicitation fraud.

Democratic lawmakers are now demanding a full accounting of diverted donor records and contracts, while Republican leadership has largely blocked information, shielded people involved, and refused to hold hearings on the matter. Democrats, in the minority, have diminished subpoena power, but that is likely to change in November.

Trump’s criminal immunity will be challenged after the midterms; even now, it only applies to “presidential acts” arising from core constitutional duties. Establishing an entity to compete with the Congressionally mandated America250 commission was illicit, extra-judicial, and purely partisan, and very likely exceeds any official, constitutional, or statutory authority. Trump billing our 250th July 4 celebration on the national mall as a TRUMP RALLY sealed the deal.

Trump robbed Americans of a sacred commemoration that won’t come again for many generations, if ever. He wanted to make our nation’s 250th birthday all about him. History books will likely oblige.

From the Wonderful Folks Who Want to Hijack Our History

Posted on by
Reply

The hijacking of our nation’s 250th birthday party by Donald Trump continues, a man who seems motivated to make sure he has a big place in American history.

His place seems assured—potentially as this country’s worst President.

The latest shameful step is his demand that National Park Service employees buy and wear—or the NPS buys and gives employees to wear==Trump’s Freedom 250 pins instead of the decorations from the Congressionally-established America 250 Committee. Mother Jones reports any worker refusing the do so could face disciplinary action.

It means that NPS employees working on the National Mall for the “Trump rally” better be wearing pins from which the President will make a profit—or else.

Trump already has turned the National Park Service into his history propaganda machine. His removal of signs, exhibits, films, and other portrayals of our history and replaced them (if he replaced them at all) with Trump-politically correct versions of history. Court filings indicate at least 37 NPS sites have been affected.

A federal judge had ordered the restoration of the items to their original places by July 3. An NPS spokesman says the agency is not sure that’s enough time to get it all done.

The arrogance of Trump’s Ozymandic quest was put on huge public display a few days ago when a giant poster was unfurled on the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building showing TR’s face and a quotation attributed to him: “Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.”

The problem is that Co-Director Michael Patrick Cullinane of the Theodore Roosevelt Center told Huff Post, “What I can say for certain is that the quote did not originate with Theodore Roosevelt.”

The Washington Post did an article about it, which prompted a representative of the Office of Personnel Management, that occupies the building, to say the quotation “is commonly attributed to Roosevelt and captures the spirit of the federal workforce.”

(or at least what is left of it after the Trump-Musk eviscerating of numerous federal agencies.)

The comment from OPM’s Laurine Pinover is reminiscent of a quote attributed to President Warren Harding: “I love Paul Revere, whether he rode or not.”  (Paul Revere was one of two riders who rode to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the British Army was advancing in that direction.  Revere was captured early in the event, questioned, and freed after being questions.  William Dawes was the one who spread the alarm but who is forgotten because his last name does not rhyme with “Listen my children and you shall hear…”)

Pinover dismissed the article: “As excited as we are about America 250, it’s surprising the Washington Post has taken such an interest in our small agency’s building banners.”

The newspaper notes that there’s another banner alongside Roosevelt’s image that promotes Trump’s Freedom 250 efforts to rewrite history in general.

The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library gives us a far better statement that he really did make—to the Iowa State Teachers’ Association in November, 1910:

“Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. No kind of life is worth leading if it is always an easy life. . . . I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

It’s not something Donald Trump—who has had an easy life but has made the lives of millions of people difficult—would understand. But this one is true, something else Donald Trump doesn’t understand, either.

Some Reflections on Memorial Day, Part Four:

Posted on by
Reply

Hundreds of people were at the Speedway as I drove out of town last Monday morning. A few were at the start-finish line—Felix Rosenqvist, his owners and crew for the annual victor’s picture taking. The rest, armed with brooms, shovels, and other equipment, were cleaning up the 500 tons or so of trash left behind by Sunday’s huge crowds. The speedway pays volunteer groups $125 per person to do the cleanup work.

