Dr. Frank Crane, former Presbyterian minister turned widely-printed newspaper columnist in the 19-teens and twenties, wrote this piece in 1921.
Later this week our state lawmakers return to the capitol for almost five months of high-pressure work writing laws for themselves and more than six-million Missourians—and those who visit our state. We, as the lawmakers, learned early in our Capitol reporting career that legislative sessions quickly become all-consuming events that impose psychological blinders that narrow the view of life as the calendar days are crossed off. This column from almost a century ago by former Presbyterian minister-turned newspaper columnist Dr. Frank Crane extolls the value of spending a few minutes before leaving for the Capitol each morning to set some one-day personal goals. Maybe each of our lawmakers and others who will shape the laws and policies of our future should keep this column close by and read it out loud each day before going to do the public’s work.
JUST FOR TODAY
Here are ten resolutions to make when you awake in the morning.
They are Just for One Day. Think of them not as a life task but as a day’s work.
These things will give you pleasure. Yet they require will power. You don’t need resolutions to do what is easy.
Just for Today, I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life-problem at once. I can do some things for twelve hours that would appall me if I felt I had to keep them up for a lifetime.
Just for Today, I will be Happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from Within; it is not a matter of Externals.
Just for Today, I will adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come, and fit myself to them.
Just for Today, I will take care of my Body. I will exercise it, care for it, and nourish it, and not abuse it nor neglect it; so that it will be a perfect machine for my will.
Just for Today, I will try to strengthen my mind, I will study. I will learn something useful, I will not be a mental loafer all day. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.
Just for Today, I will exercise my Soul. In three ways, to wit:
(a) I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. If anybody knows of it, it will not count.
(b) I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests just for exercise.
(c) I will not show any one that my feelings are hurt. They may be hurt, but Today I will not show it.
Just for To-day, I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with flattery, criticize not one bit nor find fault with anything, and not try to regulate nor improve anybody.
Just for Today, I will have a Programme. I will write down just what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I’ll have it. It will save me from the two pests Hurry and Indecision.
Just for Today, I will have a quiet half hour, all by myself, and relax. During this half hour, some time, I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective to my life.
Just for Today, I will be unafraid. Especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love and to believe that those I love love me.
It’s 2020. What vision will we have for our state and country in this Year of the Eye Doctor? We’ll have a serious commentary at the end of this entry from a St. Louis theologian who worries, as we enter this campaign year, about who is telling or will tell the truth. But first, a couple of things to unburden our chest.
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Thing one: Your ever-alert observer has noted some instances in which people have referred to 2019 as the end of a decade. We suppose it is, if you consider the decade to have started in 2000. And if you count to ten and think 9 is the last number.
We’re a little peevish about this sort of thing. It isn’t the end of a decade unless you count a year ending in zero as the first year of a decade. We realize some of you will quickly take umbrage at that observation but we need look no farther than our own birthdays.
Let’s assume you were born on May 5 in the year 0.
By explanation— if we go from 1BCE to 1CE —archaeologists use the phrases “before common era” and “common era” to avoid conflicts with various religious calenders—and since BCE counts backwards (King Tut served from about 1342 to 1325 BCE), time works backwards from one to zero and time then moves forward a like amount to year 1, the first anniversary of the switchover from BCE to just CE.
When were you be one year old in you were born on May 5, 0?
Right. Year 1. You have completed one year since your birth. On May 5 in year nine you celebrated the NINTH anniversary of your birth, not the tenth. You celebrated your tenth anniversary on May 5 in year 10, the end of your first decade. Therefore the decade begins with one and ends with zero, or as we would say in our time—2011-2020. (Incidentally, I think it is Kurt Vonnegut who has suggested we have only one birth day. All succeeding observances are anniversaries of our birth day.)
To put it less obtrusively, when Count von Count on Sesame Street counts, what does he start with?
When a boxing referee counts a fighter out at the count of ten, what number does he start with? If he started with zero he’d be giving the fighter eleven seconds to get up.
When we count out the number of pennies in a dime, how many are there? 10. If we stated out with the first penny at zero, we’d have 11 when we got to ten cents, which doesn’t seem to make much, uh, sense.
So the decade has another year to go.
