#140 – Dick Bernard: 500 years

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Happy New Year, and new Decade!
2009 ends today. Much of this past year my personal endeavors have been around family history projects.
Since late summer, I’ve been tackling an immense task: trying to summarize 400 years of the recorded history of my average and ordinary French-Canadian families experience in North America. (My father was French-Canadian, his ancestry going back to the early 1600s in what is now known as Quebec.) I’m nearing completion of the project, which I’m entitling “The First 300 Years”, summarizing the most difficult to access part: the 300 years preceding my Dad’s birth December 22, 1907. (Quebec was established in July, 1608.)
Of course, those 400 years are just a moment in the existence of humanity; 400 years in France is modern history. But in North American and American history, 400 years is a long, long time.
Normally a family history project about an ordinary family is plagued by a lack of data. For me, I was plagued by so much data it was difficult to know where to start, and what to include or leave out. I finally broke that psychological log-jam, and I think the end result (which ultimately will be on the web, perhaps in February of 2010), will probably be about 150 pages of work.
I thought I had completed the project of summarizing those 300 years in mid-November, 2009, and, in fact, I printed the first copy in mid-November, and sent out the draft to 35 people during that same week.
During that very week in November, it happened that the television was carrying a series of commercials produced by a natural gas producing association, and a couple of times their ad featured a young Mom and her little girl invited, by her Mom, to blow out 100 candles, each symbolizing a year of natural gas left for we consumers. Of course, blowing out those 100 candles would be quite a chore for a little girl, and that was noted by the Mom.
The point of that commercial, and the other companion ads, was that there is at least 100 years worth of natural gas left in this country; suggesting this to be a long, long time. “Not to worry.” I watched the screen, which is next to our natural gas fireplace, and I thought of this little girl and her Mom in context with the 400 years I’d been reviewing for the prior few months, and the hundreds and thousands of years of earlier human history.
What a distinction.
My Dad was born 102 years ago…when he came on the scene there was scarcely any use of that resource, natural gas. In fact, his ancestors (and mine) in North America likely didn’t know there was such a resource until late in the 19th century, 250 years into their arrival in the New World.
Now the ad was saying that we had about 100 years left of that single resource, and directly implying that 100 years is a very long time.
I wanted to see that ad again, so that I could write exactly what the screen “Mom” was saying to her “daughter”, but it didn’t air again. Perhaps someone thought better of the idea of using that little girl as a prop for a resource that was rapidly disappearing. I don’t know.
Having looked at my family history from 1608-1907 – I’m 12th generation in North America; and knowing my family history from 1907 to the present; and knowing how we have become a society that lives for the moment, and really relies on fantasy views of the present and future reality, I wonder what’s ahead for us as a society in the next, very short, century.
That little girl in the commercial, and most likely her stage Mom, will own the results of our helter-skelter squandering of our earth.
Meanwhile, that natural gas fireplace by the television continues to bring warmth….
We can live in the past; we can pretend that today and tomorrow are all that matters; I hope we all look far more to the future consequences of present actions.
We can start by demanding that our lawmakers take a long-term and global view as they make policy that will affect the generations that follow us.
Then, we might have a Happy New Year.
And give those who follow some chance for many Happy New Years to come.

#139 – Dick Bernard: Part II Real Time Health Care in the U.S. from another perspective

