Category Archives: Uncategorized

Today is what we have

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(By the end of the week our political conventions will have finished, each positively assuring us that the names at the top of the ballot will make us great or build us better, each speaking as if those candidates alone can do these things—as if there are not two other branches of government that could or must  have a say.  Dr. Frank Crane suggests that candidates and their parties and their promises are less important to us the we are to ourselves, not just today but—-)

EVERY DAY

Every day!

In those two words lies the secret of all attainment.

It’s not what we do once, with all our hearts, and with every splendid ounce of strength, that counts so much as the things we’ve been doing every day, whether we felt like it or not.

Every day! Therein is mastery.  The marvelous, velvet, utterly exquisite beauty of such piano-playing of Paderewski’s, or such violin performances as Maud Powell’s—it looks spontaneous but it is the result of many a hateful day’s laborious routine.

Every day! That is the road to perfection.  The speaker who can hold and charm an audience, the debater quick and ready and not to be confused, the baseball player, the woman always socially at ease—everybody, in fact, that can do anything well owes that poise and finish to the slow efforts of every day.

No matter how gifted an actor, how naturally endowed, he cannot be a master without infinite practice.

Young people do not realize the tremendous cumulative power that lies in time.  Take ten years. Say you are twenty. By the time you are thirty what enormous efficiency you might build up if you would only use every day a certain amount of time.

Almost everybody wastes enough hours in ten years to get a doctor’s degree in any university.

In ten years you might be speaking and reading fluently in Spanish or French or Japanese, you might be an authority upon geology, botany, chemistry, English literature, history, or whatever fits your ambition, if you would only be faithful every day.

Every day!  The universe is constructed on routine. The sun rises every day, the stars revolve, the seasons come and go by schedule, your heart beats and your lungs fill and empty as regularly as the clock ticks, every generation of men or of animals is the result of numberless preceding generations, over and over again Nature tries her hand and her matchless perfection is only the stored-up treasure of endless practice.

And in character every day means even more than anywhere else. The most honest man is the man who has been honest every day; the most virtuous woman is she who has behind her present virtue the inertia of a whole life full of virtuous thought and deed; the happiest person is the one who has long practiced being happy, and that soul is coolest and surest in a crisis who every day has schooled himself in self-mastery.

No force is so great in any man as the stored-up power of what he has been doing every day.

(Ignace Paderewski (pronounced Pad-er-efski’) was a Polish statesman, pianist, and composer who, as his country’s new Prime Minister and Foreign Minister signed the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. He was a spokesman for Polish independence who, during a concert tour of the United States, encouraged President Wilson to support an independent Poland as part of the Fourteen Points discussions that led to the treaty. He was 81 when he died in 1941, about two years after Hitler ended Poland’s freedom.

Maud Powell was the first American woman to achieve worldwide notoriety as a violinist. She was among the first instrumentalists to record for the Victor Talking Machine Company’s red seal records, which later became the classical label for RCA Victor’s recordings. Her recordings are still considered a standard for violin performance. She died in 1920, at 52.)

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Us vs. It—part VIII, Laughter as medicine

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From time to time we’ll pass along observations from others that might provide some comfort, some encouragement, or even some black humor that can lift us a little bit. Today we’re going to focus on humor.

These are serious times, indeed, but the Seventeenth Chapter of the Old Testament book of Proverbs reminds us (verse 22): “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine; but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

First, this observation: This virus deserves a theme song. We have reached back many decades for a famous Peggy Lee song that we have re-titled:

An Anthem for Social Distancing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqNggIve40E

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Former Missourinet reporter Drew Vogel, who now is a nursing home administrator in Ohio, passed along a comment by one of his in-laws before barber and beauty shops were allowed to open in many places: With all the beauty shops closed for the duration, in a month or so we’ll start seeing the REAL color of people’s hair.

It’s not too late for a lot of folks.

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A protestor recently had a sign saying, “Every disaster movie starts with government ignoring a scientist.”

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We saw a tweet the other day from someone called, “Sir Michael:”

Quarantine Diary:

Day 1—I have stocked up on enough non-perishable supplies to last me for months, maybe years, so that I can remain in isolation as long as it takes to see out this pandemic.

Day 1+45 minutes—I am in the supermarket because I want a Twix.

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Another tweet, this one from “JR:”

Day 2 without sports:

Found a lady sitting on my couch yesterday. Apparently she’s my wife. She seems nice.

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Atlantic Magazine recently had an article about why it’s okay to laugh at coronavirus jokes. You can find it at https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/humor-laughter-coronavirus-covid19/609184/

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Our dogs think we quit our jobs to spend more time with them. Our cats think we got fired for being the loser they always thought we were.

