#123 – Dick Bernard: the "Day Maker"

/in , /by

Today at my Church, the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis, Fr. Tim Power chose to frame his sermon around a story told by a guy I’d never heard of: a famed hair stylist and entrepreneur named David Wagner.
Fr. Tim told us that Wagner once recalled a phone call from one of his clients. She wasn’t on his schedule, but wondered if there was a possibility he could fit her in as she had an important and special evening ahead.
Wagner made an opening for her, she came in, and he did his usual great job, and was also his usual friendly self, chatting, and joking with his client in the chair.
She left, looking, sounding great, and Wagner went on to his next client.
Some weeks later, he received a letter from the woman. She recalled the day in his salon chair, and that she had come in to get her hair styled before her planned suicide (her special evening) that night.
The time in Wagners salon had been so uplifting for her, she said, that she changed her mind about the suicide, and called for help that evening.
She was writing from the psychiatric care facility, and she was feeling much better. She thanked Wagner for saving her life; something he didn’t know he was doing at the time.
Fr. Power went on to tie his story into his message of the day, basically to be someone’s “Day Maker”, than to do the opposite, the “Make my day” philosophy.
His story caused me to think back 26 years, to a very low time in my life.
I hadn’t been thinking of “ending it all”, not at all, but I was dragging pretty low.
One afternoon I picked up a phone message from a friend of mine, Vince. I hadn’t talked to him for a long while, and I had no idea what he wanted, but I called him back.
“Just wanted to say hello”, he said. And we chatted for a short while about nothing in particular.
Of all the phone calls or visits I’ve ever received, Vince’s is by far the most memorable. And I don’t think he knew I was dragging bottom; his call had nothing connected to do with that at all. He “just wanted to say hello”.
I can’t call Vince and thank him for that long ago message, since he passed on quite a number of years ago.
But Fr. Tim’s message today is a reminder that this season, with all its hubbub and promise, can be a very depressing time for many people, including those who seem unlikely to succumb to depressing thoughts and feelings.
Maybe a good gift these coming days, and long past Christmas, is to work on being a “day maker” for someone out in the world.
The message is to myself, too.
Thanks, Tim.
(You can easily find references to David Wagner Daymaker on the web. Look him up.)

#122 – Dick Bernard: Thanksgiving 2009

/in , , , /by

Last week I had two opportunities to listen to a motivated lady, Margaret Trost, head of WhatIf? Foundation, a U.S. non-profit dedicated to the possibility that some hungry children in Haiti might have at least one good meal a week.
Margaret was inspired nearly ten years ago when she made her first trip to Haiti, and a Priest there, Fr Gerard Jean-Juste (see end of this post), answered an innocent question for her in Port-au-Prince. His dream, that the kids in his parish would have at least one good nutritious meal a week, inspired her. (See blog post on Father Gerry at May 28, 2009.)
Three years later, in Port-au-Prince, the same Fr. Jean-Juste inspired me.
Paul Miller, who brought Margaret Trost to Minnesota two weeks ago, convinced me to go to Haiti in December, 2003, and thus meet Jean-Juste and so many other advocates for justice, and victims of injustice, who in turn inspired me. Such is the way that things happen.