Of course, in the cosmic sense, decades are immaterial. And we can consider a decade anything we darn well want to consider it. A person born in 1994 would celebrate a decade of life in 2005. Since time is an abstract concept invented by the human mind, a decade can be anything the human mind wants it to be whenever it’s convenient.
So what the heck are we arguing about? Let’s move on.
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Thing two: If you can’t do anything else, get the name right (that was one of the first rules of journalism I learned). As long as we’re chest-unloading, let’s again see if anybody thinks it’s disrespectful to mispronounce the name of another. We heard a reporter on one of our mid-Missouri television stations report something a few nights ago that was going to happen at Jefferson City’s Bynder Park. It’s not pronounced “Bine,” it’s “Bin.” Frederich Heinrich Binder was born in Hanover, Niedersachsen, Germany in 1845. He came to Jefferson City in 1866 and until his death in 1911 he was a major leader of our city and a builder. It’s Binder, not Bynder.
One of the grocery stores where we stock up is Gerbes East Supermarket. It’s bad enough that regular folks on the street refer to it as “Gerbs,” but it’s just plan inexcusable that the store’s public-address system that tells you what wonderful bargains there are today says the same thing. Frank Gerbes (Gur’-bus) was running a Kroger store in Tipton when he started his own business in 1934. In coming years he established Gurbus stores in several mid-Missouri towns. In 1986, he merged his company with Dillon’s which two years later became part of the Kroger chain. Frank had been dead eleven years by then, long enough—we guess—for the people who are now Kroger employees (and the company, apparently) to forget how to pronounce the name of a small town merchant who built a little grocery store empire in mid-Missouri named Frank GURBUS.
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Okay, now it’s time to start the new year on a more thoughtful although more volatile topic: truth. A friend of ours passed along something from an internet site called Theologycorner, a contribution that worries about what has happened to truth and what will become of it—and of us—if we are not afraid of discovering it from people we don’t want to listen to. This is from a theology professor here in our state:
The Death of Truth: “Both Sides” don’t deserve our consideration
Ruben Rosario Rodriguez December 30, 2019 Idioglosalalia
As a university professor of Theological Studies I have always engaged current events, and have always done so with a high degree of objectivity. By the same token, as a theologian, ethicist, and practicing Christian, I have always asserted that the church ought to stand outside partisan politics while working across party lines for the common good, remaining free to offer a prophetic critique whenever the state overreaches or neglects its duty. In other words, I have taken the apostle Peter’s advice as my guiding mantra for navigating church and state: “We must obey God rather than any human authority” (Acts 5:29, NRSV).
Therefore, it should come as no surprise that in the context of serious class discussions I have been critical of the Trump administration’s policies separating children from their families and creating border detention centers. Just as I am critical of Trump’s immigration policies now, I was critical of Obama’s use of drones and W’s use of torture then. However, unlike previous students, my most recent batch of first-year undergraduates is unable to grasp that I am not being partisan when making a serious theological critique of politicians.
Though I have explained to them how I leveled equally harsh—yet justified—criticisms at previous administrations regardless of party affiliation, for these kids so much of this is ancient history. Even though I argued cogently and fairly that Congress was justified in initiating impeachment proceedings against both, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019, all they see is the now—and since Trump is currently in office, it leads to comments like this in my course evaluations:
“Sometimes I felt uncomfortable when the professor would share some harsh political views that I didn’t fully agree with. I’m always interested in learning about the point of view of others, [but] I just felt that as a teacher it’s important to share both sides of an issue even if you have a bias towards one.”
One of the things I like to model in my class is a fair and balanced presentation of opposing viewpoints, so these words really cut to the quick. A colleague argues these students’ inability to transcend their point of view stems from the widespread perspectival approach to morality and ethics. In other words, “You may believe it to be true, but that doesn’t make it true for another.” To which I respond, “Yes, but as a teacher it is my responsibility to challenge these students to move beyond mere opinion and offer clear, defensible reasons why they believe one thing and not another.”
Truth has been devalued to such a degree that those who cannot recall a time before the post-truth era find it increasingly difficult telling fact from fiction. Thankfully, we have been here before, and can learn from the past. During the rise of fascism in the 1930s, journalist and novelist George Orwell observed that useful lies were preferred to harmful truths, and truth had been replaced by propaganda. Consequently, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In such times, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
In the aftermath of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, President Trump vacillated. Instead of immediately repudiating the heinous acts of white nationalism that led to the death of Heather Heyer, a peaceful counter-protester, and the beating of DeAndre Harris, an African American counter-protester brutally beaten by six white men, the President claimed there were “very fine people on both sides,” and that the mob chanting hateful racist propaganda included, “a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest.”
