via flickr/jennlynndesign
The 39-hour filibuster started Monday and broke the record for longest filibuster in Missouri.
How will you celebrate today?
Kicking up your heels in a square dance (the official state American folk dance)? Raising a glass of Norton wine (the official state grape)? Maybe hugging a mule while gazing out over a vast expanse of big bluestem (the official state animal and grass, respectively)?
Whatever your chosen observance, surely you won’t want to miss this year’s Missouri Day. What’s that? You didn’t know there was a Missouri Day? Don’t feel too bad, as likely millions of your fellow Show-Me Staters are in the same boat. The holiday was established in 1915 by the legislature in part to “teach rising generations of boys and girls the glories of Missouri.” The inspiration for the day came from a schoolteacher in Trenton, Missouri, Anna Brosius Korn: In her recollections, she praised the “kindred spirit that binds Missourians together elsewhere,” having observed the societies she found them creating “beyond the confines of Missouri’s boundaries...in a number of the states of the Union and at Washington, D.C.” Korn also felt that designating an official day to reflect “upon the achievements of the sons and daughters of Missouri who have given their lives and talents in her varied activities” would be best served by an October spot on the calendar (“because as Mark Twain expressed it: ‘Missouri is at her best in October.’”) And this before the Cardinals ever made a post-season appearance.
We’ll try not to hold it against her that Korn pulled up stakes and went on to Oklahoma with her husband...where she was instrumental in the creation of Oklahoma Statehood Day. Hmph.
Many of the most fascinating aspects of life in Missouri that I know were gleaned when researching Missouri Almanac, a hardcover compilation of many of the weird, wild, wonderful, historic, and amazing facts and facets of life here that I co-authored for Reedy Press. Along with a clutch of writers from across the state, I delved into: the lives of famous Missourians from Walt Disney to Maya Angelou, the groundbreaking civil rights history of our state, the envelope-pushing technological advances being created here today, and major motion pictures filmed here, among many other topics. Did you know that St. Louis was the site of the first declaration of freedom for enslaved people, a year before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation? That Missouri is the state with the second-most number of farms in the entire country? That Kansas City beat out more than a thousand other applicants to become the first city connected by Google Fiber? That we have more than 6,000 caves? That an 1820 law demanded a dollar-a-year tax for being single in the state, for men from age 21 to 50? Truly, getting to know the breadth of incredible information about Missouri is the best thing since sliced bread (born in 1948 in Chillicothe, Missouri). These facts and figures have proven so irresistible to the school-aged demographic, especially that we created an interactive traveling game show, “Do You Know MO?” to take the Missouri love a step further: the winner after several rounds of hot competition is adorned with a beaded bootheel necklace. Surely Anna Korn is smiling somewhere.
And in keeping with the Show Me tradition, one of the few official observances on the calendar this third Wednesday of October occupies the First Missouri State Capitol State Historic Site from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today: it’s a visually compelling celebration of the arts in Missouri, from quilt-making and ragtime music to blacksmithing and storytelling. Find the details here.
Amanda E. Doyle is a Missouri transplant and the author of several books, including the Missouri Almanac, 100 Things To Do in St. Louis Before You Die, and St. Louis Sound: An Illustrated Timeline.