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The website Fatherly has “28 Coronavirus jokes to retrain your face how to smile.”

We’ll share three. If you think they are sufficiently funny, you can find the rest at https://www.fatherly.com/play/best-coronavirus-jokes/

  1. If there’s a baby boom nine months from now, what will happen in 2033? There will be a whole bunch of quaranteens.
  2. What’sthe difference between COVID-19 and Romeo and Juliet? One’s the coronavirus and the other is a Verona crisis.
  3. I’lltell you a coronavirus joke now, but you’ll have to wait two weeks to see if you got it.

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Email: 2020 is so weird that the Pentagon just confirmed UFOs exist and it’s barely news.

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A sign of the times: A high school classmate emailed me the other day, “Thirty years ago I was arrested for smoking weed while hanging out with friends. Yesterday I was arrested for hanging out with friends while smoking weed.”

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This is a bad time for introverts. They can’t wait for people to leave the house so they can be alone again.

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Another tweet: Pigeons probably think humans are extinct.

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Somebody told me the other day that newspapers can carry the virus. So I wash my newspaper each day in the kitchen sink while I sing two verses of “Happy Birthday.” Last Saturday’s paper should be dry enough tomorrow to read. If I can get the pages apart.

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Another tweet: This quarantine is really affecting the work force, especially the men. We’re losing $1 for every 79 cents that women are losing.

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I hope my barber shop reopens soon. I haven’t had a haircut since February. Hope the barber doesn’t charge by the pound.

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Some people post humorous comments, signs, or videos on the FACEBOOK pages or other social media pages. The Christian Science Monitor recently reported on a man who has a white board in his yard and he posts messages such as, “I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. I’ll let you know.”

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And then there’s editorial cartoonist Gary Varvel of Creators.com, whose defiant cartoon surely will turn into a real product that a lot of us could wear.

In a few months, perhaps a new t-shirt will add “’20 CORONAVIRUS.”

And finally, for this entry, a comment from Max, another friend at the Y, who hopes the pandemic fades before warm weather brings out the ticks that carry Lyme Disease. If it doesn’t, he says, we’ll have Corona and Lyme.   Those of you more familiar with adult drinks than your obedient servant will appreciate the humor, I trust.

I used to say when something happened that would be memorable, if not historic, “That’s something to tell the grandchildren about.” Can’t do that now. The grandchildren are living it. So I’m changing the statement; “That’s something my grandchildren can tell their grandchildren.”

I wear a 2x, by the way.

 

Dr. Crane on the heart of the matter

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(Look, we all know it’s the brain not the heart that controls our emotions. But so what? Can you find anything romantic in a song that says, “If I give my brain to you…,” or “Brain letters in the sand…” or listen to someone pick out single keys on the piano that play “Brain and Soul, I’m so in love with you..”??????? Or do you think you could draw inspiration from a well known painting that should be entitled, “Christ Knocking at Brain’s Door?” Dr. Crane goes to the heart of the mater with—-)

THE HUMAN HEART

The human heart is a wide moor under a dull sky, with voices of invisible birds calling in the distance.

The human heart is a lonely lane in the evening, and two lovers are walking down it, whispering and lingering.

The human heart is a great green tree, and many strange birds come and sing it its branches; a few build nests, but most are far from lands north and south, and never come again.

The human heart is a deep still pool; in it are fishes of gold and silver, darting playfully, and slow-heaving slimy monsters, and tarnished treasure hoards, the infinite animalcular life; but when you look down at it you see but your own reflected face.

The human heart is an undiscovered country; men and women are forever perishing as they explore its wilds.

The human heart is an egg, and out of it are hatched this world and heaven and hell.

The human heart is a tangled wood wherein no man knows his way.

The human heart is a roaring forge where night and day the smiths are busy fashioning swords and silver cups, mitres and engine-wheels, the tools of labor, and the gauds of precedence.

The human heart is a garden, wherein grow weeds of memory and blooms of hope, and the snow falls at last and covers all.

The human heart is a meadow full of fireflies, a summer western sky of shimmering distant lightnings, a shore set round with flashing lighthouses, far-away voices calling that we cannot understand.

The human heart is a band playing in a park at a distance; we see the crowds listening, but we catch but fragments of the music now and again, and cannot make out the tune.

The human heart is a great city, teeming with myriad people, full of business and mighty doings, and we wander its crowded streets unutterably alone; we do not know what it is all about.

The human heart to youth is a fairy-land of adventure, to old age it is a sitting room where one knows his way in the dark

The human heart is a cup of love, where some find life and zest, and some drunkenness and death.

