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. 

                                                            -0-

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.   

                                                            000  

The state lawyer for poor people accused of crimes has made the annual pilgrimage to the Capitol to go reiterate his plea for the money needed to give poor Missourians anything approaching the defense wealthier people accused of crimes can afford.

This time it was Michael Barrett sacrificing his forehead against the masonry, hoping our elected legislators would increase financing for this part of the criminal justice system by $25 million.  Governor Nixon has recommended a $1.5 million increase in funding but has not proposed adding any more lawyers.  Barrett uses the word “crisis,” a word used by his predecessors year after year.  Although legislators have nodded sympathetically each year as they already are doing this year, the crisis remains.

The idea that poor people had the same rights as wealthier people to be defended is more than 225 years old.  It’s part of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution as a general statement that everybody is entitled to a legal defense in court.   But the idea that poor people deserved equal protection might have its origin in an 1853 Indiana Supreme Court case that held publicly-financed criminal defense was one of the “principles of a civilized society.”   The Indiana Supreme Court opinion said, “It is not to be thought of in a civilized community for a moment that any citizen put in jeopardy of life or liberty should be debarred of counsel because he is too poor to employ such aid.  No court could be expected to respect itself to sit and hear such a trial.  The defense of the poor in such cases is a duty which will at once be conceded as essential to the accused, to the court and to the public.”

That was a recognition by one state.   But it was eleven decades before that principle of a civilized society was recognized as a national right.   This is the man from Missouri who is the face of that right.

This fellow who might easily be dismissed as a person of little consequence if we passed him on the street is Hannibal native Clarence Earl Gideon.  His father died when he was three.  His mother remarried but Clarence lived an aimless and sometimes troubling life that led him to drop out of school after the eighth grade and run away from home to live as a drifter at the age of 14.  He returned about a year later and lived with his mother’s brother until she learned he was back in town and had him jailed. He escaped one day later, broke into a store and stole some clothes. His mother asked a judge to send him to the Boonville Reformatory.  He later recalled, “Of all the prisons I have been in that was the worst. I still have a scar on my body form the whippings I received.”  He was paroled after a year, got a job in a shoe factory, and got married.  But he lost his job and was arrested on several charges not long after that.  A judge appointed a lawyer to represent him but he was sent to prison for ten years for burglary, larceny, and robbery. He was 18. He got out in 1932, after serving three of those years.  He went back to the penitentiary for stealing, larceny and escape and did prison time at Leavenworth for stealing government property and more time in a Texas prison for theft.

Gideon married four women during those troubled years, the last time a woman named Ruth in 1955, when he was 45 years old.  They lived in Texas where he worked from time to time as a tugboat deckhand and as a bartender until tuberculosis put him in bed for three years.  He and Ruth moved to Florida where child welfare authorities eventually took away their six children (three that Ruth brought to the marriage and the three they had together).  Gideon got a low-paying job as an electrician and started gambling to get extra money.

About three weeks before Gideon’s 51^st birthday, he was accused of stealing money and beer from a pool room in Panama City.  In the space of two weeks, a judge refused to appoint a lawyer to represent him because Florida law allowed court-appointed lawyers only in capital cases. He was convicted of breaking and entering and was given the maximum sentence, five years.

Gideon, remembering that years earlier a Missouri judge had appointed a lawyer to represent him, began reading law books in prison and decided the Florida judge had violated his Sixth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights.  The Florida Supreme Court refused to do anything.  So he went straight to the United States Supreme Court with a five-page handwritten petition in which he wrote, “It makes no difference how old I am or what color I am or what church I belong to if any. The question is I did not get a fair trial. The question is very simple. I requested the court to appoint me an attorney and the court refused.” The Supreme Court decided to hear his case and assigned future Justice Abe Fortas to represent Gideon.  The state of Florida argued that the issue was a state matter, not a federal one and that upholding Gideon’s position would result in thousands of convictions being thrown out.  Fortas argued that the average person untrained in the law had no hope of winning when arguing against a trained attorney.

The court’s opinion issued fifty-three years ago this month ordering a new trial for Gideon was unanimous. One line in the opinion bluntly stated, “Lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries.”

While Gideon was preparing for his second trial, two-thousand Florida prisoners were released.

