#203 – Dick Bernard: Ship of Fools, Part II

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After publishing #202, a long-time friend, a liberal Democrat, wrote with her comment on the post: “Maybe Republican was written too many times [some readers] don’t want to hear it.”
The comment caused me to use my word search function at the blog, to see in how many posts, of over 200, the words “Democrat/Democrats” had surfaced in my blog; and, similarly, how often “Republican/Republicans” had been mentioned. There were 16 posts where Democrat was used; 11 where Republican appeared. Eight of these mentioned both Republican and Democrat. One, the Index, really does not apply.
In short, fewer than 10% of my blog posts had any focus on named political parties.
Of course, this is not as simple as it might seem. For years, as a “liberal”, I have noticed that the word “liberal” has been adopted as one of the many hate words of the current brand of Republicans who run the Republican party. Newt Gingrich, never below the political horizon, bears lots of credit (blame) for deliberate abuse of language for political purposes. One of his long-ago basic training lists for his PAC, named GOPAC, is here. As often as not, “liberal” (or other words from that list) is spit out, almost as a swear word, by dedicated followers of the “conservative” mantra.
In my liberal friends case, tolerance is a virtue (pretty common for my liberal friends and acquaintances); for the contemporary Republican campaign operative, tolerance for other points of view is an intolerable attitude; or at best, a weakness in the opposition, to be exploited. On the other hand, if a Republican leader is criticized – other than by one of the flock – one has hell to pay: “How dare you?!”
So, I stand my ground on the “word” usage issue. Political rhetoric is a weapon.
About a week before my friends comment I had been at a speech given by a current state-wide office holder in Minnesota. This person is highly respected, including by his peers in similar positions in other states.
Like all politicians, he is condemned to several months of going around to every conceivable setting to convince enough people to reelect him. He seems to enjoy the tussle.
During his speech he related a recent visit to some community event where one of the local citizens told him “we need to vote all you bastards out“. The angry man apparently didn’t define his terms: if “bastards” were Democrats only, or if he meant all politicians regardless of the office or party anywhere.
Really, it’s no matter. The “bastard” guys shallowness of thinking is such that he probably really believes an “ethnic cleansing” of politicians will save the day…though having known people like him through my life, he would be the first person complaining when his dream took effect about the pothole that wasn’t repaired, or this, or that, or the other. Still, there’s a strong attitude out there, “to hell with them all”, and certain political constituencies are trying to focus their diverse angers to take control of the very government the angry constituents despise.
Similarly, there are people – lots of them – who can’t be bothered with any broad view of the role of government, or the diversity of people in their society. It is enough for them to focus on their single issue, whatever that is, without any consideration for anything else. At some level they must know they can’t look at “government” this simplistic way, but nonetheless they do.
We are the government, and we deserve what we elect.
As I close, I think of some guy my age, senior citizen, who I happened to be next to at our voting location some years ago. This guy, obviously a very angry guy, was with his wife, and went in the booth and voted.
He came out and told her (and anyone else within earshot), “Now, I’ve voted and that gives me the right to complain.” Sometimes I wonder where he’s at today….
At least he voted.

#202 – Dick Bernard: Why Are We a Ship Full of Fools?