The human heart is the throne of God, the council-chamber of the devil, the dwelling of angels, the vile heath of witches’ Sabbaths, the nursery of sweet children, the blood-splattered scene of nameless tragedies.

Listen? You will hear mothers’ lullabies, madmen’s shrieks, love-croonings, cries of agonized terror, hymns of Christ, the roaring of lynch mobs, the kisses of lovers, the curses of pirates.

Bent close! You will smell the lily fragrance of love, the stench of lust, now odors as exquisite as the very spirit of violets, and now such nauseous repulsions as words cannot tell.

Nobilities, indecencies, heroic impulses, cowardly ravings, good and bad, white and black—the mystery of mysteries, the central island of nescience in a seas of science, the dark spot in the lighted room of knowledge, the unknown quantity, the X in the universe.

Dr. Crane and true grit

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

Sometimes we equate “grit” with courage.

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

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

IT TAKES GRIT

It takes Grit to do anything worth doing.

All real progress is upstream.

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

It takes Grit—

To be Patient,

To keep your Temper,

To improve your Mind,

To Exercise, and keep your Body fit,

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

To save Money,

To push your business,

To tell the truth,

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

To say No,

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

To pay your Debts,

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

To say “I don’t know,”

To do your own thinking,

To resist the mob,

To be honest, simple, and straight,

And not to worry.

But these things are easy:

To be irritable,

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

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

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

To eat what you please,

To wait for something to turn up,

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

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

To side-step,

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

To join something and use partisanship for loyalty,

To go with the crowd,

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

To follow your impulses and not your intelligence,

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

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

And to commit suicide.

It’s easy going down.

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

Dr. Crane: The Future

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(Dr. Frank Crane, by training a Methodist minister and son of a Methodist minister, became a widely-read newspaper columnist in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century. His “Four Minute Essays” appeared in hundreds of newspapers. His New York Times obituary in 1928 noted, “His message was always one of uprightness of living, sincerity of thinking, and ‘sweet reasonableness.’” Last week, we offer his thoughts on yesterday. As we look ahead to the unpredictability of life, particularly in a campaign year, we offer these thoughts from Dr. Crane on tomorrow and other tomorrows to tome.)

AROUND THE CORNER

What’s around the corner? Something. Whatever it is, I used to be terribly afraid of it when I was a boy.

When I would take a girl home at night after meeting, I would walk out in the street a little, lest if I kept on the sidewalk I would be so close that Something around the Corner would get me. Nothing ever did jump out and grab me, never a ghost, or a boogey man, or a murderer, or anything, though I expected and feared all those boy-years.

And since I have grown up I have discovered that Something around the Corner is believed in by most mortals. It may be accident, or disease or loss or disgrace—or that old fellow himself who lurks around the corner for all of us, and will get us everyone someday—Death.

The Thing around the Corner, it is the skeleton at the feast, the shadow on our sunny day, the nightmare of our sleep, the concealed weapon of destiny, the vague enemy that will not let us bivouac in peace, but makes us always keep our pickets out alert for stealthy attack.

And yet, the Good Things of life are around the Corner. Happiness hides there and springs laughing at us. And the little things that make hearts bright and days glad. Ten of these blessed things have come upon us unaware, to one of them that we have sought and found.

Love, for instance. Don’t you remember how it was with you when it came to you that She really loved you? That wonderful, divine creature, the pearl of the world, that radiant one, the latchet of whose shoes you were not worthy to unloose—what could she see in so commonplace a mucker as you? O miracle of miracles!

The there’s Christmas, Corner of all corners, with what amazing secrets and what crowded bevy of giggles and whispers, and loving thoughts!

But, especially the Little Things are they that make the sum of our contentment, and they are nearly all surprises. If we could foresee them we wouldn’t appreciate them.

It’s not the big Olympian gods that love us most; it’s the little fairies of circumstance, the elves and pyxies of happy accident that flutter along the ways of men.

The best things of life come unexpected upon you. From the time when you were presented with your first pair of trousers, or Uncle Ed bought you home a toy pistol, down to just yesterday, when a friend paid you back the ten dollars you lent him and never expected to see again, an all through your life, your successes in business, you rarest friends, your most palatable food, your most enjoyable excursions, your most interesting books, the remarks some one made about you that most tickled your vanity, the most welcome visitors—almost all of them were not planned and worked for, but jumped at you from around the corner.

And around that last Corner, where we turn to travel the Unknown, I do not believe there hides some grisly Thong of Evil, but a smiling-faced one, with welcome in His hands and the Morning Star for me.

Dr. Crane: Yesterday

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(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 we leave one year and begin another one, we are reminded of Al Stewart’s 1978 hit song that includes:

Well I’m not the kind to live in the past
The years run too short and the days too fast
The things you lean on are the things that don’t last
Well it’s just now and then my line gets cast into these
Time passages
There’s something back here that you left behind
Oh time passages
Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.