Ostensibly a protest against the removal of a Confederate monument to Robert E. Lee, the rally was also a calculated move to draw national media attention to the various factions comprising the Alt-Right in an effort to move from the Internet fringes of U.S. politics into the Trump-era mainstream. Protesters included white supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, Klansmen, neo-Nazis, and various, heavily armed, militia groups. Amidst the chants of “white lives matter,”“Jews will not replace us,” “Whose streets? Our streets!” (co-opting a Black Lives Matter slogan used during the Ferguson protests), and the Nazi slogan, “Blood and soil,” marchers carried signs with anti-Semitic slurs, brandished Nazi swastikas and waved Confederate flags, while also carrying “Trump/Pence” signs.
This is not respectful conversation; when one’s interlocutor brandishes symbols of hatred and genocide—and even calls for violence against others—there is no duty to present “both sides.” However, as a Christian, I have a moral duty to condemn hatred and violence, and I recognize there are times when remaining silent is a morally reprehensible act. This we learn from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred in a Nazi concentration camp for resisting Nazi racial policies: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Anti-Semitic attacks worldwide rose 13 percent in 2018 from the previous year, most notably in the US and Western Europe. While it would be dishonest and slanderous to link the rise of anti-Semitism to the election of Donald Trump, it is fair game to critique his administration’s lukewarm condemnation of anti-Semitism. Five years ago such acts were deemed intolerable and the public outcry from pastors and elected officials would have dominated media coverage. Today there is too much silence from Christian leaders and elected officials in light of this increase. It started with vandalizing Jewish cemeteries and synagogues, then mass shootings in synagogues, and most recently a weeklong series of vicious attacks in NYC targeting Jews during Hanukkah.
In seminary, my first ever theology professor was the late James H. Cone. To this day I carry with me the words he shared the first day of class at Union Theological Seminary in New York: “The task of theology is saying ‘Yes’ to some things and ‘No’ to others.” Theology is an inherently political undertaking—not partisan but political—and as such Christians cannot remain neutral in matters of truth, justice, and ethics. We can respectfully disagree on matters of policy—i.e., on how to address the problem of hunger and food insecurity in our public schools—but we cannot ignore the reality of poverty. We can propose different solutions to the problems created by undocumented immigration, but that does not give us license to discriminate, marginalize, or in any way mistreat undocumented immigrants.
Consequently, students in my classes will continue to be exposed to “harsh political views” they might not necessarily agree with. I don’t expect my students to agree with me on matters of politics. I do expect them to present evidence for why they believe one thing and not another. Most of all, I expect them to see beyond political posturing and demagoguery in order to evaluate all politicians (and their words and actions) from the perspective of Christian truth. And I will not tolerate Pilate’s evasive response, “What is truth?” (John 18:38, NRSV), in my classroom.
Dr. Ruben Rosario Rodriguez is a Professor of Systematic Theology at St. Louis University. He describes himself:
“I am a constructive theologian and ethicist who stands within the Reformed Protestant traditions (Calvin, Barth) yet is steeped in liberation theology (Gutierrez, Ruether, Cone). The first theological text I read (at age 15) was Paul Tillich’s Systematic Theology (3 volumes-in-one University of Chicago hardbound edition). James H. Cone was my first theology professor, and I once met Iggy Pop in lower Manhattan back in the early 1990s. I strive to be a theological pastor and a pastoral theologian, and here I am guided by the words of Prof Cone: “If I couldn’t preach it, I wouldn’t write it.”
—–Something to think about, particularly in this era and in this campaign year of 2020. We hope it turns out to be a happy new year.
(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. As the time approaches for the return of the Missouri General Assembly, we offer these thoughts.):
FUNDAMENTALS IN DEMOCRACY
These are axioms of democracy. Think on these things.
The whole people is wiser than any group of men in it. Its judgment is sounder, surer. As Lincoln put it, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
Democracy is not a scheme of voting, a plan for securing rules; it is a spirit.