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Part I, yesterday’s post, turned out to be a very positive experience. The exam revealed nothing worthy of note – the next appointment in five years. Everything was very efficient and the five medical staff who worked with me were very friendly, from the person who checked me in, to the doctor who did the procedure. The bill, when it comes, will be paid by someone else. All I’ll see is the basic paperwork.
I was apparently the doctor’s last appointment of the day. We rode down in the elevator together and chatted. He’s been a specialist for over 25 years. Not always do procedures go so well. Part of his reality, he said, is the need to deliver sometimes very bad news to patients….
Yesterday’s appointment was at a hospital on the bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. Over 44 years ago, July 24, 1965, at another hospital on the other side of the river, less than a mile from where we were visiting in the elevator, I personally encountered the bad news side of medicine when my then-wife died late at night of kidney disease. She was only 22. We were uninsured. Hers/Ours was the second story I wrote in what has turned out to be a long series on Health Care Reform.
That night I left the hospital – I was there by myself – and went to the local Western Union office in deserted downtown Minneapolis, and sent telegrams to relatives in California, telling them of her death.
My wife had received outstanding care in 1965, but it was to no avail. And we had no insurance.
The very last thing on my mind that night in 1965 was how I’d pay the medical bills. I had a year and a half year old son; three days earlier I’d signed a teaching contract for the fall, so I had a job upcoming, in a town and metropolitan area I’d never lived in or near before. But all those details wouldn’t hit me until a few months later.
First, my car broke down early in the fall. When you have money, no problem. I didn’t. Problem. I needed a functioning car to get to work – both jobs.
In October, 1965, it finally hit me that I would have to file bankruptcy, and I prepared the balance sheet for an attorney (a copy of which I still possess). Succinctly, almost all of my debts were medical bills from one place or another; those debts were almost four times my then-teacher salary.
Not long after that, I got very lucky. North Dakota Public Welfare agreed to pay the largest portion of the bill, which amounted to two-thirds of the total that I owed; and our last local hospital – a community hospital -forgave our bill there. Suddenly the remaining bills became at least manageable. I was lucky because I couldn’t even establish with certainty that we were legal residents of North Dakota. Somebody had to bend some rules.
Life went on, and now I’m at today.
I’ve lived, literally, in both worlds of American Medical Care – the present one where, at least in my case, care is assured and largely paid for; and the one where care is accessed only at some unseen person or committees whim.
In both worlds, the care was and is excellent: I have huge respect for medical professionals. But there was a world of difference.
There is absolutely no excuse for today’s situation where medical care is a privilege and not a right for all; where we engage in endless debate about who qualifies for health care. We have our policy priorities mixed up.
I think that a very substantial part of today’s American medical system – probably a substantial majority – agrees with me on that.

#138 – Dick Bernard: Real Time Health Care in the U.S. for a Member of the Privileged Class

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Overnight I’ve been involved in the never-pleasant preparations for a Colonoscopy. I’m a veteran of the procedure – family history, precautionary. If past is prelude, the preparation for the Big Event later today has been worse than the Event itself will be.
And afterwards I can eat again!
I’m a Medicare veteran, and the Colonoscopy is a Medicare procedure. My deductible has been satisfied, and most of the cost will be covered by Medicare and supplementary insurance, which we can afford to pay.
The care today will be high quality, as it was before I was on Medicare.
Just prior to Christmas, I had my annual eye exam. I’ve had cataract surgery a couple of years ago – one of the most common Medicare procedures, I hear. There, too, the care is top notch, and the cost basically covered.
I’m definitely a member of a privileged class.
Why so many of my class refuse to grant others the same access to medical care that I have is an outrage.
There is cost to medical care. Nothing is “free”, and this goes for “pensioners” too.
Recently I heard a number, sort of off-hand, that was causing concern: that every person would be forced to pay at least 8% of their income for health care. (Don’t hold me to that exact number, or what it covered – but I heard something to that effect, as we sometimes hear things.)
At any rate, this caused me to look at our family health care cost situation.
Health care is a tax deductible item in the U.S. tax code. Last year, to deduct medical, pharmaceutical and health insurance costs, those costs had to exceed 7.5% of adjusted gross income. Everything above that 7.5% was deductible.
For our family, those costs, last year, were 12%, so we had a deductible amount, and we’re basically a fairly healthy family at this point. We do have ample insurance, at our own expense, and none of it covers everything.
People on Medicare – by definition, those over 65 – have an automatic deduction from their Social Security for Medicare insurance, so Medicare isn’t “free” either. And I don’t count in the above calculation the $18,000 or so that I paid into the Medicare system in the working years before I retired 10 years ago.
Basically I have only a couple of points:
1. Every one should have to pay something for the privilege of having health care insurance. That amount should be based on how much they can afford. And, yes, they should have insurance – how that is administered is open to discussion.
2. Every one, in our supposedly world class society, should have the opportunity to have health coverage, no questions asked.
People without insurance get colon cancer, and have cataracts, too. The difference between them and me, I suppose, is that they may feel forced to wait for an exam or treatment until it’s too late….
I am happy there is an indication on the horizon that there will be substantial Health Care Reform in the making, even if it is imperfect, and just a start.
But until there is equal care for all regardless of personal financial circumstances, there is no true “justice for all” in this country of mine.
Off to coffee (without cream). It’s legal….