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Thursday afternoon a friend stopped by to visit. He’d been to a wake at a nearby mortuary, paying respects to a long-time colleague who, he said, had few friends and almost no family. A kindly gesture.
We visited.
Jim is a fairly recent retiree from a career position in state government. I suppose somebody could call him a “bureaucrat”; some others wouldn’t even elevate him to that hated status. But he’s had a career inside the state system and he knows it very well. He also knows local politics, having been an elected city council member in his suburban community.
Our state like many others is grappling with huge budget issues. Recently the legislature (Democrat) avoided a special session showdown with our Governor (Republican-and-running-for-2012-GOP Presidential-nomination) by, as Jim put it, putting off catastrophic decisions until 2011. Either taxes must be raised, or draconian cuts made in needed services (meaning also, of course, cuts in personnel and/or their wages and benefits which in turn hurts the economy). But our formerly (ten years or more ago, I’d say, when negotiating differences meant something) responsible state government has again succumbed to political reality – getting elected in November.
Earlier in the day my wife had been to the hospital to visit our friend Annette who’d been “fired” from her job in early December. I put “fired” in quotes, because she was simply let go under the guise of being “fired”: She qualified immediately for unemployment, with no contest whatsoever from her former employer. She has not actively sought a job as she needed the surgery to work. She could not get the surgery until she qualified for a certain stop-gap insurance to cover the bill, which in turn she couldn’t qualify for until a month after her eligibility for another insurance plan (one she could not afford) ran out. (Yes, it is complicated, but it’s how I remember the scenario).
Thursday night I watched the news, part of which was the failure, once again, to get an extension of unemployment benefits through the U.S. Senate. The vote was to allow an up-or-down vote and avoid a filibuster. The senators call it “invoking cloture”. It takes 60 votes for cloture, in a 100 member Senate. Fifty-seven Democrats voted aye; forty Republicans and one Democrat voted nay, and the motion failed. There are so many issues, and filibusters are diversions that cannot be afforded. The politicians have their issue: “that’ll show those shiftless and lazy dolts who are feeding at the public trough – go out and get a job” (even if there’s no job to get). Jobs are the reason the stimulus is needed in the first place. (The excuse used by senators – and it is only an excuse – is that this will increase the deficit; they all know its actual effect will be the opposite, which is why the Republicans want it to fail. I wrote about this multiplier effect one year ago on this blog.)
The Republican strategy is the same as it has been from Day One of the Obama Presidency: make him fail, and in failure, enhance the prospect for Republican success in November. That 60-vote cloture rule is one of their main tools.
Blocking legislation is a good short-term political strategy…and we are fools to bite, but many of us are – at least that’s the Republican calculus to win in November.
That night we had a house guest while I watched the national news. He was one of our grandsons, whose Dad was working his second job.
His Dad is one of those who was laid off from a corporate job last March, and has taken a temporary job – “no more than a year” – with lower wages than he was earning, with the State of Minnesota*. His job seems to be intake phone calls from fellow-unemployed persons, including occasional ones contemplating suicide because they can’t find work. He is the first point of contact with the State, and he is to help them navigate the maze to possible assistance on their particular problem. It is hard work.
When the axe falls, as it will, on our state in January, his job will almost certainly be history. So will, likely, the usual possibility that even a temporary state job might lead to something more permanent. He has to work two jobs to survive, which cuts into his opportunity to seek other employment….
And we continue on, cruising on this Ship of Fools, justifying our short-sightedness and selfishness.
At some point, our ship will sink; it’s now rapidly taking on water. We seem not to care.
* – Subsequent to this post, I visited with my son-in-law: he’s one of 400 doing this job, and he receives over 100 phone calls per day. There is no down time.
A directly related post, by Paul Krugman in Monday’s New York Times, is here.
A followup post at this blog and on this topic is #203, here.

#201 – Dick Bernard: Sock Monkey takes a trip

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Back in April, my son Tom alerted me to watch for a package containing a Sock Monkey. It was in Michigan, he said, and our home was its next stop. When I received it I was to let people who knew his daughter (thus my granddaughter) Lindsay see the monkey, and write a note or such wishing well her and her-husband-to be Jeffrey.
We talked by phone, and Tom mentioned that the monkey was his idea. He could remember seeing such a monkey at some relatives house years earlier, and he thought it would be a neat idea to have a Sock Monkey carry a message of good wishes to the newlyweds.
It was certainly a neat idea.
Sock Monkey came, and I got into the task far more so than I had expected.
Sock Monkey went out to North Dakota to the ancestral farm, and took a photo with Tom’s grandmother’s brother and sister.
Back in the Twin Cities, the Monkey got around, visiting all of the places that Tom had lived and gone to school before he migrated to Colorado many years ago. Sock Monkey posed with Tom’s sisters and their families, and with friends.
I worried about misplacing, or forgetting, the Monkey in its makeshift home – a small packing box.
Memorial Day we began our trip west via the Black Hills with an overnight in the famous Wall S.D. Sock Monkey got free ice water at the Wall Drug (well, figuratively speaking); made a call out west from the phone booth in front of the drug store; posed with the dinosaur, and was pretty generally was a pretty typical tourist. Walking through the Wall Drug with the Monkey I found a whole rack full of Sock Monkey’s! The friendly monkey had a family reunion, right there on the Main Street of Wall!
We drove on, through eastern Wyoming, where Sock Monkey (below) took a moment to perch on the dashboard and take a look at Wyoming’s scenery.