Dr. Crane wrote in his column about the importance of living for today and working for our tomorrows:

YESTERDAY

I am Yesterday. I am gone from you forever.

I am the last of a long procession of days, streaming behind you, away from you, pouring into mist and obscurity, and at least into the ocean of oblivion.

Each of us have our burden, of triumph, of defeat, of laughter, of bitterness; we bear our load from you into forgetfulness; yet as we go we each leave something in your subconsciousness.

We fill your soul’s cellar.

I depart from you, yet am I ever with you.

Once I was called Tomorrow and was virgin pure; then I became your spouse and was named Today; now I am Yesterday and carry upon me the eternal stain of your embrace.

I am one of the leaves of a growing book. There are many pages before me. Someday you shall turn us all over and read us and know what you are.

I am pale, for I have no hope. Only memories.

I am rich, for I have wisdom.

I bore you a child and left him with you. His name is Experience.

You do not like to look at me. I am not pretty. I am majestic, fateful, serious.

You do not love my voice. It does not speak to your desires; it is cool and even and full of prudence.

I am Yesterday; yet I am the same as Today and Forever for I AM YOU; and you cannot escape from yourself.

Sometimes I talk with my companions about you. Some of us carry the scars of your cruelty. Some the wretchedness of your crime. Some the beauty of your goodness. We do not love you. We do not hate you. We judge you.

We have no compassion; only Today has that.

We have no encouragement for you; only Tomorrow has that.

We stand at the front door of the past, welcoming the single file of days that pass through, watching Tomorrows becoming Todays and then enter among us.

Little by little we suck out your life, as vampires. As you grow older we absorb your thought. You turn to us more and more, less and less toward Tomorrow.

Our snows cumber your back and whiten your head. Our icy waters put out your passions. Our exhalations dim your hopes. Our many tombstones crowd into your landscape. Our dead loves, burnt-out enthusiasms, shattered dream-houses, dissolved illusions, move to you, surround you.

Tomorrows come unnoticed. Todays slip by unheeded. More and more you become a creature of Yesterdays.

Ours are banquet halls full of wine-soaked tablecloths, broken vessels, wilted roses.

Ours are empty churches where aspirations were, where only ghosts are.

Ours are ghastly Pompeiian streets, rich galleons a hundred fathoms deep, genealogical lists of sonorous names, mummies in museums, fragmentary pillars of battered temples, inscriptions on bricks of Nineveh, huge stone gates standing amidst the tropical landscape of Yucatan, Etruscan wine jars now dry and empty forever.

From us comes that miasma of inertia that holds humanity in thrall; from us comes the strength of war-makers, monarchs, and all the privileged.

We reach up long, sinewy, gray arms of custom and tradition, to choke Today and impede Tomorrow.

We are the world’s Yesterdays. If you knew enough to put your feet upon us you might rise rapidly. But when you let us ride on your backs we strangle and smother you.

I am Yesterday. Learn to look me in the face, to use me, and not to be afraid of me.

I am not your friend. I am your judge — and your fear.

Tomorrow is your friend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Jim

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I knew only one person who had anything bad to say about Jim Spainhower, the only person in public office I ever would have given any thought at all to working for—-and I still would have refused had he ever offered.    

I missed Jim’s funeral yesterday (Tuesday) because of a couple of things that required staying at home. But Nancy was among several folks from Jefferson City and a lot of other places who were there to say goodbye.  One phrase was heard over and over, or circulated over and over on social media—“good man.”  

Jim had been out of the public eye for a long time.  He was 90 when he died.  It has been almost forty years since he left the State Treasurer’s office after losing a primary race for governor in 1980. 

I met Jim the first time when he was the featured speaker at one of the retreats held in the spring and fall of each year by the college group at the First Christian Church in Columbia.  He was a close friend of our student program minister, Eldon Drennan, and had not yet entered politics.  He was straightforward, thoughtful, eloquent, never presuming to be the only repository of scriptural knowledge.  About the time I graduated, he became a state representative while also remaining a minister in Marshall.  

Later, I covered part of his political career as a reporter.  And still later, when Eldon formed a social/religious studies group made up of Jim and Joanne, Eldon and Ilene, and some other folks from Columbia and Jefferson City, Jim Spainhower was included and became the only political office-holder who was ever welcome in our home. 

Jim knew, however, that except for those few occasions when we gathered in that group, I was always the reporter and he was always the politician.  

