Pendergast and Linux

[Don Erickson]

Brian Densmore wrote:
(after I wrote:)
> >
> > Harry Truman traveled back to Kansas City from Washington
> > D.C. to attend
> > Tom Pendergast's funeral when Truman was a US Senator.
> 
> Well, that's not really the reason. Harry came back to attend as a Freemason
> (he was either Grand Master of Missouri or in the Grand line at the time).
> They belonged to the same Masonic Lodge. Harry probably delivered the
> Masonic funeral Service for brother Pendergast.

I didn't state the reason that Truman attended Pendergast's funeral, I
merely stated that he did.  The possibility of Truman delivering the
Funeral service is one that I've never heard before, but I think that I
recall reading that only three persons attended the service, although I
can't currently come up with a site for this. I was incorrect in stating
that Truman was a U.S. Senator when he attended Pendergast's funeral. 
He was in fact the Vice President of the United States.

As to the question of Truman believing that T.P. was a man of his word,
I quote the following from one of Truman's papers on file at the Truman
Library and viewable at
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/places/kc8a.htm

"[T.J. Pendergast] was an able, clear thinker and understood political
situations and how to handle them better than any man I have ever known.
His word was better than the contracts of most men and he never forgot
his verbal commitments.... I never deserted him when he needed friends."
(Undated handwritten manuscript, President's Secretary's Files.) 

> Pendergast was a crook, but
> even crooks can do good things. He is the prototype of the modern
> politician. also there was a lot more pride in workmanship in the 30's than
> today. The high quality of the Pendergast concrete probably has more to do
> with the workers than with Pendergast.

If Pendergast would have scrimped on the quality of materials that he
used, then this would have certainly had a detrimental effect on the
longevity of his projects.  So, by our empirical observations,
Pendergast must have hired good workers and supplied them with good
materials.  This is not the prototype for your garden variety crook.

My only point here is that the conventional wisdom isn't always a
balanced portrayal of the facts.  I also was taught in school that Tom
Pendergast was a parasite who sucked the life out of this town, and I
believed it.  But strangely, most of the older people that had lived
through the Pendergast years had a different view of his contributions,
and I no longer embrace the "facts" that I learned in school.

I read all the time about how there are no desktop applications for
Linux.  I don't think that the reporters who say this have done their
homework, they're just repeating what they read in someone else's
article.  If it is repleated enought times, it becomes an accepted fact.

I am genuinely sorry about what happened to your cousin.

Regards,

-Don