Sock Monkey visits Wyoming


Safely in Denver, I delivered Sock Monkey to the father of the bride, who, at the reception presented the Sock Monkey to the new couple. I gathered this was a surprise gift, but one of the highlights of their wedding weekend.
At the gift opening the day after the wedding, one of the highlight gifts was a Sock Monkey stained glass window made by one of the relatives in Michigan. It was a hit.
That Sock Monkey was a very simple idea.
But what a wonderful one!
Related posts: here and here.

Sock Monkey gets undivided attention at the Wedding Reception


A wedding gift: Sock Monkey in stained glass!

#200 – Dick Bernard: Fathers Day

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Happy Father’s Day all you Dads, and those whose role is or has been or will be that of “Dad”.
Wikipedia notes, without any fanfare, that this is the 100th anniversary of the observance of Father’s Day, it’s first observance on June 19, 1910.
I’ve been around long enough to have been a Dad not far short of half of those 100 years. Most Dad’s days have been pretty normal days; once in a great while comes one that’s not so hot; and if you’re really lucky, every now and then comes one that is a peak experience, not always on the day itself.
This year was one of those “peak experience” years, two weeks ago Friday, when I watched my oldest son give away his daughter, my granddaughter, to her new husband, Jeffrey. It was one of those “chest-swelling, button-splitting proud” moments for me. Leaving the Chapel, people in the pews applauded we grandparents of bride and groom, and I self-consciously waved. It’s a difficult experience to describe.
This Father’s Day also marks the end of a year spent trying to summarize nearly 400 years of my French-Canadian father’s family history. I’ve been going through boxes of documentation, recollections, letters, pictures: mother’s, father’s, sons and daughters, extended family…. For me the dates of birth, marriage, death are not nearly as interesting as the stories of these assorted names who are the roots of my particular family tree. The Bernard family story includes all of the elements of the story of most every family – memorable things, things you’d rather not have known. It’s just how it is.
Father’s Day came to be as an appropriate recognition somewhat akin to the earlier and still better known Mother’s Day. Father’s Day was, apparently, a woman’s idea at the beginning.
There can be endless discussion of why Mother’s Day came earlier than Father’s Day, or why it seems to still have a higher place in the pecking order of observances even today, but those can take place off to the side, and individually.
Being “Father” or “Mother” has traditionally and likely always will mean different roles and responsibilities which evolve over time in each family. (I’ve been both father and mother on more than one occasion – that is another story.)
Recently, a wonderful relative, now 90, wrote me about a long, long ago happening in her home when she was five years old. Her Grandpa – her Dad’s Dad, and my Great-Grandfather – had come to live with them on the farm after his wife had died. One day he fell down the steps and had to be hospitalized. After some time in the hospital, a decision needed to be made about him coming back to the farm for his last days, or remaining in the hospital. He died in the hospital a few months later. To this day there remain some residual feelings about whether or not Great-Grandpa’s last days were handled appropriately, and there are still conversations many years later. (In my opinion, there is no question: his last days were handled very appropriately.)
Agnes, with the directness a person her age is entitled to, wrote about the decision making process at that time: “Mom could not take care of him. [She c]ould not depend on Dad or brothers to help. Farm men don’t spend their time in the house.” And so it went. Another dilemma in the country, repeated endless times, people doing the best that they could under not always the best circumstances.
As we deal with the complexities of our own lives, a Happy Day to All, especially Dad’s.

#199 – Dick Bernard: A New Cuyahoga Moment?