Margaret Trost at Northfield MN Nov. 16, 2009

Margaret Trost at Northfield MN Nov. 16, 2009


Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, and for most of us, middle class and up, the lament at the end of this day will not be too little food, but the consequences of eating too much.
Then, for many, the preparations will begin for “Black Friday”, the day after Thanksgiving shopping spree, guesstimated by business to be less frantic this year than last, but still dubbed “black” because it is the day of intensified retail profit-making for the “Christmas season”: “in the black”.
In Haiti and in most other places in the world, “Black Friday” is most every day for most of the people, and has an entirely different meaning than it does here.
It is worthwhile to consider, this Thanksgiving, amidst the din of the prophets of doom saying we can’t afford health care for all in our country, to consider all that we really have, especially the 80 or so percent of the people in the U.S. who live very comfortably compared not only with the people who have less, but compared with almost anyone anywhere in the world. We are very, very wealthy.
I’ve noticed we Americans don’t like to talk about their money – their personal finances. It is one of the taboos, it seems. “None of your business….”
But if you’ve read this far, take a couple of minutes today to calculate your own personal net worth: assets minus liabilities. If you’ve read this far, you know what the terms assets and liabilities mean, in the broadest sense of the words. In addition, maybe you’re hoping to inherit something from somebody. Consider that an asset, too.
Even if you’re not sure of that inheritance windfall down the road, or building that inheritance for your kids, if you’re reading this on this screen, most likely you’re not wanting today.
With all the dooms-daying about not being able to afford to reform Health Care, our country is absolutely awash in accessible wealth. Together, we, could deal with all of the purported “crushing” national debt without making a serious dent in what we have. But it would take a collective effort. Too many of us consider it somebody else’s problem. It is our problem.
Hoarding our individual wealth will in the long run do us no good. Every one of us has a finite time on the planet. Hoarding the riches will have no enduring value to us. Sooner than later, we’ll be gone. Our financial portfolio won’t go with us. None of us really know what “heaven” is: most likely, they won’t ask for net worth, or have better subdivisions for some versus others.
Go ahead: figure out that financial net worth you currently have. Many if not most of you will be astonished at the amount. You are not atypical in our wealthy society.
Even many of “our own” have very little, but in this country, even having very little is a relative term: people in many places like Haiti depend on money coming from the “diaspora”, such as Haitians living in the States, sending back money to their families in Haiti. This is true for many countries. That’s “trickle down” economics as it works in life.
The matter, for us, is not the wealth we don’t have; rather it is the truly immense wealth we do have and guard jealously for all sorts of reasons.
We are wealthy.
Do the math.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Related comment: blog post on Fr. Frechette, October 25, 2009
Father Gerard Jean-Juste:

Father Gerard Jean-Juste at Ste. Claire, Port-au-Prince Haiti December 7, 2003

Father Gerard Jean-Juste at Ste. Claire, Port-au-Prince Haiti December 7, 2003

Father Gerard Jean-Juste died Wednesday afternoon May 27, 2009, in a Miami hospital. I had the privilege of getting to know Fr. Gerry, at least a little. He has had more than a little impact on my life.

That Father Jean-Juste’s time on earth was short was acknowledged, sadly, by all who knew him. He had been ill for a long while. So when word came that he passed away at far too young an age, 62, it wasn’t a surprise.

Gerry Jean-Juste was not a household name, except in the community of Haitians, and those of us with a passion for Haiti and its wonderful people. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune in the obituary section for May 28, made a special (and, frankly, surprising) note of his death, printing an Associated Press report that described him as “an influential Haitian Roman Catholic priest who was once jailed in Haiti for his political activities and fought for his countrymen’s rights in the United States…Jean-Juste founded the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami in the late 1970s. He returned to Haiti and spoke out against a coup in 2004 that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was arrested in 2005 on what human rights groups called politically motivated charges.”

He was one of only two in the “also noted” category of the obits.

The short obituary did not note many other facts, including his long confinement in a Port-au-Prince prison, the conditions he and his fellow prisoners endured there, and the fact that after his freedom no longer presented a “problem” for the powers that be in Haiti and the U.S., the charges against him were dropped.

I first met Fr. Jean-Juste as he said Mass at his parish, Ste. Claire in Port-au-Prince, on the morning of Sunday December 7, 2003. It was my first trip to Haiti and we had arrived less than 24 hours before. There are many memories of that Mass: most pertinent to today was his insertion into his sermon in Kreyol of a very special portion in English for we six visiting Americans. While he’s a Catholic Priest, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me calling his English text a “give ‘em hell” message. We were guests from a powerful and omni-present country, the United States, which had and has huge influence over what happens in Haiti.