His attorney, W. Fred Turner, destroyed the prosecution’s case in the second trial and the jury acquitted Gideon after only one hour of deliberation.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy observed, “If an obscure Florida convict named Clarence Earl Gideon had not sat down in prison with a pencil and paper to write a letter to the Supreme Court; and if the Supreme Court had not taken the trouble to look at the merits in that one crude petition among all the bundles of mail it must receive every day, the vast machinery of American law would have gone on functioning undisturbed. But Gideon did write that letter; the court did look into his case; he was re-tried with the help of competent defense counsel; found not guilty and released from prison after two years of punishment for a crime he did not commit. And the whole course of legal history has been changed.”

Gideon married a fifth time and died of cancer in Fort Lauderdale early in 1972, still a pauper.  His family returned his body to Hannibal and buried him in a grave that remained unmarked until the American Civil Liberties union placed a stone in 1984.  The stone contains a quote from Justice Fortas, “Each era finds an improvement in law for the benefit of mankind.”

A little more than one-hundred miles from Clarence Earl Gideon’s grave, almost half a century after his death and more than a half-century after the U. S. Supreme Court said poor people have the right to adequate representation in the criminal cases, Michael Barrett is pleading for the state to give his office the resources it needs to let today’s Clarence Gideons have that right.  And in a year when millions of dollars will be spent to influence public policy or to influence those who write public policy, the office that symbolizes a basic right all of us have is begging for nickels and dimes from a legislature that year in, year out, gives it a few pennies and nods sympathetically

We’re about six weeks past Halloween and you might think all of the Halloween stuff in stores has been put away.  But it’s surprisingly easy to still find masks.   And masks are in some demand in Jefferson City because tomorrow night (Saturday, December 12), several hundred people are going to don masks and invade the Capitol.

I’m going to be one of them, which has meant Nancy has either had to find out where there are still masks for sale or she’s going to have to make one.   She had some ideas about where to find some to consider.

One store had some basic Lone Ranger-type masks (although if the Lone Ranger showed up in the gold one or the red one, he’d probably surely be lone).  They cost twenty-five cents each so we bought four.  Now we have to wonder whether it’s worthwhile to take a dollar’s worth of cheap masks back or just keep them around for grandchildren to play with.  Grandchildren are going to win. Unless—-

Another store had two bizarre creations, one looking like some kind of a feathered iguana mask and another that is a mass of feathers that a performer might wear in some weird Las Vegas stage show.   They cost enough that returning them for a refund is practical.

A third store had the mask that seemed appropriate. We’re not going to show it to you because then people at the Caring for Missouri event tomorrow night will know who the person is in that mask.   One good thing about it is that it does not rely on a cheap elastic band that could break at any moment—which is why we bought four of the first set of masks—and it fits over glasses that are necessary because I have to read some stuff.

The event starts at 7 p.m. in the Capitol rotunda.  Tickets start at $100.  Some folks think this is a pretty snooty event.  Others see it as an important way to raise money and to increase visibility for the organizations and their causes.  All other things aside, it’s intended to be a fun event for worthwhile causes.  Let’s talk about the causes.

We’ve talked about the goals of the Missouri Capitol Commission to raise money to preserve and restore Capitol art.  Regular readers of these posts know that’s a favorite issue for your faithful scribe.  But let’s focus on the other two groups involved: The Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and the Missouri Association for Community Action.  Frankly, dealing with art issues pales in comparison to the issues these two groups deal with every day.

Let’s start with MACA, which reminds us that 932,066 Missourians live below the federal poverty line.  A total of 417,151 peopled have incomes less than half the poverty-line level. About one-third of those people are children.  What’s the poverty line?   The federal government says a Missourian who earns less than $11,700 a year is living in poverty.  A family of four with an income of #24,200 is living in poverty.  MACA counters those who dismiss such conditions by suggesting people just go out and get jobs with this statistic: Almost thirty percent of Missouri jobs do not pay enough for the wage earner to live above the poverty line.  Thirty percent.

Almost seventeen percent of Missourians have low food security because of their earning situation. That means they have to reduce the quality, variety, and desirability of the food they eat.  Missouri is one of ten states with a food insecurity level higher than the national average, and has the sixth highest percent of food insecure households.

MACA cites government figures showing almost 7300 people are homeless in Missouri; 652 of them veterans.

When it comes to providing help to those people, MACA doesn’t really care if the Caring For Missouri Capitol Masquerade Ball is seen as a snooty event by some people.