#137 – Dick Bernard: "Climate" vs "Weather": A matter of huge consequence.

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From time to time I’ll add updates to the end of this post. For other blog entries on Climate, see “Climate Change” under Categories.
For current information, see International Panel on Climate Change.
Early yesterday morning came a brief e-mail from someone who reads these posts: “…if the world doesn’t limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2020 or shortly thereafter, the chaos and conflict will be overwhelming. You don’t remind your readers of that; 2010 is a good year to begin; have a happy one.”
While not sure what he meant by the 1.5 degree reference*, I responded in agreement, but saying also “…[people] have limited capacity for dealing with issues. So, Health Care Reform [has been] the only game in town…Climate Change will be an even more crucial and difficult issue.”
A few hours later came a Christmas letter from someone I’ve known his whole life: “…this last week replacing my furnace that was so high tech and energy conserving that it [has] failed to keep the house warm during this crisis of Global Warming.” I’m never quite sure how to take his comments, but his implication is one would fit the profile of the anti-climate change scoffers.
Around and in between the two accounts, the news was dominated by the guy who apparently tried to blow up the plane on the ground in Detroit. I say “apparently” because you’re never quite sure what to believe in these accounts either. Since then, he’s been linked to al Qaeda, and is said to have admitted that he was somehow connected to a Middle East terror cell. And, crucially, he has a Muslim sounding name….
So it goes in the world of virtual reality that we inhabit. Fully two pages of the Sunday paper in our metropolis was devoted to this endlessly dramatized story.
I have noticed that the climate change deniers like to focus on the more immediate issue of local weather to buttress their anecdotal case. So, I was shoveling heavy, wet snow on Christmas Day, and my uncle in North Dakota was talking about a pretty serious blizzard in his area; both usual winter activities in both places. Therefore, so goes the reasoning, everything is “normal”.
Climate is a far more complicated and long term and much scarier kind of phenomenon. It is, therefore, easier to scoff at, to deny. Recent news is that countries bordering the North Pole are now interested in claiming it…it will be, quite possibly soon, a year round shipping lane.
Unfortunately, the term “Global Warming” has been over-used, and later seized, as somehow proving that the Climate Change folks are alarmist idiots. It sells well, along with stolen e-mails supposedly proving, again through highly selective anecdotal (though stolen) “evidence” that even the scientists can’t agree on the issue nor how to “sell” it to a skeptical public.
One thing is pretty certain: if the scoffers prevail, future generations – possibly even our own – are stuck with their shortsightedness, IF (as is likely) they turn out to be wrong. Even if we immediately implement every means of changing our lifestyle, we may already be too late.
I’m reminded of the story of the frog in the water: put him on a stove, and very slowly increase the temperature in his environment and he’s oblivious. Sooner or later, he’s cooked. He realized his problem a bit too late. “He” will be our kids and grandkids….
Perhaps a half dozen years ago, a college friend of mine, then a long-time PhD and chair of a department of the physical sciences at a major university, wrote me that climate change was going to do us in, starting with small but crucial changes in ocean current patterns due to subtle changes in water temperature. This was long before anybody had Al Gore to kick around.
I wish I would have kept my friends e-letter from back then.
I think he’ll end up being right. As will my friend who sent me the brief e-mail yesterday*.
UPDATES:
Dec. 27: Why climatologists used the tree-ring data ‘trick’, here
Dec 27: * Response on the reference to 1.5 Celsius reference above (from the source, a thoughtful senior citizen who prefers to remain anonymous.)
1 degree C = 1.8 degrees F
1 degree F = 0.56 degree C
There are many sources on the Web, and this seems to be one of the best for lay people. “Climate Math: 2 = 350 =40”
“In summary: 2 = 350 = 40 (means that) to avoid a global warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius we need to reduce our current atmospheric CO2 concentration from 387 [parts per million] ppm to at most 350 ppm within this century. To ensure we are on the right path, the first step has to be a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 40 percent by 2020. Now let’s get to work!”
That and the following article note that the most climate-vulnerable nations, especially the Pacific and sub-Sahara Africa ones, are warning that the increase in world temperature must be limited to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) instead of the developed or developing nations 2 degrees C (3.6 F) by 2020 to avoid catastrophic effects in their regions.
See “Vulnerable nations at Copenhagen summit reject 2C target.”
What Obama and Clinton brought to Copenhagen was a pitiful 4-percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020 or so. That’s partly because many members of Congress and their constituents are pathologically denying reality, with [MN] Cong. Bachmann being one of the worst.
See “U.S. EPA says greenhouse gases threaten human health as UN climate conference opens.”
Fortunately we also have Minnesotans like Will Steger who has launched a strong campaign to reduce atmospheric CO2 from its current 387 ppm level to 350 ppm by 2020. At public televisions preview of Ken Burns’ “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” he delivered a sobering lecture on ice-core research in Greenland and other polar areas that documents atmospheric CO2 changes in the last 400,000 years. The current ones are unprecedented. See Steger’s website.
Along with the economic barriers to achieving “2/1.5 = 350 = 40, we have the demographic barriers of exponential population growth, especially in many of the so-called developing nations where climate change effects are likely to be the most severe. But for various reasons those barriers are too often ignored.