Remember what Mazzzini* said, that some day a man would arise to whom democracy would be a religion. He would be the Great Man (I quote from memory, and may be inexact.)
Democracy is run for the benefit of the people in it; autocracy for the benefit of the people upon it.
Autocracy is most concerned about efficiency; democracy about welfare. Autocracy is eager to build the house; Democracy, that the builders be happy.
Autocracy is a White Passion; Democracy is a Red Passion.
Autocracy thinks of the State; Democracy of the people that compose the State.
Autocracy is abstract; Democracy concrete. The former exults impersonal aims; the latter aims constantly at men.
Autocracy’s efficiency is quick, specious, and temporary; Democracy’s efficiency is cumulative; every success means another.
Democracy is natural; Autocracy is artificial.
Democracy is its own remedy. The cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. It carries within itself its own recuperation. Autocracy prepares its own ruin.
Democracy has in it the seed of evolution; Autocracy has in it the seed of revolution.
The strength of democracy is education; the strength of autocracy is obedience.
The God of democracy is the same God the individual has; the God of autocracy has a different moral code from that of the individual. The Kaiser’s God, for instance, approved of the rape of Belgium and the sinking of the Lusitania.**
The method of democracy is light; of autocracy, darkness. Democracy created the free press; Autocracy the censor.
It is complained of democracy that it debates too much, but only by free debate can the right be winnowed out.
Democracy “washes its dirty linen in public.” True, but it gets it clean.
Democracy is dangerous. And there is no progress without danger.
Democracy is called vulgar, common, cheap. The real truth is that Autocracy is more so, only its defects are concealed and fester, while democracy’s are open and are healed.
Democracy is capable of a more perfect organization and unity than autocracy.
Autocracy is built upon caste; Democracy upon humanity.
“The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World,” is only possible in a world of democratic nations. So long as there are kings, emperors, and dynasties there can be no world unity.
Militarism is a function of autocracy; democracy functions in law.
Art, science, and literature will do better under democracy than under any protection and patronage they may get from autocracy, just as plants and people grow better in the air and sunshine than in a closed room.
*Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872) was an Italian politician and writer who was influential in the Italian Revolutionary Movement that argued for a unified Italy
**This column appeared during World War I and was published in one of his books in 1919.
What do we read in the face that is a symbol of our state? What would she say to us about who we are and who we should be?
Her right hand is outstretched in blessing but her gaze is challenging.
She is waiting for us to say something. What would we say? What should we say?
She will tolerate no nonsense. No fawning. Flattery will get us nothing. Neither will bluster. Threaten her with harm and she won’t change expression while she breaks your arm. Offer her flowers of friendship and she will be thankful but flowers won’t get you very far.
Her eyes see through us.
We wonder what we should say. Nothing that would compliment her beauty. She knows she is beautiful and has no need to flaunt it or to expect others to tell her what she already knows about herself.
She is strong of will, confident in her intelligence that is obvious to those who come face-to-face with her.
What is she saying to us just by her look at us?
This is one intimidating lady.
You can be better than you are, she says. You might have greatness but do not stop achieving it. Get on with the business of loving your neighbor. Don’t ignore those who need you. And stop whining about things. Be meaningful, not just important.
Don’t dispense and don’t accept BS.
Obfuscation won’t work with me. Don’t try it.
Be better. You can be but you too often don’t want to be and you know it.
You can be more than yourself. Get with it.
I won’t tell you how to do it. You’re capable of figuring that out.
I was the goddess of agriculture, grain, and fertility to the ancient Romans. I was kind and benevolent and anything that was “fit for Ceres” was very good, splendid in fact. I represented the love a mother bears for her child.
You will not see me this way for the rest of your lifetime, probably. But I will be atop your Capitol and I will be watching you as a mother watches her child.
Do not disappoint your mother.
Straighten up. Behave. Be “fit for Ceres.”
(Ceres. Sunday night, December 8, 2019, waiting to “go home.”)
(Dr. Frank Crane, a Methodist minister and newspaper columnist who died in 1928, compiled his weekly columns into a ten-volume series of small books a century ago. We have found his thoughts still valuable in today’s world and have decided to start each week with one of them. The timelessness and timeliness of his thoughts seems appropriate this week.)
What is a real American?
He is a Patriot, not a Partisan.
He votes.
He pays his taxes honestly.
He keeps informed on public opinion.