His was and is a poor parish, and he wanted to remind us of the poverty we were visiting, and the wealth we came from in the U.S., just one and one half hours away, and how far too many of his people were starving. It was one of those messages one does not forget.

The following day we had an extended private visit with him, adding greatly to our knowledge of his country, its problems and its relationship with the United States.

For the remainder of the week we visited many people and saw many things, all in Port-au-Prince and environs. Less than three months after our return home, Feb. 29, 2004, the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean Bertrand-Aristide, was felled by a coup d’etat, most certainly facilitated by our own U.S. government in cooperation with France and Canada. Along with Aristide, all of his political supporters, especially opinion leaders like Jean-Juste, were at risk, and the elected government officials of Aristide’s party, Lavalas, suddenly became unemployed.

Suddenly it became unsafe to support the ousted government, particularly if you were identified as a supporter of Aristide and Lavalas. Jean-Juste’s fate was sealed.

Time passed, and in early March, 2006, we went back to Haiti, this time as part of a delegation for the noted Haitian micro-finance Fonkoze www.fonkoze.org. Our route east was via Miami, and with great thanks to a Haitian-American friend, attorney Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Danto of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN), I was able to arrange a visit with Father Jean-Juste in Miami. At the time of our visit, Jean-Juste was officially and technically still under charges in Haiti, and in Miami solely for the treatment of his Leukemia.

But it was very obvious that the authorities thought he was no danger to anyone, so long as he was away from Haiti. The day we saw him, Sunday, March 5, 2006, he was free as a bird, and in excellent form, meeting with fellow Haitians in North Miami. For one not knowing any different, it would be astonishing to learn that he was technically someone still charged with a very serious crime. Of course, he had committed no crime other than politics, and everyone knew it.

Father Gerard Jean-Juste’s time on earth is now past, and he has made a great difference as a role-model for people who care. He is now at peace. He has left his work for all of us.

My accounts of my 2003 and 2006 visits to Haiti remain archived at my website www.chez-nous.net/peace_haiti.html . In the 2003 account there are brief mentions of Ste. Claire on pages 7, 8 and 19; I did not provide an account of the meeting with Fr. Jean-Juste in the 2006 account, since it was a personal add-on to a specific pre-planned delegation.

Fr. Jean-Juste saying Mass at Ste. Claire Dec 7 2003 (both photos by Dick Bernard)

Fr. Jean-Juste saying Mass at Ste. Claire Dec 7 2003 (both photos by Dick Bernard)