#136 – Dick Bernard: The Bad Plus

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UPDATE: The venue at which the Bad Plus is playing New Years Eve is the Village Vanguard in New York City. The National Public Radio program which will broadcast part of its performance, plus many others, including at the Dakota in Minneapolis, is apparently Toast of the Nation on December 31st. There is a very interesting history of the Village Vanguard at its website.
Truth be told, I’m no music expert. I just enjoy good music. And last night we made an excellent decision to see the Christmas show of the Jazz group, The Bad Plus, at the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis. They are three hugely talented musicians: David King, drums; Reid Anderson, bass; Ethan Iverson, piano.
They will be part of the headline group on National Public Radio’s New Years Eve live this coming Thursday night. They’ll be performing at a Manhattan club, their next gig.
You can see them perform here. They’re a hot international group.
As a matter of course, I don’t follow specific performers, or even specialize in any specific genre of music. I just like good music.
I’d never heard of The Bad Plus till last summer when I had the good fortune of being on a committee with Dwayne King, and in the course of conversation he mentioned his son, a drummer, who had this group, The Bad Plus. He was obviously proud of his son, and I looked them up. A couple of weeks ago Dwayne mentioned the gig at the Dakota, where they’ve done a Christmas concert for the last ten years (to an almost empty house the first year), so we “signed”.
Even with questionable weather last night, the Dakota, located on last nights near deserted Nicollet Mall, was near packed with fans, and the trio gave a great show.
The Bad Plus members are in the vicinity of 40, and in the Jazz world, 40 is almost an infant. Paying the dues is a long term process. The talent of the group is such, and their particular brand of jazz so unique, that they have caught on. Their staple is original compositions they’ve composed and perfected.
I mentioned their name at coffee yesterday morning to the daughter of a good friend who’s connected to the music biz in LA, and her eyes lit up.
There is talent, for certain, in performers like these. But any talent, not worked at, is only raw talent. Then there’s a matter of paying one’s dues – playing to almost empty houses; practicing; networking…it isn’t easy.
Sometimes it all comes together, and this is what is happening for three talented young men, two from suburban Minneapolis and the other from a small town in western Wisconsin.
If we stay awake long enough, we’ll catch them New Years Eve in New York!
Check them out on YouTube.