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Previous posts on this topic: here and here.
For years, when I’m “out and about” in our world I’ve made it a practice of picking up the local newspaper, however humble or exalted.
So, when we were about to leave Denver on June 6, I picked up the Sunday Denver Post, and when I wasn’t in the drivers seat, took time to read the news. Colorado and mountain west personalities and U.S. Energy Policy are very close kin, and the Post had two most interesting articles which can be accessed here and here and speak for themselves. Tidbit: The first words in the Post lead article say “[from] its creation in 1982, the Minerals Management Service…has been a conflicted agency.” In 1982, Department of Interior was headed by James Watt in the administration of Ronald Reagan, but it is impossible to find this most basic fact in either the articles or at the MMS website.
But as the deepwater catastrophe continues in the Gulf of Mexico, my memories go back to a memorable trip I took in early August of 1968.
I was a junior high school geography teacher back then, and the opportunity arose to get in my Volkswagen and take a solitary tour through parts of the northeast U.S. and southern Canada. I set a goal (which I met) of spending no more than $10 a day TOTAL for food and lodging, and off I went, with my starting and ending point of Columbus, Ohio. I wanted to see some of the geography about which I was teaching. I remember the trip vividly. Here is the thumbnail synopsis: (I was young, then, and I could accomplish a lot in what were some very long days of trying to see everything possible).
First night, Charleston W Va, including seeing a giant chemical plant on the Kanawha River
Second night, Fredericksburg VA on the Rappahannock, after seeing giant coal trains just into Virginia, driving by the military complex at Norfolk-Newport News; Colonial Williamsburg
Third night, some unremembered town in the exhausted Anthracite mining district of Pennsylvania, after driving through Washington DC, which was not recovered from the 1968 riots after MLK’s assassination; Gettysburg; a tour of the Hershey Chocolate Factory (we watched Hershey Kisses being made!)
Fourth night, Elmira NY, once a home of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Fifth night, some forgotten tiny town near Lake Ontario in northern NY after a day of mostly just driving, after a morning visit to Corning Glass Works in Corning NY. (My vivid memory here was checking in to the hotel, and asking for a room key, and getting a blank stare. They didn’t have keys…. This was just one of many examples of my high quality accomodations.)
Sixth night, Pembroke, on the Ottawa River in Ontario, seeing rural Ontario to and from, and log rafts on the Ottawa River.
Seventh and probably last night, Lockport NY, on the old Erie Canal, and not far from Niagara Falls.
The last day I drove along Lake Erie very early in the morning, and reached my destination of Oil Creek State Park near Titusville PA when no one was around. This was ground zero of American oil in 1859. Much to my surprise, a pump was running and a trickle of oil was coming out of a spigot. I rummaged in a garbage can and found an empty Iron City beer bottle, and filled it with Pennsylvania crude, turned on the screw cap and went on to see United States Steel in Pittsburgh before finishing the last leg to Columbus and home.
It was a warm day, and I forgot a basic physical fact: heated oil expands. I came back to my car and the oil had exploded the beer bottle, and I had a mess on the floor of my back seat. It was my first oil spill….
But that doesn’t explain the title of this post.
A year later, in Cleveland OH, the Cuyahoga River caught fire. In the same time frame, Lake Erie became almost a dead lake, and concern was raised about those wonderful phosphate rich detergents that not only were remarkable cleaners, but devastated the environment. We were killing ourselves. The American People Noticed.
In 1972 Congress passed the Clean Water Act.
It occurs to me that my little jaunt as a young geography teacher in 1968 was a look at the beginning of the end of the good old days of our business as usual U.S. industrial history. But changing habits is a terribly hard exercise.
Maybe the deepwater catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico will be the U.S. “Cuyahoga moment” of 2010. We are the ones who can make it so.