I played softball with several of his young employees in the Treasurer’s office, one of who was a second baseman named Bob Holden.  Pretty good with a glove.  Singles hitter.  We were just young guys who liked to play softball.  Never talked politics between innings that I can recall. 

Jim wrote a book called Pulpit, Pew, and Politics and told me when my first book came out that I was entitled to begin my prayers with, “O Thou who also has written a book….”  

 The world was different then, of course.  Today’s religious-political alliance that seeks power to mandate by law those policies that are not convincing enough from the pulpit to bring voluntary participation had not yet materialized. And Jim’s profession of faith in his book fell far short of today’s efforts to claim exclusive access to the path of salvation and to turn dogma into statute:

And although a lifelong Democrat, I know that all political wisdom is not confined to my party. I admire the Democratic party for its record of policy-making on behalf of the underprivileged and needy, but I also admit that there have been periods in this nation’s history whenother parties have better served them.  

I am a member of the Christian faith and of the Democratic party. I declare my religious and political membership in neither a spirit of pride nor by way of apology but only to help the reader better understand and interpret the views expressed…Although I am a Christian, I do not believe all religious truth is confined to the Christian faith.  Jesus did say he came to reveal the way, the truth, and the life but he did not claim his to be the only way, the only truth, the only life.  I am convinced that Jesus’ life and words emphasize the truth about God in whatever religious garment it may be clothed. I have been blessed with the friendship of manypersons of the Jewish faith and impressed by their personal dedication to thesame principles of truth, honor, and justice that my Christian faith has taughtme to uphold. I know we worship the same God.

Membership in a political party does not require unreasonable partisanship. Nor does it necessitate unthinking, blind loyalty to every position a party takes. Parties themselves are so contradictory that the member who insists on following its dictates without raising questions is certain to end up as a fool…

  I stress these points  because it is necessary to guard against making an ideological god out of one’s political party affiliation….Any government, though, that does not consider the moral and ethical implications of policy-making will soon face a disturbing spiritual crisis among those who are governed…I strongly believe that too little emphasis has been placed on the role of religion in providing the ethical ingredient needed to complement political expertise in a well-governed society.

Jim was the youngest of fourteen children, raised in Stanberry, a graduate of Maryville High School.  He became an ordained minister in 1953 and during his eight years in the Missouri House, he earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in political science.

 State Treasurer William E. Robinson, who could have been thefirst state treasurer to succeed himself—thanks to a change in state law—raninto some serious legal problems (he was acquitted) and didn’t run again, Jimwon the office. And it was Jim Spainhower who became the first State Treasurerwho succeeded himself with a second four-year term. He got sixty-nine percentof the vote.  The only statewide office-holder to beat that record since was Auditor Tom Schweich, who ran without major opposition in the general election of 2014.

He was inaugurated for his second term only a few minutesbefore Joseph Teasdale took the office of governor and told a small audience suffering in the most miserable weather in the history of Missouri’s outdoor inaugurations, “I am firmly convinced that the will of God in this election to the office of governor has been manifested through your free will to vote according to the dictates of your conscience.”

Jim later told me, “Never trust a politician with a messianic complex.”  

Four years later, when he could not seek another term as treasurer, Jim ran against Teasdale, whose administration had a checkered record.  He lost in the 1980 primary.Teasdale later lost to Christopher Bond by ten times more votes than he won with against Bond in ’76. 

In 2004, the next time a sitting governor, Bob Holden, was challenged in a primary election (by Claire McCaskill), I called Spainhower and Teasdale and asked them to reflect on how the contested primary in 1980 affected the Democratic party in the general election.  Jim still would not refer to Teasdale by name and Teasdale still blamed Spainhower’s opposition in August for his loss in November.  Forget about the old saw that time heals all wounds.  Not in this case.

After Jim left public office he became the President of the School of the Ozarks at Point Lookout, succeeding the school’s founder, M. Graham Clark.  But he was never comfortable in that role because, as we recall the story, Clark kept an office elsewhere in the same building and Jim felt people still went to Clark with an issue instead of going to him.  When the chance came to become the head of Lindenwood College, Jim moved on. 

Even after he retired as an educator, he remained a pastor.  And a friend although it has been many years since we saw each other.  

Near the end of his book, Jim wrote:

If I have one single ambition in life it is to finish my days on earth knowing that, for the most part, I have done my best to serve God in the manner he desires. I recognize my fallibility and know that when death is just a moment away it will bring to close a life that failed many times to measure up to God’s expectations. But I desire that those failures be as few in number as possible…

I have always taken great comfort in the words of Abraham Lincoln when censored for his unwavering policy in defense of the union…”I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right; stand with him while he stands right and part company with him when he goes wrong.”

The reaction to word of his death both at the funeral and on social media has been universal: “He was a good man.”  