#135 – Dick Bernard: Dad's Shoes

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Today is my Dad’s 102nd birthday (he passed away in 1997, not quite reaching 90.) He’s more on my mind than usual this year because, for the last several months, I’ve been trying to summarize 400 years of his French-Canadian ancestry in North America. I’m in the home stretch, now, thanks to many people. I’m calling the document “The First 300 Years”. It ends with Dad’s birth, December 22, 1907, in Grafton ND. It has been a fascinating, difficult, project. I’ll be glad when I can say I’ve finished it (probably in January.)

Josephine and Henry Bernard in 1908, with youngster Henry, and his sister Josie.

Josephine and Henry Bernard in 1908, with youngster Henry, and his sister Josie.


Dad was a tall man: he reached his adult height of 6’3″ about 8th grade – very unusual for those early days. His height gave him no particular advantage. He was a gangly kid, and he had big, flat feet – size 12 if I recall rightly. His nickname of “Boy” (when he was born the doctor said “it’s a boy”) stuck with him his entire life.
Dad’s big feet helped caused me a broken leg in 7th grade. He had a hand-me-down pair of racing skates – the ones with the very long blades – which were size 13. This particular day, at the schoolyard pond across the street from our house, I put on those huge skates, ended up on the end of “crack the whip” with a bunch of kids, fell, and broke my leg. It was my first experience with Dad’s shoes.
I got to thinking about Dad and his shoes a few days ago, when I took down his insulated walking boots from the shelf. I like to walk outdoors year around, and sometime back around Dad’s death, I “inherited” the walking shoes he used in the winter at Our Lady of the Snows, the place at which he lived his last ten years, in Belleville IL. I’m size 10 1/2, so his boots are a little large, but with heavier socks they fit just fine, and they’ll do me all winter. Unlike Dad, they haven’t “kicked the bucket” yet, and my guess is that they have more years left in them.
Here they are, a couple of days ago…
Bernard, Henry Shoes001
A few years ago, one Christmas, I gave each of my kids and the then-grandkids one pair each of my beat-up old shoes (I don’t easily throw stuff in the garbage!) I’m a couple of grandkids behind (this year they’ll get theirs – I’ve got two pair in mind!) The gift of the old shoes was, I admit, a bit on the odd side, but it was a gift.
On this day, Dad’s 102nd birthday, Dad’s Big Shoes come to mind. Whatever his good points, or deficiencies (like us all, he certainly wasn’t perfect), he cobbled me together, and then sent me on my merry way to practice, imperfectly, life.
I’d guess that every one of us, in one way or another, male or female, had similar Dad or Mom stories…about their Big Shoes and how they helped us grow to what we have become.
Doubtless my own kids have Dad stories about me.
I hope most of the stories are at least a tiny bit positive!
Happy Birthday, Dad, and Merry Christmas.

#134 – June Johnson: A 1940s Country School Christmas

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NOTE: Each year I’m drawn to this essay, written in December, 1985, for the teacher union newsletter on Minnesota’s Iron Range. June Johnson was then a teacher at Bigfork High School.
CHIPS FROM THE NORTHERN BRANCH by June Johnson
From somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I have plucked a Christmas memory which will be forever important to me.
Christmas on the North Dakota prairie was a time of anticipation and joy, a welcome respite from the hard times and unrelenting toil of everyday existence. Families were extremely impoverished and no “store-bought” gifts were imminent for most of the children who attended Souris #1. Excitement filled the air as mothers baked once-a-year “goodies” and sewed and baked and built gifts to be opened on Christmas morning.
The Christmas program at school was a yearly social event for the entire community No special lights or decorations were needed to enhance the appreciation of this day. The kids had planned, practiced and revised every noon hour for a month and were ready. A tree fashioned from prairie junipers decorated with strings of popcorn and thorn apples, and various homemade decorations was in place and a few small packages were already under it.
All year I had tried to get Frederic, a reticent second grader, to talk to me. An unusually polite youngster, he always had his work done but spoke to no one if it could be avoided. After the program was over, gifts were distributed and I was singularly impressed with the ingenuity displayed in the homemade gifts which were given to me. Coffee, hot cocoa and cookies were now being enjoyed by all. At this point, I felt a tug at my sleeve and found Frederic looking up at me. As I knelt down, he quickly placed a package in my hand. While he looked on, I opened it and found a sling shot and a bag of smooth stones. As I held out my arms, he hesitated only a moment before coming to me. Then he said, “I made it for you because I love you.”
In my cedar chest (which holds all my “treasures”), I have a box which holds a sling shot, a bag of stones, and the memory of a very special little boy.