#121 – Dick Bernard: The significance of 60 votes

/in , , /by

Saturday night the U.S. Senate voted 60-39 to avoid filibuster on the Health Care Reform Issue. Every Republican voted “no”.
The realistic expectation from here on out is that the Republican mantra will be to make sure Health Care Reform fails; indeed, that anything that the Democrats and/or President Obama wants will fail.
It’s a dangerous game because, through failure, we will all fail. We can let failure happen, or do something constructive.
Back in 1994 when Health Care Reform was debated, the vote was unanimous to avoid filibuster (“debate”). Of course, Health Care Reform died that year, and a comfortable Democrat majority (Senate 57-43 and House 258-176) became a nearly permanent minority as a result of the 1994 elections. It was not until 2006 when total Republican dominance of Congress and Senate was tamed (though barely: Senate tied, House 235-198). And not until 2009 – 10 months ago – when House, Senate and White House became Democrat for the first time in sixteen years. The new administration inherited a catastrophe.
Yes, it has been a Democrat majority for all of 10 months now. The Republicans dream of again scuttling critically needed Health Care Reform, and repeating 1994.
I think that this time the fear-mongering will not succeed, and reform will begin, though not nearly as strongly as I would like, or we need.
It was a useful and healthy exercise for the Democrats to go through the agony of fashioning a 60 vote majority last week.
It is not fun to watch sausage being made in legislation, and the exercise of coming to a reasonable consensus that led to 60 votes was very important I think.
The next votes, after seeming interminable debate, will require only a majority in both houses. There will be endless debate and posturing, but sooner or later a conference bill will be agreed on and there will be an up or down vote by the total Congress. Odds are that there will be a Health Care Reform bill, and however inadequate it will be made to appear at passage, it will be an essential and long overdue first step in saving our nations health care system and making it more accessible and less exclusionary than it has been in the past.
I have no idea what the final bill will look like.
The Republicans have cast their lot on working for failure, not reform, on this and other issues, I hope that a bright light shines on their negative efforts to obstruct necessary improvements in many areas of public policy. The residue of the last many years was truly a train wreck needing to be repaired. It is time to let the repairing begin.
And by the way, for those who might forget, the Republicans did pass an incredibly expensive Health Care bill in 1996. It was a windfall for big business and it is the looming disaster for us all; ask seniors about the infamous ‘donut hole’ in Medicare part D. Hardly anyone who follows the issues carefully would disagree that the cumulative impact of neglecting reform, and subservience to business (and profit) interests has left our entire Health Care system battered and broken.
Those who happen to have “good” coverage now, without Reform, beware. For those who don’t want reform at all because they have that “good coverage” and don’t care what happens to anyone else, think for a moment about the people around you: relatives, friends, yourself – what if you fall through the hole in the safety net? Because, of course, you can….
A PS:
Who’s running things in Washington?
Last February I made a little chart to help educate myself. Here it is:
The print is small, but if it’s Red, that means Republican control; Blue, Democrat control. Occasionally there were ties.
U.S. Governance 77-09001

#120 – Dick Bernard: Raining Apples

/in , , , /by

Monday and Tuesday I took a trip out to ND to give my Uncle a little help at the farm near Berlin; the place where Mom grew up ‘way back when’. The hardest part of the work is the drive back and forth, though there was some heavy lifting that needs two people. This time the objective was to begin emptying a couple of grain bins.
Once the augur is in place, and hooked up to the power take off of the tractor, the project basically takes care of itself…until the end when some unlucky person has to shovel the last remnants. I was spared that task this trip. Some day I won’t be….
The augur augured, Uncle Vince supervised from the cab of the tractor, and I had some time to wander around the now people-less farmstead. One of the apple trees in the front yard showed evidence of some windfalls, and it was an invitation to a quick lunch. I knew from past experience that these are GOOD eating and pie apples, though the remnants I found this year were on the small side.
The apple trees are now large, and there were still a lot of apples up there in the ‘heavens’ of the top branches. Vince and Edith knew they were there, but too high to harvest by the usual means.
Then came Tuesday.
Tuesday was a windy day – not an unusual occurrence in ND: 15-30 mph they were saying.
There were sufficient windfalls so I decided to make myself useful and pick them up off the ground.
The wind blew, and one dropped to the ground here, another there, sometimes several at once. I’d clean up a piece of ground, and a half dozen apples would be there in no time.
I found the task changing from ordinary work to fun. For a time, there, I felt like a kid, hoping that one of those free-fall apples would ‘bop me on the noggin’, but none did. By the time I finished, I had nearly a bushel of those windfalls gathered in one place, and then in a tub.
While I didn’t grow up on the farm, I visited there a lot when a kid and adult. So it was possible to connect the dots between the very hard manual work of the old farm days, and the occasional simple fun that visited those scattered patches of humanity in the simpler times of America years ago.
Like raining apples.
Apples Nov 10 09003
Happy Thanksgiving.