 

Several years ago, I narrated Aaron Copeland’s A LINCOLN PORTRAIT with the Jefferson City Symphony and some of the words began to come back to me as I drove through the rich, flat prairies of the two states.  “He was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and grew up in Illinois….” 

The way to Indianapolis on I-70 takes people through Vandalia, once the state capital of Illinois.  The old capitol still stands, and the House of Representatives where Lincoln began his political career has been recreated.

I wanted to go on a northern route home that would take me through Springfield, where Lincoln lived and owned the only house he would ever own, where he prospered as a railroad lawyer, and from which he left to become President.  This trip, however, was to take me to the little village to the west where he grew up.

New Salem.

Lincoln struck out on his own after his brief stay in the Decatur area and spent several years in this little village as a laborer, and as an unsuccessful store owner.  It was in New Salem that he began the study of the law and began to practice as a lawyer.  It was in New Salem that Ann Rutledge entered his life and departed from it, a relationship romanticized by many through the decades.

Abe Lincoln was a quiet man; Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man.

However deep the Lincoln/Rutledge relationship was, it has been recorded that her death left Lincoln deeply depressed, depression being a condition he dealt with throughout his life.

One of the recreated buildings in the little village is the Rutledge Tavern where Lincoln stayed—a “tavern” being a place offering room and board for visitors and travelers (Missouri’s first official state historic site is the Arrow Rock Tavern, if you want to see what a tavern was in the early 19th Century).

The park was closed the day I stopped on the way home, “closed” meaning the visitors center, restrooms, and the village buildings were unoccupied by staff and reenactors.  But visitors could take a quiet walk among the businesses and homes, the mill and the gardens and the stores.  And I did.

Copeland’s narration and his music went with me.  The composition was created in 1942 but its passages from Lincoln’s speeches seemed appropriate that day as I walked where he had walked. I remembered pieces of the narration and when I got home I pulled the script from that performance with the symphony.

The first segment:

Fellow Citizens, we cannot escape history.  That is what he said. That is what Abraham Lincoln said.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation…. We — even we here– hold the power, and bear the responsibility.

The second:

He was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and grew up in Illinois. And this is what he said. This is what Abe Lincoln said:

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.  

Both were from his 1862 message to Congress, what we call the State of the Union today.  The third segment:

When standing erect, he was six feet four inches tall. And this is what he said:

It is the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, “You toil and work and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.” No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

Lincoln said that during his last debate with Stephen A. Douglas, in Alton, Illinois in 1858. Lincoln lost the race for the U. S. Senate that year but his debates with Douglas brought him national attention.

Segment four:

Abe Lincoln was a quiet man; Lincoln was a quiet and a melancholy man. But when he spoke of Democracy, this is what he said. He said:

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Again, from 1858.

And the concluding segment:

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of these United States, is everlasting in the memory of this country.  For on the battleground at Gettysburg, this is what he said:

From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

“That cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion,” he said—-referring not to the war but to the re-commitment to the document that created the Union, that created a government “by the people, for the people,” the Declaration of Independence.

I have had a front row seat to the operation of the people’s government for many decades and as I walked the quiet streets where Abraham Lincoln walked I was reminded that the people’s government requires a people’s responsibility whenever there is a “stormy present…piled high with difficulty.’

“We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country,” Abe Lincoln said.

Today, it seems, we are locked in “the eternal struggle of these two principles—right and wrong…The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings.”

“Disenthrall:” —to free ourselves of the present condition, “and then we shall save our country.”

This, again, is what Abe Lincoln said to us in 1862:

The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation…. We — even we here– hold the power, and bear the responsibility.

Tens of thousands of ours have died creating this country, creating and defending a nation that can celebrate its holidays with great noise, great drama, and frivolity while pausing for a few minutes to be grateful for their sacrifices and recommit to keep their faith—–

From these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

After about an hour or maybe an hour and a half, I resumed my drive home. I crossed the Mississippi River with my dashboard telling me I had seventeen miles worth of gas left in the tank. A hundred yards from the bridge at Louisiana Missouri, I put 15.6 gallons of cheaper Missouri gas into a tank that’s supposed to hold 15.5 gallons.