#133 – Dick Bernard: The Dust Bowl

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COMMENTS follow this post.
Last evening I watched most of a History Channel program on the horrors of the Dust Bowl of mid-America in the 1930s. Interspersed with film and commentary from the actual events, were recollections of survivors of the Dirty Thirties, as well as a fascinating effort by scientists to reenact in the present day what people living in farm houses back then would have actually experienced.
The present day experimenters could turn off the wind and dust making machines at will, and did. They could not tolerate what the residents in the 1930s either survived, or didn’t, when the horrible winds and dust storms and plagues of insects and rabbits and on and on destroyed much of the midwest, especially in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, but all throughout the northern plains as well.
My uncle, soon to be 85, remembered what he recalled as the worst year, 1934, in North Dakota. He was 9 years old. It was horrid. There was no escape.
To have gone through it was to be seared forever…or was it?
I was born in 1940, young enough to miss the worst years of the Depression, and to remember some things about the last years of World War II.
Memory or not, I was totally immersed in the attitudes generated by these life-altering times in American history.
The 30s and first half of the 1940s were times of self-sacrifice, and a need for working together. The nature of humans was no different then than now…the assorted attitudes that plague us now, plagued them then. The difference was that there was, for them, no real choice but to concentrate on survival. Prosperity for the masses was not an active dream. Surviving the dirty thirties, and then getting the war over with were the priorities. People had to pull together. Those who didn’t were noticed….
1945 brought the end of the war, and after almost 20 years of hardship, life began anew. The baby boom began. Today, one of my cousins is 63 – she was one of the first of millions of baby boom babies.
That boom was to last until the end of the 1960s.
An attitude began then that, I believe, has become our fatal flaw as a society.
Those who’d been through the Great Depression and World War II in sundry ways made a pledge to their kids and grandkids to protect them from all that was bad in those years. The boomers made a similar contract with their kids.
A consequence of this new contract, in my opinion, is to diminish the values that allowed America to survive the bad times: a collective will to sacrifice and to work together. Looking out for #1 became a primary value.
In the 1930s, it was not until a dust storm reached Washington D.C. in the later 1930s that the then-Congress began to enact crucial legislation for the dust bowl states. It was a classic “NIMBY” (“not in my backyard”) response to a huge problem. Until the problem was virtually unsolvable, the Congress was essentially an inert mass. The rains came almost before the actions of the People’s House in Washington. Even then, a sense of unity among the “united” states was tenuous.
In a lot of ways we are in a similar quandary today, only much, much worse in long-term implications.
We dodged a financial catastrophe by a whisker this year, and we’re now living as if there wasn’t – and won’t be – a problem later.
Many pretend that climate change is no longer an issue, because some pilfered e-mails allegedly prove it isn’t a huge future problem.
We dismiss a coming crisis as fossil fuels become ever more scarce…and expensive; we ignore water tables receding due to use for irrigation – water resources that cannot be replenished by putting a hose in the ground.
Too many of the same heroes who are extolled as part of the Greatest Generation are now saying that the benefits they have reaped, like Social Security and Medicare, are too expensive to provide for the generations following them. Ironically many of today’s generation seem to agree: it is every one for him or herself. The youngsters too young to decide – our children and grandchildren? Their problem.
We are back to the individualism that led to the ship sinking with the late 1920s financial catastrophe (my Dad’s parents experienced the bank closing at the same time as Grandpa’s employer shut its doors in 1927, two years before 1929.) Both my families were casualties of the Great Depression. It took a long while to recover, somewhat.
Only time will tell if I and people like me are “chicken littles” saying “the sky is falling”.
My guess is we have a pretty clear view of the future if societal attitudes do not dramatically change: not pleasant, indeed, grim. Indeed, even deep change now may be too late…but its worth a try.
Bob Barkley, Dec. 20, 09: In regard to your piece, “Dust Bowl,” it occurred to me today, as I was once again trying to make inroads with my right-leaning sister, that attitudes have context. They don’t occur in a vacuum. For example most Americans believe what they were taught about the nations history, but that version most of us were exposed to was seriously skewed. Consequently I sent my sister two books — both by Howard Zinn: The People’s History of the United States, and A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.
Your story regarding the dust bowl provides part of your context. I was raised well into my teens in Jersey City, NJ during the Boss Hague days. I was in a Republican household in a Democratic stronghold. And my Dad was a Lutheran minister in an overwhelmingly Catholic community. Those were two strong components of the context for my beliefs.
Until we know the context in which people think we will not understand their beliefs. Your rural upper Midwest context is foreign to me. This why we must listen deeply to really understand others. It’s hard but essential.
Dick’s response to Bob: Excellent. We’ve ‘talked’ a bit before about the Jersey City days. Don’t recall the exact context, but something I’d written or sent around jogged your memories of the tense years in Jersey City. I think the primary relevance of your comment is that we all need to ‘farm’ our own circles, since our group experiences are so unique…’city slickers’ out east have not a clue what farmers in the midwest are about, and vice versa.