#198 – Dick Bernard: The President, BP, and Energy Policy

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I clicked on “publish” on #197 – Taking Responsibility and went to watch President Obama speak to the nation from the Oval Office Tuesday night.
The speech is short, well worth watching.
As I anticipated in #197, the instant analysis – and criticism – began immediately after the lights went down in the Oval Office.
I watched the speech on my favorite news outlet, and the fancy highly paid version of “armchair quarterbacks” or “sidewalk superintendents” weighed in immediately, slicing and dicing the Presidents every word and gesture and inflection.
I lasted about ten minutes, and left to do other things. There are better ways to spend ones time than listen to talking heads talk.
Then this morning the slicing and dicing continued on-line.
And I’m just paying attention to what President Obama’s “friends” are saying. I can imagine how his enemies are spinning this.
No doubt the President and his advisors were well aware going in that this would be a no-win kind of evening for him.
Everyone has their own particular grievance or expectation. Almost nobody truly believes that it is their problem to solve, or at minimum, most folks don’t consider themselves to have any clout beyond complaining to their friends and disciples.
My own interpretation of his brief, calm, direct remarks was, to borrow a suddenly publicly utterable word: “foks, if you want something to happen long-term, get off your collective a*sses and get to work. I can’t do it by myself.”
He wasn’t talking to his opposition: he knows they’re in it to have him fail, for their own political advantage.
He was talking to the tens of millions of us who said, a year and a half ago, that we wanted to be part of “Change we can believe in”. And the work has to be done locally and state by state, with local lawmakers, and state and national elected representatives we send to Washington.
Without our active involvement – and carping about a speech is not active involvement – our nation will continue the slide on the slippery slope to at best irrelevancy and at worst oblivion.
We cannot survive, living in the manner to which we have become accustomed, relying on the ever more elusive fossil fuels, found in ever more dangerous places, that we’ve gorged ourselves on over the last century.
I believe that most people, including those who hate Obama, know that we’re in a major crisis; that without major change we’re doomed.
Now is the time for us to act in our own self interest and help our nation change its far too long accepted self-destructive course.
President Obama advocated, last night, for moving away from our addiction to fossil fuels, and said it was possible, much like new-President John Kennedy said, years ago, that we could land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.
I had just turned 21 when Kennedy made his “man on the moon” speech in May, 1961, and nobody believed him, but the goal was attained with an outpouring of national will, July 20, 1969*. Granted, Kennedy had fear – of Sputnik, and the Soviet Unions nuclear adventures – in his corner then; but our crisis. now, is even greater.
Change can happen with energy policy in this decade as well IF we work to make it so. We can’t wait.
* – I notice the YouTube link invites a re-direct to the BP channel – something I had heard about. Ah, the information age….

#197 – Dick Bernard: Taking Responsibility

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In an hour or so President Obama will deliver an address that will be closely watched world-wide. Afterwards, as he and his advisors know, every word (or lack of same), expression, inflection, will be analyzed and isolated to suit the purposes of endless numbers of observers, who will then cast judgment, positive or negative, on what he says or doesn’t say. This is how the game is played.
I’ll watch the address. That’s about it.
I choose to focus, rather, on some random events, starting with an e-mail from a friend about 9 this morning. This friend is in international business, an exporter of USA and Canadian food and feed grains and seeds. He said: “To be honest business is just terrible. I do not see how the world can avoid a double dip recession as consumption is down in all areas with inventories not moving as anticipated.”
My friend is an astute veteran international business man. What he observes is not some abstract thing. It’s where he lives, literally.
What he said this morning ties in, I think, with what the President faces tonight when the camera rolls at the White House.
From May 31 through June 7 we were on the road to a family wedding in Colorado. By the time we left on our trip, the President had accepted responsibility for taking care of the oil spill. When we got back, one of the first film clips we saw on evening news was of Elizabeth Cheney asserting on one of the Sunday newsmaker programs that since this thing happened on Obama’s watch, it was his responsibility. There was not any acknowledgment that her Daddy, the former vice-president who’s been silent as stone on this issue, might share some responsibility. Their behavior reminds me of something I once heard from an ordinary person: “Mom taught me never to apologize“.
President Obama did what we expect of him: take on our responsibility. The Cheney’s, on the other hand, did what we too often expect of ourselves: nothing.
Every now and then on our trip out west (we were two couples in a Prius) we talked about whether or not this 2500 miles was a frivolous trip. Even at a pretty amazing 40mpg, we wondered, should we be doing this.
Occasionally we’d ask business people about their business, and in each instance, business was down: fewer people travelling; those people spending less.
During the past week, we’ve now begun to hear the expected refrain from the British, whose pensions are in many ways depending on the economic health of the mega-corporation, BP. “Make the corporation responsible and it’s going to damage all of us“, so goes the refrain. I think it was yesterday that Haley Barbour, the political genius who’s Governor of Mississippi, seemed to begin to make the case that drilling ought to resume, regardless of what had just happened. After all, the saw goes, people need jobs. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”.
And so it goes. Personally, I’m inclined to be moved by my friends comment earlier in this post. If we can afford to do so – and most of us can – I think now is a time to put money into the economy so as to help allay a darker and deeper recession. Sure, make choices of where you spend that money, but best to put some of the treasure in the money bin into circulation. I won’t buy a bushel of my friends soybean seed, but the money multiplier does work. And we’re the base for this.
I’m glad we made our trip. So is my son and granddaughter and daughter-in-law. So are the motels we stayed in. So is the girl from Russia who waited on us at a restaurant in Wall SD.
President Obama will be on stage tonight. But everyone of us, in the wings, has our own important and constructive part to play.
For those interested, here’s a link to the White House, related to the Presidents address.