Yes, he was. 

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Notes from the road (March, 2018 edition)

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(Jefferson City)—Nancy and I have returned from our annual few-days visit to our snowbird friends who head to Arizona in October and don’t return to Missouri until April.  We were starkly reminded when we got out of our car at our house why they do that.

We drove in some pretty big cities—Oklahoma City, Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque, for example—but we were never so lost as when we turned off Highway 54 at the Lake of the Ozarks, thinking we were headed to a gas station. We went for some distance down a nice divided roadway and never passed a building, let alone a gas station, before we turned around and figured out how to get back on 54. We cannot be the only hopeless souls who cannot figure out that maze of exit and entrance ramps, traffic circles and winding roads that lack what is (to us, anyway) any reasonable signage that tells us what goes where. Tan-Tar-A is somewhere in that tangle. And the Four Seasons.  And the Mall. Yes, we’re glad we don’t have to drag through the Bagnell Dam Bypass, which in its day was a wonder, but getting off the bypass of the bypass is about as adventurous as Lewis and Clark setting out from Wood River Illinois, bound somewhere up a long and winding Missouri River.

(Las Cruces, NM)—Maybe the world would be better if all of us followed the lead of Deputy Sheriff Jamar Cotton.

At halftime of the New Mexico State University men’s basketball game on February 24, he hugged 112 people in sixty seconds, believed to be a new world hugging record, smashing Jason Ritter’s record of 86 set last October during a taping of “The View” television show in New York City. He could have hugged more if he could have moved, but the rules say he had to stay in one place and let the hugees come to him. He’s sending the paperwork to the Guinness Book people for proper certification. “This isn’t just about breaking a world record,” he told the Las Cruces Sun-News, “This is about something that we need in our community: Unity, love, compassion, caring about people, bringing people together.”

But there was a little drizzle on his parade.  Cotton’s hug record took up three columns above the fold of the newspaper on Monday after the event.  The fourth column was about the city police department paying a $1.4 million dollar settlement to a former Las Cruces couple who accused city officers of brutality and civil rights violations.

(Hereford, TX)—Out here in the Texas Panhandle, the land is flatter than a possum after ten days in the truck lane.  The trains seem to go on forever.   We saw four Burlington Northern Santa Fe locomotives pulling a string of cars so long that it disappear into the vanishing point.  And it seemed only a minute after one train went past that another one rumbled by behind it.  Some have a couple of locomotives at the end as pushers.  We caught up with one westbound train that was probably going about 70 mph.  We were running about 80—you can do that out there; the flat distances entice you to do it—and it took us the better part of five minutes to go from the pushers at the end to the team of locomotives at the head of it all. Wish we could have counted the cars but we preferred staying in our lane. Some of the trains were hauling container cars—two stacked big boxes on flatcars that would somewhere be unloaded and mounted on the wheels of Lord Knows How Many Trucks and hauled away.

(Erick, Oklahoma)—There is some melancholy news to report for our generation from this little town of about eleven-hundred people a few miles east of the Texas-Oklahoma border (we are told it is just about halfway from Asheville, NC and Barstow, CA if that helps you locate it).  The Roger Miller Museum closed just before last Christmas.  Not enough people turned off of I-40 to go into downtown Erick, the town that Roger Miller called his hometown—although he was born in Texas.

The Museum had operated since 2004. The building is now the 100th Meridian Museum, which marks the Texas-Oklahoma boundary. The line (of longitude, west of Greenwich) was identified by John Wesley Powell, the explorer of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, as the line between the moist east and the arid west.

Erick was planning to continue the annual Do-Wacka-Do Trail Run if the public was interested. All of Roger Miller’s memorabilia was being returned to his widow, Mary.

Most of those who read these entries will remember Roger Miller and his wacky country songs of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly “King of the Road,” that reached number one on the country charts and number four on the pop charts. He died at the age of 56 in 1992, lung and throat cancer.

Before he left us, he created a Broadway musical in 1985 that was one of the few successful American Broadway musicals in an era when British productions were gaining popularity. “Big River,” based on Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, ran for a thousand performances in New York and won seven Tony Awards.  And those of us who enjoy the music of “Big River” are left to wonder what else he could have done as he moved farther away from the novelty songs that were so popular earlier in his career.

The 100th Meridian Museum is open now on the corner of Old Highway 66 and Sheb Wooley Boulevard in downtown Erick.  (Sheb, another country singer from Erick, is remembered also as the first of the Frank Miller gang killed in the shootout with Hadleyville Marshall Will Kane in “High Noon.”)

(Itsnotsnow, NM)—The drifts were taller than our car and the road was covered.  But we didn’t slide and the weather was warm. And nothing was melting. Welcome to White Sands National Monument.