#132 – Dick Bernard: The Christmas Call, and an encore for Susan Boyle

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Last night about 8 o’clock or so the phone rang. There was an irrepressible, unmistakable, voice on the other end.
It was Danny, calling to wish us a Merry Christmas.
Danny is one of those memorable characters one comes across once in awhile; people who brand themselves into our memory bank.
I met Danny during the last few months of my brother-in-law’s life in the summer and fall of 2007. Mike, more or less a recluse, mentally ill, and paralyzed from the waist down, moved into the assisted living facility where Danny lived, a high-rise in one of North Dakota’s few cities. Mike had only two or three months in the high rise before cancer took him back to the hospital, nursing home, and the release of death.
I think there would be consensus among the people that know him, including his fellow residents, that Danny is an odd duck. He was very short, and very round, he certainly wasn’t graceful in his movements, and he basically wore the same clothes every day, and they were not clothes that would win him any awards.
And he could be a pest. I think even his fellow residents tended to tire of him at times.
At first, I thought he might be mentally handicapped, and I suspect that in some ways he was, but that didn’t deter him. He was just fine with himself, thank you very much.
Mike died in early November, 2007, with few friends. He’d spent a life wary of relationships, generally.
It was Danny who called me up and said he wanted to arrange a memorial service at the high-rise for Mike, and I said OK, not thinking that he’d ever pull it off.
But near Thanksgiving in 2007, Danny MC’ed the most marvelous memorial service I’ve ever attended. He had a minister there, and he had a pianist, and he sang a couple of the hymns as solos. There were a goodly number of us in attendance. If Mike’s spirit were anywhere around, it had to feel very good.
And it was Danny’s gig.
The minister later told me later that he based a sermon on Danny’s service: that’s how impressed he was.
Recently Danny celebrated his 50th birthday. He invited us up, but we didn’t go. Now I wish we had.
There are special people who come into one’s life, and Danny is definitely one of those, for me. Last night, he and I talked for only a short while, bid each other Merry Christmas, and so it went.
And speaking of Special People: Last night I heard that Susan Boyle’s YouTube videos from last spring have now been seen over 100,000,000 times – the most popular video of the year (here). (My two earlier posts about her are here.)
Today I bought Susan’s first CD, and started listening to it. It is wonderful. Look for it. She, too, was viewed as something of an odd duck in her village years ago…. She too was irrepressible.
She and Danny have that certain something…something we can all aspire to.