He is clean of Race Prejudice, and wants the Black man or the Yellow man to have equal privilege and opportunity with himself.
He hates militarism but is ready to serve in army or navy when his country is at war.
His heat beats a little faster when he sees the Stars and Stripes.
He is made up of three spiritual ingredients: Washington, Franklin, Lincoln.
He respects women, any woman.
He looks you straight in the eye, and says plainly what he thinks.
He honors those who work and has a wholesome contempt for idlers
He speaks slowly and means more than he says.
He is tolerant of anything except intolerance.
He does not care what your religious belief is, so long as you are decent.
He has a humor of his own but laughs with his eyes more than with his mouth.
He is a good loser.
Once in four years he goes on a political debauch, yielding himself up to the most primitive and narrow party spirit; but when it is over he is once more an American, forgets his late passions, and is for the man who was elected, no matter which party was successful.
He is an essential democrat; that is, his creed is not, “I am as good as anybody,” but is “Anybody is as good as I.”
He likes to make money but likes to see everybody around him making money. He does not enjoy riches in the midst of poverty.
He wants a family of his own, a business of his own, a home of his own, and an opinion of his own.
He is not a stock, or a race, or a breed; it is a Spirit. His parents may be French, Italians, Czechs, Polish, or German; but he has caught another Spirit: he has been born again, he is an American.
He is a reformer, not a revolutionist.
He hates class.
When laws do not suit him he does not break them, he changes them.
His is the newest nation; his is the youth of humanity.
He is loyal—to his family, to his friend, and to his country.
But his loyalty does not imply lying and spying, cruelty and inhumanity.
He wants nothing for his own country he would not be willing for other countries to have for themselves.
He does not want the United States to rule the world, but to be the Big Brother to the world.
We’re puzzled by President Trump’s pronouncements that some people are “human scum.” Apparently he has forgotten that there are good people on both sides.
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Ceres will be on display this weekend at the capitol before she’s hoisted back into her position on top of the dome. She’s back from her year-long “spa treatment” at a bronze restoration company in Chicago. We expect a lot of folks to go to the capitol to see her before she goes back up. Who knows, it might be another ninety years before she comes back down.
However, the folks in Chicago did some detailed 3D scans of the old girl. The Capitol Commission hasn’t decided what to do with them yet. There’s been some discussion of creating a Ceres hologram somewhere inside the capitol so we won’t have to wait ninety more years to see her up close. Your observer has advocated for years flying drones or something around the dome to do just such a scan so 12-inch reproductions could be made and sold at the tour desk.
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Speaking of Ceres: One of the questions we’ve been asked several times is whether she was supposed to face north instead of south (or at least, north as we think of it in Jefferson City—an observation about that in a minute). We think she was always intended to face south.
North advocates say it’s odd that the patron goddess of agriculture isn’t facing the most fertile farmlands in Missouri and is instead facing the rocky Ozarks. Not really. She’s facing south because that’s the entrance to the capitol and she’s extending a hand of welcome to those who come to the building. It wouldn’t do to have her turn her back on visitors.
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Now, is she facing south? No. We think she’s actually facing, uh, southwest. Columbia is north; Fulton is northeast. Check a map that shows where north is.
Many years ago, Jefferson City officials realized house numbering was a scrambled mess because some houses, say, were in the 400 block of West Kneecap Street while houses right behind them on West Headache Avenue had numbers starting with 700. It wasn’t a problem in the earliest days of the town when it was a nice grid. But when it spread and the streets began to snake along the high ground that conformed to the meandering river channel, numbering became scrambled.
It was a huge deal when the city launched a house renumbering program that brought things into a more sensible system that would make it easier for police or fire or other service people to find out where something was happening or had happened. A lot of folks didn’t like getting new numbers but they had to go out to Westlake/s Hardware or maybe uptown of Schleer Brothers Hardware Store (imagine that: a hardware store on High Street. And a grocery store. And a dime store.) and buy new numbers to put on their walls, mail boxes, and doors. But they finally did.
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We’ve often observed that our church as a hymn, “In Christ there is no east or west; In him, no north or south” and we’ve suggested the substitution of “Jefferson City” for “Christ” would give us an accurate city anthem.