And then I came home.  I had decorated no graves on Memorial Day but I was glad that I lived in a country that those in their graves protected for us, a united nation despite our differences that  pauses for a  gaudy celebration of its existence even in a “stormy present,” knowing that we have the power to restore our nation to one that is of the people, by the people, and has the ability to be made better—-

—-for the people.

(Various prominent people are on YouTube narrating A Lincoln Portrait. I suggest you look at one, or some, of them.)

(Picture credits: City of Vandalia; Bob Priddy)

 

 

Reflections on Memorial Day, Part three  (5/30/26)

Posted on by
Reply

Sunday, things got very serious.

And incredibly intense.

And scary.

The 350,000 fans who would watch the Indianapolis 500 (or just have a big party) had started arriving days earlier, many setting up their tents and mobile homes in the numerous parking lots around the track, some spending the night before the race in their cars on 16th Street.

They began surging through the gates when they opened at 6 a.m., many wearing shirts for their favorite drivers, shirts for cars’ sponsors, and shirts commemorating the event about to unfold before them. The souvenir facilities quickly were swarming with people wanting to buy memories of what they were about to witness.

The grandstands were filling by the time the Borg-Warner trophy was moved to the start-finish line for the race about 9 a.m.

The cars were rolled to their starting spots at 10:30, drivers soon to follow, passing through a few thousand reporters, guests, sponsor representatives and car crews.

Pulses start to quicken with each step of the opening ceremonies saluting veterans and first responders with the presentation of colors, a prayer by Indianapolis Archbishop Charles Thompson, a fourteen-gun salute and taps. Indiana composer, singer, and band leader Emphraim Owens did “America,” and Grammy Nominee Jordin Sparks performed the Start Spangled banner ending with a flyby over the main straightaway by F-16s from the South Dakota National guard.

And then comes the goosebumps moment for thousands—Jim Carnelison’s annual performance of the state song, “Back Home Again in Indiana,” punctuated by a return, east to west by one of the F-16s.

And at last, Roger Penske’s order, “Drivers, Start Your Engines.”

Should you want to share the entire opening ceremonies:

2026 Indy 500 Opening Ceremony | INDYCAR

Weather forecasters for several days had warned that rain could interrupt or even shorten the 110th running of the Indianapolis 500.  The race would become official after 101 of the 200 laps. The pressure was on from the drop of the green flag for drivers to get everything them could get before the rain ended the race. The rain generally stayed away although enough drops fell to pause the race for a few minutes before the intense race against rain resumes.

More than one-fourth of the race was run under caution, the cars circulating at 90-95 mph while crash debris and car remnants were removed from the track. The green flag was out for 149 laps.  The intensity of the competition is reflected in these statistics:

There were seventy lead changes, a record.  Even more telling is this:

One-hundred and thirty seven of the 149 full-throttle laps produced a margin between first and second place of less than one second.  Cars lapped at better than 220 miles an hour, weaving in and out of lines, passing and re-passing.  Thirty-three started; 24 were still challenging one another at the end of the race. Eighteen were on the leader’s lap, the top four within four-tenths of a second of each other.

If you have the endurance, here is the entire race as seen from Rosenqvist’s car—and hear his spotter and his conversations with his crew chief (be prepared to be seated for more than three hours):

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=rosenqvist+cockpit+video&view=detail&mid=3BB33C474F5056FF64F83BB33C474F5056FF64F8&

Marcus Amstrong took the lead at the start of the last lap with contenders  David Malukas and  teammates Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist and David Malukas tightly behind racing at speeds forty miles an hour faster than the takeoff speed of my son’s Southwest Airlines 737.

The race evolved into a 23-second duel between Malukas and Rosenqvist. Want to take a white-knuckle ride with Rosenqvist on that last lap?

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=felix+onboard+for+the+last+lap+of+the+500&refig=6a18ca50d02f4504805071

Malukas led out of the fourth turn but Rosenqvist had the momentum.

Rosenqvist by 0.0223 second, the smallest victory margin in Speedway history.