Most of those attending the event will probably be old enough to remember when “domestic violence didn’t even have a name, let alone a legal identity,” as the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence says on its webpage.  The Coalition recalls that rape was legal within marriage and wasn’t even a crime until the mid 90s.  There was no law allowing a judge to order an abusive husband and father to move out of the family living quarters.  Remember when reports that a husband was beating his wife were considered “family matters?”  The folks at the party were living at a time when there were no rape crisis centers, no shelters for battered women.

. There were no shelters for battered women in Missouri, no rape crisis centers, no hotlines, no task forces, no Coalition.  Missouri had no domestic violence shelters until 1976, no legal protections for domestic violence victims until 1979.  That was about the time the Coalition was created. Since then the number of domestic and sexual violence programs has increased tenfold.

The coalition, like MACA, is a presence in the Capitol during legislative sessions working for more protections for the poor and the abused.   In four decades of watching representatives of organizations like these, this observer saw nothing snooty about their work.  There was little celebration when an effort was successful because there is always another issue for the poor and the abused of Missouri.

Tomorrow night’s event will involve some food and music and a silent and not-silent (they hope) auctions of all kinds of things that we mentioned in an earlier entry here.  Some folks will be wearing formal attire. Others will be in business attire.  They’ll be dressed much better than most of the people this event is designed to help can afford to dress..

Tickets will be available at the door.  There are places where you still can buy a mask.

Got a quarter?   I’ll sell you one of mine.

Your observer of the passing scene has had a year to ponder the things he witnessed in all those hours observing the Missouri Legislature from his perch in the House Press Gallery or from his seat at the press table on the Senate floor.  And he has come to the conclusion after the year away from the tumult and the shouting that one of the most regrettable trends he watched was the decline—and seeming death—of a quality we call “class.”

The thought hit home several days ago when legislative leaders decided to hold hearings to examine Missouri programs that help refugees, a decision reached after the histrionics accompanying their demands that the Governor keep Syrians from coming to our state. Governor Nixon threw a bucket of ice water on those demands, leading to the examination of what the state does with immigrants.

A legislature that still operated with at least a certain amount of “class’ would have decided to hold the hearings BEFORE trying to whip up public emotions on the subject, of course.  From what we have heard and read, the hearings would not have justified the earlier reactions.  But in an era where dignity takes a back seat to demonization, we seem to be left with those whose philosophy is heavily laced with the adage, “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”  Herman Wouk used the adage in The Caine Mutiny and said it was an ancient saying.   It’s all too current today.

In announcing the hearings, Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard put out a statement saying, “Because of our governor’s lack of leadership and this administration’s failed federal foreign policies, we will try to find ways to protect the safety and well-being of the citizens of the Show-Me State.”

Sheesh!   Everything seems to be couched in language these days that tries to throw a kidney punch at somebody, doesn’t it?  Parents recognize the trend.

“It’s all his fault1”

“Is not”

“Is too!”

“Is not!”

Normally about this time, the adult in the room says “Stop it!” and threatens to send people to their rooms until they can behave in a civil manner.

Unfortunately, there appears to be a noticeable lack of adults when it comes to modern politics.  “Class” is one of the casualties of the presence of term limits and absence of high ethical standards.

We dislike wallowing in nostalgia because nostalgia often recalls an unrealistic picture.  But there WERE days when people in government could do things without being so dang-nabbed disagreeable.  Of course, that was back in the days before term limits when legislators had time to grow up.  And when there were adults in the room who could help them do it.

Maybe it will dawn on some people someday that Lord of the Flies is not a political textbook.

(We have been asked to clarify a couple of things in our original version of this post. You’ll find the changes if you read through this post again. And you should.  Read through it again.

Your honorable scribe has not decided what mask he will wear although he is considering what a T-Red head would look like on top of a tuxedo)

Thousands of people each year are stunned when they walk into the House Lounge at the Capitol and find themselves surrounded by Thomas Hart Benton’s “Social History of Missouri” mural.  It’s hard to determine how much it’s worth because of its size and its location.  The state of Missouri paid Benton $16,000 to paint it in 1936. Some of the lithographs of some of the images sell for thousands of dollars today.  Through the years, this frequent visitor to that room has heard estimates of the value of the mural as being more than the cost of building the capitol (which was about $4 million) to multiples of that.

Do we ever have a deal for you!!!