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Our city has a contest for the best house Christmas lights. There’s a place just up the block from our house where the folks seem to take great delight in the darkening months’ holidays, not with lights but with balloons. This year there are inflatable figures of Snoopy and Charlie Brown and other Christmasy things. We always look forward to the fall holiday season when we see the latest Halloween inflatables , then the Thanksgiving ones and, now, Charlie Brown figures, including Snoopy’s Sopwith Camel, complete with turning propeller.
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Something from the Jefferson City Daily Democrat-Tribune in June of 1914, a headline reading “Beautifying the River Front.”
Nothing is more unsightly than railroad tracks between a city and its river front. It was a mistake to ever permit the railroad tracks to be constructed between the city and the river. Under the circumstances, there is nothing to be done but to arch over the tracks, or at least a part of them…
The article was about an early drawing by the architects of the soon-to-be new capitol showing a terrace over the tracks on the capitol’s river side with steps leading down to the water. That part of the capitol project was never done, of course. But the often-maligned proposed Bicentennial Bridge might materialize that hope of 105-years ago.
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For the record, the last time a state official was impeached and removed from office in Missouri was when Secretary of State Judi Moriarty was removed from office for post-dating her son’s document filing as a candidate for the Missouri House. Eric Greitens quit before articles of impeachment could be taken up in the House. In about 1968 there was a circuit judge in St. Louis named John Hasler who had taken a fatherly interest in a woman whose divorce case he was hearing. But he resigned before the trial could be held. And the last impeachment before THAT was probably State Treasurer Larry Brunk in the 1930s, who was charged by the House but the Senate couldn’t get a two-thirds vote against him. Brunk had been a state senator a few years earlier. The Brunk case is considered one of the reasons the new constitution adopted in 1945 eliminated trial by the Senate and put it before the Missouri Supreme Court.
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And in each of those cases, we are sure there were good people on both sides.
For some, it’s an honor. To others, it’s an insult when an animal is named for them.
For Prince Charles, the word that a tree frog had been named for him (Hyloscirtus princecharlesi) was an honor (or as he might say “honour.”). He has worked to protect tropical rainforest habitat.
As far as we know, President Trump has not found it tweet-worthy since his name was attached to a creature by a British company interested in environmental issues. The company paid $25,000 in an auction for the rights to name a legless, blind, tiny burrowing amphibian from Panama “Dermohis donaldtrump.”
If you think we are going to offer some clever comment about that, think again.
But apart from scientific names involving famous people, we don’t often hear of regular animals being named for people in the news or historical characters very much. At one time it was a pretty proper thing to do. In fact, Lucy Wales, who ran Columbia’s first school for women, used to take her students to the county fair and have them discuss the famous people whose names were carried by the livestock on display.
A fellow named Ed. H. Smith, the former publisher of a newspaper in the small Livingston County town of Chula, once suggested that Missouri needed a law restricting the right of Missourians to name animals for prominent people. He wrote to the Chillicothe Tribune in 1909:
I don’t know how to frame a bill, but I am going to try to tell you in my weak way what I want and give you a few reasons why a law of this kind ought to be passed. Now, you will notice at this time of the year the papers in small towns and even in cities like Chillicothe are full of advertisements of breeding stock. Fine horses—Belgians and Percherons—and big mealy-nosed jacks, Herefords, etc. These are all noble animal, and I know full well what these splendid new breeds are doing for old Missouri. That’s all right. What I object to is the names they give these animals. It don’t look quite right to name a jack after a senator without his consent. At any rate it don’t hurt the jack or the senator, but there is something unpretty about it.
Suppose now, I was sent to the legislature and Jim Raney would name his bull calf Ed H. Smith and print a lot of bills with a picture of the calf and say (our) names under it. How would I like it? I tell you, Mr. Editor, about half the fine breeding animals in the country are named after celebrated people. There was a rooster at our poultry show named Herbert S. Hadley. A man up by Chula has a pig named Carrie Nation. I tell you where the greatest objection to this rural nomenclature comes in. And when I am done you will be of my opinion about this matter.
Comes now a man to your print shop and wants a horse bill printed on manila cardboard. This bill contains a description of the splendid horse and his pedigree, which reads as follows: Jos. Cannon was sired by Grover Cleveland, dam Ida Tarbell, she by Hod Scruby, dam Mrs. Langtry.
