Show Me Biographies – About

“Show Me, don’t tell me.”
Example matters. Words are conveyors of definition given to meaningful experience, understanding and expression. Words can be technical. They can also be persuasive. They can be sensational and savory. If you want to take the powerful little flame of word and create a crackling fire around which others will eagerly gather, you tell a story. And if you want it passed like a torch you tell a true story—the story of a real person with an actual journey in the same world we all call home. Like a hand held out extending an invitation, one word conveys the dynamic peculiarity of this kind of meaningful. It is the word Example. Tell me and I might believe you. Explain it to me and I might get it. Show me by example . . . I will be impacted and own the lasting value.

There are countless self-help books, instruction manuals, text books, and how-to curriculums putting forth in orderly fashion the steps to success in nearly every area of endeavor. But life seldom progresses in orderly fashion. What happens, for example, when one is faced with a challenge defying thorough preparation? Biographies show us in real-world terms what happens—what did happen, and how real persons invented solutions when blindsided by unforeseen obstacles along uncharted paths.

Textbooks tell us about the histories and applications of tools invented through solved problems. Biographies show us through fleshy, vulnerable, human example what being a problem solver actually looks like. Biographies portray danger and unveil courage. Biographies take us into the dens of fearful beasts, like impossibility and failure, and introduce us to tamers who convert them into belief and conquest. Biographies show through story the development of character. Immersed and entertained, our unnoticed education is unforgettable. After all, we were there.

“Show Me” is (unofficially but famously) the Missouri state motto. Also known as the cave state, Missouri is home to thousands of miles of underground mystery and beauty, much of which remains undiscovered. In another direction, fabulous mysteries of the universe are explored and exposed ongoingly through the Hubble Space Telescope, named after Missouri native and renowned stargazer, Edwin Hubble. These two discovery zones are like fittingly boundless bookends, symbolic of abundant resources and endless playgrounds held within the vast green territory known as Missouri.

But “Show Me” is not a famous reference to exploration of underground tunnels, wandering streams and rivers, rolling forested acres, or the starry heavens above them. It implies an inquisitive attitude that demands demonstration—a want for being shown. It is an attitude displayed in words from a speech given at a naval banquet in Philadelphia in 1899 by US Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver: “I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

Missouri’s state motto represents a universal appetite. But where do we go to be shown. Who’s going to show us? Where are the great stories? Where are the people who can answer the demand for demonstration and example? In spite of its rich resources and heritage, Missouri is a “fly-over” state, symbolic of the overlooked, the neighborly, the “right in your own back yard” locations we are inclined to miss. Have you asked any good questions today? You’ll be amazed what they’ll turn up in the most unexpected places.

For these reasons, subjects of Show Me Biographies are limited to individuals with a prominent life/story connection to Missouri. They are not necessarily from Missouri and are not all residents of Missouri. But their stories all contain significant passages connected to this unique “backyard” location, representative of all ordinary places where the extraordinary happens.

Additionally, all Show Me Biographies are written by and bear cover art created by Missouri native (and show-me-driven), Russell Stuart Irwin.

All Show Me Biographies contents—authorship and artwork—are the creation of Russell Stuart Irwin