#119 – Dick Bernard: Armistice Day, Veterans Day, Remembrance Day

/in , , /by

Yesterday my Uncle Vince and I were driving down a country road* near his farm, and and out of the blue he said, “tomorrow must be Armistice Day, right?”
Right, indeed. I was surprised to hear him call it Armistice Day, since in the U.S. it’s been called Veteran’s Day since 1954, when an act of Congress changed Armistice to Veterans Day.
So, today, in England they are remembering Armistice Day, November 11, 2009 (now called Remembrance Day); here in the States we have Veterans Day. As a veteran, today I get a free meal from a restaurant chain if I show up with my dog tags. And so it goes…. (I’ll be there, at the restaurant.)
Uncle Vince was born a bit more than six years after the event that led to the establishment of Armistice Day: the ending of hostilities for the “War to End All Wars”, WW I, November 11, 1918.
There was reason to celebrate the end of that deadly conflagration.
My mother, 9 years old at the time, recalled in her recollections of growing up on that same farm we were driving to yesterday: “[My sister] Florence was born [November 3] the year World War I ended. The hired girl and I were out in the snow chasing chickens into the coop so they wouldn’t freeze when there was a great long train whistle from the Grand Rapids [ND] railroad track [four miles away]. In the house there was a long, long telephone ringing to signify the end of World War I
By far my most memorable November 11 experience was at London’s Gatwick Airport, November 11, 2001.
We were waiting for boarding call to begin our trip home from a most enjoyable visit to London, a visit which included, a day or two prior, seeing the meticulously planted rows of tiny crosses on the lawn of Westminster Cathedral. These crosses symbolized the losses of war suffered by the English in their assorted wars, including those from being bombed during WWII.
At 11 a.m. on November 11, 2001, at Gatwick Airport, an announcement came, asking for two minutes of silence from all of us, remembering….
The bustling airport went completely silent. I don’t recall so much as a baby’s cry. It was intensely moving.
Today, at the First Shot Memorial on the State Capitol grounds in St. Paul, a group of Veterans for Peace gathered around the gun on the USS Ward that fired the first shot during the attack of Pearl Harbor in WW II. At precisely 11 a.m. a military veteran slowly rang a small bell 11 times, remembering 11-11-1918, and our appeal for enduring peace.
A block or so away another group gathered at the MN Vietnam Memorial, and remembered Veterans Day, 2009, in their own way.
A memory of today I will hold was of the guy who arrived at the events at the same time as I did. He was dressed in combat fatigues, and carrying what appeared to be a wooden, but realistic, combat weapon. I moved to the right, to the USS Ward Memorial; he moved to the left, to the Vietnam Memorial. All we had at our commemoration was a small bell…rung 11 times.
Who is right in these seeming clashing commemorations, or are both right? It’s more than an academic question. In my mind, one commemoration looks back to War, remembering our veterans, as opposed to the veterans on the opposing side – who are, after all, equally the victims of War; the other, Armistice (Remembrance) Day, emphasizes Peace. There is a huge difference in the emphasis, in my opinion.
The “War to End All Wars” 1914-18 simply spawned an even more deadly World War II, and on and on we go.
I’d like us to choose the route to peace. We can do it.
* – The country road Vince and I were on is the same road that is pictured on the home page of this blog. The only difference, yesterday, was that the surroundings are “November brown”,
For another view on Armistice/Veterans/Remembrance Day, see Annelee Woodstroms post at this blog for 11-9-09.
Sunday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune carried an excellent commentary by Lori Sturdevant bring the recollections of two WWII veterans, one of whom is my good friend Lynn Elling. Do take a look . Look at the anonymous comments there, following the column. They illustrate the above distinction.