The win was worth $4.3 million of the record $30 million purse.  By the time Rosenqvist took the ceremonial last lap around the track, in the back of a pickup truck, so the crowd could appreciate what he had done, and he and his crew knelt at the start/finish line for the traditional kissing of the bricks, a light rain was falling.

The finish was bitter for Malukas, who wept when he stepped out of his car. He had finished second to Alex Palou last year by 1.142 seconds, meaning he has been separated from two straight wins in the Indianapolis 500 by a combined 1.7 seconds. But he wasn’t the only one disappointed.

 

Santino Ferrucci, whose uniform reflected the nation’s patriotic 250th anniversary theme of the day, finished in the top ten for the eighth straight year. Pato O’Ward, racked up his fifth straight top five including two runner ups.  O’Ward was only 0.4271 seconds behind Scott McLaughlin, finishing fourth. Ferrucci was 8th, 1.571 behind.

Will their time come for Malukas, Fdrrucci, and O’Ward?  Or will they join the long list of men who year after year were within reach of being immortalized on the trophy but never made it.

They’re all yet young and God willing, there will be more chances for their faces to join those of Rosenqvist and 76 others on the big trophy.

Shortly after the 500 ended, the longest race of the NASCAR season was helping Charlotte, North Carolina, observe Memorial Day.  In a few weeks, those cars will roar around the first race track in the world to use the word “Speedway” to describe itself. The cars will be bigger and one-third slower but the fans will be as devoted to them as IndyCar fans are devoted to their cars and drivers, and the competition for a prestigious Brickyard 400 victory at the greatest race track in the world will be equally fierce.

The great track is silent now. But in a few weeks a new roar of engines will be heard as the great track once again knows he heat of racing cars being driven by people doing heroic things.

For me, it was time for a long, quiet ride home, hoping I could make it back to Missouri before having to buy more of that awfully expensive Illinois gas. I found myself thinking of the era that gave us this holiday. After all, I was going to spend the day in the land of the man who was the central figure in it all.

Join me in that ride, if you wish, on Monday.

(picture credits—Bob Priddy and Rick Gevers; Borg-Warner; Finish—The Guardian)

-0-

 

Some Reflections on Memorial Day, Part One 

Posted on by
1

This was a Memorial Day that has taken some time for us to process.  The holiday’s origins are easily overlooked each year by the rush of noisy celebrations that seem far removed from the original intent of the day.  I was awash in those contrasting “celebrations” that have overshadowed the “observance” and “commemoration” originally intended. But I found toward the end in a closed state park a quiet reminder of why Memorial Day is and should be recalled for its origins—and why this contemporary noisy version of Memorial Day anticipates the next great holiday that this year will challenge our honesty about who we have become.

This might be written more for my benefit more than for yours and I hope you will excuse me for these ruminations.  I didn’t plan on them stretching into four chapters but a lot was going on, not the least of which was “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”

We’ll talk about the race but this series is not all about racing for the race is only part of the story.

The weekend had been spent in a city that observes/commemorates Memorial Day throughout the entire month of May. I know of no other city that rivals Indianapolis’s Memorial…..Month.

Indianapolis is a prototype that diminishing cities might use to reinvent themselves.s  through the course of several decades and several setbacks, Indianapolis has emerged as a dynamic, livable place of major league proportions in spirit and enterprise. And each year it throws one big party in May.

Reconciling the big party in that prototype city with the solemnity the holiday was originally created for, reconciling what men and women in the military died for in the war that created Memorial Day dwith what we are and what that the city is provided the ingredients for a lot of thinking on the long drive back to Jefferson City on Monday that took me through a lot of American history and some of my own.

I was born in Decatur Illinois, a town where Abraham Lincoln’s family briefly lived after moving from Indiana. I was raised in two small central Illinois towns, Mt. Pulaski (population about 1,500) and then Sullivan (a bigger place of about 3,300 when we moved there in fourth grade). Abraham Lincoln practiced law in both places as a circuit-riding attorney.