Now, you print them bills with good job ink and this man tacks one on a telephone pole in front of Swetland’s drug store. Suppose now, the next day there is an eruption of Shalehill at Utica, and Chillicothe is buried five hundred feet deep with ashes and limestone and shale and lava, and sandstone and hell fire and brimstone. Two thousand years from now comes a band of geologists from some big university and they did down to find old Chillicothe. They strike the top of a telephone pole and follow it down. They find this bill tacked to it and quit work at once. You get. They have made a find. They have founds something that upsets all ancient history they have ever learned. All over the land the school children have been taught that the Scrubys were a fine old English family in no way related to Grover Cleveland and Ida Tarbell’s name in all histories is written Miss. School marms all over the country will say, “my goodness gracious,” or words to that effect. Millions of schoolbooks will have to be destroyed and new ones printed. family histories and biographies will be knocked galled west. You know it. So there you are. You see what I want. I can’t frame the bill but don’t you think Fred Hudson and Hod Scruby ought to take it up. They are more interested than I am.
I don’t think anyone will ever name a clay pigeon after me. It is altogether an unselfish motive which prompts me in this matter, and a bill like this preventing any one from naming their breeding animals after our great men, ought to pass with a whoop. I rest my case.
Joseph Cannon was an Illinois congressman who was the Speaker from 1903 until 1911, the longest-serving speaker until another Illinois congressman, Dennis Hastert, eclipsed him. Grover Cleveland is the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms. Ida Tarbell was one of the biggest names among muckraking journalists of that era. “Hod” Scruby was Horace P. Scruby, the state representative from Livingston County at the time. Mrs. Langtry was the famous actress Lilly Langtry. Fred Hudson was the state senator representing the county.
The issue Ed Smith raised so long ago isn’t something we confront much today. But animals often show up in our editorial cartoons, sometimes bearing names of our leaders, sometimes representing broader themes.
Wonder when President Trump will comment on the Panamanian amphibian.
We offer today a vision of a different world, a plea to recognize that good things come from working together in common cause. In this time of division and derision, perhaps we can find some comfort in these long-ago words that sought to bring us together for our mutual benefit.
We found this poem in an 1894 newspaper published in the small town of Higbee and in several other communities in Missouri.
All Men Are Brothers
We are all a band of brothers, And should have regard for others, And with sisters, fathers, mothers, We should work for all alike.
Yes, we’ll work for all together, Both in clear and stormy weather, And our labor without measure Shall supply the wants of all.
For there’s room enough for all, And there’s plenty at our call; No misfortunes will befall While in friendship we unite.
So we’re brothers all united, And our wrongs shall be righted, For our word we all have plighted, That our union shall endure.
Nature treats all men as brothers, Does the same for us and others, So, with sisters, fathers, mothers, Let us live in unity.
Am I the only person who hears these words as a potential hymn? Perhaps they are a song heard and forgotten, we don’t know. The sentiment might be unrealistic in these times of political crudeness and rudeness. But there seems to be a longing in many people’s hearts for this poem to prevail in our discourse.
But here comes what will be the bucket of cold water for some who have read these words and found them wistfully welcome.
This poem was published in the Higbee Altruist. The newspaper also was published as the Sulphur Springs Altruist, and the St. Louis Altruist. There might have been other communities that published it as an addition to local reading material in the days when reading prevailed, before radio, television, the internet, and hand-held devices intruded into thoughtful sentiments.
Alcander Longley published the newspaper from 1885-1917, the year before his death, and a predecessor with a different name from 1868 until changing the title to Altruist. He’s not widely recalled in Missouri newspaper publishing history despite that half-century career.
Longley’s newspapers were aptly named because he really did believe in the words of that poem. And he did more than just write about it. He founded communities based on the philosophy at the end, “Let us live in unity.”
Longley was living in a rapidly-changing post-Civil War Missouri. The growth of industry was changing the economic climate; the healing of war wounds was altering politics; and the movement of people from rural to urban areas was among the economic, social and political alterations to the Missouri in which Longley had grown up (he was almost thirty when the war began).