#118 – Annelee Woodstrom: A Reflection for Peace on Armistice (Veterans) Day

/in , , , , /by

Note: Anneliese Solch, later to become Annelee Woodstrom, grew up in the small community of Mitterteich in Adolf Hitler’s Germany.  She was 7 years old when Hitler came to power in 1933, and was drawn to the exciting things that might be available to her if she became part of the Hitler Youth.  Her parents refused her request, and they never became Nazis or supporters of Hitler.  In the below segment from her book, “War Child: Growing up in Adolf Hitler’s Germany”, Annelee recounts a conversation with her Uncle Pepp, a “Main Street” businessman in Mitterteich.  (Mitterteich then and now was just a few miles from the border of present day Czech Republic, and after the War also a few miles inside West Germany.  It’s population was about 5,000.)
After the war, in 1947, Annelee married Kenny Woodstrom of Crookston MN, one of the soldiers who liberated her town.  They were married 51 years, till his death in 1998.  They, and Annelee, today, live in Ada MN.  #mce_temp_url#.
A previous post about Annelee is found at this blog at September 20, 2009.
Annelee Woodstrom, October 31, 2009: Veterans Day is coming up, and I certainly will remember it’s function.  Wouldn’t it be much better though if we could celebrate World Peace Day?  However, according to my Uncle Pepp, our wish for peace will probably never happen during our lifetime.  Uncle Pepp’s words and thoughts sadly are as applicable to our efforts for world peace as they were when I heard them from him in 1944.
From WAR CHILD: pages 122-23:
“As I arrived at the bakery, Aunt Nanni said, “Anneliese, if you are looking for Pepp, he is in his office  he will see you.”
I knocked softly.  Uncle Pepp opened the door and motioned to the big chair.
“What can I do for you?”
“Nothing.  I came to say good-bye.”
“So good-bye it is”, Uncle Pepp mumbled.
His voice and demeanor startled me.  “If you are busy, I’ll leave.”
He pointed at the chair again.  “You just sit there, and I will tell you when you can leave.”
Resting his chin in his hands, he looked at me, pondering.  “Everybody comes and tells me, ‘I am leaving.’
So you’ll be leaving too.  You should be home with your mother, but you are out there, getting bombed and shot at just like the men.  His gaze went past me.  “They went, but most of them didn’t come back.  The ones who did come home are crippled for life in one way of another.  Tell me for what?”
He nodded.  “Oh, yes, for the 1000 Year Reich.  What a Reich it is.  It started with a few crazy men and they’ve led and lied until everyone followed into abysmal destruction of humanity.  We hollered and screamed and went with them.  Now, we drown in our own blood.  How they have channged us.”
Uncle.  He didn’t hear me, and I didn’t dare to move as he went on.  “they didn’t change us, we did that ourselves.  Now, I expect they will hold everyone accountable.  He shook his head.  “All my life I tried to do right.  Then in one minute, I ruined it all.  Just because Karl joined the party and didn’t tell me, I pushed him into this damn war.  Now he is fighting in France, doing God knows what?  Killing, fighting, or running to save himself.  he shouldn’t have joined the Nazi Party without telling me and I should have signed.  Now nothing is the same.  How he and I have changed.
I had never seen Uncle Pepp like this.  I got up and gingerly placed my hand on his shoulder.  “It wasn’t your fault!  It is the war,” I said.  They would have taken Karl anyway.  Everybody has to go to war.  I bet that after this one there won’t be any more wars because there isn’t anyone left to fight.”
He laughed bitterly.  You would think so.  We learn a lot in a lifetime, but no one in the world learns about keeping peace.  Every time there is a war, they say it is for some cause and then we will have peace forever.  The human race is the dumbest species there is.  For thousands of years legions of people have fought and maimed each other for one cause or another.  They took land from their so-called enemy.  When you look around, you see that years later they gave it back.  Never mind the corpses underneath the land the young were told to conquer.”
Uncle Pepp’s eyes bored into mine.  “You think this war is the last war?  Anneliese, don’t mind my laughing.  Some day you may have a son who will get his draft notice to fight another war…again they’ll promise you.  This is the last of all wars.  On the other side there will be a mother who will have to send her son for the same reason  to stop war.  What we have not yet learned is the simple truth.  Wars lay the seed and breed another, more horrible war than the one before.”
Uncle Pepp came close to me.  “I always told your papa you should have been his first born, but I am glad you are not.  Maybe you will make it through this war.  You will, if you are lucky and have a say about it.”  He kissed me on the forehead.  “Now go, and do come back, you hear me?”
He walked away from me and sighed.  “Tell your mama Mrs. Beer heard last night that Otto died of his wounds in Russia.  It’s not official, but a soldier who was lucky enough to be transferred out sent word to them.  Now that’s her second son who didn’t make it home.  He waved, walked out and shut the door quietly.
I sat still, thinking about what Uncle Pepp had just said.  My heart ached for Uncle Pepp because I knew he hurt.  But I knew there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.  Just like the war going on all around us, I thought.  We couldn’t do anything about that either because if you did, you were shot anyway.
POST NOTE:  At the time of this conversation with her uncle Pepp, Anneliese was about 16 years of age and assigned to work as a telegrapher in the city of Regensburg.  Her father, who had refused to join the Nazi Party, had been drafted into the German Army.  He was home for a leave near the end of 1943, then was never heard from again.  His last child never knew his father.  They believe he died a prisoner in Russia, but this has never been confirmed.

