Happy b'day MO

Missourians are supposed to be modest and self-effacing midwesterners. I used to be one myself. 

The state of Missouri was admitted to the Union on Aug.10, 1821. Missouri is called the "Show Me State," a motto dating back to the 1890s and a speech where Congressman Willard Vandiver declared: "I come from a country that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me."

For the past several decades, the mean center of the population of the United States has been in Missouri.

Missouri is the center of America in other ways, too: St. Louis, Missouri, is considered the farthest west of America's Eastern cities, and Kansas City, Missouri, is thought of as the farthest east of America's Cities of the West. In the past, Missouri was a Southern state; now it's generally thought of as a Midwestern state.

It's what's called a "bellwether state" in politics. Missouri has voted for every winning U.S. presidential candidate since 1904, with just two exceptions: the 1956 election and the 2008 election.

Missouri was settled by German brewers and has always had among the most lenient drinking laws in the nation. When Prohibition fever swept the rest of the nation, Missouri never enacted statewide prohibition. State law specifically bans arrests for public intoxication. Open containers of alcohol are permitted in moving vehicles (passengers can drink).

Missourians count among their ranks: Mark Twain, Langston Hughes, T.S. Eliot, Sara Teasdale, Tennessee Williams, William S. Burroughs, William Least Heat Moon, Joseph Pulitzer, J. William Fulbright, Walt Disney, Walter Cronkite, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Jesse James.

Writer's Almanac

Beer!

Finally got over to the Yazoo Brewery taproom last night, in the old Marathon building hard by I-40 near downtown Nashville. They used to make cars here, now they make good beer: high on my list of things that make life worth living.

Because my wife is not the beer aficionado I am I got nearly two for the price of one, plus a growler of "Hop Project #15" to go. As daughter (who gave a terrific dramatic performance in "Little Princess" last night, btw) would say, not of beer but of delightfully-random other things, "it makes me happy."

Earlier this week I finally landed at the Flying Saucer (in the old Union Station depot) too. Turns out there are at least 200 beers to sample before I can even think about dying. Well, I can think about it. After so many beers, can I possibly stand it no longer? Hard to imagine.



Cheers!

Ben Franklin

I've been enjoying Walter Isaacson's biography of Benjamin Franklin. (Einstein is on deck). I didn't know that David Hume had acknowledged Franklin as America's first world-class philosopher, but old Ben -- or Poor Richard -- was a first-rate aphorist for sure. Some of my favorites:

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

Wish not so much to live long as to live well.

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.

And of course:
Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Safe at home!

The odyssey concludes...

A 3-hour drive from Columbia, SC brought me to the mountainside doorstep of my old friend and former grad school roomie D., who led me to an excellent little bistro in Sylva, NC called "Guadalupe" (the beer selection was outstanding, I can particularly recommend the "Duck-Rabbit" and "Highland" Porters). Then we took in a gorey movie I might rather have missed, "The 300." In this version of ancient Greek history, centering on the battle of Thermopolae, the blood-lusty, death-dealing Spartans never retreat, never surrender, commit collective suicide in the name of warrior "honor," and all the while are portrayed as exponents of reason and freedom. Times reviewer A.O. Scott said it was as violent as "Apocalypto" and twice as stupid. But it was nice to pay just $5 for a movie, even if I lost count of decapitations, eviscerations, and variations on the declaration that freedom isn't free. I'm betting this film is popular in the Bush White House.

A restful night's sleep, capacious breakfast, and much engaging conversation followed, and then I was on the road again, arriving safely home in mid-afternoon to a welcome greeting that confirmed the truism about absence and the heart. Before I had a chance to unpack a thing I was whisked off by my elder daughter to her baseball practice. It's good to be useful again.

My march through Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas topped 2,000 miles; the restorative value of it all was priceless. And it's great to be home.