#196 – Dick Bernard: Lindsay and Jeffrey's Wedding

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Okay, okay.
Here’s a slide show of a wedding with 84 slides, and I took them all. (Simply click on the first photo in the group, and then you can play this as a slide show, as you wish.)
Do cut me some slack. After all, it was granddaughter Lindsay’s wedding, June 4, 2010, at the beautiful Red Rocks in Morrison CO, with other events in Denver suburbs Lakewood and Littleton. We had a wonderful trip, and time.
Some of you know the “players” in the slide show; others may know no one. I’m the white-bearded, white-haired guy…there aren’t many of us to pick from! In the photos are my siblings and my kids and many of their spouses. At the wedding, a few deer were a delightful distraction (the man officiating reminded us that he knew the deer were there, right behind him, but we were in the chapel for a wedding!) But how can you not notice?
Simply Sloppy Joe’s is there in the slides: it is a small, well known popular walk-in eatery in Denver area, the enterprise of Lindsay’s Mom, with her Dad’s help. The business name says it all. A few standard varieties of Sloppy Joe with a weekly special. Even Sloppy Joe cookies. They’re a local institution, well known and loved in the Denver area, at the corner of Pierce and Mississippi in suburban Lakewood. Check them out if you’re in Denver. If you know someone in Denver area, let them know of Simply Sloppy Joe’s!
But this slide show is about a wedding. And it was, truly, one of the nicest, best weddings I’ve ever attended. Sure, I’m biased. But it was.
In the images are some clues about the high points of the wedding.
There’s a sock monkey who appears in a few places. “Sock Monkey” travelled all over creation, and appeared in lots of photographs on both sides of the new family. The images ended up in an album, an enduring message about the strength of family. One of Jeffrey’s relatives in Michigan made a stained glass sock monkey. Cute. I took my sock monkey duty seriously. Along the monkey went to North Dakota, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado. Sock Monkey even stopped at Wall Drug for a glass of free ice water!
I liked the refrigerator door display in the new couple’s townhome. It’s in the photos. Lindsay loves the Beatles, for a very personal reason. I told her the Beatles were just hitting it big in the United States when her Dad was born in 1964.
Instead of the traditional unity candle, the couple used a natural theme, a young sapling, for that portion of the ceremony. The simple wedding cake followed the natural theme. A story teller told a marvelous story. At this wedding, good followed good followed good….
They recently closed on their townhome, and a criteria was that its cost be low enough so that it could be paid for if only one of the two were working. Good practical old-time kind of thinking.
Marriage is often viewed as a destination.
More accurately, I see it as the beginning of a trip along a road which is not always predictable.
I wish Lindsay and Jeffrey well.
From what I experienced last week, they’re off to a good start.
Congratulations and best wishes!
A pre-wedding post on the upcoming wedding is at the blog for May 31, 2010.