#117 – Dick Bernard: The School Board election

/in , , , /by

I live in an affluent community.  There is no “other side of the tracks” unless one counts a few Habitat for Humanity houses not far from here, or some lower income apartments.  This is a well educated place, full of professional types.
My community is one of several who are part of our local school district.  The other communities have slightly different profiles than mine, but not that different.  We are reliably middle class.
Last Tuesday was our districts school board election.  There were 10 candidates for 4 open positions.
It has been a long time since I’ve been parent of a school age child, so public education is a way off my active day-to-day list.  But I always vote, and a week before the election I wrote a friend who I know is active in school affairs in this town, and asked if she had any recommendations.  She didn’t.  So I went about learning what I could about the candidates, picked four, and voted.  The next day I found that half of my candidates won.  Fair enough.  I had showed up.
But it seemed like a very small voter turnout, and I started to nose around.
Succinctly, this particular school district has about 55,000 registered voters.  The school district website says “The population of the district is approximately 100,000 people including the 16,650 students who attend district schools.”
On election day, about 6% – one of sixteen – of those registered voters actually cast a ballot.  The rest apparently didn’t care who made policy for the nearly 17,000 children in this districts schools.
The candidate with the largest vote got 1614 votes.  By my calculation that means about 3% – one of thirty-three registered voters – elected the candidate.
As I looked further into this matter, I came to discover that there was a concerted effort by one group to pull off what I would call a “bullet ballot” for three candidates they supported.  They leveraged the small turnout into a win for two of their people.  Even so, their candidates got very few votes, so even they were not that successful (unless one counts “winning” as the ultimate success).
Our vote this year was uncomplicated.  The only issue was the school board election.  It was a quick in and out for any voter, including the very significant percentage of eligible voters who have children of their own in these public schools.
But the vast, overwhelming majority of people did not care enough to vote, and, as disturbing, to apparently not even care enough who it is making the policy governing their children’s education.  The clear winner in this election was disengagement.
We should be ashamed.
But we won’t be….