Lincoln scholars point to 1843 as the first time Lincoln and a couple of friends first quoted the phrase from three of the Gospels that “a house divided against itself can not stand” as they helped organize the Illinois Whig Party.

Fifteen years later, he spoke them again in accepting the nomination to run against incumbent Senator Stephen A. Douglas: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. . . .A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”  He lost that election but it paved the way to the presidency two years later and the great test that followed that determined the correctness of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and by 1858 Abraham Lincoln.

A civil war that tested that assertion took Lincoln to Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, where more than seven-thousand soldiers from both sides had been killed and more than forty thousand had been wounded. He paid tribute to those who died defending the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that our nation had been “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

He called upon the nation that day to complete what he called the “unfinished work”  and “the great task remaining before us,” not referring to the war but to the words of the Declaration. He called for the people to recommit themselves to that cause so the nation should have a “new birth of freedom” flowing from, by, and for the people—a united people, a house NOT divided.

A 1904 newspaper article reported that in October 1864, almost a year after Gettysburg and about six months before the Civil War ended, three women in Boalsburg, Pennsylvania decorated the graves of Union soldiers.  Boalsburg, an unincorporated area of 4,600 today, makes the disputed claim that the event was the earliest documented observance of a memorial day.

On May 1, 1865, just three weeks after Lee’s surrender and two weeks after Lincoln’s death, as many at 10,000 people in deeply Confederate Charleston, South Carolina dedicated the graves of Union soldiers who had died in a Confederate Prison. Reports tell us many in the audience were Black.

Waterloo, NY claims to have held the first FORMAL annual observance of a memorial day on May 5, 1866. Local druggist Henry Welles is credited with thinking of the event.

The first national observance was on May 30, 1868 when former Illinois white supremacist John A. Logan, who had become became strong Lincoln supporter at the start of the war and abandoned his racist sentiments after fighting alongside black troops, issued a national proclamation calling for “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country. ” Logan, a wartime Union General, was the Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization for Union Army veterans such as my great grandfather. The day originally known as “Decoration Day” was expanded after World War I to honor all of our country’s military dead. It officially became Memorial Day in 1971 when it became a national Monday holiday that now is most often considered the unofficial beginning of summer.

Logan County, where Mt. Pulaski is, was named after Logan’s father. My great grandfather enlisted in the Union Army in Moultrie County, where Sullivan is.

My journey Monday, the now designated Memorial Day, took me back through that area of Lincoln and Logan, and Private Robert T. Priddy—who served under General Sherman at Vicksburg—where Logan was with another Union Army unit.  I had been thinking a lot about the cacophony that the holiday weekend had become as the miles of pavement disappeared beneath my car, I found myself in a quiet place that helped me put the day, the weekend, into a context.  I’ll take you from the cacophony to the quiet in succeeding chapters.

-0-

Notes From a Quiet Hill 

Posted on by
Reply

In case you are wondering—-

Triple-A says the highest recorded price for regular unleaded fuel in Missouri was $4.683 on June 16, 2022. The record for diesel was set just nine days later at $5.375.

-0-0-0-0-0-

We either are still in Indianapolis or on the way home after witnessing two races—one of which we hope to have more about later (and we don’t mean tomorrow). We took this picture last year of the starting field—only six cars, if you want to call them that.

This year was the second annual Wiener 500.  All six of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile raced for two laps, each with a two-person crew (both college students who have spent a year touring the country promoting Oscar-Mayer products.  It was so much fun they decided to do it again Saturday, weather permitting (we are writing this on Wednesday night before heading to the Circle City Friday morning).  We’ll have a full report.  Last we knew, two young women from the MU Journalism school had been part of the traveling show. If one of them drives one of these machines to victory, she will be the first woman to win a race in the 117-year history of the Speedway.

Last year, the 500 broadcast crew had fun with their straight-faced coverage:

Inaugural Oscar Mayer Wienie 500 🌭 Full Race | INDYCAR on FOX

Unofficially, the last 2.5 mile lap was turned in 3:17.5, about 65.2 mph.