#131 – Dick Bernard: Merry Christmas

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UPDATE Dec. 18, 2009: We now know much more than we did three days ago. Were this a place with a union (it isn’t) I would without hesitation advise a grievance on wrongful termination. Most likely, though, our friend would never grieve: her gender, race and culture would cause her to not fight the issues.
OK. So, I don’t know all the facts. I don’t even know the story, first hand.
Whatever.
Within the last few hours my spouse, Cathy, said “guess what”. She’d just learned that her friend – let’s call her Annette – had just lost her job at a bank.
She’s been fired.
Cathy has known Annette for many years. They met when they were working part-time second jobs at the warehouse for a major national retail chain. They were the ones who first looked at and dealt with the stuff customers would soon be buying as, say, Christmas presents. Quite often it was high-end stuff. They’d make sure that what had been ordered was actually in the shipping crate and undamaged, that sort of thing. Very low wages, but it took the edge off too little income from their day jobs.
They became, and remain, very good friends.
Annette was an immigrant from an English-speaking Caribbean island, one of those desirable high-end tourist destinations. She’s black, with a still interesting accent. Oh yes, a U.S. citizen for many years. I’d guess she’s somewhere in her 50s, now. All the time I’ve known her she’s been single, divorced, with one son who often has tested her abundant sense of humor and optimism but who now seems, more or less anyway, to have weathered the storms of growing up. He lives out east somewhere, a father, divorced.
She has a particular talent, Annette does. She had an unusual ability to count, and account for, money. She did this for a long while for a big corporation downtown, barely reaching $10 an hour. The particular demands of her job didn’t allow her to continue at it. Her department was moved to a suburb, and she had no way of getting there because she didn’t have reliable transportation, and the new location wasn’t on a bus line. So she had to look for something else.
She found a position in a branch of a major bank – one of those you’ve heard about in the TARP conversations. She was good there, too. It was in a rough neighborhood. Been there several years now. She didn’t have a car, thus needed to take a bus to work. Once she was hit by a car in the crosswalk heading to the bus stop. Required after hour meetings were a problem for her. If they weren’t over by a certain time, she’d miss her bus, and have to wait for the next one. But she couldn’t leave the meetings.
As I said, her bank branch was in a rough neighborhood; the bus stop wasn’t a particularly safe place to wait. Her colleagues, including the one who called the meetings, could jump in their cars and go home. “See you tomorrow”. She had to wait.
After the bank received its TARP funds, last year, the bank cut employees hours, and only recently were the hours brought back to what they had been before the banking crisis last year. Of course, cutting back hours doesn’t mean cutting back on work – it means more work in the same hours for those remaining on the job.
As I said, Annette was talented at counting money. She has a wonderful sense of humor, and my knowledge of her was sufficient so that I know she’d be a great person to meet at the teller window – her job.
But something happened recently. I’m not sure what.
Maybe it was a new manager with different expectations. Whatever the case, Annette has just been fired. Something was mentioned about forgetting a procedure when dealing with counting out a large amount of money for a customer in $20 bills – there were no larger denomination bills available; or maybe the break room was messy and somebody blamed Annette for that. I doubt the issue is missing funds. When you’re a subordinate, you’re an easy target.
Long and short, while we’re out frantically trying to finish “Christmas shopping”, our friend is out of a job, back in her tiny apartment. Meanwhile, on my suggestion, we’ll be getting a new TV this week. The old one is a 15 year old 27″ that works just fine, and I suggested a few days ago, before I knew of the firing, that we give it to Annette. Cathy said “no”, Annette’s apartment is too tiny to accomodate it and the piece of furniture that goes with it.
It’s easy to say, about the Annette’s of our world, “tough bounce”.
Nowhere near as easy when you know the person as we have, for years.
As individuals, we can’t rescue Annette and all the Annette’s out there. It’s societies job, but “society” – the greater community in which we all live – doesn’t seem terribly interested in her sad story either. Evil Taxes, you know.
What to do?
The big bankers with Annette’s former bank will get big bonuses this Christmas. The government bailout was very helpful. Thank you very much. Some might take some time on her home island in the Caribbean.
Merry Christmas…and Happy New Year.