#116 – Dick Bernard: Denying Reality

/in , , /by

Recently, I’ve read several articles, research based, on the truly dangerous behavior of humans:  denying reality.
The long and short: we live in a society where we believe what we want to believe…and most of us are in a position, at least for the moment, where we can get away with it.  Climate Change?  No problem.  It’s just odd weather, and the unusual drought conditions somewhere don’t affect us.  I can still buy my bananas at the store – I’ve come to like a banana a day.  Never mind that in my youth, bananas were an exotic fruit rarely if ever seen, and that went for things like oranges too.  Living an entire life in North Dakota and Minnesota, I don’t run into banana plantations with any frequency.  For me, bananas just happen, like Santa Claus.
Our self-deception goes on and on: Incredible numbers of people still believe the long-debunked fiction that Saddam Hussein was somehow behind 9-11, thus justifying a war against Iraq which destroyed that country, and has almost literally bankrupted us.
As somebody said, when confronted with the reality about one of those ubiquitous provably false e-mails that she’d published in her local church bulletin: “I’ll believe what I want to believe.”
Yes, we can get away with deceiving ourselves.  For now.
But that’s a bit like making your bedroom the middle of a never used country road.  For a while it will work, but in the end you’ll be unpleasantly dead.
Sometimes I wonder if there exists in our society some kind of collective self-loathing, a “death wish” as it were.  Common sense says that we’re flirting with disaster long-term, but we thumb our nose at it, and admire the creativity of the people who craft the lies we are expected to believe.
Recently I’ve been noticing a repetitive ad during the nightly news which reassuringly asserts that there’s 100 years worth of natural gas left in our country.  The subliminal message is “not to worry”.  It reminds me of those old cigarette ads in magazines where the doctor was confidently smoking the cigarette, or the with-it woman was enjoying her smoke, or the cowboy on the range (who later died of lung cancer)….  Ah, marketing.
So alarming percentages of us believe that climate change is not a problem, even though the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community is on record that it is a serious problem.  Or that our life styles don’t need to change, even if continuing our life styles will assure no future at all for the generations beyond us.  Or that  Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, even though the very people who perpetrated that fiction years ago, later officially and publicly debunked it themselves.  The list goes on and on.
Are we fools?
The people who approved that ad about the 100 years of natural gas were speaking to people like myself who survive by natural gas as this winter begins.  I don’t know where, exactly, my natural gas comes from; all I know is that if the temperature gets below 70, the furnace comes on….
“100 years” was deemed by the marketing strategists to be a good reassuring number.
As it happens, at the same time I’ve been noticing this ad, I’ve been completing a family history of my Dad’s side of the family, which came to Quebec from France nearly 400 years ago.  I’m doing a history about the first 300 years, ending with my Dad’s birth on December 22, 1907.  (He died a dozen years ago today).
In context with that family history, 100 years is not much more than a blip of history…and I’m not delving into the hundreds of additional years of recorded human history in France.
More so than any generation in history, we can assure our future destruction.
We seem not to care….
Here’s a couple of articles I’ve seen recently on this topic: Your choice.  #mce_temp_url#; #mce_temp_url#
UPDATE: November 7, 2009
Jeff Pricco: Another good article for the deniers: #mce_temp_url#.
Just like the public is saying Obama is not delivering Change.
When the culture of leverage and debt and not facing reality in household or government finances has been three to four decades in the making…profligate spending on credit and a culture and mindset that we can have everything we want and more and not eventually pay the bills…has set in…no President or Congress (an institution I have argued is set up to defeat change) can remedy this in 6 to 12 months….
If this is not a slow painful sluggish recovery with little growth, it will not be successful.  If we opt for more fake bubble remedies that buy us prosperity on credit, we will see the mother of all depressions soon.
Carol Ashley: I think that the more one lacks self-confidence, the more one is apt to not change one’s mind in the face of evidence to the contrary.  In psychological terms it’s known as cognitive dissonance.  People are very good at adhering to their beliefs about what they think they know and justifying those beliefs.
I can go back to child-rearing and look at how parents are loathe to admit they are wrong in front of their children. There seems to be an “understanding” that admitting that one is wrong decreases their authority with their children.  In fact, children tend to often know when parents are wrong and respect for parents goes up when parents can admit when and where they are wrong.
As my nephew and I confront each other on beliefs about what we think we know, we can both attest to how difficult it is to let go of something we believed in the face of evidence to the contrary.  Dan and I are probably unusually willing to confront these things.
For myself, I am aware that i will first become defensive and then, when alone, take a closer look, and then if I find satisfactory evidence, can and often do admit I’m wrong.  But how many people even know themselves that well, much less are able to take the “loss of face,” because that is what it feels like even if it gains you respect for being able to admit the other is right?
It’s a challenge for all of us.  It’s easy to blame the far right for this, but we are all susceptible to some degree.  the far right might be more susceptible but understanding can bring compassion instead of just fighting against them which brings even greater resistance.  We need to understand the fears behind it.
On the other hand, that probably works better on a personal level than in the political real.  Maybe.
Comment back to Carol on her last paragraph: I think personal and political should be dealt with as synonyms.  As Tip O’Neill so quotably said: “All politics is local” (as in, all politics is personal!)