You can own a copy of the Benton mural for a fraction of its value.  In fact, I know some folks who would be glad to sell you one for, oh, say, one-tenth of the value of the original.  And don’t worry. You won’t have to build a 25×50-foot addition to your house.

A panoramic five-foot long photo of the mural is one of several reproductions of Capitol art that will be auctioned at the Capitol Masquerade Ball on December 12.  It will be in the rotunda, starting at 7 p.m.  The proceeds will benefit three organizations: The Missouri State Capitol Commission, the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, and Missouri Association for Community Action.

All you need is a mask and a ticket.

General ticket donations are $100.  If you want to be a Very Important Person—and you are, you know, admit it—you can get a VIP ticket for $250.  Those who buy the VIP tickets will have get a commemorative gift and you can hang out with other VIPs in the VIP lounge.

Just let the organizers know you’re going to be there and reserve your ticket at www.caring4missouri.org.

You might get to rub elbows with a whole bunch of important folks.  The top state office-holders and both of our U. S. Senators are honorary co-hosts.  The organizers can’t promise all of them will be there, but it will be worth the price of your ticket to find out who is.  And besides, you’ll have a chance to rub elbows with a lot of other good folks and you’ll be supporting three fine organizations.

Mike Michelson will be there to tickle the ivories.  The Norm Ruebling Band will play music anybody can dance to.  There will be a Redlight Photobooth to commemorate your presence in any way you’d like.  There will be beverages and Hors d’oeuvres.

And organizers will sell things.  There will be a silent auction.   AND there will be what the sponsoring groups hope will be a really, really NOISY auction.

And this is where you can get some really great things for your home or your office.

Just imagine that five-foot long Benton Mural hanging in the lobby of your office or behind your desk or above your bed or—well, just imagine.

There are also a couple of other prints of parts of the mural.  They’ll also be auctioning off photos of the portraits of Mark Twain and Susan Elizabeth Blow that most people see only if they get into the Governor’s office.   Mark, of course, is Missouri’s most famous writer.  Susan is the founder of the kindergarten in America.

Are you a Civil War person?  How about reproductions of the N. C. Wyeth murals depicting the Battle of Wilson’s Creek and the Battle of Westport?  (This is one of the changes. The Wyeth prints won’t be sold at this event. They’re being saved for a later event so if you had your heart and your checkbook prepared to buy them, save both for a later event. We don’t know if masks will be involved).

And a print of another of the monumental murals in the Capitol also will be auctioned:  Charles Hoffbauer’s “The Glory of Missouri in War” mural from the House of Representatives.

All of these can be yours if you (a) buy a ticket and (b) outbid somebody else who also wants these unique decorations for home or office.  Folks, you won’t have a chance to buy these images anywhere else. Nowhere.

The pictures are photographs by Lloyd Grotjan, the Jefferson City photographer who did the outstanding photographs for The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone took for the book.   The five-foot long Benton mural panoramic view originally was intended to be a fold-out in the book but we had to leave it out because, well, a five-foot long book wouldn’t fit on many coffee tables.

There needs to be a noble purpose for this fund-raiser.  Support for MACA and MCADSV is vital in helping them fight domestic and sexual violence and helping the 930,000 Missourians living below the poverty line.   Support for the Capitol Commission will continue its efforts to assess and restore the art of the Capitol, most of which has gone years without care.

Last year the commission held a wine-tasting event that included a great discussion of how wine tastes differently in different glasses (and tasters got to take home a set of glasses).  The money raised from that event has financed assessments on 55 paintings.  The Office of Administration is moving forward with restoration/repair of the art that’s been assessed.  The commission wants to continue that important work.

Just a few days ago commission chairman Dana Miller hired ICA Art Conservation to assess the condition of the Benton mural.  ICA is a nonprofit group that specializes in conservation and repair of the works of Midwest artists.  It has been highly recommended to the commission by the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City.

So get in the closet and dig out the kids’ Halloween masks, or get busy with some cloth and feathers and make something outrageous,

or go out and buy something.   Most folks probably will be in business attire but the sponsors sure won’t mind if you want to show up fully-costumed.  (Actually, the sponsors hope you’ll NOT wear business attire because this is a high-class event.  Dana would like to see people in formal attire although she says business attire is acceptable.  But formal attire is preferable. Even if you wear a T-Rex head for your mask.)

You should be that Masked Man.  Or Masked Woman.