Fine gypsum sand stretches for miles, creating interesting light and shadows.  Bushes dot the landscape.  Desert animals survive in that environment somehow.   We didn’t see anyone doing it, but we were told that some folks go snowboarding or dog-sledding in the comfort of the desert warmth.   It’s a bit of an adjustment to be surrounded by so much whiteness but not be cold and wet.  Not a place to visit in the heat of summer, though, we were told.

(Peoria, Arizona)—The Kansas City Royals played the Seattle Mariners in their fifth exhibition game of the season on a mild and lovely Arizona day.  Royals won.  The same field is used by the San Diego Padres, who beat the Royals the next day.  Royals diehards know that former Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer now plays for the Padres.

In the teams store at the stadium, they sell baseballs.  If you want to spend some extra money, you can buy game-used balls with a tag attached that tells you who hit that ball and what the play was—foul ball, single, and so forth.  Most of the game-used balls went for forty bucks.   But there was one that was a foul ball struck by Hosmer in his first at-bat as a Padre.  The price tag on that one was $80.  Gotta sell a lot of foul balls to make back that $144 million the Padres are paying him.  Wonder what a fair ball would cost.

(Unidentified Flying New Mexico)—We found ourselves face to face with aliens one day.  The folks in Roswell, New Mexico do a pretty good job of trying to convince visitors that a spaceship with intergalactic aliens crashed near their town seventy-one years ago.

Roswell is bigger than we expected—almost forty-thousand people.  The museum appears to be in an old theatre and it has copies of newspaper accounts of something that somebody claims happened and accounts of the disappearance of all of the evidence, including the purported remains of the ship and its occupant(s), and government agencies and officials telling people who supposedly knew something they better not talk.  There are life-size figures in the museum of the purported aliens. Oddly enough, it seemed to us, there did not appear to be any female aliens.  Or male aliens. They were just aliens. There was no indication of reproductive apparatus or of different genders.  But, hey, these are serious aliens and they might be so advanced that such things are not necessary. If I see one for real, however, I’m not going to shake hands.

Did something really happen out there and at Area 51?   There’s only one person who has the authority to find out.   And with his abiding interest in getting to the bottom of all things aliens, we’re sure he’ll soon tweet a definitive answer to seven decades of questions.  He also might think about increasing the height of his wall.

(Albuquerque)—We filled up the car’s gas tank for $2.03 a gallon.  When we got home we filled it up for $2.29.  Just for the record.

(Toiletsnake, Arizona)—Just inside Arizona there was this rest stop.  Note the sign along the sidewalk suggesting people step carefully no matter how badly they need to go.

We don’t know why, but the sign left us wondering:

“In groups that practice snake-handling, if a young woman breaks her engagement can her former fiancé ask for his Diamondback?”

(Photo credits: Las Cruces Sun-News (Cotton) and Bob Priddy)

Notes from a quiet street  2017-I

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(Miscellaneous musings of more than 140 characters, usually, but not enough words to be fully blogicious.)

We found ourselves wandering through an otherwise unoccupied mind one recent day when ice or the threat of ice was limiting more fruitful occupations or ambitions.

An observation after two years of retirement:  If you put on slippers instead of shoes when you get dressed in the morning, the chances are above average that you will not step outside your house more than three times during the day and you will stay outside no more than two minutes each time.  One of the trips will be to get the morning paper. Another will be to get the mail.

—

We are reminded of the closing lines of the movie “Patton,” a quote from the general read by George C. Scott:  “For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”

NASCAR sent us a note the other day that now is the time to load up on 2017 driver merchandise—everything from baby clothes to pull-along coolers with your favorite driver’s colors and numbers.  We thought it would be interesting to look at Carl Edwards’ stuff, which went from merchandise to memorabilia pretty fast.  Hats and t-shirts are about ten to twenty dollars off.  Jackets are forty dollars off.  And so it went with other items that became examples of the truth of Patton’s remark that “all glory is fleeting.”  Superstar today, clearance table tomorrow.  Such is life.

—

We were headed to Nevada, in southwest Missouri, a few weeks ago to deliver a couple of copies of our Capitol art book to Cavender’s Book Store when we came upon a large crowd of black birds somewhere near Preston clearing the road of remnants of an unfortunate creature, bite by bite.  As we neared them, the birds all took frantic flight—except for one, a much bigger bird that seemed to just spread its wings and gracefully elevate. As he lifted off, I spotted the large fan of white tail feathers and then a white head.  I swear he looked back over his shoulder, perhaps to see if my car did any damage to his snack. It’s kind of a gruesome story, I suppose.  But I’ll remember the Eagle I saw a few days before Christmas long after I’ve forgotten the rest of the long trip on a chilly, rainy, December day or even Christmas itself.