0-0-0-0-0-0

Another example of the political amateur hour in Washington crossed our desk a few days ago when Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told the House Natural Resources Committee advocates for solar energy are wrong because, “”All of these projects …in Nevada have one thing in common. When the sun goes down, they produce zero electricity….The whole machine doesn’t work when the sun goes down. And there’s examples from around the world of this happening.”  He suggested committee members have secret briefings about how solar energy doesn’t work.

California Congressman Jared Huffman couldn’t resist a response, asserting there is an “amazing new technology that apparently the secretary is unaware of, it’s a battery.” And solar system batteries hold the day’s electricity for use at night.  Burgum seems to have been in the dark about that. Ignorance such as this in this administration stopped being a surprise a long time ago.

-0-0-0-

I’m an immensely popular guy. Or maybe a lot of people are interested in my welfare. My phone is ringing from sunup to sundown from people wanting to make sure my Medicare program is good enough. Even when my caller identity says they’re call from some town in Missouri (and other places nationwide) it turns out that they’re not calling from those places at all.

And many voices sound as if they’re coming from places without Medicare.

A dozen calls a day probably is below average. I answer the calls because I don’t want to fill up the answering machine with non-messages. The thing beeps and drives me crazy.

One day our caller ID told us we were calling ourselves. But we recognize our own voices and the voice calling us was neither of us.

It’s time we re-examined the Attorney General’s no-call list to see if we can have a law (maybe it has to be federal) that says any call originating from someplace other than where the caller ID says it’s coming from is a crime.   It has been many years since we heard of the Attorney General racking up a big fine against a robocall company.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Here’s something that is really, really serious in our country’s politics.  There are conspiracy theorists who claim that President Trump faked his assassination attempts. While there is no Christmas card exchange between his mailbox and ours, we can’t see how that assertion is true. If it is true, it means that Donald Trump planned for the death of one or more onlookers—Corey Comperatore, who did get fatally shot, and two other people on the platform who were wounded in Pennsylvania. There are those floating the idea that he somehow convinced some guy from California to give up the rest of his life as a free citizen to go to Washington and do something at the correspondents’ dinner to justify tearing down part of the White House and building a ballroom that is more secure than the Washington hotel ballroom where the dinner was scheduled this year.

All of that is rubbish. Perhaps the discussion we should be having is about what Trump does and/or says that has encouraged three unbalanced people to try to get him in their gunsights.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Here’s a way to end Mr. Trump’s war with Iran.  We buy all of its enriched uranium and make an exclusive contract with Iran to be our exclusive supplier, with American management involved. Payments for the uranium would come from the funds this country has confiscated from Iran not only to pay for the uranium but to constitute reparations for our bombings. Turn management of the Strait of Hormuz to the United Nations which could charge reasonable fees that would finance programs in the world’s poorest countries.

Maybe we could make Iran our 51st state. Or the 52nd.  Or the 52rd.  Or 53rd.  We almost need a scorecard to keep track of the possibilities.

-0-

The 51st State

Posted on by
Reply

President Trump’s fixation on creating a 51st state is, as is the case with so many of his ideas, poorly thought out. Who is it going to be?  Canada?  Greenland?  Cuba?  Venezuela?  Some other country somebody mentions to him that sticks in the front of his mind ahead of all other issues?

A COD—Country of the Day.

Who have we left out?

Well, there’s one place that’s been hopeful for more than a century of becoming the 51st state.  Puerto Rico. But Puerto Rico—it’s just a place for paper towel-throwing demonstrations by a president who seems to want anybody BUT Puerto Rico to be considered anything more than he considers it to be—a possible trading chip to gain Greenland.

The Trump administration has been miserly in providing disaster relief to Puerto Ricans after hurricane a few years ago. He withheld $520 million in disaster aid.

I’ll trade you my ’62 Oldsmobile with no air conditioning and plenty of water damage for your ’53 Ford that doesn’t have a heater and uses tire chains seven months of the year.

None of the other four countries has expressed much interest in his undisciplined mind’s suggestions although Cuba certainly is closer than Hawaii—-although Cuba says it values its independence, is no Iran as a threat to this country, and shouldn’t be Trump’s next punching bag.