Robert Jeffrey David Wells wrote his master’s thesis at Missouri State University in 2008 about Longley and his newspapers. He recorded that Longley founded the secular utopian community of Reunion in southwest Missouri’s Jasper county in 1868. It winked out three years later. He created the Friendship Community in Dallas County a year later. It failed in 1877. His next attempt was the Friendship Community of Bollinger County, in 1879, the Principia Community in Polk County in ’81, The Mutual Aid Community in Jefferson County, which lasted from 1884 to ’85, followed by the Altruistic Society of 1886 there. In 1889 he formed the Mutual Aid Community of St. Louis before forming The Altruist Community in several locations between ’89 and ‘91. He established the Altruist Community in Randolph County in 1895 and Altro 1898, which lasted until 1900.
Missouri has had s number of communistic societies. Travelers driving through the few that survive, Longley’s or anyone else’s, might never know the unusual ideals behind their foundings unless there are signs.
The St. Louis Communist was his first newspaper, before the Altruist that contained the poem. Longley died in 1917, the year of Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution that re-defined “communism” in dark, repressive terms. Perhaps it is best that someone who believed life is better if everyone contributes to the mutual benefit of all did not live to see Lenin’s longer-lasting definition become reality.
Today the words “communism” and “socialism” are political swear words. But once upon a time, they were sincere ideals. And, after all, what’s wrong with a poem that sounds like a lot of the songs in church hymn books today?
Nature treats all men as brothers, Does the same for us and others, So, sisters, fathers, mothers, Let us live in unity.
I find myself using the word “courage,” or at least thinking of the word, too often in observations about our political world at state and national levels. It takes courage on both sides to break from partisan ideology, to challenge entrenched and powerful private influences, and to take stands that benefit the benign many more than the influential few. We wonder if lack of courage by those entrusted with leadership translates into lack of trust by those who think courage to truly provide for the common good is needed.
A poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko comes to mind often these days. Yevtushenko was a Russian (and Soviet) writer, poet, novelist, and film producer whose works questioning and challenging Soviet authority led to his expulsion from the Gorky Institute for Literature, and a ban on travel. (Both of his grandfathers had been declared by Stalin to be “enemies of the people” twenty years earlier.)
In 1961, he wrote a poem he called “Conversation with an American Writer.”
“You have courage,” they tell me.
It is not true.
I was never courageous.
I simply felt it unbecoming
To stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.
I simply mocked at pretense and inflation.
I wrote articles, scribbled no denunciations,
And tried to speak all on my mind.
Yes, I defended men of talent,
branding the hacks, the would-be writers.
But this, in general, we should always do,
And yet, they keep stressing my courage.
Oh, our descendants will burn with bitter shame
To remember when punishing vile acts,
That most peculiar time
When plain honesty
Was labeled “courage.”
We suspect many people today would appreciate that kind of courage, seeing instead only bowing to power in the interest of personal security.
It’s still warm, 90s lately, and some leaves are starting to fall. But we are reminded of a rolling snowball as we watch the developments in Washington. We seldom have observations about the national scene, but we have lived long and seen much in state and national politics. And we know that once a snowball starts rolling, it gets bigger and bigger and it starts going faster and faster.
A friend of mine once advised a roomful of public officials, “It is better to admit you have a skeleton in the closet than to try to bury a body. A skeleton doesn’t stink as much as a body when it’s dug up.”
That’s not an exact quote but it catches the idea.
The problem we have seen in politics is that the tendency is to try to heap more dirt onto the grave. And in heaping more dirt on the grave, the person under scrutiny is only digging the hole deeper.
Richard Nixon, Bob Griffin, Rod Blagojevich, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Tom Pendergrast and insurance director R. Emmett O’Malley, Eric Greitens, and now, Donald Trump. And there are a lot more.
We don’t know what the case will be against President Trump or whether it is a sustainable one meriting an impeachment action by the House. But it just feels as if there’s a snowball starting to roll. And past experience tells us snowballs don’t stop until somebody is swept away.
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Nancy and I helped some of our church friends work on a Habitat For Humanity project backed by another church last week. After several hours of standing, carrying, holding, and scraping, we went home and promptly stiffened up as we recovered in our recliner chairs for a short time. As I got up, I dropped the TV remote and I tried to pick it up. I found myself wishing I had one of those button things people wear around their necks. Except mine would be wired backwards so that the emergency responders would hear me say, “Help, I’m up but I can’t get down!”
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Cardinals are playing in October. Milwaukee got knocked out early. The only thing better would have been if it had been the Cubs.
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And what in the world is it doing being hockey season already?