—

Our state has a new chemistry set in an old box.  About one-fourth of the members of the Missouri House are brand new.  The governor, as we have noted several times, is fresh to the world of political office-holding.  Five of our six top state officeholders are new to those offices.  The chemistry in our Capitol is entirely different.  It’s going to be interesting to see how the elements mix.

—

More than a dozen years ago, someone suggested the Missourinet start using Twitter.  The example of Twitter that was given to us was a series of twits, tweets, toots—whatever they are (perhaps depending on the sender)—from a former colleague who was telling the world he was at an airport, then that he was waiting to board his plane, then that he was in his seat, then that he was waiting to take off.  We all thought Twitter was silly and superficial, an attitude borne out a few weeks later when another friend send a message that she was on her way home from work but had to stop at a store to get a sump pump.  Your observer started calling Twitter, “The Theatre of the Inane.”

Well——?

—-

We are reminded by all the discussion about punitive tariffs on American-company vehicles made in and imported from other countries of a talk we had a long time ago with Kenneth Rothman, a two-term Speaker of the House who was Missouri’s first Jewish statewide elected official, Lieutenant Governor, 1981-1985.  He bought a little farm near Jefferson City during those years and wanted to get a little American-made pickup truck to use out there.  But he learned Ford’s compact pickup was made by Mazda; Chevrolet’s little truck was made by Isuzu, and Dodge’s compact truck was made by Mitsubishi.  He finally found an American-made small pickup truck that was manufactured in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania.  A Volkswagen.

—

We have friends who flee to Arizona and Florida during these months. We pity them for the loss of their sense of adventure.

121 characters.  Including spaces.

 

Broken column, broken men

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Something in the half-awake moments early in the day seems to generate the kind of ideas that do not emerge in the hours of full wakefulness. Perhaps it is a mix of unformed dreams with leftover thoughts.   So it was this morning.

The days lately have been dominated by putting together the source list for the next Capitol book, going back through boxes of records to retrieve the ideas of others that have been synthesized into the narrative of the history of Missouri’s Capitol so they can be given proper credit.  Throughout that process, a broken granite column has been summoning the author to rediscover it. 

In 1915, while workers were turning lines on paper into a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle that would become the Capitol, the huge granite columns from an east coast quarry were arriving on flatcars on the railroad tracks below the bluff where the capitol was being built.  A derrick would hoist each column to the top where they could be moved inside the eventual chamber of the House of Representatives and erected.  Little construction could be done on that part of the building until those columns were in place. 

One day, the derrick broke, dropping a column back down onto the flatcar, which truly became a flat car.  The column broke apart. Nobody was hurt. We do not know what happened to all of the pieces—some might have been shoved into the nearby river.  But at least one large piece wound up on top of the bluff where it was rolled to the side out of the way.  A new column was quickly ordered and supplied.

For years and years that column was partly visible, partially buried in the sloping side of the bluff.  The story was told that it was one of the columns from the capitol that burned in 1911.  So one day about thirty-five years ago or so, the eventual author, joined by a friend, UPI Bureau Chief Stevenson Forsythe, and Jefferson City Senator Jim Strong searched it out.  Clearly, it was not a column from the old building.   It remained as polished and as shiny as the day it broke, as polished and as shiny as the columns in the Missouri House.  

Now, as the third version of the manuscript—or maybe the fifth; we have made so many changes it’s hard to say how many versions there have been—is going through the latest honing and sourcing, the broken column is calling.  “Find me,” it said in those hazy half-awake-half-sleep moments.    

As far as we know, it is still there.  But now it is covered by more than three decades of leaf debris, roots, vines, dirt, and other debris.   And memory of the location has dimmed.    

And in that half-light of awareness this morning a new thought came, a purpose for that broken column, a reason to find it.    

Many memorials have been added to the capitol campus since the three of us scrambled part way down that slope that day.  Perhaps it’s time for a new one that honors the seven men who died building the capitol and the hundreds of others whose hands and sweat transformed lines on paper into the three-dimensional symbol of all that is good and not-so-good about state government.

  S. C. Hyde         

 Ira H. Green       

 Samuel Ritchie    

 Tony Templeton          

 H. Robert Deighton    

  Henry T. Smith                      

 August Baker       

 Two of these seven were killed in at the quarry in Carthage where the stone was being prepared for the building.   A broken column engraved with the names of seven broken men who did not live to see the magnificence that the hands of other men completed for them would not be inappropriate as we mark the building’s centennial events.  

If that column is still there, I’m going to find it.   

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