Putting Puerto Rico aside because it already is a United States territory, let’s think about the silliness of the other four.

He cannot sign an executive order declaring another country a state of the United States. That’s not the legal process for creating a new state—although for Trump, legal process is a dismissible thing.  His contempt for the law is beyond contemptible.

Think about this:

Making another country a state means that other country will come under our laws, our Constitution, our long history of court precedents. It will suddenly come under our clean air and clean water laws.  OSHA, just by itself, will be an enormous problem for many countries (we’ve climbed and descended some pretty dangerous steps lacking handrails in other countries just for one example). Highways will have to meet federal highway standards.  In the case of Canada, the province of Quebec will have to forget its French language.  It’s not ‘Murican y’know.

The EPA will face a seemingly insurmountable challenge. Healthcare programs will have to be brought into conformation with United States plans.  Currency, banking, stock markets—all will  be changed to the American system.

Integrating the military systems, minimum wage standards, pension programs, and taxes will have to conform to our system.  Speaking of finances—currency uniformity will be a real bear.

The social safety net expansion will be horrendous.

National Parks, national historic sites, cultural centers, museums, and school systems will suddenly have to be made American.

Licensed professionals will have to be re-licensed and relicensed under American standards. Lawyers under other countries’ systems of laws will have to be retrained in our system so their citizens will be protected as our citizens are (except in certain Democratic-controlled cities, of course).

Political conventions will face enormous challenges and it is likely there will be more than two parties.

Licensing of professionals—doctors, lawyers, etc.—-will have to be done by our standards.

Just changing the style of traffic signs will cost, maybe, billions. No more kilometers.

And our history books will have to be rewritten to reflect the history of the newest state.

Did you ever hear of Alexander McKenzie?  No, he’s not a character from “Outlander.”  He’s the Canadian explorer who became he first “literate traveler” to cross North America north of Mexico—a decade before Lewis and Clark.  Giving up Lewis and Clark might be a leap greater than some Americans can tolerate.

And that brings us to the differences in our countries in dealing with indigenous people—
“First Nations” as they’re called in Canada.

What happens to the national anthems? Will anybody be allowed to sing them?

Missouri was a district, then a territory, and once it became socially and bureaucratically qualified, a state.

What will become of the existing governments and their employees? And their government pensions? The national capitols and capitol cities?  What will be their status or will they cease to be nothing more than historic sites?  What new religions might we have to deal with or what religions from our newest “state” will change our religious demographics in an uncomfortable way for established denominations? //?

Highly important: How will we gerrymander their congressional districts so they’ll vote red? Gotta protect the homeland.

How long will it take for the new state’s education system to equal ours?   That’s one that could cut both ways.

And—-

Wait a minute!

Hold the phone!

Some of these countries speak SPANISH!!!!

We know what problems that present sto the 50-state country and what its present administration that thinks of people who speak Spanish.  It’s been rounding them up, impounding them by the thousands in often miserable concentrations, and shipping them off to countries that are not being considered for statehood.

And how about those who speak Kalaallisut, Tunumit, and Inuktun, and Danish?  The first three make up better than 96% of a language known as Greenlandic. The rest speak Danish.

Oh, dear….

For years MAGA people even before there were MAGA people insisted our official language is our version of English.  How can we be considering adding states that present us with such language challenges?

At least Canada has a language closer ours except they say “Eh” while we say “y’know.”

How long can we keep asking these questions for which our President has no answers?

But having no answers, at least no honest answers, is what he’s best at.

Viewing what he has done with the 50 states now under his supervision leaves no confidence that he can deal with a 51st state no matter how he might try to have it created.

Here is another possibility he hasn’t thought of.  Combine more than ninety islands that this country took over in the 1890s into one jurisdiction although they’re separated by a few thousand miles. Our country claimed them because of their vast mineral deposits.

And what was that much valued mineral?

Guano. These islands had no people but they had birds for centuries and their byproduct was needed as fertilizer in this country. Trump could claim that combining these islands into one new state would prove that this country is the only one that really has all it’s ______ together.